When playing telefragged with Quakespasm 0.90.1, you will be greeted with the console error message of not enough edicts (max_edicts 2048)

To alleviate this, just type in the console max_edicts 4096 and the map will load fine. My only question is, why was the edicts amount reduced by default? 

11 bits allocated by the netcode for a packet telling other clients about an edict = 2048 is the highest possible number. Raising many limits in Quake requires modifying the netcode, making it backwards incompatible, but metlslime went ahead and just raised all of them at once and created PROTOCOL_FITZQUAKE. 

and, to answer your question, it lets you know the map wouldn't work in other engines without raised limits. it's on the user to make the choice to silence the warning.

also, it's a warning, not an error, right? the map loads fine in Fitz/Spasm either way. 

sounds are 13bit. baselines are 16. 'fast' entity updates are 16.
vanilla quakeworld's deltas are 9bit, but that's irrelevant around these parts.

'max_edicts' (actual cvar name is of course different in different engines, yay standards!) is a serverside limit, and may have lingered from older configs. exceeding it will kill the server, necessitating increasing the limit and restarting the map or whatever. 

8192 is the max edicts that protocol 15 can handle (due to sounds) 

Finally got to play through MFX's map. After playing this and ijed's map, I have to say that the quality of gameplay in these maps absolutely obliterates that of any first person shooter released in the past 10-maybe 15 years. Atmospherically it's a post-apocalyptic nightmare set in another dimension where plasma and laser weaponry is openly utilized but whoever built these places can't seem to find a better power alternative than steam.

Exploration reminded me a lot of Half Life and Alien vs Predator 2 with all of the ducts leading to various places. There's plenty of health and the interconnectedness of the maps is simply breathtaking. It's amazing to see real art being made with this game engine amidst the sea of boring childish games that pander to the lowest common denominator and hold the players hand. 

My only question is, why was the edicts amount reduced by default?

It was actually increased from the default, which was something like 600.

One should also be cautious about just blindly increasing limits like this. The size of an individual edict in Quake is variable, and with a high enough max_edicts you can easily blow through your entire heapsize. 

Edicts are variable size? I thought they all had the same members. What varies? 

by variable size, he means at load time rather than mid-game.
the number of fields allocated is mod-dependant, and bloatware crap like xonotic can easily have 2k fields or whatever. 

 

Thanks.

If anything can bring me back to Quake it's posts like that.

Glad you enjoyed it. 

that post brought the pack to my attention and i just started playing it a couple of days ago. i'm still in the middle of it; everything about it is so startlingly immersive that i have to step away from it to gather myself, catch my breath, and then i just want to go right back to it. fantastic stuff. 

After playing ijeds map, I think there's pros and cons of these massive maps and using bsp2. The size, detail, structures, design is all fantastic.

However, I found myself lost a bit. On two occasions I just had no idea at all where I was supposed to be going, and when it's this non-linear and large, that's a bad thing. I ended up having to noclip around looking for monsters, then backtracking with notarget to figure out where I was supposed to have reached them. On both occasions they were just random areas in a location I'd already been through. I don't know how I was supposed to have known to go back there to this small room that no longer has a closed door, without any indications.

It's okay in modern games, because there's always a pointer or waypoints, but Quake has nothing like that so it still needs some linearity so you don't get completely lost. The same happened at the end after the earthquake, once I got to the top of the lift I took a wrong turn and spent the first 3mins wandering aimlesslesly. Noclipped and realised what I'd missed, by then only had 1.5mins to complete the map and it was pretty much impossible. I then get stuck with it saying elevator is now accessible. I eventually noclipped to find what elevator I think it was talking about, but the route was blocked anyway, I can only assume because I hadn't killed enough monsters but I no longer had time left. Oh yeah, I love timers.

So I ragequit realising I'd just spent 80mins playtime and now can't finish it. Where's the actual end? Is it upwards? I'll at least noclip to that so I can continue to mfx's map tomorrow.

But yeah it was an awesome map apart from getting lost. 

getting lost in a map like ijed's is part of the experience.

I mean that seriously. 

So I thought I would give this pack a go. I have downloaded the engine, quakespasm-r1261, run it and got this error. I copied over the gfx.wad from the old Quake folder but still get the same error. Is there a particular directory structure that I need to follow, (no, I haven't read all the Readme files or Googled it or asked my mum). 

You still need the usual pak0.pak and pak1.pak files in id1... is that your issue?

(Also at this point IMO you should just use the most recent Quakespasm release, although that's almost certainly not related to your current problem.) 

Yeah, I'd recommend the most recent Quakespasm now. The beta version that was required when RRP came out was just an early beta of QS 0.90.0.

The directory structure should be like:
- quakespasm.exe
- [other quakespasm dll's, etc.]
- id1/pak0,1.pak
- rrp/pak0.pak 

making a shortcut with "-game rrp -heapsize 256000 -zone 4096" is critical :) 

Not really sure? I have the Quakespasm folder with the engine, various dlls and the gfx. I also have the rrp game folder in there. When I run QS it immediately crashes with the gfx error.

OK, just also dropped the ID1 folder in there and it now loads - thanks. 

Nitin; yeah most people seemed to like non-linearity and didn't mind exploring quite a bit.

Played mfx's map the next day, damn that's awesome. One of the best base maps ever. I'd suck dick for more of this! Maybe not quite, but levels of this quality are quite special.

I must admit, I couldn't find the last data chip. Got the obvious one in the trapped area, got the one through the hole in the floor, couldn't find the other. Noclipped for about 20mins looking everywhere but just couldn't spot it. Everything was dead so I couldn't go by monsters roaming around. In the end I just noclipped up the lift, I probably didn't miss much anyway, just a button working.

I also played in DP, worked pretty well, except DP not saving the resolution and having to change that everytime I play. 

Thx man, we had a blast making all that. Glad you liked it!

As for the last keycard, i know exactly where it hides. It is at the giant vent you see from the starting point. High up there. 

i must admit you may have encountered a bug. That other card than the ones you described is easy to find/placed in your path..

These maps were never tested in DP, so dont assume they work there.

My heart bleeds a bit now.. 

Promise another map like that and flop your wang out............... 

*gets lube*

Yeah it might have been a bug, I'm did some more flying around near the start but no sign of it, so DP probably broke it. I wonder if DP caused issues in ijeds as well. 

While the main route is lineal, it does loop over itself a fair few times. I tried to limit the potential for wandering off the track as much as possible, but in a couple of areas it was pretty bad.

That said, with a map this size somebody is always going to get lost unless you use lock gates to close off all incorrect areas or just avoid looping completely.

Many parts used the 'Follow the Enemy Road' tactic to lure the player forwards, but still kept the potential for them to fall off a balcony and end up wandering around for a while to get back up.

I let this one get out of hand in terms of scale, but overall it seems you funcers liked it :)