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Quake Re-release!!!
Id/Bethesda just announced a new release of Quake with a bunch of enhancements.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi-bdUd9J3E

More info: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/Quake/9P1Z43KRNQD4#
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AO is also something that needs to be properly integrated into a post-processing pipeline, it's not a simple glEnable or anything like that. So what I'm saying is that doing it can be a very disruptive change to an engine, particularly if an engine doesn't already have a post-prcessing pipeline.

Engines like Unreal, Unity or even Kex already have all the groundwork in place for this; with Quake you have to do everything from scratch.

On the other hand you can do it wrong and crudely crowbar it in, which means that when people come looking for the next set of post-processing effects (and they always will) you'll end up with a mess to straighten out before you can do them. 
 
Silly question: I haven't looked into the MD5 code yet, but what would be the challenges to implement it in software-rendered engines? 
MD5 In Software 
It should be very possible. Only the C code in r_alias.c would need additions, and that produces structures for use by the ASM code that are completely independent of any model format. The exception is R_AliasTransformAndProjectFinalVerts which consumes trivertx_t structs from the MDL, so that needs a C implementation for MD5s (unless you want to write an ASM version yourself).

It might be possible to combine this routine with the skeletal animation code as an optimization path, though.

The most important thing would be to get the bboxes absolutely tight. A hardware accelerated version is tolerant of loose bboxes, but a loose bbox in software means that you'll overflow the framebuffer pointer, write over and corrupt random memory, and probably crash. That was an issue when I wrote the software Quake interpolation code, but you might not even want to bother with interpolation. 
MD5 In Software 
https://www.quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/MD5_Software_Quake.pcx

This took me maybe half a day to do, and a good chunk of that time was spent trying to figure out a bug in skin texcoords.

I need to tidy up and comment the code a little, then I can release it publicly if anybody's interested. 
MD5 In Software 
For anyone who's interested; you'll need to compile this yourself: https://github.com/mhQuake/MD5Stuff 
Thanks MH! 
I'll try to implement it later.

As for the x86 ASM compatibility, it's better to simply disable the x86 code for character models because most of the speed gains provided by the x86 code are in the BSP renderer, not in the MDL renderer. I don't know if Super8 and MarkV still uses x86 code in their MDL renderers, but it's not really necessary.

Yes, bounding box issues really crashes the MDL renderer. I've had to fix numerous MDL rendering crashes caused by the interpolation code; it must be very carefully implemented, with special care in temporary entities and static entities with framegroups. 
 
An interesting content bug in the new MD5s is that some of them have bad bounding boxes. That's easily resolvable by recalculating them at load time, but it's still annoying and shouldn't have happened.

All of the d_polyse ASM code actually turned out to be usable, without modification, for both model types. That makes sense because that just consumes trisoup with a position/light/texcoord vertex format.

It's interesting to look at the MD5s in a software renderer without frame interpolation. The 10 fps animations don't look as bad as the old MDLs, probably because the positions aren't compressed down to 8-bit as well. It's still obviously 10 fps, of course, just a subtle improvements.

The MD5s don't support framegroups but they can support skingroups. Anything with framegroups is still a MDL. 
Has Anybody Managed 
To successfully decompile the progs.dat files from the rerelease? Would be interesting to know what they changed. Especially since there's apparently some code that breaks some vanilla maps. I know at least of one, Pulsar's "The Elder Reality" from Retro Jam 4. 
Interview With Nightdive 
sCary's shugashack interviewed some nightdive studios people about the re-release

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uWUuqTsnGY 
The Part About Updating 
is somewhat missing. Anyway, nice to see some faces of the guys behind this. 
 
Yeah that was kind of an odd interview to be honest. It seemed like the guy in the home gym was more interested in making sure they don't get mis-credited, the ceo was obviously just on a by-the-numbers promotional tour and the shacknews guy was waaaay overdoing the "excitable fanboy" schtick, to the point where I wonder if he's overcompensating for never having touched Quake 1 in his life. I'd much rather see an in depth Machine Games interview. 
It's A Good Port 
for consoles, I'll give them that. But for PC, there are better alternatives. Right now they are rather trying to have some stuff exclusive to their port, like that new DOTM campaign, but the community beat them to it, in spite of them not revealing their source code.

In the end, it's OK for people who just want to play Quake and don't want to get too much into tweaking, searching for custom expansions and so on. 
Motion-blur 
Maybe I am just conditioned by playing AAA console titles like Last of Us and Horizon Zero Dawn; but does anyone else like the motion blur in the new release?

I really like it. Don't miss it too much when playing in other ports but it's a good addition to Quake Ex.

Don't hear this discussed very much.

re: the Nightdive interview. Go back and watch the game capture video. Whoever capped that was NOT familiar with the game and it's hysterical to watch. 
 
*gets double barrel shotgun*

*shoots ogre from 100 feet away* 
 
Whoever recorded that gameplay was playing with a gamepad, and don't know how to use strafe to dodge enemy attacks. Also, they tried to get ammo boxes when already having full ammo. At 7:20, they tried several times to jump over the wrong steps on the wall, and eventually gave up. And they keep wasting non-explosive ammo on zombies...

The KEX engine only does the underwater warp horizontally, not vertically. I don't know why they didn't warp it vertically, but it seems that they doubled the amount of horizontal warping to try to compensate.

The lack of view bobbing is disturbing. Turning it off by default was a mistake.

The fog and lighting are very cool, but I'll always miss lightmapped liquids and properly lit item boxes. 
 
Why in gods perversion's would someone address such a absolute turdifical abomination in fucking Quake ?!?

Jesus fucking christ are you baiting Dumptruck or what ?

Do you want lens flares too ?? 
 
The KEX engine only does the underwater warp horizontally, not vertically. I don't know why they didn't warp it vertically, but it seems that they doubled the amount of horizontal warping to try to compensate.
I noticed that too and it looks bad. Hopefully just a bug that'll be addressed in the upcoming patch. They also changed the underwater colour from brown to blue, which also looks bad most of the time.

The lack of view bobbing is disturbing. Turning it off by default was a mistake.
This one probably has the community to blame, as switching off the view bob is something that a lot of people seem to like.

The fog and lighting are very cool, but I'll always miss lightmapped liquids and properly lit item boxes.
I'm still unconvinced by lightmapped liquids, particularly when combined with translucency. I can accept the wrongly lit item boxes so long as they're only used for items, as it does make them stand out more in the scene. When people start using them for geometry the lighting flaws are really bad though, with lack of dynamic lights on them being perhaps the worst. Kex Quake does at least put dynamic lights on them. 
Viewbobbing 
Until I saw the viewbobbing option in the remaster I'd forgotten it was even a thing in Quake, mostly because when I think of viewbob I think of that godawful sea-sickness inducing side-to-side sway that a lot of inferior FPS use. Quake's viewbob is more of a phallic thrusting motion, which is much less intrusive until you start to think about it as a phallic thrusting motion that is. 
Botion Mlur 
Ok so, I'll address it in a civilized manner as it seems some education is necessary for the young ones and the older ones not quite right in their taste.

The First Person Shooter puts you, like it says on the tin, in first person.

Before we go further, dear reader, if you do see motion blur when casually moving about in daily life, please contact you doctor and get that checked.

Now, you might say if I see one thing move really fast across my field of vision it looks like a blur. That is object motion vector based blur, and that can look good and makes some sense. Its just the one or two fast moving things that blur.

What games and Quake re-release is doing is CAMERA movement based blur, and that makes no sense nor does it look "good". Like lens flares.

I shall quote a consultant on the matter to drive the point home a bit.

Camera based motion blur is unusually offensive though. It says “this camera is a camera” instead of “this camera is a person”, happily throwing away the single most fucking fundamental and compelling aspect of a first person game just to score some sweet FX wank points.

Unless the game has a gimmick like You're in the pitch black and seeing everything through your camera lens night mode or something.

But that is NOT Quake is it ? 
 
Maybe the medkits are having a negative effect on Ranger's vision. 
When I See An Explosive Box 
In E2M1 on the path across the pool while going for the gold keycard, I also get blurry vision. But with a strong red tint. Because it shouldn't be there. 
#179 
A very subtle detail that I really liked in the KEX lighting is that it casts a bright but small lighting around all flames. This fixes the problem of fullbright flame models with low lighting values looking out of place in very dark places.

It's not as effective as the effect I've implemented to fade out the flames, but it fixes the problem without changing the original behavior of the flames.

I can accept the wrongly lit item boxes so long as they're only used for items, as it does make them stand out more in the scene.

In that case, none of the items should get ambient lighting, including the armor, weapon and powerup pickups. It doesn't make sense for some items to get ambient lighting while others don't. Neutral lighting values for all.

And items with neutral lighting should have the same treatment of flame models in the KEX engine, with a bright but small dynamic light being cast from them, to make sense for them to be bright in dark areas.

The light in the super shotgun spot in E1M2 is an evidence that id Software originally wanted for all items to cast a small light on the environment, but they probably gave up on the idea because of technical issues: dynamic lighting on all items would impact the performance too much, and switchable lights would raise the filesize & memory requirements.

I'm still unconvinced by lightmapped liquids, particularly when combined with translucency.

That's what user options are for. 
 
In that case, none of the items should get ambient lighting, including the armor, weapon and powerup pickups. It doesn't make sense for some items to get ambient lighting while others don't. Neutral lighting values for all.

I'd be OK with that.

Quake 2 made lighting on bonus items pulse with time. It's also just as easy to set a minimum light level on any EF_ROTATE item.

Ultimately it's a game, and it comes down to "how does this contribute to gameplay?" Highlighting items you can pick up in some way is something I'd be perfectly OK with. (I draw the line at bouncing though, but some form of adjusted lighting is fine with me.)

You're absolutely right about the SSG spotlight in e1m2 and there's similar spotlights on the GL and SNG in e1m3. These aren't dynamic lights though, they're baked into the static lightmap. But it's definitely evidence that id did wish to draw attention to these pickups. 
 
Yup. All I advocate for is to have a consistent visual language, just that. 
 
Yup. All I advocate for is to have a consistent visual language, just that. 
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