Question on Darkplaces vs. ioquake3

[SeanHeron]

Hey, I'm new here and I have a question - more out of interest than that I'm likely to do anything with it.

To introduce - I had some mates round this weekend and while they're not into free/libre games regularly, we all played some Nexuiz and had a blast . So good job for everybody involved!

I've also been playing Tremulous for a while now, and so I couldn't help but wonder that you guys are using two different engines (though of course diversity has advantages as well).

I've had a bit of a look around, and I read that people reckon Nexuiz would look worse on the ioquake3 engine then on Darkplaces - is that still the case? Are there other reasons that speak against porting? And what reasons might Tremulous have for not switching to Darkplaces?

Thanks for your time,
a very curious Sean

[divVerent]

First of all: switching to another engine means throwing everything away, and rewriting it from scratch. You really only do that if you have to.

Technical advantages of DP over ioq3 that Nexuiz really should not lose:
- more advanced rendering features, eye candy
- easily customizable menu
- more intuitive command line interface
- HTTP downloads for missing maps (nexuiz map packages often are HUGE)

Technical advantages of ioq3 over DP that Tremulous really should not lose:
- much less CPU load on the dedicated server, as no interpreter is running but native code only
- AAS support for bot AI
- much better handling of player prediction

The point of the original decision was, indeed, the advanced rendering features.

[Flying Steel]

It seems a little late in the game for this question, since imo, the big question now is how will things compare when id releases its 4th generation engine?

[Irritant]

It seems a little late in the game for this question, since imo, the big question now is how will things compare when id releases its 4th generation engine?

DP already has most if not all of the rendering features of id Tech4, except for maybe Megatexture.

[divVerent]

Exactly.

Main things missing is good content. The engine itself is quite up to date and comparable with id tech 4, while ioq3 is somewhere between id tech 3 and id tech 4, in terms of visual quality.

But, our player models look really bad, and many maps have blurred textures. THAT is where we currently are lacking. No engine change can fix THAT.

[Flying Steel]

I hear you on the content issues, I can help on that front.

I was thinking of non-graphical modern features though, like vehicle physics. I wonder what id tech 4 could bring to the table there.

[divVerent]

The engine has not much to do with that.

In fact, vehicle physics are in Nexuiz svn, but at the moment only one vehicle.

The question remains however if vehicles would even be of any use in a fast paced game like Nexuiz.

[toneddu2000]

The engine has not much to do with that.

In fact, vehicle physics are in Nexuiz svn, but at the moment only one vehicle.

The question remains however if vehicles would even be of any use in a fast paced game like Nexuiz.

And what about tris limits? How many tris can I "fill" in a map to avoid slow motions on , let's say, a dual core modern pc?Another question: I saw on http://svn.icculus.org/twilight/trunk/phystest/ a piece of code about ragdoll, I compiled it and.. it's amazing!Is it just a test or one day we could see players swept away from a shotgun blast?

[tundramagi]

The engine has not much to do with that.

In fact, vehicle physics are in Nexuiz svn, but at the moment only one vehicle.

The question remains however if vehicles would even be of any use in a fast paced game like Nexuiz.

I find vehicles useful and fun in nexuiz.

[Flying Steel]

In fact, vehicle physics are in Nexuiz svn, but at the moment only one vehicle.

Do you think we can get this vehicle in the game by default for the next release? Like one or two placed in Reborn or Silver City somewhere?

Just to help the testing process of course.

The question remains however if vehicles would even be of any use in a fast paced game like Nexuiz.

I am sure they certainly will, it'd just be a faster vehicle with more firepower or it would be useful on bigger maps.

Character class mutator(s) also provide an opportunity to lower the game speed for tactical gameplay, by making all but the fastest classes as quick as default Nexuiz player physics. A much better solution than havoc was, imho.