What things are worth listing about engines?

mh · Post by mh » Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:34 pm

I can support infinite lightmaps.

Just some thoughts...

A comment on an engine like "supports 128 lightmaps" is not really useful out-of-context. An engine coder might well be aware that the hard limit on lightmaps is 64, a modder might have that information as a result of trial and error, but a general player would not really have any reason to be aware of it. If a given engine supports higher limits, then it would be more generally useful to provide some descriptive info on it. This could be as simple as a matrix comparing engine limits with regular GL/Win Quake limits.

The "target audience" point is interesting to me - just who is the Q1 general audience today anyway? Identifying a target audience of "blah" might be useful to pin things down, but it's not really worth a damn if said audience consists of a grand total of two people.

I'd support a target audience of "engine coders" and "modders", with no real preference being given to either, as I think both audiences are in need of a good kick up the butt which this exercise could provide: (a) engine coders need to start being consistent and standardising things better, and (b) modders need to be prepared to constructively feed back to coders on what is good or bad for them.

frag.machine · Post by **frag.machine** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 12:49 am

I don't see why this list should be restricted to coders, modders, or gamers. Split the list in sections, and you can be more concise and direct to players, add a bit more of detail to modders and finally show all the technical stuff to coders, if available.

metlslime · Post by **metlslime** » Wed Jun 25, 2008 8:04 am

i don't mean to imply it should be restricted to one type of audience, just that thinking about who the audience is should help clarify what sort of information is best.

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:48 pm

I don't really have a target audience in mind. Surely, my love, the singleplayer maps are important. But I'd like to make it as versatile and broad as possible (which is why I posted here). So if you want to say so the target audience are "engine coders", "modders", "mappers", "players".

For the limits I agree with metl. Also it is less work than trying to find out how many whatevers exactly the engine can load/run. I will create/pick 2-3 maps with non-standard/dangerous limits and see how the engine performs. Masque is a good one I think. Marcher will be in again as it turned out to catch some engines (this time I will test on proper hardware though, so the results will probably be better). Based on that it will get some "modern limits" "rating".
Are there any modding specific limits? I would feel a bit stupid only testing maps again.

-skybox, fog, gamedir: agree, will be: worldspawn and "command"
-transparency: Will be listed as "brush (func_), entity, sprite" and whatever else can have transparency. So, what else can have transparency?

-custom hud: Is only meant as "do i get my faithful 1996 hud (maybe optional) or does the engine force me to use its own custom one?". It is not meant as "can i use my custom hud" (as afaik only the QW engines, most mentionable ezQuake, allow that).

-enhanced menu: rather useless indeed when I think about it.

-anaglyph rendering will be a special feature. Mostly because I don't think it is that great. :p
Yes, step by step for sure. Just how the map archive did grow.

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 7:22 am

Packet Overflows are dependant on the protocol, is that right? I noticed that DP and aguirRe's engines use their own protocol by default and they don't run into packet overflows. Yet they do (tried aguirRe's) once I use the Quake protocol.

edit: No, apparently not. At least a map with 30 grunts I gib does give a packet overflow in some engines but not in others.

frag.machine · Post by **frag.machine** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 6:48 pm

Protocol makes some difference, the same going to number of entities in the PVS (the less the best). But basically most engines manage to avoid it using larger network buffers, aguirRe's engine is a good example of this.

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:23 am

All this limits stuff gives me such an headache and the testmap I built (which exceeds clipnodes, visleafs and another something) crashes all but two engines. So I have decided to leave the limits/compatibility stuff for later.

Urre · Post by **Urre** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 9:16 am

I don't think DP can run into packet overflows in the newer protocols, no matter the amount of entities.

frag.machine · Post by **frag.machine** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 3:01 am

Spirit wrote:All this limits stuff gives me such an headache and the testmap I built (which exceeds clipnodes, visleafs and another something) crashes all but two engines. So I have decided to leave the limits/compatibility stuff for later.

Do you mind sending me this map by e-mail (.bsp only if you prefer) for some private testing and engine debugging ?

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 7:19 am

Sure, here it is for everyone.

http://www.quaddicted.com/stuff/somany.bsp
It's got 36039 marksurfaces (normal limit: 32768), 47594 clipnodes (32768) and 10163 visleafs (8192).
If you want the source just shout, it's on my lappy.