News

January 27, 2008

• Just a short note that I was able to register the domain quake-info-pool.net again.

July 21, 2006

• There was no update for a long time as I did not have access to my homepage anymore. Thanks to Frika C I could finally update the Quake Info Pool again. So the update from 2002-02-28 is finally online :)


• As you already may have recognized the domain quake-info-pool.net got "hijacked" because of a struggle between my private homepage hoster and the registration company.


• Also added some old bugs, that I forgot to post on my bug list, but was contacted about in the last years (e.g. no random respawn).


• This was my final update - the Quake Info Pool is now discontinued.
  I want to thank everyone from the Quake community for their great help, all the bug reporters and especially the awesome guys from Inside3d.com. Will miss you all and may the dark side of the force be with you :)
  Maddes

February 28, 2002

• Bengt Jardrup provided some nice information about some of QBSP's bugs, which of course are posted on the bug list. By the way he recently released new versions of his enhanced TreeQBSP and TxQBSP (he releases faster than I can post :).
  Matador sent me information how to avoid the grey fog in WinQuake, which he ripped from a config file from AirQuake.
  

February 13, 2002

• The bug list has been updated again.
  There was incorrect information about the sometimes not working R_MIRRORALPHA and a new weird issue with R_MIRRORALPHA was added. Also added a problem with Radix's R_WATERWARP tutorial, a fix is already implemented in the upcoming QIP engine release.
  While checking R_MIRRORALPHA and R_WATERWARP with all the multi-texturing stuff, I recognized that GL_TEXSORT 0 has some problems without it. Last but not least I added the SGIS multitexturing hint for Nvidia cards from my engine readme to the list.
  


• Here is a screenshot with the useable GL_CLEAR functionality of my next QIP engine release. I expect it to be released in the last February days.
  


• By the way Matador got the QIP engine compiled under Linux, his changes will be incorporated into my next release, so you can compile it for Linux too.
  Still haven't send the mail to the LCC-Win32 authors.
  

February 08, 2002

• The bug list has been updated with more information about the GL_CLEAR bug with the status bar. My next QIP release has an useable workaround for this.
  For QuakeC there's now useful information about using .colormap on non-player entities and how to use functions that create temp strings, like ftos(), correctly in conjunction with print functions.
  Also added information about: Quake crashes on Windows XP, grenade watersplash bug and Windows 2000 tcp/ip ports closing. To avoid more unnecessary map bug reports I added the QuakeC fish monster count bug to the map page.
  


• By the way Matador from Brazil currently works on compiling my QIP engine under Linux, if you are interested in helping him with this task, then please contact me.
  Still "developing" a mail for the LCC-Win32 authors about my Quake executable problems when compiled with LCC-Win32.
  

February 01, 2002

• As I said before I put the most important settings of my engine port into the options menu, to do this I developed a new menu sub system which lets me easily add or rearrange menu entries and submenus.
  "CL_COMPATIBILITY" still defaults to 0 (off), but it is now easily accessible through the options menu and the entry has a hint to switch it on for demo recording.
  While I was coding I also implemented Matador's fix for GLQuake's HOM effect, you can now easily set the maximum depth GLQuake renders a scene in the options menu. As this effect is the same as WinQuake's grey void, I hope this can be changed too, but I didn't found the right line to change yet.
  


• I still need someone to work with me on a unix version of my engine. Tell me if you want to volunteer.
  


• LCC-Win32 still gives me headaches :(
  Depending on the size of my code and the LCC-Win32 version I use, GLQuake and/or WinQuake work or not. I plan to contact the LCC-Win32 authors about it, hopefully they can find the cause of these weird behaving.
  


• The bug list has been updated with the fix for GLQuake's HOM effect plus the related GL_CLEAR bug with the status bar. Also added Lord Havoc's fix for GLQuake's vanishing entities.
  

January 22, 2002

• Some tips about my recently released engine:
  
  
  • If you want to record a demo which shall be playable with all Quake executables, then do not forget to set "CL_COMPATIBILITY" to 1. This will disable all functions which generate new SVC messages, like requesting the entity limits from the server and the handshake of my Network Versioning System. Btw this is already documented in the readme under "non-standard features".
    
  • I was asked several times if I'm going to provide a makefile and/or executable for Linux. Slot Zero even asked for a dedicated server executable. Unfortunately I never found the time to deal with Linux.
    So can anybody help me and create a working makefile for my QIP engine to compile and run under Linux?
    
  • And due to heavy request I'll put the most important switches (like "CL_COMPATIBILITY" and loading external data) into a separate submenu under the options menu.
    While doing this I will make "CL_COMPATIBILITY" default to 1 and make it archived in config.rc too.
    


• I had a longer email exchange with Bengt Jardrup about GLQuake's performance drop with skies. While discussing and testing it, we even discovered that skies provide better data for VIS than solid walls. Also Bengt just released new enhanced versions of TxQBSP and TreeQBSP some days ago.
  


• Last update I forgot to mention that Tyrann finally released a TyrLite version which can produce .LIT files (parameter: "-lit") instead of "fake BSP30". If you switched from TyrLite to Tomaz's TomLite, you can now switch back as TyrLite creates white lightning and colored lightning in only one step and has a very important new fix. The only thing missing from TomLite is the not-that-important "-tint" parameter.
  

January 16, 2002

• Hope you had a nice Christmas time and a good new year's eve party.
  


• There was a bad bug in URQP 1.06, where you couldn't see the finale when you finished off Shub, so please update to URQP 1.06a. Sorry for the inconvenience.
  


• My new engine build is now available for download. The engine is still regular Quake, but it has many additional features. New features are:
  
  • A new console variable system. You can create cvars with the "set" command, with the "seta" command the cvar is even saved to the new config.rc file. The new file is loaded before quake.rc, so all variables are defined when config.cfg is called and they get their last value (even from engines not supporting the config.rc file and the "seta" command). Last but not least the new cvar system allows to create cvars from the QuakeC code (PROGS.DAT).
  • Support for external light data files (.LIT, file format by LordHavoc).
    This will give you colored lightning within GLQuake.
    
  • Support for external vis data files (.VIS, vispatch format).
    For the .VIS support the engine searches a .VIS file with the name of the map, if this is not present it searches for a .VIS file with the name of the map's directory, so you can use ID1.VIS for all the original id maps. Same for HIPNOTIC.VIS and ROGUE.VIS. For all other maps I created the tool VPSplit to extract the vispatch data from a huge .VIS file for every included map in a separate .VIS file.
    
  • Support for external entity data files (.ENT, text format).
    With the .ENT support you can use my mapfixes with ease by just putting the new .ENT file in your maps directory, now more extracting the map from the pak files, modifying it and putting it back into the pak file. More importantly this gives you the possibility to reduce the harddisk space for all your Quake addons. For example CTF, to play the original id maps with CTF you had to extract the id maps from the pak files (again) and modify it with the provided CTF .ENT file, so you had a duplicate of all id maps in your CTF directory (~25MB). Now you just need the .ENT files, no more wasting space.
    There's something special about the .ENT support, it searches the .ENT no further than the directory the map was loaded from. This is necessary to avoid loading .ENT files not meant for the currently played addon. For example if the Quake path is "ctf;ctfmaps;id1" and the map "e1m1.bsp" is loaded from "ctfmaps", then an existing "e1m1.ent" from "ctf" or "ctfmaps" would be loaded, but not from "id1", which could be a mapfix for regular deathmatch and not CTF.
    
  • If you do not want to use external data just the set corresponding "external_*" cvar to zero.
    
  • A toggle option for mouselook in the menus, no more messing around with +MLOOK and -MLOOK, they are still present but made nearly obsolete by the "m_look" console variable.
    
  • Many new builtin functions for QuakeC codersm which are already added to the QSG standard (which will be posted soon
    
  • For coders the sourcecode package now offers project files for the freeware compiler LCC-Win32 to compile WinQuake and GLQuake.
    
  ...and lots more so check out the readme and the commands "cvarlist" and "cmdlist".
  


• Added Bengt Jardrup's new versions of TxQBSP and TreeQBSP as recommended tools.
  


• My todo list for the next weeks:
  
  • Check all remaining bug reports and update the buglist.
  • Finalize my Network Versioning System for the Quake engine and incorporate Frika C's EBSP into my engine port.
  • Bring URSP to the state of URQP 1.06a.

November 25, 2001

• *doh* A long time has passed since my last update. Don't worry, I spent some of my limited leisure time on Quake work.
  


• First, the most important news: URQP 1.06 is released!!!
  The most recognizable feature is the added FrikBot 0.10a and the slightly changed map rotation (now Omnicron/Frikbot-like). More things have changed underneath the surface, especially the rearranged damage system has to be mentioned as it allows simultaneous kills (players can kill each other in the same frame) and it can even be used to heal players (think about the trigger_hurt entity and real health pools).
  The changes to the damage system also revealed a bug in Frika C's EndFrame implementation: the execution of the EndFrame() function has to be processed before the retouch code, hence directly after the entities. This has been fixed on the engine page.
  


• The new engine isn't finished yet, as my current leisure time is very limited due to the currency change in the european union.
  It will finally have a new console variable system (set, seta, unset, create cvars within QuakeC) and much more. All new builtin functions are already added to the QSG standard (which will be posted soon, BramBo is heavily working on the scripts).
  


• Also did some Quake bug hunting again:
  
  • Added a QuakeC hint to my ftos() fix as it causes unwanted display of values (1.47639 instead of 1.4).
  • Confirmed a bug report about Hipnotic's Mission Pack where you get stuck in COOP by becoming a "Zombie".
  • The player's armortype is not stored correctly on level changes.
  • Got reminded that TWCTF9 is based on Critters and that it contains the same "MOVETYPE_PUSH" error as the original, the same problem was also found in TWCTF2M9.
  • Listed reports about DOSQuake crashes on PCChips boards, crashes caused through buffer overruns in string routines and a way to get 100% killes in E1M4 without my fix.
    
  • Added Tomaz's TomLite (based on TyrLite 0.8 but with LIT support) as a recommended tool.
    This QMAP posting offers another interesting LIGHT tool with LIT support called Q1RAD and a BSP30 to BSP29+LIT converter called OneLight.
    
  and many more...
  


• There are more new downloads available: demos of the above mentioned Hipnotic "Zombie" bug, TWCTF2M9 map fix, an updated TWCTF9 mapfix, batch files to automatically replace entity lists in BSP levels and process BSP levels with MHColour, Visual Basic 6.0 SP5 Runtime Libaries. As some sites have vanished from the net I also added Lethargy's Death Dominion Addon for Hipnotic's Mission Pack "Scourge Of Armagon", Dr. Splat's WaterHack tool, AdQuEdit, the massive mulitplayer demo benchmark BigAss1 and Ten's WKeyKill.
  


• I found this page which lists all the change logs for all Quake versions after QTest1.
  


• A hint for all server admins and online players:
  Internet Explorer for Windows 5.5 SP2 and higher do not support (Netscape-style) plug-ins anymore, hence QPlug won't work with these browsers, but you can use Markus Baumgartner's Q3Plug.
  An example for both is also available on the Quake servers page (mail me if I shall add your server).


• If you use Microsoft's Visual Studio 6.0 for your Quake engine coding, then check out the latest Service Pack 5.
  


• If you wonder what happened to the big gaming archives at cdrom.com then check out the BlueNews' article "DOOM, Quake, Unreal archives re-opened" and visit the new archive at 3D Gamers.
  


• Bigfoot.com limited its free service dramatically, so maddes@bigfoot.com is not my primary mail account anymore. Please use the contact and bug report formulars to send me your mails.
  

January 28, 2001

• I'm still alive. My project at work went "gold" in December, but I was assigned to another project which is in its final stage, so I'm again in crunch time *doh*.
  I read all your mails, but found no time to check the bug reports. These will be included in the next real update.
  The download section is now fixed and I added the latest Visual Basic runtime libraries.
  Last but not least, I decided to concentrate on URQP again and still try to adapt the decompiled Defusion source to it.
  

August 20, 2000

• More bugs have been added to the bug list, including DOSQuake's input init and time bug, a list of all models with problematic skins and the annyoing dead body clip bug (demo available).
  Most of these and others have been fixed too, so you can download a delta to the last fixes at the download page.
  The new source fixes also include a new makefile for DJGPP and a transparent console in software, all provided by Norberto Alfredo Bensa.
  


• Do you remember the WaterVIS page, run by Darren "Sgt. D" Winter on SOD.NET?
  The place where you got all available VISPatches to add transparent water to many Quake levels with ease. Unfortunately the SOD.NET server is long gone, but I finally got all the files from Darren so I'm temporary hosting the WaterVIS pages at http://www.inside3d.com/qip/vispatch/ (2010: back at Darren's http://www.quakewatervis.com/).
  


• Last but not least the latest Nvidia Detonator drivers 6.18 are as good as the 5.13 drivers, the only new weird problem is a moderate performance drop with multitexturing ENABLED!.
  Fellow Quaker Al Hardy came to the same results, maybe he should get an Nvidia drivers section on the Quake Info Pool ;)