Introduction

Progress

Downloads

FAQ

Previews

Contributors

Weapons

 

 

Log

9/5/2003 10:13:54 AM

When bored, waiting for others to update their parts of the code, I do stuff for visual effects to bide my time. Today, I decided to make new spawn effects.

there's a major change to the codebase which i was working on after quakecon that's about to happen, and everyone has their hands in different parts of the code and its up to me to take them all and put them back into something that actually works. right now i'm just cleaning up bugs.

but last night i spent 5 hours setting up a development environment server so i can test with people, if anyone is interested find me on IRC in ETG, Gamesnet, or Telefragged.

Sorry for no media updates, doesn't mean they don't exist. Just skim through the shadowspawn.net/temp dir to see what's going on lately.

9/2/2003 8:12:49 AM

it sucks. major friggin pause here.

finish fixing stuff, or work with a cgame.

crap.

the thing is it's almost entirely cgame structure now. I can even start copy/pasting over unlagged code from q3 into it, with just function name changes.

cg_pmove.trace = CG_Trance (q3)
vs
pm.trace = CG_PMTrace (fusion)

stuff like that. For those wondering about the grapple, it's about to change once again. I never wanted to get this deep in rewriting prediction. Allot of the q3 'traps' to the executable I have access too.

Whether or not wf fusion takes off, this opens a huge can of whoop-ass for any mod.

now i understand why static was griping about all the people wanting to plug in unlagged code into wfa. there's a crapload of stuff that can go wrong, except with hitscan weapons. maybe. allot of the 'feel' of wfa would be changed greatly. q2 halts everything frame by frame, q3 allows some prediction, and wolf ET is nothing BUT prediction to the point that it becomes 'fortune telling' and about as reliable as the lottery numbers on the back of a fotune from a fortune cookie.

Yea i can make a hitscan go through the legs of a model and not hurt the player, realism, but not everyone has a lan-based connection.

its a pickle, sure is.

then there's network overhead. its just too damn much to think about. on one server it could be fine and perfect and all wowzy, but on most of the 'rental' clan-based servers the lines are hard pressed and shit could just act strange and rubbery.

damnit damnit damnit.

at least i got a compass that works like wolf's now in fluidity and uses a model instead of a drawing. i'll just play till i can think of what to do.

acrid did this for TC, allowing server-side changes via a config to tweak the network. it took allot of time to hardwire choices for that type of thing. I was toying with that, since almost all of the network code needs to be touched, i could just go in and bloat the hell out of the code with a check for the setting.

 

8/31/2003 3:26:23 AM

"how are you looking to protect against cheating. the q2 netcode format is out with the opensource. I was wondering if you would consider client side implementation of punkbuster, removing the netlag it causes. if not, simply adding heuristic detection of variables triggering around weapons firing, checking to see how continuous the player crosshair tracks perfectly whatever the person is aiming at. note that most people never actually track all that well compared to bots. this may be rudimentary anti cheating code but it will kill any blatant bot usage."

cheating, i dunno yet. its not really the q2 protocol; it is different. there's ways around it but they all suck.

i'm really still toying with concepts. nothing is ever cheat proof, trying to make it too tough to cheat is a better approach, i think.

as it stands now tho, the q3 protocol 68 specs have been released by some, so its possible to make a proxy bot that's totally undetectable by punkbuster. (ouch, remember ratbot?) Proof of concept is already within really, really tight circles and i doubt they are going to release it like ogc; cause when it is released it'll render almost all ID games open to the same issue and probably piss off a few people.

oh another issue that i face is the fact that any changes i make to the engine is gpl'd. It sucks, but what I'm thinking is I can release a generic protocol*XX.c proof of concept and functioning, and keep some internal modules private and not gpl'd, and noone will bitch about it, for obvious reasons, but still share with other trusted authors, and keep that updated.

I was turned onto qizmo for mqwd on sunday morning, its basically a reverse-action ogc. it launches the exe from itself, a wrapper, and checks the exe and the rest of the files, and I can avoid issuing the actual source to it because it's not directly associated to the exe/dll's.

Even if I did release the source to it, it could act like PB where the clients just download a simple html file that would literally cause the exe to recompile it's dll. But since it's a wrapper, and works on behalf of the exe and not as the exe itself, it wouldn't really need to be released except as raw base source only so others could build off of it, yet have no clue what's inside that update, because an update can always crypto the changes as they progress, like EB did with PB.

8/26/2003 2:49:21 PM

Sorry if you've covered this but Strafe Jumps & Cancer Jumping will function exactly like q2's (grap. flings off angled surfaces) right? And Decoy Jumps will or wont be in WFF?

well see that's one of the big iffy things. i really liked decoy jumping, but now that the md3 models are used and animation is keyed into the decoy's player movements, it becomes tons more data to keep on flooding the clients with, as well as the sounds for it.

it is tough now, at quakecon i was trying to show it off as an example; i had to change how decoys are dropped because of how the q3 maps are different then q2, tech stuff but it is different. they are no longer a 'tossed corpse', but they are, sorta.

the easiest thing to do is put in a fraction of a delay. As it stands now i'm leaving it in and gonna just watch what happens. At quakecon noone could do it but me, and even i sucked at it now with the changes, but it is possible i'm certain.

and heh the decoy trace code is because of how we did our maps in wfa. i swear the hardest part was making the code work with our maps and physics, otherwise it'd just be q2wf using q3 models and effects.

8/25/2003 2:13:30 PM

Clarification request: "could you list what makes Fusion diff from Q2wf v wfa or in other words, what GOODIES from both games can we expect to see in Fusion"

It's q2wf code with WFA media, q2wf media, and new media to both. Basically if it's been in wfa, the q2 counterpart now uses wfa media. If it wasn't in WFA but it was in Q2wf, good chance its totally and completely new. Since I'm moving away from baseq3 reliability, it's going to be using new stuff all over. That's about it really from what fusion is using from WFA, 'prettyness' wise. Code wise, it gets kinda fuzzy.

There is a new HUD system, but the Q2wf configs work for identifying players, tho you might start lagging out if you spam it. I might fix that or i might wind up changing it so it just shows up in a designated place on the hud.

Q2 and q2wf have map entities that weren't in Q3WFA. So now basically where there were WFA counterparts from Q2wf, now they use the WFA set... where they didn't exist in Q3/WFA they do now. Things like teleporters are still server-side, but rotating doors, func_trains, etc are a mix of Q2 and WFA effects, but follow Q2 standards where they don't interfere with wfa maps already.

The easiest: target_speakers use all the keys that Q3 does (wait, random, gametype) as well as the q2 speakers (attenuation, volume), and now can use 44.5khz stereo (neither) or affected by PVS (wfa), as well as global, looped on/looped off, targeted (both).

Basically if a Q3 mapper never worked with Q2 before, all they need to do is look at the notes from the new Q2/WF Fusion ents and they'll be at home. Q2 mappers will have to do work to change their entities, but anyone who's worked with both q2 and q3 already know what's involved, the same that worked with Q2wf and Q3wfa pretty much know what's going on. Except allot of things that were messed up in q3 in general now work like they used to in Q2, but only in WF Fusion. As an addition if the gametype of "wf_fusion" is in the key/value, it won't spawn in wfa ctf/dom since wf fusion converts that gametype to ctf.

The code base: It's q2wf 4.25 for the most part of what people who play it will experience, it's 5.0 from the backend for tons of fixes and optimizations Acrid put in, as well as tons of MOCK code that now works. Additionally there is tons of client-side work that was done to seperate the client and server code, so its starting to be optimized over a basic client/game(server)/ui structure similar to Quake3 and even backs further away from the Q2wf foundation, but end result is just smoother gameplay. That translates as its 4.25 for all intents and purposes, but what q2wf maps can be played on maps like q3ctf4? or any other of the wfa map styles that were introduced over the years... even zero (lan-fear) that has an almost infinite sky... so imagine sentry killers on that map, or turrets tossed WAY high up.

But I know the first knee jerk reaction from those that play q2 will be OMFG THOSE DAMN SPAM BUGS!

There's a reason I put them all in, on purpose where they were fixed in 5.0, or left them in when they were there and weren't 'crash bugs'. For these, I don't call them bugs, but if I forgot one or two I'm sure people will let me know (I missed a few at quakecon and people pointed them out right away, grapple to floor sentry bug stuff that I actually reproduced by accident even tho it was fixed before I ported code).

Most WFA players never knew what made q2wf what it was; if WF has a future in Q4 or any other game I gotta bring it down to it's foundation first to show people what it was all about. Grapple kills are in cause of one request that made sense, people loved to use it. So its now there but not against sentries; I also changed the grapple kill so it's on par (speed/damage when it hits a player) with the gauntlet, and even does a "humiliation" feedback.

The stinger kicking spam works like it did, but they don't leap up off the ground if it detects someone new after it goes 'idle'.

The depot damage... it's funny you should mention that. At quakecon I was watching WFA-only people wondering what just happened when an engineer came on full force after the flag runner and depot spammed them, the TF guys went right back into their old ways. Some stuff was just needed, i mean blowing up a depot hurt the engineer also, and now it seems like it hurts them even more due to how events are handled in the code.

But mappers for WFA also had ways to stop things from being built and placed in certain map spots (tucking a sentry in a corner, or making a laser not work in a certain corner), so that works as well. I'm not going to merge the two game's individual 'lamma' fixes until later, after talking to everyone who's played it. I dunno, I like watching an affective defensive borg, but I hate the ones that kept on blowing up my own stuff.

There's going to be three very vocal sides: q2wf people who are like omfg all the spam crap is back (which they will be right) and hate it, Q2wf/wfa players that will be the same and love it, and WFA "Prostar" people who will have no clue what's going on when they walk into a flagroom and see a biosentry, proxies, pipebombs, defensive spy with a gas grenade, goodyears, and turret grenades as well as a sentry welcome them, or an engineer who just watched a team gunner plant a strange box at his sentry and then saw it blow up 10 seconds later.

As far as what class gets what and weapon damages and all that, MOCK works allot more powerful then how it does in Q2wf so people can play. I won't release an updated MOCK until well after the first round of betas when i gather all the feedback from everyone and just mess with it; so all the messing that i do with it after the first beta can be reversed by whoever wants to reverse it without bothering to hunt through tons of now-messy and uncommented code. Besides as it's written now the MOCK front-end is totally different then what it was.

There's tons of code in there also; multiple alarms, multiple lasers, missle launcher, static map-based sentry guns, cloaking, plus all the oldschool weapons like the earthquake grenade. There's code for 'decoy cells', as well as, well, allot of crap; anti-grav boots, jetpack boots (like megaTF), so many weapons that I didn't have time to assign models to them; just made sure they didn't crash when loaded, let alone compiled right after porting.

I think I rambled.

well the bugs, the 'bugs' are what always started arguments even internally. some called a defensive borg a bug. to me, thats strong, cause I look at how it's handled in TF.

A sentry splitting into two and becoming indestructible except by those few that know how to kill it, ok that's a bug.

stingers kicking the shit out of a standing still gunner, that wasn't a bug. it leaping out at grapplers when it went idle, that was.

the sentry stand bug from q2wf was a bug. planting a sentry right outside the doorway of the spawn isn't a bug, but wfa has code that mappers used to stop that from happening, but then it became a hindrance if the door was near a major choke point.

so then it all gets fuzzy; what makes it fun? i'd rather strip it to the base to remind everyone what WFA came from, then fix any bugs that crop up.

i'm not looking to make this popular; im looking to remind or show people were all this talk about what WF was all about.

the differences between 3.x's and 4.25 are:

  1. the amount of weapons available

  2. the long plasmabomb would wipe everyone on space-wfa no matter where you were, and the defuse rate was like 2/10 chance

  3. the lightning gun was this bolt-like gun for the borg

  4. the sentry lagged the server out when it was tracking

  5. just about every other effect was messed up performance wise.

i did a port of every source of q2wf immaginable, from the beginning to the end, so i could track back changes. it can be tweaked (except for the lightning gun and the pb distance) via mock to be like any other release.

8/19/2003 11:59:59 PM

WF Fusion at Quakecon 2003 was a success! It was able to be run on just about everyone's machine. The only CPU that had issues had an ATI, and since I only have a NV chipset it was hard to diagnose; it was the first time a hard lockup occurred and the machine was known to have issues previously. Since the OS locked up on this machine instead of a crash or error I can only hope it's a driver error or hardware error. Other ATI chipsets who tested out WF Fusion did have a noticeable screen anomaly during the initialization that went away after everything was fired up (NV chips just go gray during OpenGL init, ATI instead had some weird garbage); I made a note to contact ATI for a video card (can't hurt to ask) and a driver SDK for development purposes.

The Quakecon Alpha build of WF Fusion (1.05) supported multiple concurrent connections (12 tops) with one class loaded (I did the marine-only for the massive test). After more then one class loaded the memory errors I was working on before I left for Quakecon cropped up, and at most 4 clients could connect, hence the marine-only stress test. This problem was already fixed, but not tested in the build that I had ready next. All in all every weapon worked, every crash (3) that happened was expected. Some demos were also recorded and will be posted; it was very very cool seeing people crowd around and watch stingers, homing rockets, turret grenades, all the effects spam around in it's prettiness, watching the WF players click back to the hybrid mix of tactics. People will feel odd at having a defensive depot smack them down or grapple-kills.

Performance did vary however; while running a server and also connected in a window (which did lead up to a crash) my average timerefresh brought out a low of 90, on another GF2 it was 70, and on the ATI's it was around 60-80. Again this is without the memory optimization in place; it was chewing up about 1/4 gig of ram just at load. On a side note the latest GF's brought up minimum FPS of around 250's. The argument about ATI and NV will probably boil down to ATI driver interpretations, so I really really need to get an ATI rig to develop and test things on. Although it is all developed on DX9 and OpenGL standards I scratch my head wondering why things happen the way they do with ATI when they should be running neck and neck with GF with the newer cards. I'll post specifics on the main WF Fusion site in a few days after going over the tons of data.

8/19/2003 11:31:59 PM

Memory Management at Quakecon on a client! Here.

8/13/2003 2:03:50 PM

Been busy with that for the past week and 1/2, commitments to projects come in order. those levels sure do look purty tho.

I did get the updated code tho for the model fixes, but I dunno if i'll be able to hack code at quakecon so a team6 will probably be in order since after 7 class models are loaded clients just run out of room for stuff.

i usually chainsmoke and drink coffee and depending on how bad the code is from others, consume vast amounts of alcohol so I can slow down my brain to try and figure out wtf happened. (tho the first question when someone looks at my code is 'are you on crack?', so I don't complain, its all blobs of code during fits of rage finding bugs)

i doubt i'll be in the right state of mind to code at quakecon, but if i get bored or can't sleep i will still try; i usually only code for about 3 hours at a time tops before moving over to something else in the project, its just now that the project is about to wrap up so its all code now. Well I can busy myself with the hud and ui I guess.

seriously tho, there are some 'interesting' changes. for one: there is now going to be a cgame as well as a game and ui dll, so that means more freedom to do stuff(tm).

7/29/2003 2:00:31 PM

JOO DIE cRASH JOO DIE!

buf = Z_Malloc(len)
*buffer = buf

to

buf = Z_Malloc(len+1)
buf[len] = 0
*buffer = buf

Vic, the guy that runs the original project, fixed it after constant pestering.

/me runs to go test some more stuff.

yea see to everyone else its friggin obvious. what i'd like to know is

1.) why it ran in the first place (luck?)
2.) why only I hit the wall first (others got weird errors, only I crashed constantly, but I think thats cause wf is not stock quake)
3.) how did our beloved jc allow that one through (its stock)

some of this is foreign to me, i got a big chunk of it to run at the beginning by guess and by golly

7/28/2003 12:46:57 PM

 low level memory management fubar.

some damn pointer or something is not being cleared. it'd be nice to figure out which one, right now i got breakpoints everywhere to watch data flow, but this is really beyond what i've ever done and my experience; debugging low level memory allocations was never something I ever had to do except in assembly, and this is getting to that point.

been fighting with this for over 2 days now, it was never a show stopper before. The bug would creep up from time to time, sometimes had the crash and it was easy to skirt by just literally repacking a pk3 with a shader with a line feed in it. now it refuses to go away. its seemingly random too. the worst. here.  note the bsp name in the model string passed through; something is not getting cleared. i can hack around it to stop the negative numbers from crashing, but it would be even more fragile and wouldn't stop what was happening, hell it could get worse. this one might be the one that kills it all, i can back out the latest changes but... they are needed because now it supports skin files in the md3's.

what's worse is that it doesn't work in the 'blackbox' version, so it is definitely something in the damn wf code. i even got a memalloc error (app using too much memory, 315 megs!) on one map because of this error shoving other things into play that shouldn't be loaded, or loading crap that was already loaded but now into new places.

can't... give... up...

7/26/2003 11:33:36 PM

waiting for a new model set for it. right now, i basically reworked the sentry code so that it'll use a 2 part system so that's why it looks like the current sentry. was kinda a pain in the ass too... found some interesting broken things about it also, weird bugs, but they are all fixed now.

1.7mb divx

The Nurse's Bio-Sentry is just as effective as the Healing Station as curing and healing teammates, but it actually provides some range by firing healing darts at all nearby wounded allies. Its uses are far more valuable as a defensive tool however, as one Bio-Sentry can support a group of defenders in the flagroom or on the Sniper deck, very handy for giving your teammates some extra health when they need it. Its darts heal 25 points of health per stick. The biosentry has a maximum of 100 health points.

1 mb ogg yea its 44khz, but it was this royalty free tts deal, as long as its not for commercial purposes.

7/26/2003 1:14:36 PM

ok, ladders have changed their physics. rather then just copy and paste water (wfa's) and the ladder clip tute (wfa's also) and just have q2's ladder clip (sucks sorta) i kept the contents_ladder working. note that any additional surfaceparms on the ladder will work also (metalsteps, slick, whatever).

Basically, ladders act like this

person gets inside a ladder. (The ladder needs to be greater then 16 units thick because the player's origin needs to be in it, but all wfa maps are like this).

Once person is 'in a ladder contents' the movement left/right sidestep is limited to 25 units both ways. (person can't slide off of one to the side.)

the player also has to press +up or +down to go up or down, similar to wolf's and truecombat's. Just looking up while pressing forward isn't gonna happen; the forward and backward movement are limited in speed making it difficult to just fall off of one by accident. might seem like you are 'stuck' on one, till you turn around and press forward or press forward or backward while going up or down. Physics is duplicated like q2's in this manner.

going onto a ladder doesn't put fire out (wfa) but the player will be stuck in the last animation frame they were on (so a running player who hits a ladder their legs are stuck in running... ah well, q2 did the same thing, i'll figure that out later when i do jetpack fixes)

7/24/2003 5:09:52 PM

Nodrop: 600k divx

i swear space maps are the worst for things, i found so many bugs on space-wfa. q2 was never really made for space maps, so there is no code for 1/2 the stuff and I had to write allot from scratch. at least you can drop ammo forever and not run up the ammo drop limit. Also a larger avi: 5.7mb avi

7/23/2003 11:20:41 PM

Flare Grenades: while im debating on the color of the flare grenade (it was always bfg green x 3) just wanted to show what extreme dynamic lights can do to a map.

1mb divx, and a different color, 2.7mb divx

dman's idea to use cobolt and blueish white. i might just leave that in. its tough to tell. gotta remember that in q2 there were only 255 colors also, so anything with dynamic light gave it a cooler look because you not only had 255 shades of brown, but the video card would use 32 bit color to get the balance right so these q3maps are kinda tough. going the pinkish/purple route tho, i dunno.

on maps like banter you really needed them by those stairs.

7/23/2003 5:17:04 AM

Particles: Just got some new particles to work correctly, teleporter particles are handled a bit different then regular particles. Also, particles are throttled differently; in q2 there was a max count on particles, in this they are counted with max vertex normals per scene; basically if there is nothing to draw the particles get spawned in full effect.

I haven't figured out how to pass them off as map ents yet, but I think I have an idea.

1.7mb divx showing spawn protection (ahhhh remember that).

it all means crap if I can't figure this one out, which has plagued me since day one. 850k divx. But, just the plain old wfa plasmabomb but with bfg particles now.

7/21/2003 12:35:55 PM

Merc Weapons: YES HES BIKER. so please don't laugh, until I find a model for it its a good placeholder.

I beat the 16 viewable weapons limit. somehow. not sure if it really works, i'm assuming it does cause it shows up in a mirror.

570k divx

note softy's rocket launcher model that was supposed to be the SK launcher is now the stinger launcher :P

and until I figure out how to maintain the ammo on the gun, which is tough (its a hack, really, but it DOES work) thats staying as the blaster.

7/19/2003 3:03:36 PM

Hyperblaster: 1.7mb divx avi

as soon as i learn how to switch md3 skins on the fly, it'll just pulse for now. goal is that it'll be bright once the gun fires. after bringing in the md3's, all the origins are off a bit on all the weapons, depending on the model's origin. it flips if you carry it right handed/left handed, and if it's center handed its dead on. at least its consistant with all the weapons, i think i know where its happening.

just need to reset it after playing around some.

7/19/2003 12:29:50 AM

usually i just crash at the end of the day. but every day at the end of the day i also make some notes as to progress, update my little todo, and take a screenshot.
today its updated each day, sometimes. some may appriciate it tho, if you look carefully at the amount of yellow and the file name. for those that don't know wtf that is, its basically the 'core' of something that other things depend on, and must be re-written to accomodate those changes. its not the core, but its pretty important on how players are observed to be animating.

it's stupid stuff really, probably doesn't make any sense, but it is fun tho seeing the end results. wish we had better models to do stuff with tho.

7/15/2003 10:29:29 PM

maybe its me loosing my sanity at times, maybe to only me this looks funy but I had to record it.

was having this old issue with q2wf revisited where the spy wouldn't show up in his own camera. the 'hack' was making a dead body and freezing the player at that spot, but due to the way player models are drawn after bringing in md3 support that didn't fly; it crashed.

After fidgeting with it for about 3 hours, I talked to static/zith and he pasted a part of the engine that I had already bookmarked as a possible solution (it was the end result of a function I was about to duplicate). Well I commented out the part that does something else to the player, and the spycamera worked fine. So I had to force how the player is rendered with prediction when the camera is enabled for that player. I am still sorta in the mindframe that this is a mod; now its not. its a game.

I swear he typed maybe 10 words max between the conversation and it spurned a train of thought that produced a solution; proving that when 2 people work on things it doesn't make things go 2x as fast, it can make things go 20x as fast.

but in my first thwarted attempts to implement it, something funny happened. No, its not that I only made the new parts in 1/2 of the code, I just had put it in the wrong place and lost 1/2 the network playerstate data. well look at the avi; it pretty much explains itself.

yea shadows are on by default; you can turn em off. but they don't really suck any performance out of the game.

considering i've already disabled most 'performance' tweaks cause they were unstable; there is no picmip but 'mipmapping' does work fine. no picmips, sorry; textures started tearing and there was no real reason to add it since the way polys are drawn has changed.

mipmapping is when the texture gets blurry the farther away it is.

there is one minor flaw with the player md3 shadow castings; its um, kinda funny; the parts of the player seem to float away from each other when jumping like they are connected via rubber bands or springs. I think it's prediction tho, so i'm not addressing it yet till everything else is stabilized.

allot of settings are locked on by default; there is no longer vertex lighting even existing. not locked, removed. talked with allot of driver development gurus and engine coders, learned what does what. i had to learn some of openGL stuff for this, but not much; its using libraries that i already knew about but now i can use.

7/15/2003 2:43:59 PM

addendum to the todo: animations / vweaps mostly. That means guns with hands (or at least the animation frames). There are allot of weapons in wf; all grenades are at least done.

specials like the biosentry and the camera need to get done. I have the camera, but its like 156 verts for a box with a cylinder on it.

here is a list of weapons. It's not daunting considering the media is already there; its just not consistant and viewable first person weapons are different then what they are carrying around. (mega, dartgun, supershotgun, sniper rifle, stuff like that are either in md2 and md3 format or their Q3 counterparts are using baseq3 media). The models are also skinned, just the md2's are in horrible pcx format (which some I had no choice but to remake because they would crash the engine). The md2's aren't 'tagged' skin formats like md3's.

For someone to learn modeling its a great chance to work with pre-made models.

Find me in irc, i'll give you a pk3 with all the weapons in them; and you already have the wfa weapons. The animation frames, welp you will have to go off of the md2 ones. If you scrounge up some from polycount just note it so I can get their permission.

7/15/2003 8:21:13 AM

Big ol' update. If you are wondering why updates are going slower, its because the final stages are getting tougher.

laser weapons threw me a loop, 500 lines of code spread over 4 files 3 days later all of them work. To be honest I coded some stuff while I was half awake after this problem was bothering me for 2 days and I just woke up and fixed it, it worked, so I reused the code all over the place.

some of the models are just starting to irk me. like right now the laserball grenade just doesn't want to show up, but it is rendering a shell and a shadow. it just doesn't draw. out of all the weapons, this is the only one doing this but it's the only one using a new grenade model so i dunno. oh I can just make it a stock grenade, or bring in the md2's, i just haven't figured out which I want to do yet.

  1. Pretty much got all the things done I wanted to for the weapons and most of the effects (teleporters and spawn protection don't spawn particles yet but will; its a tough call cause of how q2wf teleporters worked and were displayed);

  2. I gotta figure out some of the map entities and why they aren't working (thats a big one),

  3. figure out what I want to do with the model system (cause I really have no clue yet, see below),

  4. the plasmabomb/bgf/flag md3-to-sprite conversions,

  5. remake the biosentry probably from a level1 sent just reskinned white... because the pallette for the image for the biosentry is whack; god knows where it came from,

  6. remove all the debug prints that I sorta left in there,

  7. figure out proportional fonts/spacing for the ui,

  8. test for network utilization,

  9. do a little stress testing,

  10. some real testing if any network tweaks can be made for prediction

  11. clean up player event sounds

  12. hud (hud is totally ganked right now, network again)

  13. add some particles to some effects

  14. make some gibs models

    and probably some other stuff.

7/14/2003 12:19:44 AM

Megachaingun and Full Metal Jacket.

it's so cool when you are just sitting there working on bits and pieces of minorly related things, then go and fix a few more and the 'total effect' comes into visualization.

I was working on space's ents (target kills and remove's and nodrops are a wee bit tough) and out of boredom of firing up the map for the dozenth time I just fired the mega. I was like woah.

First of all there was the model I forgot I put in straight from wf (i think the animation frames are off).

there was some scene in full metal jacket, where chaingun totally rips into a wall on a building... Not all of the bullets gave off sparks, but all left wallmarks, but it looked and sounded cool as hell. I fired, and just was stunned at what it looked and sounded like. divx with no sound doesn't do it much justice, but I tried to give you an idea. Directly rendering gfx (particles) instead of shaders is cool as hell.

1 mb divx

7/13/2003 2:25:49 AM

things that make you go AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!

q2wf had this team balancing code all over it (well really not all over, just at an important part of it) as the winning team progressed, weapons became less effective, certain things 'lasted' less like proxies, goodyears, and what i've been working on currently LASER DEFENSES. not much, but slightly and it was a ratio between the scores/caps.

friggin chasing a bug for over 3 hours so i said fuggit, deliberate dr watson type crash so I could debug and trace. there it was, so hidden and not commented well. what I thought was a bug cause I was so atuned to what was going on actually wasn't; I just happened to have tons of debug prints on stuff and was wondering why variances I couldn't explain were happening.

oops, geeky stuff.

damnit I forgot all about that. it is pretty slick so i'd like to refresh some people on what it is; its a delta curve, will flatten out before 20%. statistically and mathematically its a work of art; the winning team's weapons and specials are slowly handicapped. This has been around for a while.

now THAT is interesting if you think about it for pub play and dwell about its effects on popularity. It has been in there for a while like I said, i did some hunting on sources (it can be turned off, most admins probably never even knew about it). It really could explain why WF was considered a more challenging game; the game literally adapted for the team's skills so if there were allot of prostars on one side, they would have to work harder.

i mean EVERYTHING was affected. just THINK about that. I'll take a moment while you do.

Thinking about it yet?

seriously, try to imagine that during a game. any changes to weapon damages will be so slight noone would notice at all. ever. instead of 8 splashes for rockets at a maximum splash distance for a gunner it takes 10. so instead of 200 bullets to kill someone during a pray and spray event it takes 240. so the pb takes a little bit less from people. so the sentry does a little less damage.

its so slight and its based on score.

What other game has ever done this? none that I can think of at all, except coin-op arcade games single player; the worse you do the easier the game is. its there for a reason, to keep you hooked. except with this, the better you do, the harder it is to be better. it's not giving power to the loosing team, its subtlely taking away power from the winning team.

just something to think about, thats all.

7/13/2003 1:04:46 AM

Twin Kingdom Valleys (TKV) style of map works. 2 flags, and instead of that push I just used a mesh with one side as a clip.

also dman's "mad dash" map works as well; its 2 identical small maps within one bsp; you never know which 'map' you spawn in.

7/11/2003 12:13:02 PM

Modeling sucks. new blaster. but its so so so still the old blaster (even tho its now like 4 different 'meshes', new parts, and new skins and all that on the gun) but its a start; in game the lights actually throw a soft glow around the barrel of the gun when it pulses

7/8/2003 3:48:22 AM

Where did the last 3 days go?

  1. Lightstyles in q3. no its like sof2 lightstyles.
     
    no tute yet, we are workin on them with the tc maps now for 1.1; after im done with them i'll make a tute.
     
    can't really explain it easily but its not hard, just a few parms on lights that are making effects and the worldspawn.
     
    Using the latest off of zerowing for radiant and q3map2. This is not new for me, been doing it for a year. yea. btw anyone can grab this stuff. it takes a bit of reading to get it to fire up, and it really should be done with cygwin, but you can compile with standard vc6 patched.
     
    i've been using more then one editor for a while so it doesn't bother me when one has limitations (or is still not entirely completed), so always be prepared for broken stuff.
     
    as for the interface, you basically get this yellow 2d box with rgb lines through it for either points or surfaces or at selection origins, so it acts like a modifier along whatever axis... and those handles are easier to grasp and move around.
     
    you also can drag stuff around by that yellow box; its easier to work with by a long shot. completely different with gtk's current setup, but it is pretty cool. multiple points tho doesn't work yet, like brush terrain. tho i don't like 3ds and am used to total freedom with lightwave, it seemed like it would be more useful for those new to mapping and the powerusers alike, to an extent.
     

  2. For those about to bitch about WF Fusion cause I know some will: well first they won't be reading this. Second, they can eat crow and they shall be referred to the faq.

    unless i borked something with porting that is (whoops, too many grenades in that cluster) team10 is being tested, then the rest of the .class configs.
     

  3. Zitheral (Static, Retired WFA Lead) jumped on board. Things click, and I'm sure he'll just love my coding style of brute force till it works. Plus I don't think he can turn down the concept of getting his hands on the engine. Either that or he will want to see what's going on before everyone else will and offer appreciated advice so I don't loose all my hair, or he thinks there are WF groupies, or any combination of the above.
     

  4. Mapping: its just q3. some q3 ents will act like q2. sorta. func trains are a pain in the ass tho. no quads/haste/ ents, but it does have techs which spawn at dm spots, but don't worry about the ents really.
     

  5. Posted a slew of media to the media section.

7/4/2003 9:13:03 PM

And some days are productive. All the md2's are now md3's cause well, i dunno. we have em.

7/4/2003 3:43:36 PM

Some days are just funny: 2.5mb divx avi

just shows the nurse running around in q3dm0. note the shadows tho. its not high on the list, but i sorta wanted to have shadows on by default.

7/4/2003 12:24:43 PM

Some days just SUCK.

7/3/2003 1:09:43 PM

wish I had the originals...  for the radio pack with 44khz stereo available

7/3/2003 2:21:40 AM

this is some geeky stuff, and not many people read these forums because they are too busy with worrying about lg ammo, but this is the guts of the game right here and any mapper can understand this, and any non-mapper can understand this also; it ain't that tough trust me.

scaling is a 1.32 normalized difference from wfa. That means all trigger ranges, tracking ranges, splash, pb's, alarms, turrets, homing, stingers, sentries, biosents, proxies, goodyears, are properly scaled to q3 maps/players.

instead of directly porting over to q3, i adjusted everything to accomodate the scale differences. This means the gunner spread is like q2 but in q3, the ssg spread, the ak47, m16, needler, all is exactly like it was in q2 on q3 maps and players. if an alarm was meant to be triggered at 100 units, well now its 132. its simple. it makes sense.

should be interesting since most wfa stuff has been messed with over time, this is pure.

This is radius... not diameter. weapon damages I am NOT going into. its the same as 4.21 lets leave it at that. These splashes are ALSO affected by pvs (potential viewable set) and then los (line of sight) only, except for splashes through z coords (hitting a player above you who's on a platform).

alarm distance: 337 units
turret tracking: 1351 units
sentry tracking: 1118 units
sentry killer track: 1980 units
sentry killer splash: 132 units
rocket splash: 138 units
proxy mine: 132 units
goodyear: 132 units
laserball track: 462 units
stinger track: 1320 units
stinger splash: 258 units
pb:
short:1320 units
medium:2640 units
long:5280 units
laser base: 675 units (to kill it)
laser distance: 2703 units
laser destroy:1320 units (for gunner to destroy it)
laser radius: the outcome is fuzzy, ask later.
pellet rocket radius:154 units(shrap is hitscan)
napalm:26 units
cluster rockets: whatever 30*1.32 is this is getting old and i'm getting tired.

as you can see, i used 1.32 as the common factor. This is set as a server var (for now) so I can test things when the online test is available, if it seems damn odd from q2wf then i'll adjust it and eventually hardcode it. Being that q2 code was made for q2 scaling, and q3 is scaled to 1/3 the difference, i was being conservative with the factors and decided to leave them at 1.32 units cause i like even numbers and its faster. or so i was taught anyway.

ok so wtf does that mean?

go find a flat map, like cancer's or goodspeed's mid. drop a decoy or alarm or whatever. jump on it, and do viewpos. note the numbers, xyz coords.

start walking and do viewpos. you'll see the distance from the decoy if you do a little mental math to see where things are gonna affect you.

thats how pure this port is gonna be.

any mappers seeing this are gonna probably go 'eek' as they had to adjust for the constantly morphing wfa; moving this or that back, whatever. these maps WILL play differently.

HOWEVER

if you were the productive sort of person and not the sort to just hack, you could grab a few q2wf/q2 open source maps and retexture/re-ent them with q3wfa textures with brush primitives and using a freeware ascii editor, then use -scale 1.32 in q3map2 and poof, a q2wf map retextured to fit shows up fine in q3 in less then an hour including compile times.

anyone who went to the dallas lan or was hanging out in wfa when i posted it saw the first experiment with this procedure in banter, many moons ago. it took less then 30 minutes to convert and compile it for q3; vis took longer then light.

simple.

7/1/2003 10:20:28 PM

bugs suck, but I'm getting the hang of it. the animation frames when the spy 'feigns' death; well it fast forwards to the start death frame; and hangs there. when feighn is off tho, the animation frame starts at the end death frame, so a corpse is sitting there firing at stuff.

probably hack it by giving it a 'nudge' when feign is off, like make it jump or move forward or something, i dunno. this one is tough.

7/1/2003 1:48:03 PM

MP3's: Got them in finally, animation is stuck on walking when they are running, skin paths are all screwed up because of the .class definition files (you can specify which skin to use in the def but I might wind up hardcoding it), and I need to rewrite the decoy stuff some more. v_weaps work (gonna use wfa's mega, but that's 3 guns using the same model so I dunno what to do about that yet).

but... figured people would like to see the difference between the gunners. q2wf's gunner looks like a little kid next to major

7/1/2003 11:58:26 AM

there's allot of green now between /* and */ with bot animations with the word FIXME everywhere.

probably like 100 lines commented out for bot animation. some stuff I just can't figure out yet; but after doing the decoys I think I can revisit it. Had dreams about link.exe.

7/1/2003 6:22:35 AM

6 hours later....

didn't sleep.

tore it all apart.

rewrote allot.

put it back together. still needs work but its looking ok.

Going to crash now.

7/1/2003 12:06:25 AM

gunner, then marine mp3. Figured some people would get a kick out of it.

6/30/2003 10:37:01 PM

Got the latest md3 changes from Jalisko. Merging them in is very very complex work because of how the code handles class models in ctf mode. This is going to be tricky as hell. After this tho, its just the ui/hud, removing all the debug prints, and its ready.

6/30/2003 3:59:17 PM

Decoys: making them gesture while you gesture is pretty damn tough

6/30/2003 3:01:53 AM

kinda bent at the flame thrower.

basically its shit. it 'tosses' flame sprites, kinda cheesy. always has. with wfa's vs wf's, its night and day. hope noone minds that i took it upon myself to make it like rtcw's flamethower; lightning gun but with flame effects. sorry i told everyone I wasn't touching weapons at all, but i mean it is so cheesy i can't really explain it; its so -bad- it should be in detention.

gonna need help with the player model stuff and ui soon; this part is the intensive part. its really complex since it was made to be configurable (like mock, you could define the models for each player and weapon, even make new ones, but I had to disable it cause its not what this is about; yes it was a 'roll your own' wf at one point.) i have 1/2 a mind to disable the ui and leave it at settings for now before releasing it. still about a month away at most; just changed the master server for just this.

got the ban ip list as well as the stats working. so many friggin weapons; so much work done. there was a napalm grenade launcher even; i just took the normal long grenade and gave it a opaque yellow shader.

emailed some people to make sure its not gonna dissapear; the future's so bright I gotta wear shades.

All wfa maps will work with this, even all baseq3 maps will work; any self-sufficent maps will as well. The engine has the ability to dump the entity list and load it up properly if edited (some people just can't understand it has to be at a code level). Will need some people to re-adjust some things, if they want, to just have fun with it. It is something kinda cool, but not unfamiliar to people who've played quake since Team Fortress; q1 for those new to quake. Since the server holds all ents in memory, the server tells clients what to load; each server can be different. (team'd packs instead of health on q3ctf1).

There are class-specific spawns, triggers, etc for this now, as well as any other ent can be class-specific. Trying right now to get help with skyportals (looks promising but never can tell) but don't count them in to work yet.

so close to releasing a network ready alpha its not funny.

6/29/2003 10:15:57 PM

2.7mb divx avi

2 days of weapon merging, almost done now. Kudo's to inf3rno; fraps and virtualdub made premiere look like crap. wasn't able to capture sound that easily tho; vid speed is slightly off. it captures faster then it says it does.

i kept the sight as a model. cause i like the shadows. it doesn't 'steer' the rocket, it literally homes in on it. took me a while to get used to firing it at the ground and watching it do a loop-de-loop on space. (first few seconds when i zoom (yay zoom!) if I fired it the rocket won't hit that crosshair; it'll skip over it, come back, and do a loop from above),

6/27/2003 1:16:56 PM

That didn't take long, 10 minutes and I started fixing all the weapons.

1.5mb download, divx, same excuse about the choppyness. Stingers in action. Yea, it uses rocket smoke instead of sparkles for the debris, but i'll try to make it use both if I don't run out of room.

That used to crash the client..

6/27/2003 1:06:53 PM

MAJOR CRASH/BUG FIXED! OMG YES.

I have no idea what made me think of it. I was faced with a major decision, rip it all apart and rebuild it from scratch (there goes a few months of time before this would get out), remerge from the start (it was pretty tough), or sorta do both.

So, i ripped out all the weapons and starting bringing them in one at a time with a clean slate in the weapon/player/header files; the worst crash was from the cluster rocket, the lightest one was from the stinger blowing up. Couldn't hurt, and I would just stare at code, get up to watch tv, sit back down and stare at code or port media, get up again, go for walks, stare at the code, sleep, wake up and stare at the code. After a bit I think I know what every function does between client and server and how they communicate.

Somehow mentally I was still debugging the offending parts of code and it just hit me like a chunk of brick.

see i knew it'd come to me. for anyone that cares or knows, the vector math has changed and how events are broadcast between the client and server. This isn't q3, this isn't q2. its tough. One little missing part was all that needed fixing; what direction and velocity ents start up with in the world if they are to be broadcast; even a temporary ent event that does nothing like an explosion.

but anyway, my work is now cut out for me, almost all weapon events need to be rewritten.

its just a matter of copy/paste tho for the most part.

6/25/2003 2:29:39 AM

STEREO SOUNDS FOR ALL EFFECTS.

i swear i spent about 20 minutes doing nothing but tossing bullets and picking up ammo packs, using the q2wf armour2 wav but now in EAX stereo, and the respawn vibrated my drink on my desk. probably gotta tune it down cause i couldn't hear my grapple; but it sounds cool.

if you have spare time, anything is welcome; new cool sounds for anything as long as you can prove they are not copyrighted.

i just finished up the per-gametype spawn check so all wfa maps won't spawn the commandpoint stuff in ctf; dman's maps are fixed, and the only maps that won't really work are the ones with skyportals; maybe i can force the sky black if it detects one.

no clue how to add a new refdef with q2 yet.

i 'borrowed' some gun sounds from truecombat and made em stereo for explosions, the m16, ak47, pistol, sniper rifle (with volumetric echo) basically it does a trace sorta like a drop with map items but along all 3 axis and updates during movement; and plays the same wav proportional to the distance of the traces and in volume. I'm gonna have to work on that later tho, cause I am still experiencing the grenade explosion crash. (stingers crash too)

I fixed all the bounding box ent problems; they were upside down. even the players were.

all players have their unique sounds in death, jumping, water, and the 3 pain sounds.

added a bizzillion debug routines for any mappers, since it uses q3 tech. you can make a sentry shoot at yourself in a debug mode; same with turrets and homing rockets will target decoys (just for map testing stuff), mostly i put it in there to test my own stuff but left it in there in case anyone was curious.

the grapple still has that 'sloppyness' when you are grappled right to the wall, you let go you go back the direction you came from. can't really do to much about it without rewriting it; but i did rewrite some of it with a few grapple tutes i found to make it as close to what we are all familiar with.

drawsurf vis works by line of sight except for some ents (flags); they work like normal q3 vis. so even if you had a wallhack you aren't gonna really be able to see anything. that means r_speeds have been cut literally 1/3 of what they were on maps.

6/23/2003 11:17:11 AM

Got a preview of the Split&Tag md3 coversion from Jalisco, creator of the OSP map that's going to be in the 2003 qcon tourney. I stuck in a few wfa playermodels and ran around a map or two. It's kinda awesome, but the only code available is really alpha. Waiting to see what he comes up with.

6/20/2003 5:09:00 AM

oh strike the classes don't have all their weapons part, it was from a defunct .class file

they all have what they should. only thing that people might not remember is the packbombs.

this thing is almost near ready; to take my mind off of this error i just make models out of the q2 ones or figure out how to do things differently, like jetpack sounds or laserd sounds; or making the config system work a bit better and sv_pure checking for pk3's. right now i got a crash because of the menu.shader in baseq3, but i (EEK A HACK) coded around it to not load it. (it's a blank file with 24 line feeds).

6/20/2003 4:56:34 AM

omg you don't want to see the windiffs. and i do backup almost every build, incrementally. and i do use cvs for allot of things, just not this.

the first merge looked like, well, hard to explain. 3k errors easily.

this has been an error from the start, it didn't just appear. actually it appeared because i was able to render everything.

i'm passing data to the server, or the server is passing data to the client out of order. i vaguely remember reading something a while back about how data strings are handled, and what orders in what definitions need to mirror each other in the structure definitions.

thing is each tute that exists that i've ever read, that i ever seen and done has only little additions to the engine, not a full blown merge of this magnitude. and when i ask on any forum they just go quiet.

Things that are blatently wrong:

classes don't have all their weapons (.class file is fine)
lasers blow up for no reason
im going nuts from dualing keeps music.
all grenades cause an error when they explode (broadcast phs,pvs)
depot causes an error when it explodes (broadcast pvs,phs)
if i remove the broadcasts they are fine.

i see prints on the hud that are inside the debug code

everything renders fine. the hud works as it should, the sentry tracks as it should, the turrets do what they should do. almost all media is ported. (the decision to not make things bob like in q3 was mine) its when there are certain explosions, all (self) type explosions, stuff goes screwy.

commands are just sent out of order or the wrong ones. that post above was a cmd to join a server that was already there, not a /reconnect but i can't really explain it easily. that should not happen, regardless. it would've crashed with an error, but since i have my hands on the exe i'm just stepping over the crash and printing out the commands so maybe i can make sense out of it all.

to show what i mean in the hud (ok, i'm using stock q3 stuff for the hud) look at the print in the lower left. ignore the extra char in the screenshot name, i have a new q3font that looks like q2 in there and its not working yet.

6/19/2003 11:55:57 PM

something is just out of place, can't figure out why some of the cs_lightstyle strings are printing out on the hud as text when I pick up health.

need a 101 on client/server communication. i'll get it, meanwhile almost all media is ported. only thing left on the todo is figure out why sentries/depots/flagstands are 30 some units off the floor, and why the cyborg gets the sniper rifle and not the sentry killer, recon gets knife, some other stuff like that (maybe old .class file?)

might be all related.

6/19/2003 6:43:00 PM

I fixed the hud, but something is out of order. This is tough. lots of tutes on how to do stupid things, but no write-ups on 'be careful or this will happen'.

FIXME: BAD server message: net_message.readcount 97: net_message.cursize: 95
Server disconnected, reconnecting
FIXME: Illegible server message(no svc_*): net_message 105: cmd: 105
FIXME: Illegible server message(no svc_*): net_message 106: cmd: 226
FIXME: BAD server message: net_message.readcount 621: net_message.cursize: 108
Connecting to localhost...

6/19/2003 1:57:54 AM

fact is that both acrid and static know more about stuff then I do in allot of areas, like how to fix something when its broken beyond belief. me, i need to literally print out sheets of code and go through it with a highlighter, or comment the hell out of it and index my comments in something else. then again, sometimes i just fix things cause it 'looks' wrong. i dunno how else to explain it. i think its what some hate most, slight-of-hand coding. That is until something breaks or its in need of a revamp, then its time for all the proper tabs.

like this stupid grenade error. it doesn't crash the game hard, i get an error due to things sending the wrong data at the wrong time or out of order. i never messed with raw netcode like this especially at the engine level. god what great things are in q2 vs whats in q3; i can understand why people still like to map in the q2 engine due to manipulating entities.

making a searchlight? its a snap. need to make a dusk till dawn effect? easy as pie. you should SEE some of the stuff that was coded into q2wf that was never used due to performance hits.

on p5/and k6 233's at the time. with voodoo2 cards. so you can understand my giddyness. i wonder why noone attempted it before :/

Something you need but don't have? code it. Need a mirror? code it. Need a camera portal? code it. its that easy. map crashes with bad command byte? well guess what, now i can find out WHY its sending null strings, cause i have it at the engine level.

there was absolutely noone to help me with this. when i asked acrid about some vector error he said 'just change it' and assumed i knew wtf the error was. i was able to figure it out, but that pretty much set the level of help i was gonna get from anyone on this. besides, i was fully pumped coming out of the truecombat release and hyperaware of everything, from picking apart code and level design stuff.

Which btw is why i'm posting in here, the wfa maps use dlights awesomely, stock q3 maps look like turd. and knowing the wfa maps like the back of my hand helps since i can inject entities if i want to.

i dunno, noone to talk to, so i ramble in here. my g/f gets this glazed look in her eyes sorta like i get when she starts talking about ancient greek.

if anything comes out of this, i can state that i merged all the source codes of q2wf from the start till 5.0, understanding why each change was done and for what reason, and why so many people invested so much time into the mod.

just cause it was cool.

6/18/2003 8:53:40 PM

i'd like to do it to q3 wfa, don't get me wrong... unleash the wrath of q2wf 4.21 through 5.0 onto the public, but that would cause no end of bickering.

this is the safest way to test what weapons do what, how they affect gameplay, and gain feedback while not interfering with wfa at all and not requiring anyone to download a new mod.

plus it will settle the debate between old school q2wf'ers and newgen wfa'ers.

trying to get the physics just right went ok, except for the jetpack and jump pads (jump pads are server-side).

its just a toy, i'll be happy if i can find someone to host the server for a few weeks. or have it at quakecon, either way.

Btw that stupid flag bug was something that they added in for testing maps; if it can't find a flag it just gives both of them to the player so if you die there's no return point and the game crashes. Stupid; but useful. Just removed that.

6/18/2003 4:05:40 PM

its actually a bug i haven't tracked down yet, you spawn ingame with both flags and you are seeing the particle effects and dynamic light glow. i just have it remove it if you die. i think i have leftover q3'ish ctf code in there, or i forgot to rename one of the items in the wf code.

its q2 effects, glows, particle effects, rendereffects, fov effects... the pb was a pain cause it was a q2 sprite, had to change it to a non-animated wfa pb md3.

as soon as i port some more of the rockets, and figure out why i get some errors on explosions on some ents, i'll post screenies. i even added some grapple fixes that i know wfa has, and realize why wfa has em (grapples on triggers + prediction = bad)

i gotta figure out how to do the player models tho. that's gonna be the toughest and most time consuming part.

6/17/2003 6:43:17 PM

I FIXED IT.

YEP YEP YEP.

omg so great. just gotta figure out why player spawns with a flag by default in devmap, and why a supplydepot tries to do a muzzleflash, then i'm all done!

Till the next crash, anyway.

6/17/2003 12:30:39 PM

Well it wasn't the hud. on the benefit side, i was able to move the hud definitions to the outside of the engine, so they can be configured.

Now I know why static was always so hesitant to add things. touch one thing and the whole shebang falls like a house of cards.

6/17/2003 2:09:36 AM

fuckin i give up for the night. i hate friggin bugs like this.

makes me think its hud related more and more. NOTHING draws. everything works right, nothing draws at ALL.

gawd. at least i spent time remapping media and getting some new fangled tricks in.

6/15/2003 4:59:29 PM

fixed a fov crash with the camera. also fixed a map crash, all of dman's maps don't work cause he didn't use !@#$% misc_teleport_destinations. contents ladders don't work. plasmabombs don't crash, yay, but now i know why they lag when they go off, they brodcast like a dozen wav files starting at once to everyone on the level. duh.

now everything just homs and i'm taking a break for a bit. can move around and grapple to stuff, drop decoys, use specials, but hell if i know where i am :P

but at least the menus look right. had to twig the font a bit, so in the dropdown console everything looks squished a bit. its using wfa fonts for the on screen menus. discovered the radio menus work from wfa, the set/vstr's are just substituted with alias cmds.

custom q3-like dedicated console, acts like the stock q3 one but no copy button. gotta figure out how to make the window alpha faded a bit and pick some cool colors. just something why i try to figure out the hom's.

6/13/2003 3:43:00 AM

Got the last source of q2wf from Acrid, version 5. True combat was released, something is in the air and I think I caught it. Diff'd the 4.21 against the 5 and had a shit; so many changes that it wasn't worth merging again. Archived and stored the work, then began the merge processes all over again.

6/12/2003 9:32:00 PM

well it sure as shit ain't easy. all the model vector math has been transformed over to q3 stuff. for me its easy cause i don't understand most of it. well sorta do, its client to server geeky stuff with indexes now.

its like

compiling....
SPAM FOREVER WTF ABORT! CTL-BREAK CTL-BREAK!
1021 errors, 340 warnings

(an hour later)

compiling....
SPAM
42 errors

(an hour later)

compiling

2 errors. (WTF ERROR IS THAT?!)

(3 hours later)

1 error (OMG I NEED SHOTS OF TEQUILA, I QUIT)

15 minutes later an epiphany while reading Fantasy books or staring at the walls of the shower cooling off and still seeing lucidia console font burned in my retinas in the caulk...

game_x86.dll- 0 error(s), 0 warning(s)

YAY! replace that sucker with the fresh dll. run around in a map, try to plant a spycamera, BAM system error. DAMNIT! no clue either, but it has to be simple. dunno tho considering that its q3 in q2... and im staring at like 20 odd some mod sources unpacked on my desktop looking for how they did stuff.

repeat.

MY sandbox.

6/12/2003 4:50:28 PM

LoadLibrary (./wfadev/game_x86.dll)
==== InitGame ====
Loading config file: wfadevwfserver.ini
New class def loaded: wfadevteam10.class
10 Classes Loaded
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: no_bioattack = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: skip_l1 = 1
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: maxrate = 8000
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_no_health = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_no_items = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_weapons_stay = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_no_falling = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_instant_items = 1
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_same_level = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_skinteams = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_modelteams = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_no_friendly_fire = 1
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_spawn_farthest = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_no_armor = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_allow_exit = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_infinite_ammo = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_quad_drop = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_fixed_fov = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_quadfire_drop = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_ctf_forcejoin = 0
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_armor_protect = 1
WFConfig: Invalid General Setting: df_ctf_no_tech = 1
WFConfig: 21 map(s) loaded.
ZBot Protection Enabled
------- Server Initialization -------
SpawnServer: 2forttron-wfa
PackFile: ./wfadev/map-2forttron-wfa.pk3 : maps/2forttron-wfa.bsp
Building PHS...
Average clusters visible / hearable / total: 90 / 260 / 1338
1 entities inhibited
11 teams with 68 entities
-- Capture Limit Warning (1 left): Type 'vote' to pick next map --
-------------------------------------
-- 30 Seconds Till Flag Pick Up Allowed --
FindFile: can't find launcher.cfg
couldn't exec launcher.cfg
-- 20 Seconds Till Flag Pick Up Allowed --
-- 15 Seconds Till Flag Pick Up Allowed --
-- 10 Seconds Till Flag Pick Up Allowed --
-- 5 Seconds Till Flag Pick Up Allowed --
4
3
2
1
Flag Pick Up Allowed

2 days without sleep power coding. broke the eraser bots completely, spy camera crashes with an fov error, massively reworked allot of crap while i was porting, and bots wont work at all until i figure out how to decompile the nix .sav file.

6/10/2003 12:07:03 AM

First merge success with 4.21. Lots of bugs, crashes frequently.

6/9/2003 8:12:03 PM

Got QFusion source off of their CVS, and built it and messed around in a few WFA maps. Looks awesome, great potential.