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FTE Engine
This engine needs its own thread... also!

FTE's homepage: http://fte.triptohell.info/

This thread is for the discussion of using FTE's enhanced features, and/or drawbacks, for Quake level design/modding and/or gaming in general.

Discuss...
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What is the easiest way to implement blood splat in FTE? I mean, like these awesome dark red decals here:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/704037719774586031/FE956021E201FFFBF3B9708D066733F126DB4B1C/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/704037719774585892/A54C896DF6196FE8C76C81677DD16E36984ADAF6/

These images are from a modification that Bloodshot12 made in particlefont.tga for Quake 1.5... Unfortunatly it is a darkplaces mod.

I know there's a way to do this changing the progs.dat, but i don't want to mess with progs.dat because i want the blood splat working with other mods, like DMSP2 and the official mission-packs =D

So, is there a easy way for me to do this or is too complicate? :P 
WebAssembly + WebRTC? 
Does the Emscripten build of FTEQW support WebAssembly and WebRTC for multiplayer? 
 
@Tribal
r_particledesc effectinfo is the lazy way.
you can also use r_converteffectinfo (iirc) to see what it would look like in fte's native particle syntax.
you can use r_part_redirect to rename a single existing effect to some other name, although this is usually only useful for weird people who want to mix multiple different effects without editing the particle configs.
FTE's embedded particle configs don't contain any decal effects on account of decals generally needing much high res artwork in order to look good. That said, if you use 'type cdecal' then you will get an effect that spawns as clipped decals, but you'll want to provide your own textures.

@bubbag
no, it doesn't use webassembly yet, though I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to update emscripten and tweak the compile flags in the makefile.

it does support webrtc, but only between itself, and it requires a broker to do so.
web server: sv_port_rtc rtc://BROKERADDRESS/GAMENAME
web client: connect rtc://BROKERADDRESS/GAMENAME
non-emscripten server: net_enable_webrtcbroker 1; sv_port_tcp BROKERPORT
(it is possible to omit the BROKERADDRESS args by including a usable value inside your site's fmf file, but you'll need a reliable broker for that.)

Otherwise you'd need to use websockets to connect to an existing server, eg 'connect ws://server:tcpport', but this only works for fte servers with both a tcp port open (controlled eg via sv_port_tcp) and net_enable_websockets set to 1. Alternatively fteqtv can be used as a proxy if you want a way to connect to any quakeworld server.

Installing game data from a public webserver is a copyright nightmare though. Users are meant to be able to provide their own additional game data by using drag+drop, which is of course annoying.
It is unfortunate that the paks need to be downloaded in their entirety, which makes downloads excessively large on account of all the maps which might not be played that session. 
@Spike 
Thank you very much for the info =D

Unfortunately i can't mess with the code right now, because it seems that is something wrong with my .NET frameworks :P Codeblocks+mingw refuses to compile any code (keeps asking for more and more *.h file) and Visual C++ 8 doesn't even install :P So, until i fix the .NET i'll stay away from the codes :(

But i downloaded the new version of FTE (5259)... this version doesn't support Hexen2 anymore? All i get when i click the file is a black screen with "Join Server/Options/Quit" :(

I think i'll stick with the old version for now =D 
 
Hi, it's me again

About Hexen2... How can i play music with FTE? I already put the ogg files in the "music" folder inside the DATA1 folder but it's not working, i copied the "music" folder to the main folder, and even created an ID1 folder but nothing seems to work :/ 
@Spike 
Forget about the post above.
The music works now =D 
 
It's me again!

I just noticed if i start the new version of FTE with "-hexen2" the game works :)

And now we don't have those annoying messages about "no-precache" on the top of the screen \o/

Thanks =D 
 
imho hexen2 is just generally too buggy without the mission pack, regardless of engine.
Note that if you rename the exe to fteh2mp.exe then it'll always try running the hexen2 missionpack, regardless of where its run from (unless given eg -quake on the commandline, or an fmf file, or just use -portals for it).
Assuming you actually have the mission pack, that'll fix a number of gamecode bugs that can get really annoying...
I also tend to test portals more often than the original game, tbh its been a long time since I tried.

Hexen2 has a serverside cvar to control the clientside music which I intentionally didn't mimic, and I don't have any midi playback code anyway so it never really mattered.
CD playback should work as in quake. Its just a shame that the midi music uses different tracks. 
@Spike 
I just tested renaming the exe to fteh2mp.exe... Now the "no-precaches" messages are back :P

I also notice that with the new version i can't gib the enemies' corpses anymore... with FTE 5121 i can gib them all :/ 
 
it's nice quake with moderate rag doll physics 
Hurdles With FTE 
I'm trying to get to using FTE for single player again, but there are quite a few hurdles that I'd like to have resolved before the engine drives me away from using it again for a few months:

- There doesn't seem to be a menu option to disable autorun.

- Weapon cycling with the mouse wheel doesn't work when holding down shift.

- Weapon viewmodels: Neither Ruohis's or Plaque's packs have all the weapons modeled, so when I enable both of them in the "updates+packages" menu, some viewmodels overlap (the SG and TB). So I tried to disable both of the packages and use QRP models instead, but FTE would simply revert to the Quake default viewmodels, even if all the QRP packages are installed. Should I just install the qrp packages to the id1 folder the traditional way instead of using the "updates+packages" menu?

- Vulkan mode causes quite a few graphical glitches. Water reflections seem to be out of whack (for example reflecting geometry behind walls, I think) and many particle effects don't work with Vulkan.

- Trying to turn on Direct 3D 11 crashes the game altogether. Seems OpenGL is the way to go.

- Enabling Afterquake in the "updates+packages" menu forces the default graphical presets on startup, so I always have to manually go turn on the cool realtime presets when firing up FTE, which is frustrating.

- underwater sounds are overpoweringly loud if there are a lot of sound sources (ambient, especially) in the map. The issue is particularly problematic when both "static sounds" and "mix in background" are enabled in the audio menu, I think. Can the underwater sound attenuation be coded in a way, that only the sound sources that are in the same liquid body would carry farther out?

- The particle effects menu is quite confusing; I don't know which effects to turn on. If I turn on the Haze particle set, for example, will I no longer have to turn on all the individual Haze particle effects further down in the menu, let alone Haze-lite effects? Should I restart the map/game for the effects to fully turn on?

- torches (with the wooden stem) don't seem to be implemented in the available particle effects. I never see any fire. Sometimes I see only the stem and sometimes not even that either. Would it be possible to have both 3D fire models and particle fire effects?

- rtlights are handled differently in FTE compared to DP. Is there an easy console command or something that would change rtlights interpretation to that of DP, or will I just have to make my rtlights for FTE from the ground-up? DP has an ingame rtlight editor with the command r_editlights but FTE doesn't seem to have it. How can I easily make realtime lights for FTE in... realtime? B] (ba-dum-tss)

Anyone else experiencing similar issues? I'd be especially curious about the audio, Vulkan and Direct 3D issues. 
 
Fte has rtlight/terrain editor

http://fte.triptohell.info/moodles/csaddon/ 
 
disable autorun:
why would you? :o
cl_forwardspeed 200; cl_backspeed 200; cl_sidespeed 350; cl_upspeed 200; cl_movespeedkey 2.0; cfg_save

weaponcycle+shift:
only way I can think of that happening is if you've bound shift+mwheelup to something different from mwheelup (fte understands modifiers). rebinding mwheelup-without-modifiers should also rebind all its modifiers too.

viewmodels:
I really need to get around to editing those packages so that they don't conflict with other stuff.
If you've manually installed that stuff for use in eg DP, then you'll already have all that content anyway.

vulkan+d3d:
these don't get tested as often as they need. so are unfortunately often buggy.
I've only got an nvidia gpu to test vulkan on, and it generally performs worse than opengl. yes it has better cpu usage but it really sucks (for me) in terms of pixel fill rates compared to opengl or d3d. FTE's implementation is mostly complete - read: has more ways to go wrong.
d3d11: windows only junk... plus you're generally better off with d3d9 (the lack of custom hlsl means d3d9's support for oldskool multitexture gives d3d9 the advantage).
ultimately my time is limited and I'm lazy, and focus+test opengl the vast majority of the time. they should normally all be able to run vanilla quake well enough though, so if they can't then that's a bit of a fuckup, but as the opengl renderer still works it doesn't seem that significant.

afterquake:
changing content shouldn't change presets...
remember to use either the menu to quit or to use the cfg_save command if you actually want your config to be saved after changing/reverting any cvar/preset settings.

underwater sounds:
that's your openal implementation for some reason completely ignoring distances when reverb is enabled.
you can set s_al_use_reverb 0, or switch to some other driver/device via the menus (especially if you want something more quakey).

particles menu:
the particles menu is just a list of particle config files to use (the order in which you enable them can make a difference).
do note that particle configs are still configs, and there's a few evil ones that include non-partcle commands (like cvar settings) which don't get forgotten when unloaded, but a properly made effect (one that doesn't have such things) will be fully purged by just changing options.

torches:
the 'fast' preset hides static models (like torches+flames - quakeworld users tend to not like scenary), but the others should still include them.
the QRP models have no flame animation and expect that effect to be provided by a particle effect, which is a separate thing from the model. Yeah, its messy. :(

rtlights:
they're meant to be handled in pretty much the same way, except for editing. note that you might have different .rtlight files installed for the two engines.
if you installed the plugins/ingame-map-editor option via the downloads menu, you can then set ca_show 1, and you'll get some csqc-based editing menu. Be sure to pick the rtlights option... 
Replies And A Couple Of Other Things I Forgot To Mention 
- Well, as a single player, sometimes I like to take it slow and calmly appreciate the level's architecture, and seeing Quakeguy running with each movement sure makes it less of a relaxing experience. Yeah, I'm weird like that. But slower movement does provide some accuracy to platforming sections for example. So yeah, the slower speeds do have their use cases in single player.

- According to more testing the mousewheel weapon cycling starts working when I reconfigure the weaponcycle keys at the keys menu (even if according to the menu the mousewheel was already assigned to it). So, I save my settings, shutdown FTE and restart the game and then try weaponcycling again while holding down shift and the problem returns. So now it looks like that in addition to having to set the realtime lighting presets each time Afterquake configs are enabled in the "updates+packages" menu, now I have to reconfigure the mousewheel, too, every time I restart the program. Extremely frustrating. :(

And to make things even weirder, when I have the Afterquake configs disabled and then save my new weaponcycle bindings (and left shift key binding for the run action) and restart the program, the key bindings have not been saved. Does this have something to do with Windows 10 or system locales or something? Just throwing hunches in the air here.

- I got the underwater sounds working (ie. sounding like I weren't underwater at all) by changing my sound device from default to DS (I presume Directsound). I'm assuming OAL (openal?) was the default audio device. There was also a third device, WASAPI (no idea what that is), but sound was just garbled when using that.

-About the torches: I guess I can only hope someone makes particle effects for the torches with wooden stems at some point, then. (Or then make them myself!) @~@

- Here's a side-by-side comparison of how DP and FTE handle an individual ceiling light in one of my maps. In DP it's a nice subtle gentle light whereas in FTE it's a bright blue patch. (Note that the light radius of 0 is a rounding error from 0.01). Maybe my outlandish values like coronasize 3000 cause problems in FTE?

- A thing I didn't mention in my previous post is that sometimes when I startup the game (OpenGL and realtime lighting) I get models resembling Christmas ligths.

- Another thing I forgot to mention is that cursor keys are only partially supported in the menus. I think only in the main menu you can move up and down between the different options but in the other menus you can only use the right and left keys to adjust sliders. Otherwise I have to use mouse to switch between rows. 
Torches 
Particle effect for torch and big fire is available.
http://quakeone.com/forum/quake-mod-releases/finished-works/6241-small-mod-compilation?p=239369#post239369

Here movie shows a torch effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u86vKWSdlm4

Me think you can copy effect. 
@Esrael 
- runspeeds
yeah, sorry, I was just trying to be humerous, and failing. imho its better to set cl_speedkey 0.5 and otherwise with always-run on. if you need the precision then you can hit +speed (for slow), and then you're not required to hold a separate key every single time you encounter a vore etc. but yeah, not 'failthful' or something.
the afterquake menuqc stuff lacks an autorun setting because its not a trivial setting (so wasn't in the first versions), and then got overlooked once the code became more capable.
the engine's built-in menus do still retain the option.

- menu cursor keys
yeah, those menus were written as mouse-first menus.
any menu that might need a scrollbar (when running at lower resolutions / bigger fonts) has multiple tiers of widgets (ie: title+options[option1+option2], and the up/down arrow keys don't propagate properly between tiers - if the upper tier has focus then you can't change between the actual options.
You can disable the replacement menus in the updates menu, if this annoys you.

- binds not saving
fte attempts to sandbox its configs.
if one of the known-configs changes when switching gamedirs then configs will be reloaded.
when saving the config, that config will be saved to the active gamedir if the gamedir contains one of those known-configs and to id1 otherwise.
this means that a mod with its own settings won't propagate any of those settings back to the base game.
basically what I'm saying is that I'm not really sure what's going wrong here.

- sounds
wasapi is what directsound is a wrapper around (since vista). it generally has lower latency (especially if you tweak some cvars to request exclusive access to the hardware). I'm not sure why it'd be garbled, maybe I'm not feeding it enough data (try increasing wasapi_buffersize?). either way, its main thing is that there's a wasapi_exclusive cvar that can be set to 1. :)
otherwise it doesn't really make much difference.

- torches
I thought the hazed particles had something in them. the 'spikeset' ones do, but mneh.

- coronas
the general recommendation is not to hack the radius to some low value and compensate with an extreme corona size, but rather to set the corona scale to 1, set the ambient+diffuse+specular values to 0, and then set radius to directly control the size of the corona. must less hacky that way.
try setting r_coronas 0.25 instead of 1.

- lights
looks more like your r_shadow_realtime_world_lightmaps setting is different in the two engines. FTE has a habit of forcing it to 1 when it couldn't load/import any rtlights (too many buggy maps otherwise), but I've no idea why that could be happening in this case.
when comparing lights, it can help to disable bloom and any iris adaptation stuff (read: hdr), and srgb stuff too. this should make the colours more directly comparable.

- christmas zombies...
... I really have no idea...
does the mod that you're running mess around with .colormod or something? I have no idea why those zombies would each glow/bloom a different colour, unless your mod was using that.
are they still bright colours with bloom disabled?
does r_fb_models 0 help? 
FTE + Arcane Dimensions Mod 
hello, after a long hiatus i am back in quake realms and i have one question. i use darkplaces usually but i am testing FTE right now because DP cant handle forgotten sepulcher.

FTE runs that level fine, everything works - monsters, breakables, extra particle effect. All that works properly but when i get killed and load previous save new particle effects no longer look the way the should. i am talking about torches, power ups and so on... original ad version of these effects is replaced by something ugly. the only way to restore particles is to start level from scratch.

any idea what causes this bug? FTE obviously can handle AD version of particles but when i use SAVE/LOAD the fancy visuals are gone.

jakub 
@jakub 
fte tries to do its saved games differently, and they're still a little buggy right now (particle effect names are not saved).

In the meantime, you can use the savegame_legacy command instead of the regular save command/menu, which should get it to do its saved games the exact same way as any other engine (and compatible too, except for homedir stuff).
(or set sv_savefmt 0 for the same result, if it exists in the version you're using, not sure when I added that.)
(you should also be able to use it to fix a prior save too.) 
Thanks 
hi spike, i tested your suggestion to change sv_savefmt command and it works.

thanks for quick and helpful reply.

jakub 
One More AD Problem 
hi spike, i tested forgotten sepulcher more and there is another problem. particles works fine, even after LOAD/SAVE but something else gets broken. gameplay is really choppy after LOAD, however that can be fixed by applying vid_restart

what is more complicated is that already broken breakables re-appears as invisible walls that can not be broken again. i can shoot them, i see impact particles, they bounce grenades and i can shoot them indefinitely but they will not break again.

any idea?

jakub 
Version Info 
i use win64 client version 5259 
R_glsl_offsetmapping_lod In FTE? 
Spike, I want to try to get up my lazy butt and address your replies later, but in the meantime, I noticed that FTE doesn't have the command r_glsl_offsetmapping_lod and r_glsl_offsetmapping_lod_distance, like DP does. I noticed that it improves performance with bumpmapped textures hugely (especially in large areas) without noticeably lowering visual quality. Any chance of it being implemented in FTE, yes? :3c 
FTE/Afterquake Spotlights In Realtime Rendering 
Hi,

when I'm trying to use spotlights (both using target or mangle) it seems that this information is ignored in realtime rendering mode for the lights as I get surfaces lit which actually lie outside the desired cone. Static lighting looks correct though - am I missing some option? 
 
rtlight importing doesn't support all features from maps.
spotlights have been implemented for a while (and sometimes even working), buts its only recently that they've actually been importing from maps - you'd need an svn build for it to work. 
FTE/Afterquake Spotlights In Realtime Rendering 
Ah ok, then I'll probably have to wait a bit longer, thanks! 
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