Tweak help for specific system

[us/3r]

Hey all.
I recently re-installed Quake 2 and tried to set up my configs to the best of my memory, but am still suffering from extreme low framerates for my system (I think).

I was wondering if anyone else out there had a similar system, and if they have tweaked it to get better than the 50-60 FPS I get at max.

Here's my system:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.7 Ghz I think?)
520 M. RAM (I think  DDR-2800 )
ATI Radeon 9600 w/ 128 VRAM

Anyone with a similar system who has managed to get some nice framerates should respond with their tweaks and suggestions or requests for clarification on my part.
Thanks much

[Punk_FAS]

What exactly does "gl_ext_pointparameters" do, ATI card user here.

[Lemonzest]

GL_EXT_POINTPARAMETERS is a way of doing partials, such have a rail and teleporters, until ATi Catalyst Version 6.4 they were just software and as such slowed down everything but 6.4 fixed it so as long as you have cat 6.4 installed you can leave pointparameters as 1, with vsync off i get between 500-750 fps depends on the map.

[us/3r]

sweet suggestions! Many thanks.
I'll give them a try once I get some Quake time and post back here with the results.

If anyone else has some good ideas I'm all ears too.

[Jay Dolan]

EXT_pointparameters basically just allows the game to not worry about scaling particles according to their distance from the player.  Drivers which offer the extension provide fast scaling for OpenGL point primatives.  This way, particles may simply be rendered as GL points.  Without the extension, each particle must (or should) be scaled by the game engine before being rendered.  If you have a fast processor, you probably won't notice much of a difference either with or without it.

us/3r, if you're looking for something really fast, check out http://jaydolan.com/quetoo.html .

[Lemonzest]

Jay, you have windows builds? as i would assume like the other 90% of the world, the OP is using windows.

[Jay Dolan]

Not yet.  Waiting for someone to step up and port it.  It's not a very tall order..

[naymlis]

be sure to let us know when that happens.. id like to try it

[Ghost9]

How do you guys test your fps?

I click nocheat.exe, type map q2dm1, and do a timerefresh from the starting point at the center of the arena.  I don't move at all.  This way I get a consistent measure.  (around 3,000 fps).

How does everyone else do it?

[us/3r]

wow....tried out all the tips (new catalyst - only goes to 6.2 for win2k )  turned off everything that had a long name and looked like it did something cool, turned off v-sync and the particles one, and wow....timerefreshing around 250 - 800 FPS, and did the ol'

timedemo 1
map demo1.dm2
map demo2.dm2

with sound and got around 80-85 FPS.  Mission accomplished fellas.  You guyz rule.   

On a different note that quetoo thing looked really cool.  I came across it in a totally unrelated search.  What kind of knowledge would one need to port something like that to a Win32 app?

[Jay Dolan]

Naym, I'll keep you guys posted.

us/3r, some decent knowledge of ANSI C and GNU Automake.  Essentially, you'd want to download msys and mingw from http://mingw.org.  Those should provide most of the build environment required to start compiling it on Win32.  Then, I'd download the Quake2Forge source from http://quakeforge.net and search out #ifdef __Windows__ in your text editor.  Those are the relevant sections you'd need to basically paste into Quetoo.  I really don't think itd be that hard; I just don't have access to a Windows PC.  You're welcome to join #quetoo on irc.freenode.net if you have more questions.

[RRBM [NL]]

Naym, I'll keep you guys posted.

us/3r, some decent knowledge of ANSI C and GNU Automake.  Essentially, you'd want to download msys and mingw from http://mingw.org.  Those should provide most of the build environment required to start compiling it on Win32.  Then, I'd download the Quake2Forge source from http://quakeforge.net and search out #ifdef __Windows__ in your text editor.  Those are the relevant sections you'd need to basically paste into Quetoo.  I really don't think itd be that hard; I just don't have access to a Windows PC.  You're welcome to join #quetoo on irc.freenode.net if you have more questions.

I have msys and mingw installed. It works perfectly. If you can help me make a modified source of quetoo for windows im willing to compile it for windows. I have msys and mingw installed on a windows xp system. 

[Jay Dolan]

Really?  Hm.. I just actually pushed out a new release this past Sunday which, among other things, added a cross-platform hunk management system - thus removing the only bit of code that was really tying Quetoo to Linux/BSD.  Why don't you try downloading 0.4.0 and building it?

http://jdolan.dyndns.org/jaydolan/files/quetoo-0.4.0.zip

To get a functional client, you'll need to have SDL libraries and headers installed somewhere msys can see.  You're quite welcome to join #quetoo on freenode - I'll help out if I can.  I imagine that getting the source to compile won't be too tricky, but building the shared objects (game.dll) and installing the binaries appropriately might be.  We'll see.

[[BTF]adam]

If this has loc support, then it is just possible I will use it (so long as it doesent fak the movement up..)

[Jay Dolan]

It absolutely won't fak movement up   It *should* be, and this is nothing more than my honest impressions, the smoothest Quake2 experience you'll find -- provided 'net conditions are up to par.  It's very lean and fast compared to other engines, and we've spent quite a bit of time pouring over the input handling code to make mouse control as smooth as possible.  Still, R1Q2 will almost certainly provide better play over noisy/flaky connections.. and it of course has more features.  So it really comes down to a matter of your situation and your preference.