Project 'brainstorming'

General discussion relating to the Transfusion project.

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predator
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Post by predator »

Chris meant my bloodbath remakes that I made long time ago for Q3A.

However at this point, when our TF maps are already in q3bsp format, we can test them under Open Arena. I'm going to create test maps soon, selecting 5 of our current TF maps and replacing TF entities with OA entities. Then we'll run a few tests.
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Slink

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Post by Slink »

Cool. In order to help you, I would need to own a copy of Q3, yes?
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DustyStyx
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Post by DustyStyx »

No, just OpenArena
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Slink

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Post by Slink »

Okay. I'll be home today around 6pm Eastern (GMT -5:00) so let me know if anyone wants to check stuff out today.
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Post by DustyStyx »

I could play around with it for about an hour or so, tho I'm not sure when I'll be able to get on tonight. My wife is using the computer to study nursing for the most part. Also I don't have access to the wireless HUB I connect though, it belongs to my neighbor, so you'd have to be the one to setup the server.

If you can, join IRC.Anynet.org/#transfuion when you get home.

If you need Tom's bloobath maps, click his sig link > http://q3bloodbath.w.interia.pl/
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Elric
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Post by Elric »

Could someone please move this thread to Transfusion Discussion? :cry:

It starts to get really interesting - for everyone ;)
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Slink

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Post by Slink »

Chris, Mathieu really seems to want this thread moved... :)
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Elric
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Post by Elric »

Thanks a lot Chris! (or whoever did it)
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DustyStyx
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Post by DustyStyx »

Wasn't me.
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Elric
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Post by Elric »

DustyStyx wrote:Netplay with Unlagged is very playable
Do you mean that an unlagged mod is necessary to make Q3 network code behave nicely? I mean, for high pings this is probably unavoidable, but if it's also required for low ping games, maybe the Q3 net code isn't that better than DP net code after all :(
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Post by predator »

Oh it is a lot better. I played many hours of PKA mod online (which uses standard Q3 netcode) and the difference is huge.
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Slink

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Post by Slink »

Okay, but how does the multi-play performance of Nexiuz compare to the other two? If you aren't sure, or aren't familiar with Nexiuz, I'll gladly test it with you.

http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/

I'd also like to test the current "complete" build of TFn so I have a current frame of reference.
-Slink
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Post by Elric »

Do you know whether OpenArena has integrated the complete unlagged code? Its changelog mentions "Unlagged tracehits" (version 0.7.6) and that "Chaingun works in unlagged now" (version 0.8.1). But it's not very clear to me how much "unlagged" OA is.
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Post by Willis »

Elric wrote:Do you know whether OpenArena has integrated the complete unlagged code? Its changelog mentions "Unlagged tracehits" (version 0.7.6) and that "Chaingun works in unlagged now" (version 0.8.1). But it's not very clear to me how much "unlagged" OA is.
Unlagged, aside from being an anti-lag mechanism (the tracehits timing part) is also a gameplay mod, which I'm assuming they did not want in OA. So it's not to say that the anti-lag features are incomplete there, I'd take it to say they didn't want the gameplay changes. But I could be wrong.
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Post by Willis »

And now for a more generic double-post.

Let me throw in my two cents in random order on subjects brought up in this topic.

If TFn were to switch engines, it would be based on top of an engine, not a game/mod. It would be based on ioq3, which is the engine that Open Arena uses, or xreal, a fork of ioq3. I understand all mention of OA so far has likely been in terms of testing what the Q3 engine could do with the current maps, I just want to make that point clear.

DPs netcode is nowhere near as bad TFn makes it appear. DP certainly ins't perfect, but the difference between Nexuiz and TFn is night and day because Nexuiz has a better and more mature code base on the QC front.

No, there are no other game code programming methods available for DP aside from a Proof-of-concept python engine that is dangerous, and when it comes down to it, python isn't that much better of a language. The other more un-tested method in DP is Client-Side QC which is much smoother for clients as it emulates some of the work on the client side rather than fully relying on the server to send every single update. However, CSQC is quite immature on the DP engine. For those of you not familiar with it, CSQC was used in the original Quake World.

Unlagged is a Q3 gamecode mode, so all it requires is a q3 standard compliant VM. It shouldn't even matter if the engine is protocol compliant or not.

Switching to a Q3 engine -- while it has potential to alleviate some of the game code issues that Transfusion is plagued with, as well as some of the UI solutions, it also changes things considerably on other fronts that will prove just as difficult. The most notable of such is on the model front. PSK is a very advanced format, the best available in ioq3 to the best of my knowledge is currently md3, and mixed support for an unpopular skeletal format. This is one of the biggest reasons we stayed with DP. IOQuake3 has either MD4 or MDR format, which is skeletal (appears to be MDR) which as far as I can tell is only supported by Milkshape with plugins. XReal, another Q3 engine, which appears to be more like the DP of Q3 engines does support md5 models.

Aside from that, the next major obstacle is shaders, they're a whole nother can of worms on their own, and with them, you start running into various card incompatibilities.
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