New client: CleanQ2

[SquareHimself]

Alright, so at the moment there isn't really a whole lot new about it. Paril and I have taken jdolan's aprq2 and are using it as a base to make a sister engine to the Cleancode game DLL. We are looking at adding improvements, moving it over to C++, etc... Right now it's just AprQ2 with some bug fixes (HTTP downloading fix on linux and support for libpng14/libjpeg8). Anticheat... we'll have to consider that if the engine takes off like we hope.

Ideas thus far include hud scripting, VoIP, and a strong cross-platform support... but who cares what we want? What do you guys want? What are your favorite features from other clients that AprQ2 doesn't have? What do you dream about having in a Q2 engine? We want to know! This client is for all of you to make your Quake 2 experience the bomb.

The source will be open, and of course... a link to the project pages:
Cleancode (The DLL) - http://code.google.com/p/cleancodequake2/
CleanQ2 (The Engine) - http://code.google.com/p/cleanq2/

A windows binary is not yet available, but will be shortly.
Also, if you would like to contribute... SPEAK UP!

(I fucking love colors.)

[[BTF]Jehar]

Hmm, I suppose I'd start with some of the things expected these days that aren't currently in Q2.
This may or may not reflect any kind of practicality.

-hud scripting
-ogg sound support
-sky portals
-server-side image displays
-image-based motds
-more team communication aids, though q2 being so bare of them has led people to make elaborate team binds over the years. I'd rather not tarnish that.

Some of those threaten to break backwards-compat, which is part of the reason why q2 is still in the state that it is. So many people still connect with q2.exe or nocheat.exe. This late in the game, I don't think anyone would go for major engine overhauls like Doom has enjoyed.

[|iR|Focalor]

What exactly is hud scripting? The ability to change where ammo and health and current weapon icons appear?

[VaeVictis]

What exactly is hud scripting? The ability to change where ammo and health and current weapon icons appear?

i assume they mean like what cpma and quakelive have where you can basically code your own hud, have different lay out and everything custom huds are amazing... ALTHOUGH i dont believe this would work for anything but ffa on a cleancode server :/ the reason behind this is because i believe the hud layout is controlled by the game.dll, so its something server side controlled by the mod

also, i would like to see the option for particle effects as good as quake2evolveds particle effects not egl... screw egl particle effects >_< lol would have to include lighting thought, but just updating graphics to that level period would be awesome just make sure if you do it is optional so its not killing players who need their fps

something kewl in q2pro is the ability to record demos inside a demo

something that would be AWESOME for a quake2 engine, is a built in server browser like how ezquake comes with a great one for quakeworld, that sorta thing, and then you could just use your recorded addresses as sort of a favorites list

oh and another amazing thing would be picmip without picmipping entities like how jehars modded client did for the tastycast for awhile, could maybe have a cvar to enable or disable it?

maybe have a built in cvar for forced model male and female like q2pro does, the force model cvar for r1q2 and aprq2 only forces to grunt i believe :/ bad for tdm... also maybe a built in feature for brightskins? that way people dont have to scream OMFG BRIGHTSKINS MOD! HAXOR!

i know one cpma player was complaining about q2 cvars when i gave him link to the kicker, he didnt want direct mouse input he wanted raw... i dont really know wtf the difference is but its something to consider

im sure there is plenty of other things im missing, if i think of them ill make another post

[X'tyfe]

Why use APRQ2? Wouldn't r1q2 be more inline with what cleancode is about?

[Slayer :D]

#1: Add $$loc_here and $$loc_there to aprq2.

[[BTF]Jehar]

#1: Add $$loc_here and $$loc_there to aprq2.

 Already there.
"bind l "say_team Im at $loc_here and looking at [$loc_there$]""

[VaeVictis]

i had trouble geting aprq2 on my quake2. besdies i want a prgram that will fix the shitty bugs on my server :-) if you can provide that then great. other than that i don't really use any advanced features. the only thing i ever used was wav timers for items. i never used a custom pak for the graphics engine. i haven't seen any i really liked so far, of the few i seen. soemthing that makes my quake look like the doom engine maybe?

people usually run servers with r1q2 pretty solid stuff

and as far as awesome graphics go, there is a number of engines, by far the most impressive is quake 2 evolved, but its coded so poorly no machine can run it without some serious frame drops :/ hence why id like to see the same awesome effects (maybe lighting?) put into a client programmed by people putting more effort into it



OH ANOTHER THING! perhaps have a more complex key binding options menu so you can go through and bind each weapon and maybe a few chat bind options where you type out what you want it to say and what key to say it, thatd be kewl, and then have a button at the top or bottom of that menu to write config kinda like how ezquake does it could write it to a cleanq2.cfg and then have it exec that just before auto exec in the client startup

[reaper]

integrated music : )

[VaeVictis]

integrated music : )

seen a lot of clients with this feature for other games, such as doom and soldat and such, dont know how much use they actually get though...

id assume most people prefer using something like wmp or itunes, but if this feature was to be added i can guess it wouldnt be too hard all they would have to do is perhaps look up the source on how those games integrate the player, or perhaps just whip something up by themselves... if that is put in there make sure you add cvars for it so you can control volume of the music seperated from the game volume, and also maybe the ability to bind keys for stuff like next song and such

[[BTF]Jehar]

Uh. Aprq2 has integrated winamp and xmms controls.

winampnext               Next Track
winamppause               Pause

And so on and so forth.

[reaper]

I'm talking like integrated pandora, things like that, plus a graphical interface so you don't have to learn the commands. 

[peewee_RotA]

A quake 2 based operating system
 

[reaper]

I did not say it would be easy.  Also it's best to look two steps ahead, sometimes things lie somewhere in the middle, and new ideas are created.

 

[SquareHimself]

Well, since Cleancode is going to take over the world... don't limit your imagination on what you'd like to see. We can make client and game dll interactions that are specific to cleanq2 and cleancode working together, but will maintain compatibility so that cleanq2 can play on regular old quake2 servers (This is the goal, anyways). Paril has even found a way to have IRC in quake2 and it be entirely server-side, so don't limit your imagination when it comes to suggesting ideas!

Improved UI seems to be a recurring theme, so I'll go ahead and throw that on the list. I'm also going to take a look at q2pro for ideas, so thanks for the mention :p

As for the question as to why aprq2 instead of X client... well, a few reasons.
1) AprQ2 already works on Windows and Linux, and it does this well.
2) AprQ2 is my personal client of choice
3) AprQ2 is used in the kicker package
4) I like AprQ2
5) See 4

Paril just fixed another bug effecting Windows users, so hooray for that. Bugfixes come first, as always.

Keep the ideas coming!