KMQuake II- News

3/14/08 0.20 Public Beta 3 Released!!

It's finally ready. I've decided to make this beta open to the public to speed up the finding of bugs/issues. Lightmap softening didn't make it in to this release, nor are there Linux binaries, but several tweaks and bug fixes did:

Support for non-power-of-2 textures on cards implementing the ARB_texture_non_power_of_two extension. This greatly improves the quality of most skins in-game.
Improved the accuracy of the FPS counter.
Fixed dark corners on most warp surfaces when vertex lighting is enabled.
Added a separate cvar, r_warp_lighting, to disable vertex lighting on warp surfaces without affecting non-warp trans surfaces. Useful for maps where vertex lighting doesn't work well, but lightmaps on trans surfaces do. This is also now a separate option in the advanced section of the video menu.
Added support for Quake3-style .arena files inside pak/pk3 files. These are added to the maplist in the start server menu and filtered by gametype.
Added support for an Ogg Vorbis ambient looping track, for when the game has been left idle for quite a while in single player. The CD music system has always had this feature, so I decided to duplicate it for the Ogg Vorbis system. This cvar (ogg_ambient_track) defaults to track11, the same as with the CD system.

Go and get now in in the downloads section. And if you find any bugs/issues, be sure to contact me.

11/14/07 Still Alive...

I haven't had that much time to work on KMQ2 over the last two months. However, I have managed to improve widescreen support for all of us, except the ones who have 4:3 screens. Here are some improvements I've made for 0.20 Beta 3:

Added support for 1280x720, 1280x768, 1440x900, 1920x1080, and 2560x1600 widescreen modes, in addition to the existing 856x480, 1024x480, 1280x800, 1680x1050, and 1920x1200 modes. These resolutions make a beautiful line.
Cinematics are now displayed in anamorphic form.
Added support for widescreen-aspect levelshots.
Console font size is now resolution-independent. Default size is 8 pixels scaled up from 640x480 resolution.

One last graphical improvement I've been attempting is lightmap softening. I've kept running into glitches with this, but I'll keep on trying until I run out of cake.

I've been looking for better menu background and loadscreen art. If you'd like to contribute some, the backgrounds should be in a decent format. Maybe 320x240 .lbm. That was a joke. Ha ha. Fat chance. They should have versions in both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, and both versions should be resized to 1024x1024.

Finally, I've started remaking the included levelshots in matched sets of 4:3 and 16:9 images.
Contributions of these are also welcome. The desired maps include the baseq2 single player and DM maps (including match1), the 64-player DM maps, the CTF maps (including Outlands II), the 3Team CTF maps, and The Reckong, Ground Zero, and Zaero mission packs. They should be taken with the crosshair disabled, hud_alpha and cl_gun set to 0, and r_screenshot_jpeg_quality set to 100. They need to be pairs of 512x512 matched images in standard and widescreen aspect ratios.

When all this is done, I should be out of beta and releasing on time.

9/2/07 Update on 0.20 Beta 3

After looking at all the changes required to support R1Q2's protocol in the client, I've decided it won't be in 0.20 beta 3. It may make it into 0.21, though.

I'm also looking for someone to compile the updated version of QuDos' Linux port. If you're a Linux user interested in seeing KMQ2 on Linux and are proficent with GCC or another compiler, email me.

8/25/07 0.20 Beta 3 in progress

I've decided to add a few more features before the public release:

QuDos' Unix port has been added to the source tree, and updated from 0.19. I don't know if it will compile yet. Item bobbing and Ogg Vorbis commands (play, pause, resume, stop, etc) have also been added from QuDos' port.
The network protocol version has been changed from 35 to 56 to avoid conflicts with R1Q2.
The client will now autodownload the pk3 file containing the current map from the server (thanks to Jay Dolan and Quake2World).
R1Q2 protcol support is also a possibility.

A GTKRadiant 1.50 game profile for KMQ2 is also in progress. This will add KMQ2's new surface flags to the surface inspector, as well as add in-editor support for tga/jpg textures and md3 models. However, I have hit a small snag with the presence of retextures showing up in the editor and not being resized like they are ingame.

6/25/07 0.20 Beta 2 ready!

Email me to get in. Be sure to replace the separator in the email address with a '@'.

This release took another 2 weeks to get ready because I decided to go the extra yard and add in fragment shader support for water warping so that users with ATI cards can get the same cool effects as nVidia users. The pixelation seen on newer nVidia cards is now gone, and this effect can also be enabled for caustics.

6/9/07 Well, it took a lot more than a week...

I've been rather busy the last few months, so the new beta got delayed. I did, however, end up doing a lot more than just a few tweaks. It should be ready real soon, unless I decide to add something else.

New features since the last beta include:

Added support for the game DLL to set the attentuation of looped sounds.
Support has been added to both the Lazarus and missionpack DLLs for mappers to override the attenuation for any bmodel entity. Func_train, func_tracktrain, and func_vehicle now default to idle attenuation.
This changes the protocol and game DLL interface again (sigh), so DLLs from the last beta will no longer work.
Added support for lightmaps on trans surfaces. Set transparent lighting to lightmap in the advanced video menu to enable this.
Added support for caustics on bmodels.
Added support for camera effect and letterbox screen modes. These effects can be enabled by setting the RDF_CAMERAEFFECT and RDF_LETTERBOX bits in a client's refdef flags in the game DLL.
The Lazarus and missionpack DLLs have had spawnflags added to func_monitor, target_monitor, and info_player_intermission (letterbox only) to use these effects.
Added Jalisko's fix for black lines appearing when light blooms are enabled at 1280x1024 resolution.
Changed savegame slot names to better cohabitate with other engines.

3/3/07 0.20 Beta 2 almost here!

There are just a few minor tweaks remaining before beta 2 of 0.20 is ready for testing. This build has several more optimizations and bugfixes than are in beta 1. I should have it ready within a week.

1/3/07 0.20 Beta 1 ready!

Email me to get in. Be sure to replace the separator in the email address with a '@'. What are you waiting for? Go! Go now!

12/30/06 0.20 Nearing beta release!

There are just a few more critical bugs remaining to be removed before I can release a beta of 0.20.

New features since v0.19 include:

Increased max coordinate range. Includes kmqbsp3 to support large maps.
Note that this breaks all existing game DLLs and demos. Be sure to download updated game DLLs that are compatible with this version.
Clients and servers will have to upgrade to maintain compatibility.
Greatly improved md3 support. Md3's render faster, are frustum-culled, and are properly vertex-lit. Per-mesh, per-skin rendering scripts are also added (see md3_scripting.txt).
Overall optimizations to rendering.
Added support for alpha test surfaces (textures with holes, bypassing the problems of TRANS33+TRANS66 rendering).
This can be enabled on a texture with an alpha channel (TGA's) or color 255 (pink) areas (.wals) by setting the 0x02000000 surface flag in the surface inspector (only QERadiant 1.47 seems to show this flag).
Use the included version of KMQBSP3 to compile maps with these surfaces.
Added modified version of debug/dedicated console from Quake2Evolved.
Added improved version of Kirk Barnes's underwater caustics and view warping.
Renamed all gl_* renderer cvars to r_*.
Removed support for ancient, decrepit SGIS multitexture.
Fixed particle overdraw option so it only redraws on top of alpha surfaces.
Now supports streaming Ogg Vorbis files from inside pak/pk3 files.
Added saveshots to quicksaves (savegames named "quick" or "quik").

9/12/05 Released just in time for QExpo 2005!

New features since v0.16 include:

Integrated renderer into exe. Ref_kmgl.dll is no longer needed.
Added support for custom resolutions. Uses cvars s_customwidth and r_customheight when gl_mode is set to -1.
Added projection entity shadows. This is selectable from the advanced section of the video menu.
Added option for model shading (off, low, high) to advanced video menu. Also, dynamic lights now light models by the vertices.
Added option for flowing shell effects to advanced video menu.
Added light blooms. This is selectable from the advanced section of the video menu.
Added support for Ogg Vorbis music. To hear tracks ingame, rip the Q2 CD's audio tracks (2-11) to track02-track11.ogg and put them in baseq2/music. For the mission pack audio tracks, rip the Ground Zero CD's audio tracks (2-11) to track12-track21.ogg.
Added support for Quake3's RoQ format cinematics.
Added improved version of decal system from Quake2Max.
Added pk3 support from Quake2Evolved.
Added support for JPG and up to 1024x1024 skyboxes.
Anisotropic filtering now works properly and video menu allows selection from modes supported by the video card.
Added support for custom door, plat, and button sounds. See kmquake2_lazarus.txt.
Fixed looped sound sourcing bug with bmodel entities (func_door, func_plat, etc).
Added Jitspoe's Fix for sliding bug where steep sloped surfaces meet floors.
Added cvar cl_rail_length to control length of rail trails for performance purposes. Defaults to 2048. Rail trails are now drawn starting from the point closest to the player.
Now opens menu when disconnected.
Reset defaults option in the menus now loads cvar defaults for all settings in that menu.
Added enhanced player setup display from Quake2Max.
Added levelshots to start server menu.
Added new default font based on one from Jitspoe's Digital Paint 2.0.