I used to lurk around the forum a few years ago, I wasn't a modder but I enjoyed the community. Because of that I3D was the first place I thought of going to look for advice on Quake engines.
Now to state the question and my needs. I'm looking for an engine that will run well under Windows XP, and has reliable network multiplayer support. I don't really need a lot of special effects support or anything, I just wanna be able to frag my buddy.
I guess an OpenGL based engine is most likely but I don't know who/where to look for the ones I remember, and I didn't want to get something that sucks because it was never finished.
Thanks for reading my post and maybe even responding. I'd also like to thank all the people who were around years ago for giving me a place to hang on the net and have fun.
Want advice on Engines
There are three basic options. If you want to to stick with normal quake the best option is DarkPlaces. It's highly advanced, with real time lighting etc, and has several mods designed specifically for it. The network code is also very good. http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/
If you want to go with QuakeWorld then the best choice is probably FTEQW. It has the great qw netcode, as well as most of the functions of DarkPlaces. It can also be used to play Quake 2 and Hexen 2, with Half Life support maybe coming soon...http://fteqw.sourceforge.net/
If your PC is a little older you might want a less intensive engine, such as Tremor. It still looks pretty tasty but is designed for lower end PCs.http://tremor.quakedev.com/
The choice, as they say, is yours.
If you want to go with QuakeWorld then the best choice is probably FTEQW. It has the great qw netcode, as well as most of the functions of DarkPlaces. It can also be used to play Quake 2 and Hexen 2, with Half Life support maybe coming soon...http://fteqw.sourceforge.net/
If your PC is a little older you might want a less intensive engine, such as Tremor. It still looks pretty tasty but is designed for lower end PCs.http://tremor.quakedev.com/
The choice, as they say, is yours.
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For the networking you would definitely be best with DarkPlaces, which has gone through a bunch of protocol updates, and now (currently on #7 I believe) it is pretty refined. You get much better general performance, things like angles are sent with more detail, it can handle more than 256 entities, models, sounds, etc, blabla. It also has client-side movement prediction (like QW and Q2) and can manage lots of stuff going on (for example I played a game with a few clients and 200 monsters with projectiles flying all over the place with no more ping than a usual game of Quake). Of course if you have a slightly older computer, the DarkPlaces renderer might be a bit chunky (but anything more than 1 GHz should be fine).
FTEQW is good too, but, although it has 4,000,000 random features, in my experience it has been slow, chunky, buggy, etc. Haven't tried Tremour (probably is spelled Tremor) but I hear stuff like JoeQuake and FitzQuake (two other engines I've never seen) are also good for no-frills engine enhancements.
FTEQW is good too, but, although it has 4,000,000 random features, in my experience it has been slow, chunky, buggy, etc. Haven't tried Tremour (probably is spelled Tremor) but I hear stuff like JoeQuake and FitzQuake (two other engines I've never seen) are also good for no-frills engine enhancements.
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