Saturday, May 1, 2010

The host_framerate cvar is messed up

Credit to Sajt on the Inside 3D Forums for spotting this one. The host_framerate cvar is, and has been for some time, terminally messed up in DirectQ. The cause of the problem is that if you change the value of host_framerate, the server (and parts of the client) won't obey the new value - they will still act as though the way it should normally be is in effect.

Fortunately this is an easy fix, but I most likely won't be releasing an update for it. The reason why is that it went about 4 months before it was even noticed, so it seems satisfactory to assume that this is not a feature that's in high demand or widespread use in the first place. I more than half suspect that it's something ID put in to simulate the engine running at different speeds for test purposes, but that got unintentionally picked up on by modders.

A further reason is that the DirectQ source code has already forked in two - the current 1.8.3c release is actually a separate fork. While this is just one small fix, the hard reality is that there are a lot of things that could be described as "one small fix", and they all mount up. I don't want to create a situation where there are two very divergent codebases which would need to be reintegrated at some point.

If there is sufficient demand for it, I might do a binary only release (with the affected code file included to satisfy the GPL), but I would really prefer to not start going down that route. It's the first step on a very slippery slope that would lead to a 1.8.4 release that contains completely different code to the current 1.8.3 releases.

I suppose the deciding factor would be someone showing me a mod that is available now and that depends on changes to host_framerate. Works in progress don't count unless it's a WIP that's going to come out within the next few weeks.

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