yquake2remaster/doc/030_configuration.md

Configuration Guide

Yamagi Quake II provides a lot of configuration options. This guides shows how to configure Yamagi Quake II to match you needs. This guide is for advanced users, if you just want to play you're likely happy with the defaults and the options that can be set through the menu.

Choosing a Renderer

Yamagi Quake II ships with 4 renderers:

• The OpenGL 3.2 renderer: This renderer was developed for the needs of modern graphics hardware and is usually the best choice for OpenGL 3.2 capable graphics cards. It provides a very detailed look and feel, matching the dark and dirty atmosphere on Stroggos. The texture rendering looks mostly the same on all GPU drivers. Depending on the display, the default lighting may be too bright or too dark, it can be adjusted through the menu or through the vid_gamma cvar.
• The OpenGL ES3 renderer: This is pretty much the same as the OpenGL 3.2 renderer (and uses the same cvars for configuration), but uses OpenGL ES 3.0 instead of "desktop" OpenGL, so it also works on the Raspberry Pi 4, for example. Reportedly it also has slightly better performance on Wayland, at least with the open source AMD drivers.
• The OpenGL 1.4 renderer: This is a slightly enhanced version of the original OpenGL renderer shipped in 1997 with the retail release. It's provided for older graphics cards, not able to run the OpenGL 3.2 renderer. The OpenGL 1.4 renderer has some limitations. The look and feel is highly dependent on the GPU driver and the platforms OpenGL implementation, especially the texture rendering may vary to a wide margin. The global lighting may not be rendered correctly, especially liquids may be too dark or too bright.
• The Software renderer: Shipped for historical reasons only. Setting the OpenGL 3.2 renderer to match the software renderers look and feel is often the better choice, since it's faster and provides colored lighting. The software renderer may show some rendering errors on widescreen resolutions.

Choosing a Sound System

Yamagi Quake II ships with 2 sound system:

• The OpenAL sound system: This is the default and highly recommended. It provides full surround sound support and even HRTF for headphones. But also the plain stereo playback is much better than in the original sound system. The setup is done mostly through OpenAL, have a look at the documentation of your OpenAL library.
• The SDL sound system: This is the classic sound system, providing an experience like the original client. Set s_openal to 0 and execute an snd_restart to activate it. The classic sound system may be somewhat problematic on modern systems like Windows 10 or Linux with Pulseaudio.

Tuning for Precise Timings

Yamagi Quake II comes with a highly evolved asynchronous client. While the default settings are usually good, some players may want to tune for more precise timing or better vertical synchronization accuracy.

Quake II was never meant to run on todays hardware. Modern hardware is hundred times faster than the hardware of 1997. Faster hardware brings higher framerates, which make inaccuracies scattered all over the code visible and a problem. We're unable to fix all those inaccuracies, because the game data, the network protocol and the whole look and feel depends on them. We can just try work around them.

If your computer is fast enough to reach at least 60fps in Yamagi Quake II (this should be the case for most machines these days, including Laptops with integrated GPUs; a notable exception are Raspberry PIs), the following settings should give you the best results:

• Make sure that busywait is set to 1. That's the default. Setting it to 0 saves some CPU time (and thus increase battery life and reduce heat), but can mess up the timings, especially on Windows, which can lead to tearing- and / or micro stuttering.
• Set cl_async to 1 (the default) to avoid glitches especially in physics/movement when rendering at high framerates (>90fps).
• cl_maxfps should usually be set to -1 (the new default) so the engine can choose a packet framerate that should be ideal.
• If your display's refreshrate isn't detected correctly, set vid_displayrefreshrate.
• If your display has a vertical refreshrate of 60Hz, just enable vsync (r_vsync 1) and make sure vid_maxfps is at least 60, which by default is the case.
• If you have a display that runs at more than 60Hz, enabling vsync should still make the game run well, but you get best results by running it at a render framerate that's a multiple of 60fps, for example by setting vid_maxfps to 120 (for 144Hz displays).
• If you have vsync disabled, you should set vid_maxfps to a framerate that your computer can reach.

For slower machines (that can't consistently reach 60fps) it makes sense to disable the asynchronous client all together by setting cl_async to 0 and limiting the framerate to a value <= 90, to avoid the aforementioned glitches in parts of the game where your machine reaches more than 90fps after all.
This is done by setting vid_maxfps (to 80, for example). cl_maxfps is ignored with cl_async 0, and every render frame is also a client/server frame.

The cl_async entry in the cvar documentation has some more information on the asynchronous client.

Getting a classic look and feel

Yamagi Quake II has some features to provide a better experience on modern hardware. For example widescreen support, HUD scaling or FOV alterations. Not all users may like these changes.

HUD scaling

All levels of scaling can be switched off in the Video menu. It's also possible to switch only parts of the scaling off, for example the menu and the console can be scaled, but the HUD not. The cvars are:

• r_consolescale for the console.
• r_hudscale for the HUD.
• r_menuscale for the menu.
• crosshair_scale for the crosshair.

Please note that's not always clear which GUI elements are part of what subsystem. The loading plaque is part of the menu and not of the HUD, for example.

Field of View

Yamagi Quake II has a different FOV calculation then the original client. Yamagi Quake II determines the optimal FOV (horizontal and vertical) with the Horplus algorithm and the gun is rendered always with a static FOV of 80, the original client only had a vertical FOV applied to everything.

• The FOV itself can be altered through the Video menu or the fov cvar. That gives a smaller or wider FOV, but not the classic Quake II look because the Horplus algorithm is still active.
• The Horplus algorithm can be disabled by setting horplus to 0.
• The gun can be rendered with the global FOV by setting r_gunfov to the same value as fov.

4/3 Cinematics

While the original Quake II client stretched cinematics over the whole window, Yamagi Quake II always renders them with 4/3 aspect. The old behavior can be enforced by setting cin_force43 to 0.

Sound system

As already said above, Yamagi Quake II has two sound systems. The old one and OpenAL. Additionally some new sound effects were added. We recommend to stay with OpenAL, even if the stereo rendering is somewhat different to the old sound system. OpenAL is much more distortion free and more reliable, especially on modern platforms like Windows 10 or Linux with PulseAudio / Pipewire.

The new sound effects can be disabled with:

• s_doppler set to 0 disables the doppler effect.
• s_underwater set to 0 disables the underwater effect.

Renderer

While Yamagi Quake II still supports the Software renderer, configuring one of the OpenGL renderers to give a classic look and feel is often the better choice. The OpenGL renderers are much faster, more reliable and support colored lighting.

General cvars:

• cl_lights: Set to 0 to disable the dynamic lighting.

Both OpenGL renderers:

• gl_texturemode: Set to GL_NEAREST to disable the texture filtering, giving a classic pixel look. Additionally disabling anisostropic filtering makes it look even more authentic.

The OpenGL 1.4 renderer:

• gl1_pointparameters: When set to 0 the particles are rendered as blurry octagon. May be already the case if the GPU driver doesn't support point parameters.

The OpenGL 3.2 renderer:

• gl3_particle_square: When set to 1 the particles are rendered as squares.

• gl3_colorlight: When set to 0, the lights and lightmaps are colorless (greyscale-only), like in the original soft renderer.

Retexturing Packs

Yamagi Quake II has full support for retexturing packs. They just need to be installed and should be picked up automatically. To disable the retexturing pack at a later time set r_retexturing to 0.

• The most comprehensive build retexturing pack can be found here: https://deponie.yamagi.org/quake2/assets/texturepack/
• And there's an AI upscale of the original textures: https://github.com/Calinou/quake2-neural-upscale/releases

Retexturing packs can be installed by placing the pak or zip files in the baseq2 directory.