O'dium, Q2E ETA?

[Eraser]

Hey o'dium, I'm planning on starting a project that's very similar to the demo scene thing you'll find at http://www.scene.org

The thing is, a few people at work got intruiged by these demos and, just for the fun of it, we started a sort of competition to create the coolest demo.

No one really has the abilities to create any high quality stuff, so it's just a humorous poke at the whole demo thing. But I wanted to take an alternative approach.

I had this idea of using Keygrip2 (http://www.planetquake.com/keygrip) to recam a Quake 2 demo. I wanted to create a visually interesting map. Not something you'd play in, but something with... well, I dunno, cool glowy things and stuff.

However, since Quake 2 is a fairly old engine, supports only 8 bit textures and let's not get started about the lack of any sort of shader support, I quickly jumped to the conclusion that using Q2E would be really, really cool. That is, the one with per-pixel lighting.

I have some good ideas on what to do with it. There might be something in it for you as well, as it could be interesting promotion for the capabilities of your engine. I'm hoping not to toot my own horn here too much, but I would like to explore the possibilities in extensive use of the per pixel lighting capabilities of the engine.

So to achieve all that, I have a few questions about the engine:
1) What is the ETA on the PPL enabled version of Q2E
2) Will this version still support the .dm2 file format? That's all I can feed into keygrip2
3) What BSP file format does it use? Which editor should I use to create maps?
4) Is there a shader manual of some sorts?
5) How customizable is the menu system? Most importantly the loading screen. I'm probably going to try and strip off all Quake 2 content and release the thing as a seperate executable with just the content for the demo, starting the whole thing by executing a cfg file. It would bypass any menu systems but would leave the loading screen unchanged.
6) What types of audio files does it play? Still limited to WAV or have you added MP3 or maybe OGG support?

Are there any technical problems you yourself would forsee in this idea?

Thanks for your help

[Eraser]

Oh and if anyone has any interest in helping me create this thing, I love working in teams so hey, why not

[dzjepp]

Well since odium seems to be making a conscious effort to avoid idl I'll see if I can answer some of those q's:

1) What is the ETA on the PPL enabled version of Q2E

ETA on a public release? Don't know. You can download the 'closed' beta right now though, that supports ppl. Check their forums or the sourceforge page for an updated build. I believe someone or in part of the q2e community is making new textures to generally spiff up the mp maps. Right now, you'll get just ppl with all the old art assets. But, I believe there is a retexturing project for q2. I might have a nice pak with updated textures too, I'll link you to em if you want to have a look.

2) Will this version still support the .dm2 file format? That's all I can feed into keygrip2

I haven't tried playing around with demos in older builds of q2e, but it seems to always been said that demo support is sort of crippled in q2e. This probably has to do in part because of the netcode problems. Which is why they are planning an updated version of ctf for q2e. Other q2 multiplayer mods prolly won't be compatible. You might have a tough time getting demos working nicely, I dunno.

3) What BSP file format does it use? Which editor should I use to create maps?

I think they where going to try and support q3's bsp format, I dunno how far they got with that. But the new builds of gtkradiant should fully support q2 and q2e. Check their site to see if there are any q2e prefabs you might need to use with it.

4) Is there a shader manual of some sorts?

http://www.quake2evolved.com/rtrm.htm

That's all I could gather.

[dzjepp]

Oh and if anyone has any interest in helping me create this thing, I love working in teams so hey, why not

If you need any actors in your production then I would gladly run around in the maps and take direction from the overzealous director.

[Eraser]

Well since odium seems to be making a conscious effort to avoid idl I'll see if I can answer some of those q's:

1) What is the ETA on the PPL enabled version of Q2E

ETA on a public release? Don't know. You can download the 'closed' beta right now though, that supports ppl. Check their forums or the sourceforge page for an updated build. I believe someone or in part of the q2e community is making new textures to generally spiff up the mp maps. Right now, you'll get just ppl with all the old art assets. But, I believe there is a retexturing project for q2. I might have a nice pak with updated textures too, I'll link you to em if you want to have a look.

Yeah I found version 0.66 but found that if I run it I get missing textures everywhere and all the maps are completely black. I guess I'm missing some pak file with resources but I couldn't find anything like that.

2) Will this version still support the .dm2 file format? That's all I can feed into keygrip2

I haven't tried playing around with demos in older builds of q2e, but it seems to always been said that demo support is sort of crippled in q2e. This probably has to do in part because of the netcode problems. Which is why they are planning an updated version of ctf for q2e. Other q2 multiplayer mods prolly won't be compatible. You might have a tough time getting demos working nicely, I dunno.

That could really screw things up

Thanks for your response dzjepp :icon14:

[|Berserk|]

Looks like I lost my old account. Anyway...

1) What is the ETA on the PPL enabled version of Q2E

For a proper release? No idea.
As dzjepp said, there's a public beta, which is only recommended for developers willing to contribute work, or for the curious.

ATM, is not optimized, but it should be pretty stable (except for the common ATI problems).

2) Will this version still support the .dm2 file format? That's all I can feed into keygrip2

The current build still supports .dm2 demos.

3) What BSP file format does it use? Which editor should I use to create maps?

We're still using Q2 BSP.
Any editor that works with Q2 should work with Q2E too.
The current build also includes an integrated light editor for adding/editing light sources in-game.

4) Is there a shader manual of some sorts?

Nope, but most of this applies to Q2E: http://www.iddevnet.com/doom3/materials.php

5) How customizable is the menu system? Most importantly the loading screen. I'm probably going to try and strip off all Quake 2 content and release the thing as a seperate executable with just the content for the demo, starting the whole thing by executing a cfg file. It would bypass any menu systems but would leave the loading screen unchanged.

The current build still lacks a scriptable GUI system, so if you need more than new images you'll need to modify some code. It should be very easy, as long as you have some programming knowledge.

6) What types of audio files does it play? Still limited to WAV or have you added MP3 or maybe OGG support?

Sound effects are still limited to WAV.
There is OGG support for background tracks tho (but only background tracks for now). They replace the original CD audio tracks, but you can play any by using the "music" console command.

[dzjepp]

Hello 'serk You might be able to get your old account back if you give a shout to one of the admins (try that phag doomer), just give him your info...

And ask odium why he's trying to avoid idl, which in turn is forcing people like me to spit misinformation about the mod.

[|Berserk|]

Yeah, it's been a while since my lost post here

[Eraser]

I read some of berserk's posts over at the Q2E forums and my head's still spinning from all that technical talk

Thanks for your reply here btw

[Drön]

Yeah, it's been a while since my lost post here

ages man, we miss you.

[|Berserk|]

I haven't posted on a forum other than mine for quite some time now. Maybe it's the lack of time


Eraser: you think my posts are too techie? Oh well, I tried my best
What gets to my nerves are all those posts about the lack of lighting, when we explicitly stated the release is only meant for developers.


Anyway, is raw still in charge here or what? I'd like to get my old account back. Who should I mail?

[Survivor]

Hello 'serk You might be able to get your old account back if you give a shout to one of the admins (try that phag doomer), just give him your info...

[Eraser]

Eraser: you think my posts are too techie? Oh well, I tried my best

Heh no

If the person the post was ment for understands what you're saying then that's quite allright. There's lots of non techy stuff you posted as well (at least, here at Q3W you did I think).