Now that RC2 is out I'm going to wait a while and see if bug/crash reports come in, but I'm starting to feel as though the next release might be the full and final 1.8.666 release.
Even if not, there are a few more changes going to come through next time around.
DirectQ entity movement and rotation has always been a little jerkier than it should be, despite the availability of interpolation; I've identified the cause of this and it has been eliminated from the engine. Everything is nice and smooth now.
Some more robust capabilities checking at startup has greatly increased support for older and/or downlevel hardware. Massive credit needs to go to the mighty Baker (he of ProQuake fame) for testing various builds, reporting crashes, and generally being patient during the troubleshooting of this one.
I am sorely tempted to change my default protocol to the new RemakeQuake protocol. This is based on the FitzQuake protocol (which is my current default) but has extended co-ordinates and smoother angles for all entities (not just the player) built in (which, IMO, Fitz should have also had from the outset). It might be a bit hairy doing this at this stage in the game, but I do want it at some point in time, and it's of benefit to everybody so if it can be done now I think it's worth shooting for.
On the other hand, I mentioned that I wanted to make a change to handling of fullbrights, but have now decided to defer this one. I'm reasonably certain that I can get fullbright colours without needing to load an extra texture for them (confirmed with HLSL, actually), and definitely certain that I can seamlessly and robustly support gl_fullbrights 0, 1 and 2 (i.e. old blend mode), but it needs a bit more restructuring of the surface refresh that I'm currently willing to take on.
I'm also planning to at least make an attempt at Linux/Wine support; even if it only gets as far as checking whether or not it works and getting some idea of what needs to be done, it will be useful information.
Once I get the full and final release out I'm planning on taking a break from DirectQ for a short while. This will be to let ideas for 1.9 settle better in my mind, get away from what has been a quite intense piece of work recently, try some experiments outside of the main codebase, and generally relax and chill out more. I also fancy doing some OpenGL work, which I haven't really done in a while, and think I'm going to write a replacement gl_rsurf.c that should utilise some ideas from DirectQ's renderer but be adaptable to other engines quite easily. Sometimes a change is as good as a rest!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Upcoming changes
Posted by
mhquake
at
12:22 AM
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5 comments:
RMQ! RMQ! RMQ!
I tried out the rmq rotate brush map,
on DirectQ, I couldnt get the actual rmq engine to work so I have no base for comparason, but Walking into the giant rotating bridge gibbed me lol.
I know I know, the rotating brush code is WIP, so its absurd to bring it up, so Just mentioning I guess.
Should be pretty obvious, I'm all for rmq protocol :)
I'll need to cross-check that one with the RMQ engine, but it may be intentional. We'll see.
I have been given an RMQ SP map (that hasn't been released yet so don't ask me anything about it - it's quite awesome though) that features rotating stuff but doesn't have this happen. I'll know more after I cross-check.
I'm glad to see you and the RMQ team collaborating a bit, it should keep your engine up to snuff and their code from getting too reliant on dirty hacks.
...or the other way around...! :)
OK, cross-checked and it's a DirectQ bug. It doesn't happen with 1.8.4 (which didn't support rotation, but I don't think that part is too relevant) but there are problems with the current version (which is also WIP code), and I suspect it's clipnodes, as there are some other problems which would indicate that.
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