Comments - Baker55

I didn't see this comment until recently, the source code for all versions of Zircon can be found in the files section if it isn't with the executable. In this case it, is Moddb.com

This is the only site for Zircon at the present time.

For now ...

Trying to get the engine to expose current DarkPlaces capabilities and do a better job of playing Quake.

And trying to expose some of those, while getting the engine to do a better job.

Add: I don't quite know the answer to the standalone games part ... because Zircon does support total conversions better than DarkPlaces because it was extended (KleskBY provided some of the ideas to improve it) ... see Rite of Reckoning or QUALKER ... a gamedir with ONLY a "data" folder .. Zircon will assume total conversion if no Quake data found .. so Rite of Reckoning below, was easier for KleskBY to put together (no batch file and no command line needed, engine-based total conversion detection).

Reckoning: Moddb.com

QUALKER: Moddb.com

(Yet I want it to do more ..)

I made setting the texture filter easier and put it in Options->Change Video Mode so it is easily accessible. It also saves to config now.

Excellent!

I did several tests and deleted my config and started QuakeCombatPlus and one of the times, it failed to startup and just crashed out.

Thank you for reporting this!

NOTE: I can have a hard time getting it to crash, the following replicates the crash every time --> no config.cfg in id1, no config.cfg in quakecombatplus folder ... start with zircon.exe -game quakecombatplus -> Single Player -> New Game -> crash.

Started up fine for me. Doing more tests.

I started both from the command line and from Quake by doing "game quakecombatplus". Both worked fine.

Anything special about your setup? Is there an error message or what happens?

Please let me know!

Meanwhile, I'm going install from the download.zip and make sure that is ok.

(Just reinstalled zircon from the latest download #46, QuakeCombatPlus starts up fine for me).

What happens when you try to start it up?

I'll investigate that ASAP.

> The textures I used ( - credits to the author(s)!! - ) have much higher resolution

I'll have to check it out, I guess I falsely assumed you used the Quake Retexturing Project texture set. Although I guess Rygel's texture set is out there.

Just want to point out, the texture download I link -- the size reduction was NOT by reducing resolution, DarkPlaces has a method to support JPEG with alpha channels.

I agree with the high resolution thing, I like high resolution textures myself. The Rivarez Edition, for example, is very nice.

When I saw "Quake HD" I didn't think your project was a recent one, I thought it was the old "Quake HD" project then I saw it was "Quake 1.5 HD".

Anyway, I am going to be building a databank of works supporting DarkPlaces and I'll definitely be checking this out, it looks like you've done some excellent work here.

I haven't tried it, but only because I just discovered it within the last 12 hours.

I primarily do engine coding, interacting with the DarkPlaces developers but I have my own DarkPlaces fork, Zircon Engine which is DarkPlaces with a mouse-driven interface and many conversative single player enhancements.

Anyway, I look forward to checking out your project when I get done engine coding.

The Zircon Engine is going to have a built-in Quake Injector soon that installs single player campaigns from Quaddicted and I'm locating DarkPlaces works to have it so a variety of those can likewise be installed from a graphical user interface in the menu.

Just want to point out, you might consider taking a look at utilizing this high resolution texture pack to get download sizes down: Moddb.com

Your download could lose 1 GB in size, while retaining 99.9% of the appearance.

If you want to see those textures in action: Moddb.com

If you use Zircon Engine ("DarkPlaces Mark V"), you will not need this script. Zircon engine also renders way faster, loads maps way faster and has a mouse driven menu with regular updates.

Zircon Engine: Moddb.com

Both Quake 1.5 and QuakeCombatPlus are both regularly tested in Zircon Engine to make sure they work great.

Also several fixes/upgrades addressing issues found in other DarkPlaces high resolution works like Rivarez Edition.

I am pointing this out because the 6 year DarkPlaces build provided with Quake 1.5 has aged poorly and has lots of quirks.

Good eye on noticing!

No SDK folder in the source code. The SDK folder includes a ton of .lib and .dlls for SDL2, those can be downloaded separately from the SDL2 web site and few engines include that in their source code.

I still plan to include the SDK folder in most of them, but not all of them.

One of my Windows computers, the speakers need to be plugged in and turned on before starting up any game, or the game will say there are no sound drivers.

Sometimes DarkPlaces renders monsters too dark for the map lighting to enjoy a map.

The overbright option gives a user a way to instantly deal with that, if it is a problem.

I have played some DarkPlaces mods like Quake 1.5 where overbright feels wrong to me.

So it defaults off, but is instantly available in the menu.

Glad you figured out computer's sound with a restart.

Looks great! Congratulations!

Hey Tireheb666, thank you for the feedback!

> Make console bind of \ by default

I actually use that "/" (the other thing of slash) for toggleconsole, however, it isn't the function of an engine to be deciding default keys really.

> GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR

typing gl_texturemode GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR in the console works, the GL_NEAREST will autocomplete pressing tab or Ctrl-Space.

> mod menu like in Ironwail

Going to put something similar to the Quake Injector discretely inside the menu that feeds from Quaddicted but is not necessarily restricted exclusively to Quaddicted.

I've already done testing downloading and examining the Quake Injector .xml inside the engine, but haven't written the parser yet and the Quake Injector .xml file contains some unicode characters ...

This is probably a few weeks out ...

> Does this engine supports all custom bsp and mods released til today?"

Short answer: No. But in the future, it will keep getting better.

DarkPlaces can mostly play most single player maps and mods, Zircon does a better job at that than DarkPlaces due to user feedback and then acting on the ones that could be dealt with -- Zircon probably has 50+ improvements in compatibility over DarkPlaces (examples: correctly doing fog and .alpha support for static entities and support for fence texture .mdl flags 16384 and unloading csqc it doesn't support like for Alkaline and the ability to play the Quake ReRelease and DarkPlaces 2014/2017 has serious items dropping out of maps issues with some maps --- like bye bye silver key -- Zircon has largely eliminated that as an issue although timing differences in events can still cause incompatibilities with vanilla Quake occasionally).

However, Zircon is still not fully compatible with all single player releases and mods. It edges closer as time progresses.

Eventually it probably will be the case, because that is something important.

Sorry I didn't see this until very recently.

I don't much use "official DarkPlaces" for gameplay, I created the modified Zircon engine based on DarkPlaces to fix and improve DarkPlaces.

Zircon Engine: Moddb.com

DarkPlaces has a bad drop to floor default setting that might be causing this issue for you -- sv_gameplayfix_droptofloorstartsolid 1 -- might fix the issue.

sv_gameplayfix_droptofloorstartsolid 1 is the default setting in Zircon Engine ("DarkPlaces Mark V Project").

It is not clear why sv_gameplayfix_droptofloorstartsolid 0 was made the default setting in DarkPlaces as it seems to only cause problems.

"shader error messages"

Are these "shader compile permutation" error messages?

If so, the engine was not able to compile GLSL shaders and there are going to be rendering issues.

Let me know if this is the case.

Are you still using Intel Iris Graphics Family?

I was able to disable my NVIDIA on my laptop to play using Intel Integrated, and with the Intel Integrated everything was perfect.

If I recall, Zircon Alpha 60 worked great for you except flickering water issue.

Could you post the shader errors you are getting? Just type "copy" in the console in Zircon and it will copy the console log.

I don't have Intel Iris and can't get my Intel Integrated to have any issues, but I may be able to do something if I can see the shader error text to know what GLSL capability your graphics card says it doesn't support.

I located the source of sliding corpse issue. It is "sv_gameplayfix_fiendjumpfix 1"

Try setting "sv_gameplayfix_fiendjumpfix 0" and see how it goes.

I am going to make "sv_gameplayfix_fiendjumpfix 0" the default instead of 1.

DarkPlaces Beta came up with a fiend jump fix, I am cautious about physics changes so I made it a cvar based modification --- but this is the cause of the sliding corpse issue.

Thank you for pointing this out!

If you can help me experience or understand some of these other things, I will see what I can do for those as well.

I was able to get a sliding corpse. I'm checking different versions to investigate this.

It could be specific zircon_beta_gcc.exe which is built using MinGW.

Update: No it is not related to that ... Release 7 everything is ok .. Release 19 I get a slide ... I'm narrowing this down to identify the source of the issue.

You can report bugs here.

If you tell me what map you experience this on, I will look into it.

I personally haven't any issues with Quake Combat +, but I haven't done much testing in it lately.

When I have done tests with Quake Combat + in the past, it played flawlessly.

If you provide me information about an issue, I will do everything I can to fix it -- but I do need to know to recreate it.

I am going to do some playing Quake Combat + here in a few minutes to see if I can experience any of these issues.

Hey Akidd,

What do I need to download and what is the map name?

> I am using the Enhanced Edition ID Wads if that matters.

I'm not familiar with that. Could you give me a link to the download?

I only tested it with vanilla Quake. I don't know how it reacts to fog and I'm not sure how it interacts with invisible entities.

It is also possible that with a certain combination of settings, the flashlight looks wrong. Like I did not set r_corona 1, for instance.

I also don't know how it reacts with a mod that uses "flashlight" as the name of the command to activate a builtin flashlight.

(Ah you figured it out, while typing this ... it was a DarkPlaces setting with coronas ..

I might dig through the engine code to see if I can make the light coming from the flashlight never have a corona while keeping total DarkPlaces compatibility .. however I had to read engine code while writing the csqc to see how the light spawn function worked and I know it specifies corona so I am thinking probably not.).

It's pure client side with no interaction with the server, so cannot wake monsters ... but I plan on having the flashlight wake monsters in some of the upcoming stuff I am releasing.

Jakub1 -- This will work with any mod that does not have its own csprogs.dat --- QuakeC source code included -- Moddb.com

I'll think about it. I could imagine a csprogs.dat that has that as a feature.

Hey hemebond, I'll do articles soon. I have been coding a lot lately trying to wrap up some fun stuff and I want to get it in the next article.

Zircon Beta generally far better. (Both both work fine with Quake 1.5)

> Also is there a way to play Quake 1.5 with others mods (like Arcane Dimensions)

Unfortunately no -- Quake 1.5 has its own progs.dat and anything that comes with a progs.dat, like Arcane Dimensions -- you can't use both.

So for instance, Arcane Dimensions has custom monsters and such, Quake 1.5 encounters a monster_XXXXXX and Quake 1.5 doesn't know what that is or all the custom items.

Hey FuzaIV, first -- thanks!

I'm afraid it is all bad news relating to Epsilon at least in the short term because ...

Quake Episilon is ONLY compatible with **DARKPLACES 2011** before DarkPlaces changed the particle system in DarkPlaces 2012.

The author of Epsilon, who I think of as Xolve, is someone who I have known and interacted with many times over the years and I would like Zircon to work with Quake Epsilon.

I looked at the changes from DarkPlaces 2011 to DarkPlaces 2012 and it is very heavy and not something I could easily accomodate.

This is not to say there is "no hope", I may in the future come with up an idea. So there is hope for the future ...

You might check out Rivarez Edition .. Moddb.com which is compatible with DarkPlaces 2014 and forward (and therefore Zircon).

It is possible the performance depends on graphics card and you are using a better graphics card.

I have a pretty solid Nvidia laptop, but it's still a laptop.

Ok, I changed some settings and the terrible performance was back.

The lightmap upload process for dynamic lights does the not like the Dimension of the Machine maps. And since that is one of the main changes from DarkPlaces Classic to DarkPlaces Beta, this is also fits with DarkPlaces Classic not having a similar problems.

r_dynamic 0 and everything is smooth, r_dynamic 1 and certain areas of some maps experience bad lag.