QuakeForge for Debian
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Well, it's finally here: 0.2! It's just a CVS snapshot but it's stable
enough that I am comfortable releasing it into woody at least. If you
didn't read the changelog.Debian and you want to know where quake went,
shame on you for not reading it. => For completeness, here's a full list
of the binary names in 0.1.x and what they are in 0.2-d:
qw-client-3dfx -> qw-client-3dfx quake-3dfx -> uquake-3dfx
qw-client-ggi -> qw-client-ggi quake-ggi -> uquake-ggi
qw-client-gl -> qw-client-glx quake-gl -> uquake-glx
qw-client-sdl -> qw-client-sdl quake-sdl -> uquake-sdl
qw-client-svga -> qw-client-svga quake-svga -> uquake-svga
qw-client-x11 -> qw-client-x11 quake-x11 -> uquake-x11
qw-server -> qw-server
In short, quake is now uquake (since that's what it was in CVS even in
0.1.x) and the -gl target has been renamed to the more appropriate -glx.
New Cvars
Some things have been added which will make the GL renderer targets (for
Debian these are -3dfx and -glx) look a little nicer. Here they are:
r_fog - set to something like 0.0005 to have a light global fog
r_volfog - complicated, see below
r_sky - set to 1 to use skyboxes instead of sky textures
r_skyname - sets basename of the skybox you wanna use, see below
gl_conspin - set nonzero (try 1, 0.5, etc) for QER spinning console
gl_conalpha - defaults to 0.6, alpha consoles now actually work!
r_waterripple - set it around 5 to 8 for water to have little waves
Skyboxes
In order to use skyboxes, you're going to need one. Any skybox from
Quake2 should work nicely. Drop the six .tga files into the gfx/env
subdirectory under any directory where QuakeForge looks for pak files
such as ~/.quake/base. For this example I'm going to use a different
directory and add -game skybox to my command line.
First, I put my skyboxes in the appropriate directory:
knghtbrd@trinity:~/.quake$ ls skybox/gfx/env/
nightbk.pcx nightlf.pcx snow2bk.pcx snow2lf.pcx snowbk.pcx snowlf.pcx
nightbk.tga nightlf.tga snow2bk.tga snow2lf.tga snowbk.tga snowlf.tga
nightdn.pcx nightrt.pcx snow2dn.pcx snow2rt.pcx snowdn.pcx snowrt.pcx
nightdn.tga nightrt.tga snow2dn.tga snow2rt.tga snowdn.tga snowrt.tga
nightft.pcx nightup.pcx snow2ft.pcx snow2up.pcx snowft.pcx snowup.pcx
nightft.tga nightup.tga snow2ft.tga snow2up.tga snowft.tga snowup.tga
Don't worry about the pcx files, they're only used for software renderers
and QuakeForge doesn't support them yet. As you can see here, I have
three choices for skyboxes: night, snow, and snow2. Let's use snow2.
To use it we would start the game with +r_skyname snow2 on the command
line. You can put that in your autoexec.cfg if you'd prefer or even set
it from the console by hand. It just doesn't take effect until you
reload the current map. BTW, when you start a map without a skybox you
should see six warning/error messages that several sky*.tga files cannot
be found. The default r_skyname value is sky and the engine tries to
load them whether you have r_sky turned on or not. This IS a developer
version after all.
Volumetric Fog
Quake has no support for volfog. In order to make real use of it, we are
going to have to create a volfog brush. (If you have no idea what I am
talking about, don't worry---I don't fully understand the map-making
aspect of QuakeForge either, I just code here!) In the meantime, we're
borrowing the water brush for testing purposes. You're going to need a
map which has been "watervis'd" (ie, you can actually see through the
water if you set r_wateralpha to .3 or so)
raptor suggests the settings r_wateralpha 0.3 and r_volfog 0.0009. Note
that the current volumetric fog implementation has a few side effects and
uses the OpenGL stencil buffer. Unless you have a g400 or something (I
don't) you're going to discover quickly that volfog eats more of your CPU
which is likely to lower your fps a bit unless you have a fast chip.
We'll probably change how we render volumetric fog in the future so it
works better for more people. A real volfog brush is likely so map
people can actually put areas of fog into maps sanely.
I want to reiterate that this is a development release. If you can break
it, we'd like to know---especially if you can tell us how. Send reports
and other comments to quake-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
-- Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org>, Wed, 8 Mar 2000 02:27:27 -0800
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