An appeal to client coders.

[[BTF]Jehar]

Having the source code to the engine has brought us many great things - R1CH continues to improve on network protocols, performance, and stability. People like Echon give us some fun eye candy, and clients like aprq2 offer some plain useful features (such as aviexport).

As most of you will know, q2 is not the only community built around modified clients - Quake 1 and Doom both have had a strong amount of improvement over the original code, and things are now possible within the engines that were not at their release.

However, I'm seeing a trend towards what I see to be overly conservative changes to the Q2 source code, and it's one that I'm not certain is justified. There have been modifications throughout the years, such as Lazarus, that add features that affect the amount of freedom one can have with the engine. It's rarely just eye candy - rather they are things that let modders and mappers *do more*.

My question is why I have not seen these things integrated into the standard source ports, as they have in other communities. I realize that bloat is something to avoid, but these are features that would be transparent, and only expand on capabilities without adding complication or exclusion of older works.

There are possibilities in scripting, mapping features, shaders, etc that can only serve to benefit the future of the engine.

Obviously, I don't code, and I'm sure I don't understand all of the reasons why I haven't seen these things happen, but I would surely like to know. At the very least, I would like these things brought to light, and perhaps find grounds for discussing what can be developed.

[Whirlingdervish]

On the subject of lazarus code, you should check out the KMQuake2 engine by Knightmare...
It incorporates all of the cool lazarus entity coding and it increases a lot of the hardcoded maximum limits in q2 that deal with drawdistance, number of surfaces and entities, maximum map size and much more..

You can probably find some info on it over in the q2 section of Rust: Game Design.
http://forums.gamedesign.net/viewforum.php?f=14&sid=80c88bd8781a012bfa982804b3cd959c

[R1CH]

Two words, backwards compatibility.

You can't just go changing the map format and such without care as then your client is no longer a Quake II client but a 'whatever the hell your mod is called' client. Given the current limits of the Q2 engine, adding such huge changes and still preserving compatibility with 3.20 clients is impossible. Scripting, shaders, etc - how do you expect them to run on 3.20? Granted some engines like EGL already support optional shaders, but one of the main things I noticed about Quake 1, Doom, etc is all the fractured communities from all the different versions which are incompatible with each other.

[Ghost9]

I'm just missing my onscreen ping display and "events" from nocheat.  Once you get used to something its hard to give it up.

 

[[BTF]ZeTHeR]

Fragmented communities and fractures within them, ah ha... this is what I have been seeing start with Q2.

[X'tyfe]

Two words, backwards compatibility.

You can't just go changing the map format and such without care as then your client is no longer a Quake II client but a 'whatever the hell your mod is called' client. Given the current limits of the Q2 engine, adding such huge changes and still preserving compatibility with 3.20 clients is impossible. Scripting, shaders, etc - how do you expect them to run on 3.20? Granted some engines like EGL already support optional shaders, but one of the main things I noticed about Quake 1, Doom, etc is all the fractured communities from all the different versions which are incompatible with each other.

well said, its not worth it. the quake2 community is to fragile atm to do such things. and its not like people make alot of maps anymore

the quake1 community is really only divided 2 ways, and this was long before the source was released
quakeworld is the muliplayer community, and netquake, well im not sure exactly what they do there afaik its just runequake which is a mod for netquake 

in the doom community there have been "engine wars" where tones of flames broke out between 2 or more parties bashing the other engines. this is still going to a lesser extent in the doom multiplayer community

the doom community is very different and can get away with radically changing and adding new stuff to the engine
because most people are into single player and map editing. but this also causes problems when maps are made for a specific engine

[zndkw1n]

Maybe a few added effects wouldn't break compatibility.  I dont know why quake2 evolved is panned by some members of the community, it's in my opinion more stable and clearer than egl for playing. 

[X'tyfe]

yes but the expense of everything, thank god it died
it could have been great, but it just didnt get very far 

there was no way even with compatibility still intact that anyone could use it to play online
and that in itself is was i think killed it

they scraped compatibility in the end, but they just said "to fuck with it" cus hardly anyone cared at that point

[zndkw1n]

Well, im playing the rogue server with it, and it works fine, and fast.  Your probably right, but I just get bored sometimes of plain q2 gfx.

[[BTF]Gator]

have you tried r1gl or aprq2?

both look good and are very fast.

[[BTF]Jehar]

There are those who have replied that understand what the doom ports bring to the table, and I just want it to be clear that I'm not looking to make the game *look better*. There are several ports that add superficial eye candy just fine. I'm rather looking for features to be added to make the game more expansive for everybody. For example, what would it be like if every client could have their own rail color(s)? The point here isn't simply graphical additions, but funtionality additions and whatnot.

Very good points were brought up, and I can see where the community might be too small to have any potential splits. Just wanted to be clear

[zndkw1n]

Maybe more detailed info on players, like country, ping, detailed frags and deaths, etc.  Or a free q2 equivalent that lets those that dont have q2 play on tastyspleen too