Engine standards for mod compatibility

[Urre]

[Downsider]

[Urre]

[Downsider]

[FrikaC]

Italics make things funny.

[Downsider]

It's cause you said 512 is the minimum of the maximum allowed amount. It's not very specific, you just know it's >= 512. The other one just says limits increased. Which means you know it's >= 512.

They mean the same thing, neither is more specific than the other ;O

[Urre]

Not really. My guess would be that it's the maximum possible limit, which I'm not realizing because I don't code Quake engines. Possibly some form of language/grammar error I'm not seeing. If it's something along the lines of it not being specific because it's a minimum limit, then yeah it might be a little funny, as the modder might misinterpret it and use more than 512 static entities. Otherwise feel free to enlighten me!

EDIT: Huh? Wasn't the limit much lower? I recall 128.

[Downsider]

There's no minimum limit for entities, though.

Don't you see the irony in your mistake?

[Urre]

Wait, that's just weird logic. Don't you understand I meant increasing the limit of maximum allowed static entities?

[goldenboy]

Yup, this would be good to have.

For the mapping side, I think most modern engines support the "raised limits" bit sufficiently, Fitzquake finally did this with 0.85 and protocol 666. Unsure about mh's engine, Proquake, Joequake and Qrack. Tyrquake needs a kick in the nads here or be dropped from the list.

Basic csqc support is the next thing (Spike's win-csqc-quake as a blueprint).

After that, like you explained to me, monsterwalk and tracebox.

avelocity based rotation for eventual use of origin brushes a la Half-Life and Quake 2. AFAIK this already is in the engine, and a tutorial exists.

alpha.

Support for colored lighting (.lit files) of course.

Unified way to specify fog.

Sorry for being mostly unspecific, I stopped considering engines without support for higher map limits a while ago (ie, target engine is usually Fitzquake .85 in that regard, so that's kinda the expected level of raised limits) and I don't know enough about the details of the other features.

Standard name could be Quake Standard Base, inspired by Linux Standard Base (a standard for Linux distros to provide a basic set of features).

[LordHavoc]

What is needed is that one or more knowledgable modders/level designers work independently or together to write draft documents for capability extensions, different from normal extensions in QuakeC because they define entire sets of capability, ensuring compatibility as a whole with things that demand this capability subset.

After a draft proposal is written, it can be refined with feedback from the community, then written up as a technical document in final form and listed on a website like quaddicted, and then as each engine adds support for the capability, they can be added to that page's list of supporting engines.

Then level designers and modders can simply state "this requires URRE_MAPLIMITS_V1 - see www... for a list of engines that can run this."

[scar3crow]

alpha, colormod, frik_file come to mind immediately in terms of just being 'useful.'

But I think LordHavoc is on to something there.

[goldenboy]

[Urre]

That is exactly what I meant

[Spirit]

What Downsider is trying to make fun of like a know-it-all 8th grader is probably that you said a "minimum of a maximum" while there could only be one value and that would be the maximum. You probably said minimum because you meant a common maximum of 512 would be a good minimum standard to see among engines. But hey, it is way moar lulz to post backseat remarks instead of simply correcting.

I love you for posting this topic, very good initiative.