All I really want is to get an engine like quakespasm to have the ability to use a frame rate higher than 72 without the physics messing up 

Use QuakeSpasm-Spiked then. 

Type host_maxfps 0 in Quakespasm-Spiked console to decouple the framerate. More info at 3.1 here 

Off hand, that is probably is a bad idea.

You'll get a lot of frame rate variation.

And if you get really high fps, you might overheat your graphics card.

Quakespasm, Quakespasm Spiked and FTE love to overheat with no map running ... (not that DarkPlaces doesn't love this also).

Kicking out tons of frames per second rendering the console over and over again.

Also the above engines if I recall, love to kick out 700 frames per second when the application is hidden or in the background.

In contrast, Mark V throttles down when no map is running or not the active application. No point in rendering an idle console 700 times per second or rendering hundreds of frames per second when the app isn't even active.

/My thoughts 

Also the above engines if I recall, love to kick out 700 frames per second when the application is hidden or in the background.

Interesting, that reminds me of when i got my latest computer and began to install old games (from around 1990) and the computer began to overheat, as it happened with several others. Curiously it didn´t happen when they weren´t on fulscreen. 

I set mine to 144 to match my monitor. 

@A_COCONUT
If you really want to let it rip, set sys_throttle 0 too, otherwise it'll still idle a little (and thus struggle to go above 800fps iirc).

@Baker
cl_idlefps defaults to 30 in FTE - the equivalent of your selling point for your own engine. if you cleared that cvar then you're getting exactly what you asked for.
DP has cl_maxidlefps. Same behaviour. 

Spike, I looked at the code it looks like your intentions are right.

That being said, when FTE is not active app for me, it uses 50% cpu. This laptop is dual-core that is that is the most it could use (100% of one core).

Here is FTE in idle (50% cpu): screenshot

Here is Mark V in idle (9% cpu): screenshot

And right now, my video fan is finally spinning down some after FTE had it screaming.

FTE going idle causes my video fan to go crazy.

FTE operates fine when it is the active application. 

Windows 9x interface will always be the best.

I'm particularly fond of the Windows Me interface, too bad the underlying OS was crippled. 

Also the above engines if I recall, love to kick out 700 frames per second when the application is hidden or in the background.

In contrast, Mark V throttles down when no map is running or not the active application. No point in rendering an idle console 700 times per second or rendering hundreds of frames per second when the app isn't even active.

Oh shit, so that's what that is.

A fix for QS/QSS would be great. I have a laptop, and it will cook itself if I'm not really careful. 

My original interest in throttling down came from ORL.

Long ago, he ran a server and was kind of insistent it needed a feature from Ben Jardrup's Quake named sv_sleep or host_sleep or something so that the server used very little cpu. I was shocked by the cpu usage reduction.

(Quakeworld has always had this in the server side to make it use low cpu).

In ProQuake, in one release I enabled it by default as it seemed to be fine in single player and pretty ok in multiplayer.

Multiplayer complaints came rolling in hard and heavy and en mass, especially those using very high fps for smooth lightning gun aim.

So I disabled it. Later I made it only apply when no map was running or if the application was in the background.

GLQuake does have a lesser form of this, so does FitzQuake. But it never made its way over to FitzQuake SDL or later to Quakespasm.

[For other fun, in windowed mode in Quakespasm ... minimize the window ----> BOOM! Also the mouse moves when the window doesn't have focus unlike FitzQuake or GLQuake ... and Quakespasm Spiked ... do "Single Player"->"New Game". Watch while nothing happens.

No one seems to report these things to the engine developers ... a bit curious.] 

@Baker
cl_yieldcpu 1

@Kinn/FifthElephant/Cocerello
tbh, just use vsync.
with host_maxfps 0 or so, so that you don't confuse any prediction your driver might be doing, and thus get lower latency from it.
with vsync it might report 100% of a cpu core, but your drivers will be using some fancy low-power instruction to wake up as soon as the gpu pokes it instead of depending upon the operating system's (shoddy) timings (same reason I'm too paranoid to default fte's cl_yieldcpu cvar to 1).

any modern game will have some vsync option in its menus, though old opengl programs might leave it to your drivers to force the setting
which might also be useful for any games that don't allow you to use the swap-tear extension (which can help when drivers guess timings badly if nothing else). 

Spike --- no difference. Now this is FTE 5020 from April 2018 +/-.

cl_cpuyield 1 -- screenshot 

If I set cl_idlefps to 30 and cl_yieldcpu, the cpu usage when FTE isn't the active app is quite good.

screenshot

But cl_idlefps defaults 0 according to the screenshot. Which was the source of my pain and frustration. 

When I think about this feature, most lighting edits are very localized

Most if my lights are surface lights. Very few of them are very localized. Sunlight and then surface lights coming from light fixtures, liquids and some special textures like teleport destination pads. Maybe the editor should compile the portion in the viewport first and then the rest in background. 

I've had instances where the surface lights didn't line up with the texture. This has only happened on nonorthogonal constructions. Was wondering if you have encountered this and how often to you play with the -surfacelight_subdivide parm? 

I don't know a way to see the generated lights to check for misalignments. I just trust it works. And I never played with surfacelight_subdivide, tbh. I just tweak the light entity. Need to follow one of your tutorials to see those :P 

I still want definable fog volumes via brush (func_fog) or something

and decals 

Thanks for the great info guys. I love the smoother feeling of higher frame rates but hate how many plats and trains hurt the player when HOST_MAXFPS is above 72 in most engines.

@dumptruck_ds
Love the mapping tutorials. Keep it up.

@Shamblernaut
I would love to have decals and multiple fogs. It would make maps with multiple distinct atmospheres easier to make. 

decals can be faked well enough with fence textures in my experience. Multiple fogs = multiple settings for fog depending on where you are in the map? If so, AD has it.

My 2018 dream at the moment is actually making a complete map... 

We have a lot of this stuff if you are willing to use engines like FTE, DP and to some extent QSS.

For example, decals are very much a thing in those engines.

If these are just posts requesting QuakeSpasm to introduce more and more graphical whizbangery, then it needs to be specified really. 

Yeah, that's quite true. Also, isn't the point of QS to be a faithful port that runs the game without any bells and whistles? You can argue that things like decoupling framerate and physics still fits within this mission objective, but I don't think that QS should be adding things like (proper) decals... 

isn't the point of QS to be a faithful port that runs the game without any bells and whistles

Yes, well...kinda. I suppose there's a sort of vague, entirely subjective "yeah that still feels quakey" filter for classifying something as "fits the QS philosophy" as opposed to "unnecessary eye-candy shite".

For example, no-one here will say fog or coloured lighting shouldn't be in QuakeSpasm.

Tough call really! 

Forgive me if I'm forgetting my 'Quake Engine History 101' lessons, but aren't most of the features that QS has that aren't 'standard quake' inherited from FitzQuake? It wouldn't make much sense to try and remove those, but the argument I feel can be made that treating that as the feature cutoff point is a sensible idea.

At least, having such a point is a good idea if you want to be seen as the 'core' engine that provides the basic expected functionality for modern quake. It could be declared today of course, or for QS 1.0...