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Curious. Waiting for the release.

mankrip wrote:Curious. Waiting for the release.

Welcome to dctalk, Manoel! Glad I could turn your attention to this thread

I was wondering how difficult it would be to make Makakqu SDCARD compatible, so you could save and load game saves, config files and maybe even maps and mods from it?
How about a version that is IDE mod compatible that supports MMU and HD swapping in order to make huge maps run despite of limited RAM on the DC?

How difficult would it be to make the engine load custom progs.dat depending on what mod the game server is running?
Any chance for a PSO like chat "bubble" system with a dictionary in Maqaku?

A couple of weeks ago I got a cygwin KOS toolchain running so I could complie Makaqu, however my CDI refuses to load in windows based emulators. No success with DEMUL or NullDC.
Did anybody ever get Makaqu emulated on PC?

moi wrote:I was wondering how difficult it would be to make Makakqu SDCARD compatible, so you could save and load game saves, config files and maybe even maps and mods from it?

No idea. I have a SD card adapter for my DC, but never tested it. Also, I'd have to update the engine code to be compatible with the latest versions of KOS, but I guess Shuouma may have done it.

moi wrote:How about a version that is IDE mod compatible that supports MMU and HD swapping in order to make huge maps run despite of limited RAM on the DC?

Huge maps have large intricate data structures which requires very fast access, so virtual memory wouldn't cut it. But using SSD storage as virtual RAM for simple data such as sounds would free some of the main RAM. It would allow for bigger map files to be used (maps with more textures, for example), but it wouldn't increase the performance of maps with large areas and/or a higher level of detail. Big maps would still have to be comprised of multiple individual areas with the same size and level of detail of the original Quake levels.

Still, talented mappers can make good-looking geometry under vanilla Quake's restrictions, and IMO support for huge maps isn't the best approach to improve the gameplay possibilities of this engine.

moi wrote:How difficult would it be to make the engine load custom progs.dat depending on what mod the game server is running?

The progs.dat is run by the server only. The gameplay on the client side is all done through network messages received/sent from/to the server. IIRC, the client don't need to have the same progs.dat locally.

moi wrote:Any chance for a PSO like chat "bubble" system with a dictionary in Maqaku?

Possibly yes, but I've played PSO so long ago that I barely remember how it was. I remember it being really fun, though.

moi wrote:A couple of weeks ago I got a cygwin KOS toolchain running so I could complie Makaqu, however my CDI refuses to load in windows based emulators. No success with DEMUL or NullDC.
Did anybody ever get Makaqu emulated on PC?

I've never tried emulating the DC version on the PC; always used a real DC for testing DC-specific engine code, and used the PC version to develop mods.

mankrip wrote:No idea. I have a SD card adapter for my DC, but never tested it. Also, I'd have to update the engine code to be compatible with the latest versions of KOS, but I guess Shuouma may have done it.

If I see it correctly KOS does support the extfs2 from the get-go. Since DreamShell is running from FAT32 formatted SD cards it's using its own FAT32 KOS driver for reading and writing(GDI Ripper App, Config FIle Save).
AFAIK there is a custom build of DCPLaya 2.0 that supports reading media files from SD as well.

mankrip wrote: Huge maps have large intricate data structures which requires very fast access, so virtual memory wouldn't cut it. But using SSD storage as virtual RAM for simple data such as sounds would free some of the main RAM. It would allow for bigger map files to be used (maps with more textures, for example), but it wouldn't increase the performance of maps with large areas and/or a higher level of detail. Big maps would still have to be comprised of multiple individual areas with the same size and level of detail of the original Quake levels.

Sounds like adding VM is not worth the effort then. Making Makaqu using DC's 2MB Sound RAM for sound files would probably an easier and more effective approach in saving up that precious main RAM.

mankrip wrote: Still, talented mappers can make good-looking geometry under vanilla Quake's restrictions, and IMO support for huge maps isn't the best approach to improve the gameplay possibilities of this engine.

Some of those those classic mods such as AirQuake, QRally or GTAQ that were attempting to have large maps ignoring their high r_speeds though. Those "unusual ones" I'm mostly interested in since those are pushing the engine to it's limits.

mankrip wrote: The progs.dat is run by the server only. The gameplay on the client side is all done through network messages received/sent from/to the server. IIRC, the client don't need to have the same progs.dat locally.

Sounds good. So worst case scenario when you have to reboot the DC and to re-dial in order to play a different mod online can be avoided.

mankrip wrote: Possibly yes, but I've played PSO so long ago that I barely remember how it was. I remember it being really fun, though.

I was thinking about a comic book text bubble appearing above the player's head when chatting rather then having to read the Quake console. I guess it's possible to implement via QC but an implementation inside the engine would cause somewhat less overhead in CPU cycles and RAM.

mankrip wrote: I've never tried emulating the DC version on the PC; always used a real DC for testing DC-specific engine code, and used the PC version to develop mods.

Well then it's back to multisession CDRs or rebuilding of SDISOs for me I guess

Just a short update, due to the nature of old Q1, the online
was really bad regarding lag. So I have now ported QuakeWorld
instead to the DC.

"QuakeWorld, abbreviated as QW, is an update to id Software's Quake, that enhances the game's multiplayer features (namely TCP/IP support) to allow people with dial-up modems to achieve greatly improved responsiveness when playing on Internet game servers."

The release is now in beta testing.

Shuouma wrote:Just a short update, due to the nature of old Q1, the online
was really bad regarding lag. So I have now ported QuakeWorld
instead to the DC.

Sounds like a logical step! I guess the ping is most crucial bottleneck to be dealt with for starters.
Will it require port forwarding/dmz?

Wow another port of Quake? Awesome! Would love to see some video of the beta if possible?

We are not worthy, Shu. As above, a video of the footage would be awesome!

Anthony817 wrote:Wow another port of Quake? Awesome! Would love to see some video of the beta if possible?

Here ya go: https://twitter.com/pcwzrd13/status/988131444215214080

Shuouma wrote:Just a short update, due to the nature of old Q1, the online
was really bad regarding lag. So I have now ported QuakeWorld
instead to the DC.

"QuakeWorld, abbreviated as QW, is an update to id Software's Quake, that enhances the game's multiplayer features (namely TCP/IP support) to allow people with dial-up modems to achieve greatly improved responsiveness when playing on Internet game servers."

The release is now in beta testing.

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