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I had the same problem. After poking around a while, turns out that Microsoft's DirectSound was the problem. But not the only problem... There's a variable called s_wavonly that defaults to 0. Setting this to 1 and then restarting the sound system (snd_restart) _should_ work (by disabling DirectSound), but on my system it just turns the sound off. So, I edited config.cfg (which q2test writes everytime you exit) and added the line: set s_wavonly "1" This works, but q2test strips it out when you exit. So, I got my key mappings and video mode the way I like them, added the required line to config.cfg, and then typed: attrib +r config.cfg to make it read-only. Now I can't make permanent changes to settings in the game, but at least sound works each time. You might also want to change s_mixahead from the default of 0.2 to 0.1. This might cause choppy sound in higher resolutions. Unfortunately s_mixahead is a misnomer, as you can't actually mix "ahead". It really sets how long of an interval to mix before playing the sound, so it causes a delay. Setting it to 0.1 helps a lot. That's the value WinQuake uses for it's equivalent setting, _snd_mixahead, and I didn't notice the delay there. Also, weapons animations seem to hit their peak "kick" frame a lot sooner than Q1, so this exagerates the delay, but that should be easily fixed before Q2 comes out. Wes Morrison |
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10-21-97 I'm glad everyone is having fun with the Quake II test. I think the Quake II/id fans have managed to brown-out the Internet with all of the downloads ;) We're trying to get an estimate of how many times the test has been downloaded, but its difficult to extrapolate the numbers. My best judgement tells me that absolutely *no less* than 250,000 downloads were made in the first TWO DAYS. |
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Part of releasing any new product for perusal and criticism by the masses
is enduring the slings and arrows of competitors, reporters, reviewers, and
just about anyone else who can type. I was feeling pretty good until I saw
some pretty negative comments about the Q2 demo on various newsgroups, which
is normal, but what bothers me is that a lot of people expect something
RADICALLY DIFFERENT from id software. A lot of people are looking to id for
a game that id doesn't want to write -- an RPG, a fighting game, a 3/4 view
fighter, whatever. This, folks, is why you have a choice. As much as we like to think that Quake2 is different from Quake, it is going to have essentially the same basic goals - run around, kill shit, survive until the end. This is the very essence of a "first person shooter". Which brings me to my point -- the first person shooter, aka FPS, is a genre unto itself. It is not a technology, it is an actual, honest to goodness genre just like real-time strategy, turn-based strategy, driving simulation, flight simulation, game show, puzzle, RPG, whatever. It is a separate genre defined as "running around a world from the first person point of view and shooting things". Invariably an FPS involves "finding a key" by "killing enemies" so that you can "go to the next level". You can call the key something else, or you can make it a switch, or you can make it a timed event even, but the key exists -- it is defined as "some action or event that must occur in order for the player to continue towards the conclusion of the game". Along the way you will encounter obstacles, and those obstacles are usually some type of enemy that you must kill. And when you have removed your obstacles, you get your key, and move to the next level. In this fashion, Quake is like Super Mario 64. The difference being that in Super Mario you "jump and squish" and in Quake you "shoot and gib". Both games have you running around, getting powerups, trying to get to the next level, while not getting killed. They differ in the details and the implementation, but that's about it. What this comes down to is that MANY classes of game fall within this description, yet people get upset when "yet another shooter" comes out that does this. You don't see people saying, "Oh great, yet another flight sim" or "yet another football game", but for some reason shooters are singled out as being overly derivative. Maybe it's because they all harken back to a game that is still in our recent memory (Wolf3D), so being able to call everything a "derivative" is pretty easy. We're seeing much the same thing with real-time strategy games right now, and maybe an analogous "problem" exists in that field. And in the end, yes, Wolf3D, Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Quake 2, Unreal, Jedi Knight, and the host of other FPS games coming out are going to be doing roughly the same thing in slightly different ways, just like the host of military flight sims do today. The consumer gets to choose which one implements their vision of the perfect FPS the best, and thus the market decides what is good and what is not, and that is a Good Thing. If people buy more copies of Unreal than Quake2, we will have to re-evaluate our design decisions. If people buy more copies of Half-life than Quake2, we will have to re-evaluate our design decisions. If people buy more copies of Jedi Knight than Quake2, we will have to see about getting a Star Wars license :-). So when you're criticizing Quake2, or any other FPS game for that matter, ask yourself -- "do I dislike this specific game, or am I just sick of this genre?". The former contains the type of complaint that I think most game companies doing FPS games are interested in. The latter, however, is where you get to vote by buying "Dark Reign" or "You Don't Know Jack". id software writes first person shooters. We do these types of games far better, in my opinion, than any other game company on planet earth. And I do not see us giving up this _genre_ any time soon. But we are always looking to IMPROVE upon this genre to make, with each successive generation, the definite product that defines the genre, much like other companies do with RTS and flight sims. |
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For Quake2, you are adding CTF into the commercial release; how
much different will CTF be in Quake2 from Threewave CTF? Is there
anything in Quake2's CTF that you wanted in Threewave CTF, but it
never made it? CTF won't be in the initial commercial release. It will come out a little later as an upgrade/addon. Time constraints of development. The CTF will not be significantly different--the essential gameplay elements will remain intact. I don't want to change something that works. Lots of small issues, such as grapple redesign, the runes (or possible lack thereof), etc. actually still need to be worked out. I'm hoping it will be an evolution of CTF into a more refined game. Many people know my dislike for adding stuff for the sake of just having new gadgets to play with. ThreeWave CTF has always been basic, simple and complete. |
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On to the Q2 Test. John summed up the attitude towards changes in the game at this point so I'll try not to be too redundant. Basically you won't be able to please all the people all the time so keep that in mind as I try to address some of the issues you've sent. Some things I'd like to point out that WILL NOT change are: 1. Textures are smooth and 'muddy' in GL. Just the way it is and the price you pay for faster gameplay and colored lighting 2. Models will swim due to the frame interpolation being achieved through a 'grid' which the vertices are forced to snap to in xyz space. Just the way it is and any sort of tighter grid would slow the game down. 3. Weapons are going to stay where they are, off to the side. Straight out in front of you blows artistically and looks dumb to me. 4. Unless John decides to make it an on/off feature, the weapons switching will be the same as it is now. Tactical play balance is a part of the game now in case you haven't noticed. 5. This is Quake2 and not Quake. This game is an evolution of Wolfenstein and will never be an RPG or flic-fest like JK or Wing Commander. We have THREE artists at id and we don't plan on expanding any time soon. Our games are a nearly arcadian experience with no higher meaning or need for cogitation other than which weapon you're going to use to blow the shit out of your enemy. We create a virtual world where after dragging your ass through your 9 to 5 or boring school days you can get a little escape and have a ton of fun. Don't underestimate the changes of the multiplayer experience we have in store for you. I promise you it takes DM and MP to the next level after the one Quake has set. 6. And finally the fact the Q2 will kick some major ass this Christmas is indelible. I'm in the process of making changes in the animations (such as showing empty rl and gl racks and tweaking ALL animations to be more realistic) based on your valuable input but to be honest, after 600+ e-mails, I've probably heard it all by now. I'm in no way trying to discourage you from writing to me with suggestions and or requests for changes, just letting you know that I'm probably already aware of the issue by now. So send 'em to me but try to be original and/or inventive in your comments. Thanks again for the kudos and fraggin' good comments. |
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:I assume that the .DLL code will be in multiple .c and .h files; I was :thinking that once we got the source, we'd all pick a .c or .h file to :decode -- and tell the list which one we're doing so we minimize duplicate :effort. ( Of course, if the file in question is 4000 lines long, more than :one person is probably a good idea. ) Currently it's in 62 files. Longest is just shy of 1,800 lines. Most of them are in the 200-500 line range. :As a software-only player I have to say that Q2 looks better than any :other unnaccelerated game I've seen in software mode. My guess is that :this is due to the great lighting effects and brilliant texture art. :While I'm off-subject it looks like there might not be any fullbright :colors in Q2 - are there? No, there are not. :Will the include files for the DLLs be released early? So we can look at :the interface? Please? Please? prolly not |
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Are you disappointed in the fact that the Quake2 Demo won't have Multiplayer support? Well, it kinda sucks, but I'll still get it 457 41.2% HELL YES! That Sucks! 341 30.9% Doesn't matter one bit! Quake2 will ROCK 146 13.2% I don't give flying fart, just gimme it! 158 14.3% |
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Many of the comments about the Quake 2 test are already being addressed. We expected quite a few of them,
but the test has served its purpose of bringing in some good feedback that we couldn't have predicted. The final game will definately be better as a result of the test. However, it certainly won't please everyone. I am confidant that the majority will think that Quake 2 is significantly better than anything we have ever done before, but even if we please 80% of our potential customers, that will still leave a couple hundred thousand people thinking that we let them down. I suppose that I have it the easiest there -- I can always defend my technical decisions with specific discussions of my evaluations of the tradeofs that led me to the paths I chose. In fact, in a large number of cases when someone suggests something, I can actually say "Tried it. Didn't work as well." Defending level design, artwork, or sounds is a lot harder. We can't even always agree here at id on many of these issues, so we know for sure that we can't please all the users simultaniously. All we can do is put talented people on the job and have confidence in their abilities. Note: Q2TEST DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY HIGH QUALITY SOUNDS! That would have added another 15 megs to the demo size. Selecting high quality sounds just upsamples the existing 11khz / 8 bit sounds. There is a significant quality increase (at a slight speed and memory cost) with the full production sounds. Quake 2's goal is to be the best first person shooter ever. We are trying to evolve a genre, not move to a different one. If you don't want a game that mostly consists of running around and killing things, you will be dissapointed. We are trying to be cohesive, but not deep. I have high hopes for the games that are atempting to aply our technology to other genres, but don't look for it in Quake 2. |
| - Linux Quake2 Test. Now that the Win32 q2test is out, I'm working fast and furious on getting q2test out for Linux as well. It will support software and GL rendering modes (ala MesaGL). It will also be a console application initially and uses SVGALib for Mouse and Keyboard handling and video in the software render. The GL version has the same requirements as the Linux GLQuake I'm working on. |
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Those of you getting weird lockups on 3Dfx -- um, PLEASE make sure you
have the latest versions of Glide (2.4x) from 3Dfx. Also, PLEASE make
sure that if you are having problems, BEFORE submitting a bug report
get rid of ALL 3Dfx environment variable tweaks! This means
SST_GRXCLK, SST_FASTPCIRD, etc. etc. since these may cause lockups
through no fault of our own. If you clear those environment variables,
and you're using Glide 2.4x, and you're still encountering problems,
please let me know. I'm getting several reports of floating point exceptions occuring on the DEC Alpha. This is a known problem, and is probably the result of some bugs in our code that are masked on Intel (this is why porting to different platforms is so damn useful!). We're going to look into this as soon as possible. In the meantime we're enabling divide-by-zero exceptions on Intel via _controlfp() and hopefully this will let us hunt down the problem. Got several reports that Q2TEST for DEC Alpha works on 21064. Coolness! Apparently Q2TEST/AXP doesn't work with Dynamic Pictures Oxygem boards (not much of a surprise there). |
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I hope everyone is enjoying the quake 2 test. Its always hard to release a version of a product that you know isn't in its final form. There are plenty of things that are getting better every single day, but we need to chop it off at some point to let everyone test it out. We will do another demo after we finish the full retail product, so if you don't like looking at preproduction stuff, wait for that one. Still, I am pretty happy with the test. I think Quake 2 is definately the most cohesive game we have ever done. Don't worry -- just because the test doesn't have multiplayer in it, it doesn't mean that we haven't been thinking about it. Many features in the quake 2 architecture are going to enable a whole new level of net play. It will take a few months after the full release for all the potential to start showing through, but just you wait! The biggest changes to Quake 2 are internal. Anyone doing modification work on Quake is going to be ecstatic when they get to work with quake2. The game dll source code and all the utilities (including the OpenGl map editor) will be released shortly after the game hits store shelves. |
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Recompiled Quake2 on the Enorex DEC Alpha system, and it worked pretty
much on the first shot. The main problem we had was a divide-by-zero
error that was masked on WinNT/Intel but which manifested itself as an
exception on WinNT/AXP. The cool thing is that this may, in fact, be a real bug that would have been very difficult to find if we hadn't ported to the Alpha. The DEC Alpha version of Quake2 will be compiled specifically for the 21164, and should run fine on the 21264. It supports both software rendering and OpenGL rendering. For OpenGL rendering the only hardware accelerator we have to test with is the Permedia 2, and I'm pretty damn pleased that 3DLabs is supporting the DEC Alpha far more than just about any other OpenGL vendor out there. This is a niche market, but it's a high-performance niche market that clearly stakes out the high end. Right now the 3DLabs driver is missing some pretty important features that are necessary to truly enjoy the full Quake2 experience. There are some annoying bugs which we can live with (not being able to toggle between fullscreen and windowed modes), but the two major killers are lack of colored lighting (that whole src*dst blending thing again) and no glTexSubImage2D support. The colored lighting can be lived without -- people running in software won't get colored lighting, so not having it in the GL version isn't crucial if you're using a Permedia2. However, glTexSubImage2D support is pretty vital if you want dynamic lights. Currently we disable dynamic lights if we know we're running on a Permedia2, but this can be overridden by setting the appropriate cvar ("/gl_dynamic 1F"). Software refresh support on the Permedia2 is pretty impressive. Ref_soft runs great in all kinds of video modes, including 320x240, 400x300, and 512x384. Fullscreen mode is pretty much required if you want to get the most out of things, however -- the DIBSection performance we saw was pretty abysmal, most likely the result of 8->16-bit translation during the BitBlt. With fullscreen rendering, the Enorex w/ Permedia2 was pretty amazing, especially using ref_soft -- and especially considering that NO AXP specific asm code was being used. If we or DEC were to slightly tweak the AXP rendering paths, performance would likely go up a HUGE amount. We plan on doing a full round of testing with Quake2 timedemos in the next day or so. |
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