Thursday, October 1, 2009

1.7.3 Updates So Far

Before I sign off for a week and a half, here's what's been done to date for 1.7.3:

  • Standardised file I/O further.
  • Prevented PK3 support from creating a folder structure under %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\temp.
  • Removed nehahra cutscene cvars from checking/enumeration for non-Nehahra games.
  • Added new PROTOCOL_VERSION_MH extending coordinate system to 3.402823466e+38F.
  • Started porting QMB particle system.
  • Improved accuracy of angle quantization for old protocols.
  • Changed angles to quantized shorts instead of full floats for new protocol (bandwidth and packet size).
Perhaps the single most noticeable change here is the use of quantized shorts (instead of quantized bytes) to represent angles in transmission. One effect of this is that hipnotic rotating brushes are no longer jerky but instead incredibly smooth. You will be able to see this for yourself on the hipnotic start map.

Unfortunately zerstorer cutscenes are still jerky. I might experiment with full floats to see if that makes any improvement, but if so I will need to increase the max packet size as we would be talking about 4 x data size for angles!

One important point to remember about protocols is that the server controls the protocol. If you use DirectQ to connect to a protocol 15 server, all you'll get is standard protocol 15 behaviour.

That's about it until the 15th October or so.

2 comments:

Andy said...

Be safe, come back, and let me be the first to say, "We look forward to 1.7.3" (and watch out for those slipgates, wherever it is you go).

Baker said...

Smooth hipnotic brushes = awesome