Regardless, thanks for the great update :) 

Is there another way of minimizing it then? 

Yes the windows key is disabled when Mark V runs.

Fullscreen, you definitely want it disabled. Windowed mode, harder to say.

For windowed mode, I made the decision like this:

1) Mappers are really smart, know how to install engines, know how to use more than one.

2) Casual players are afraid of that stuff. And are way less likely to be pressing the Windows key for functionality when running the game because they probably are just "playing the game".

So I decided to err on the side of a casual player who just wants the game to work.

An uber intelligent mapper such as yourself could use Quakespasm or DirectQ or such if you are developing a map or mod and need that.

[Although, I'm betting Quakespasm likely disables that as well ... but I know Fitz 0.85 doesn't ...] 

 

Quakespasm also supports this.

Mark V's video code rewrite makes ALT-ENTER a very fast operation. 

There is something weird going on with the latest release
Fitz: 0.92 exe: 02:43:35 May 24 2013
(using version command)

After a while the enemies cannot take any more damage from the player. It is like their bounding box has moved/changed. If I quicksave and quickload the problem goes away and then gradually comes back. I have only encountered this problem with my latest map. 

I did some more investigating and it is not the bounding boxes, I can see them with the r_showbbox command. It is a time based event where enemies no longer take/receive damage. After a while I can just walk through them. I can't produce a save file to show what is happening because quick save/load fixes the problem (temporarily) 

Can you capture it in a demo? 

are they still damageable (blood particles vs grey puffs)?

can you get the edict # and check what the fields look like? (maybe make a tiny hack mod where the axe does an eprint of whatever it hits) 

I have no time and sadly will have no time for amount of time that I can't determine right now.

I have about 15 minutes of "real" free-time and this isn't going to be changing soon.

I'm sorry about the bug --- real-life prevents me from having any meaningful amount of time to address this and I will continue to have no time for the future as far as I can see it --- and this is beyond my control.

Someday, I will fix --- I was trying to "go out in style with a delicious technical masterpiece" that could be feature ripped into Quakespasm easily --- I went all out, I thought I was practicing some awesome quality control and this slipped by me --- but I locked-in, I have no time and I'm not going to have any time.

And I'm sorry. I really was shooting for the moon to please to go out with a really fun bang with some incredible engine performance and flexibility.

Now I am beyond the event horizon, all paths available to me lead only towards real-life and I am far beyond the point of return to be able to work on this.

Believe me, I wasn't looking to let anyone down --- but I am no longer able to do anything about this.

Sincerely,


The Sadly Uber-Time-Restricted-Baker
That-Can't-Fix
This-Since-I-Have-No-Time-And-Wont 

seriously?

i mean seriously... 

 

Something to add to a wish list ...

* Be able to freeze a demo and then fly around the world to inspect / look at things. It would be very helpful for debug reasons to see what is happening with a demo. I don't mean change or move stuff around, just fly around and see where things (monsters/items) are. 

From what I know (unless I mix up things) Quake demos only include the entities in the PVS so a feature like that would require a whole different protocol. 

As the demo progresses the engine is updating entities with new locations, states (moving, alive, dead etc) and when the map is frozen I just want to fly around and see where all the entities are and what state they are in. Even the current PVS would be better than nothing. 

Qrack does this today and is the only engine I know of that allows this. I don't have any experience personally using the feature recently, I'm just pointing you to what can satisfy this desire today.

[I still have no time to work on Mark V and don't see this changing in the known future ... but I still care ... ] 

Daz's recent CG video revealed another Mark5 bug: playing back a demo of sock's map, many models were displayed pitch black, sometimes flashing depending on the view angle. I haven't tested it, but I could imagine the clipping and lighting issue also ccurs on other over-limit maps. 

Hey no worries on your time, I just wanted to post here some ideas if you come back to MarkV development in the future. 

quakeworld servers can record Multi-View Demos that support that (cl_demospeed 0 to freeze them or whatever it is, attack to toggle free-cam, jump to switch players).
With FTE, you can start a map and issue the 'easyrecord' command and it'll just start recording some randomly named mvd demo.
(sv_voip_record and it'll also include any voice chat too, for extra playback privacy invasions *cough*). 

Something to add to a wish list ...

* Excluding entities from being recorded in a demo. For example detecting a new key on an entity "nodemo" "1".
* Excluding entities from casting shadows (r_shadows). For example detecting a new key on an entity "noshadow" "1"
* R_shadows always casts shadows from 360 angle, being able to change this via worldspawn. For example a new key "r_shadowangle" "90" 

More stuff ...

* Adding external texture support for model skins (24bit TGA) with use of the alpha channel so that the skin can faded gradually. The external skin could be specified with an extra key on the entity. Like for example "ext_skin" "textures/hiknight1.tga" 

Drawing alpha-blended models correctly requires sorting every alpha object (if convex) or triangle (of a concave object) in the scene and drawing them back to front. I don't know of any engine that does this (perhaps darkplaces.) But fitzquake certainly doesn't.

People probably haven't complained about the cheap method used in fitzquake and other engines, probably because most mappers use the feature sparingly, and only on simple convex brush-models, and not on many models in the same scene so that you see them overlapping incorrectly.

I only mention this because as a perfectionist like me, you will probably notice this problem once you start relying heavily on the feature, on many objects in the same scene, and on objects with convex, organic shapes.

The safest way to use alpha given this, is to only put it on convex shapes and make it hard for the player to have a line of sight that passes through multiple layers of alpha objects. 

I remember now...last time I checked darkplaces doesn't handle this within a model - if you have multiple layers of fur in the model you do get graphical glitches occur where they overlap. 

even if you do depth-sort, large objects can still cut through and overlap in screenspace even if the actual brushes don't (or for instance a transparent player standing waist-high in water).
mostly a .alpha set to 0.99 will result in the entity using the alpha channel of 32bit replacement textures (blended).

ext_skin with nice long strings would be far too painful. just use .skin if you really need that sort of thing (in combination with shaders as needed). 

Would a QC controllable sound mixer be a good feature? Adding reverd echo and other dsp stuff. I remember good ol duke3d had a few option with sector effectors. Setting an effect to match a rooms size would be cool.