Let's see... A bit more info:

my command line is as follows, "C:\QUAKE\RMQEngine-Win32.exe -heapsize 56000 -game rmqwinter11 -sndspeed 44100 +map e3m1rq", I'm playing on a 3,1 Ghz Intel Core Imac with 8 gb ram on Parallels (I just played Serious Sam 3BFE on medium/high settings pretty well, and Wolfenstein 2009 works like a charm). I'm emulating a win2k machine that was my former pc and managed without a hitch the previous RMQ demos.

If I start the level from scratch, the loading goes just fine, trouble starts when I F6 and then F9.
There, it crashes.

I played up to the button that opens the first two doors, after having found the gunsmith secret...

I'm going to bed now, tomorrow I'll try something you suggested... Thx a bunch! 

Why don't you try the Mac Port of RMQEngine I posted above? I would be interested in your feedback. I am running it on a very similar system and it works like a charm. 

A very small heapsize - try 256000 or 512000.

I suspect this is the sounds in that map bombing things again. 

Is nowhere near adequate. e3m1rq actually needs only 16mb heap to run, but it will need a LOT more during loading as temp storage is heavily used.

A 1024x1024 skybox, for example, will need about 45mb of temp storage to just load. It's all discarded immediately after (as soon as the textures are created) but the texture data has to come from system memory in the first place (that 45mb includes files as they are opened and read, then converted to BGRA (cos it loads faster than RGBA)).

All maps will load and play fine using the default heapsize in the engine, so either drop it from your command-line or use a higher value (with 8gb of RAM you really have no need to be using just 56mb). 

Try the Mac port! :) 

...What happened is that my heapsize was inherited from who know when via multiple copy+paste. I was not aware it was set SO low. Sorry to have even asked. I should have thought this by myself. Maybe too tired to think, tonight I'm gonna set things right.

And ehi, sure Sleepwalker, glad to give you feedback on this!!! Thanks for taking the time to make the port, in the first place!!! 

there is also an OS X port of QuakeSpasm 

"then converted to BGRA (cos it loads faster than RGBA)"

Seriously? Are we talking something measurable or milliseconds here? 

I really must put that test program up on the RMQ SVN....

I've done a lot of measuring and benchmarking of formats and layouts here. Bottom line is that on all hardware (except ATI/AMD for some odd reason, where it's the same no matter) BGRA is between 6 and 30 times faster than RGBA.

For load times this may or may not be important.

If you're loading native 64x64 8-bit Quake textures, then it's likely you won't even notice.

If you're loading 512x512 TGAs it may be the difference between the player waiting 1 minute vs waiting 5 minutes for the map to load.

If you're updating lightmap textures at runtime, it may be the difference between running at 10fps and running at 250fps. That's where milliseconds are actually measurably important - 4 milliseconds will get you 250fps. 20 milliseconds will get you 50fps. If you're also running a server, running QC, drawing stuff, updating anuimations, playing sound, etc, then every single millisecond is precious. Every millisecond you save in this kind of this is a millisecond extra headroom for something else. 

OK, the test program is now on the RMQ public SVN: svn://svn.icculus.org/remakequake/engine/Experimental/TexSubImageTest

The code is mostly portable, but at present relies on some Windows-only libs for timing - you could replace this with the SDL timer stuff if you wanted (portability is not a huge concern for test programs). 

Well, some proper feedback on the sounds then (not giving a flying fuck about the bitrate because it is very irrelevant):


Nailgun and Super Nailgun sound like silenced weapons.
Sound player makes when coming out of the water sounds weak and squeamish.
Lightning gun sounds weak and silent.

All weapon sounds seem to have no bass and sound hissy. 

"BGRA is between 6 and 30 times faster than RGBA"

That makes zero sense to me but if you've measured it then I'll defer to that. 

All weapon sounds seem to have no bass and sound hissy.

This. What makes this extra strange is that the sound of soft gibs hitting the floor is the most bassy sound in the game!

All in all I have to say this is a huge improvement over the last demo. There are some great bits of atmosphere, especially thanks to some of the ambient music. As far as sounds go that's as possitive as I can be as the Enforcers (and now the ogres too) still sound as if someone's pulling a string on their back and if you get a whole load of grunts running around overhead it sounds like there are a bunch of coked up tap dancers roaming the slipgates.

For the most part the build quality of the maps is top notch, though I feel some of the "new areas" are often pretty unnecessary and just end up diluting the original level. The bit on the floating ship in Ep 3 has the most infuriating ladders I've come across in any game ever -- please put a clip brush in so it's not possible to just walk through them? A couple of times I got nearly to the top and then just shot straight through it and suffered falling damage. The third time I got to the top and an ogre raped my face. What's the fish about?

The laser rifle is way overpowered -- Fiends and Shamblers just arent scary when you can tear them apart in a matter of seconds. 

If you aren't planning on updating the animation of the Super shotgun (or are but haven't by your next release ;) ) you should add a simple 'click' noise at the end of the SSG reload imo, as the weapon sits inert but is unable to fire, so a little cue that it's ready would be helpful for learning it's firing timing since you've changed it. 

The OpenGL "common mistakes" page is quite awesome for this kind of thing; this link is relevant: http://www.opengl.org/wiki/Common_Mistakes#Texture_upload_and_pixel_reads.

Summary.

Most GPUs will internally store all textures in BGRA layout, irrespective of what you specify when creating the texture.

What should be obvious from this is (and this applies to the format param of glTexImage and glTexSubImage calls):

Using GL_RGB for starters is just plain nuts. You're not saving video RAM and when loading the texture your driver must expand it to 4 components and swap R and B.

Using G_BGR avoids the swap but means it must still be expanded.

Using GL_RGBA avoids the expansion but means it must still be swapped.

Using GL_BGRA avoids both the swap and expansion - transferring the data from system memory to GPU memory is just the equivalent of a straight memcpy which can be optimized (the most simple optimization being transferring 32 bits of source data at a time instead of 8 bits). No CPU work required before transferring, data is already in the format the GPU will use internally, result is a much faster transfer.

Of course, once the transfer has completed and the texture is in GPU memory none of this has any impact on performance. But if further transfers must happen during runtime (like e.g. Quake dynamic lightmap updating), then it most certainly does. 

The laser rifle is way overpowered -- Fiends and Shamblers just arent scary when you can tear them apart in a matter of seconds.

I think it should be toned down quite a bit as well because of this. 

I finally have my pc back with Q1 installed and I thought I would try this mod out! I downloaded it (400mb), readme instructions were confusing (seems to have been mentioned before).
Installed the mod in a RMQ directory, started with the -game rmq command, moved the winters content down a level. Typed map e2m1rq and got an error about a model :-

host_error: mod_loadmodel: progs/h_shal.mdl not found

I tried the original Q1 with the RMQ engine and it worked fine. Love the blur effects when taking damage. Oh well back to lurking ... 

h_shal.mdl is part of ID1 Quake content. Are you missing PAK1.PAK? 

Sounds like it can't find the original Quake there.

Laser rifle: I forgot to bump the Shambler health. This is because it conflicts with a secret plan.

How the blaster works is it get incrementally more powerful the longer you shoot, but also gains a cooldown time - thats why you see particles from it when its fired for a while.

A fiend doesn't give you enough time to warm the thing up by firing, I like how that's working. It's also good for the other enemies, since it's stupidly easy to spam away and run out of ammo.

But the poor old Shambler caught the raw end of the deal since how you fight it is ideally suited to a sustained fire = more damage weapon.