Another Quake 2 package - nQuake2

[fdrjk]

lol

+noise!

[The Happy Friar]

I went to download but it's only the installer.  Where can I download all the stuff w/o using the installer?  I find installers kind of annoying when they're internet only.  From reading the thread I thought it was a download with an installer that installed everything, not just an online installer.  The DarkMod team had an initial download and an updater that automatically updates your folder when you run it, I'd rather have that.  But I'm not going to use something that downloads an unknown amount of data & files on my machine.

Plus, where's the code for it on sourceforge?

[yahoo]

is there a zip archive ?

[VaeVictis]

might be worth considering item timers, americans don't use them but they are common practice in european competition

No it wouldn't be. We're trying to create a solid package here, not some bloatware, aimed at a wider audience i.e. new players who don't want to hear silly timers. In the scheme of things this is by far the lowest priority possible and totally out of place! And it's precisely one of the things we shouldn't waste time on. Seriously where do you get your ideas? 

Priority #1 - Giving the client a facelift thus making it more attractive to newcomers and modern players by shipping it with new:
High Resolution Textures, Models, Players, Sprites, and Hud.

uhm... have you seen the ACTUAL bloatware that is thrown into starting packages for both qw and q2? item timers are common place for european players and many ffa players, and just because they are included does not mean they have to be used immediately.... having the wav files there, and a bind for the timer that you can assign to a key gives the OPTION

doesn't force any to do anything

maybe you should read right BEFORE what you cut from what i said, as i did ask who it is targetting... for noobs? no i don't think item timers should be in there, but it doesn't hurt to have the option for an extra few KB

[empezar]

Has anyone of you even downloaded the package?

I'm not going to even consider a suggestion coming from someone who hasn't even downloaded the package.

And to everyone who is actually whining about a package I spent a lot of hours creating, for free, please just look away. Don't waste your energy, and please don't waste mine.

As for the suggestions of changing the fundamentals of the installer - forget it. Create your own installer instead.

The source code for the installer is on SourceForge.

Thanks.

[empezar]

And about the legality of other packs - it breaks both the GPL license and the demo license. It may not be "warez" packages (although some of them are [ACMECTF]), but copyright infringement is not the only way to break the law.

[empezar]

The targeted audience is beginners, or people who want to "try Quake 2 again". I basically created the package for myself, but since that worked great in making nQuake(1) a success, I figured I'd give it a shot here as well.

It's not meant for "pro" Quake 2 players, though I wouldn't mind creating a "base install" that pro players can use with small modifications to make it suit their needs.

As long as "bloat" doesn't 1) make the install considerably larger 2) can be integrated in a clean way (i.e. file/folder structure intact), I don't mind adding new features. Timers work fine for this since they can just be put into the nquake2.pkz file and added as aliases. Someone who don't want to use the timers simply don't have to bind a key to them. A comparison can be made with nQuake(1), where I've added the 20 most popular console characters and crosshairs. They are hidden inside a pak file and can be reached using aliases. It's an appreciated feature.

[The Happy Friar]

And about the legality of other packs - it breaks both the GPL license and the demo license. It may not be "warez" packages (although some of them are [ACMECTF]), but copyright infringement is not the only way to break the law.

Legally, using any assets created for Q2 and anything made with the SDK breaks the EULA of modding q2.    But nobody really cares and I don't think id ever did...  Yes, that means any of the Q2/3 based standalone stuff that didn't create separate assets technically violates the the EULA in the game and/or the SDK one (Q1 had no such limit).

If I wanted to do it I wouldn't create an installer, I'd just make a standalone version using custom content, like OpenDoom or OpenArena, and pitch it as that.   I'm not saying change how the installer works, I'm asking why can't I download everything else w/o the installer?  My friends who came over to play Q2 two weeks ago wouldn't of wanted to wait an hour to download something once they got here, so it wouldn't of helped.  Having something that could be put on a flash drive/portal device/etc. helps more.

As for the code, when I click the "code" button it lists GIT or http, using those links doesn't seem to bring up anything, browse commits lists nothing & forks wants me to log in.  Last time I accessed code on SF it listed everything there in a tree structure, did things change?

[The Happy Friar]

I ran the installer while I went to prep lunch.  You forgot to add a chat bind key with the movement key.

In the readme section 1, it should say "quake 2" not "quakeworld"

Section 3, AQ2 isn't the "grandfather of modern shooters" (that would be wolf/doom), and it's aim wasn't to great realism but to mimic over-the-topness of 80's & 90's action movies with semi-realistic weapons and what not.

IMHO, AQ2 is *NOT* the mod new players should be presented with, it's to complex and there's a lot of "heapness" (headshots, bleeding, etc) vs new players (even some "old" plays I played with said the same thing recently, so we played something else)

Doesn't go to a menu when you start the game, juts a console. 

You should remove "game" from the menu as it brings up MP menu and there's already an MP menu.

I'm going to try it on my kids computer and see how it works.  It's got an intel card in there and most store-bought computers have something a little newer then what they have (but theirs run Q3A powered games well & even runs UT2k4).

You should have an option that imports your Q2 custom assets over to it on the installer so you can use already installed custom models, maps, mods, etc. w/o needing to redownload everything.  Also include a server setup section in the readme (or maybe a UI for server setup?) for people who want to LAN.

[empezar]

Thank you for actually trying the package and giving me input. I'll go through that list next time I have time to modify the package.

I've included the source code in a zip file here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nquake2/files/Windows/v1.0/

Also, you can choose to download and install nQuake2 without removing the distribution files. This way, the distribution files will not be re-downloaded next time you run the installer.

I could modify the installer to look for the distribution files inside a "distfiles" subfolder if you want. That way you could 1) make an nQuake2 USB stick 2) edit the contents as you please.

Otherwise, the distribution files are available here: http://fnu.nquake.com/, as nquake2-gpl.zip, nquake2-non-gpl.zip (plus q2-3.20-x86-full_3.zip + q2-314-demo-x86.zip).

[quadz]

And about the legality of other packs - it breaks both the GPL license and the demo license. It may not be "warez" packages (although some of them are [ACMECTF]), but copyright infringement is not the only way to break the law.

I agree about the demo license.

However as we hashed out on the quakeworld.nu thread, to the best of my knowledge there's no GPL violation.

If one believes a GPL violation exists, one should explain the mechanism by which the GPL'd binaries (in our case r1q2.exe, ref_r1gl.dll, ref_soft.dll) are affecting other files in the distribution.

A mechanism by which GPL could spread from those binaries to other parts of the distribution, would be if other parts of the distribution and the GPL binaries "make function calls to each other and share data structures" such that they effectively "form a single program, which must be treated as an extension of [...] the main program."

There's nothing like that connecting the GPL binaries to other files in the package. So where does the violation occur?

  *  *  *

In any case, GPL aside, I don't want there to be any avenue by which the Q2S installer we host could be considered illegal.

Elysium has made some awesome progress in the past few days, re-coding the installer such that it now bundles NONE of the assets from the 3.14 demo or the 3.20 point release. Instead, when the new installer runs, it will now offer to download these packages on the user's behalf, from a choice of mirrors (including the id Software FTP site, though that one is marked as "slow".)

Hopefully this approach will eliminate any and all concerns over the legality of the installer package itself.

Regards,

quadz

[r1]

R1CH, also if you don't mind reposing your old file from planetgloom ftp that would be great:
ftp://ftp.planetgloom.com/files/gloom-1.z-source.zip

Thanks!

[The Happy Friar]

I just installed nQuake2 on my wife's laptop.  It's got some intel built in GPU.

The install went seemless, it runs, and it even seems to have the autodownload work from my server when r1q2 wouldn't work properly.

I might switch to Q2Pro just to have autodownload working 100% again. 

Good job so far.   

[empezar]

Just letting everybody know that this project is not dead.

I haven't received any input on the contents of this package, so the only update I have brought you now is an updated Q2Pro client.

However, the installer has been updated with a few new features:

2013-09-14 - nQuake2 v1.1

* Added dropdown menus for movement binds in configuration window.
* Player name now defaults to the current user in the configuration window.
* Full game data (pak0.pak) is now detected and installed when placed alongside the installer.

If anyone can find anything with this package that could be improved, please tell me here!

The project will within a few days be reachable on www.nquake2.com instead of the old url.

[empezar]

2013-10-11 - nQuake2 v1.2

* Added addon support.
* Broke CTF and Eraser Bot free from the base package and turned them into addons.
* Added high resolution textures addon.
* Merged the distribution files page with the mirror select page.
* Fixed the bug where the download size would not be properly calculated.