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AlekTheNerd

Random Whining About Dark Places

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I've been looking at Quake source ports recently, and the best I've found is Dark Places, which, although is the best, still sucks. It feels the need to enhance the graphics, no matter the settings I choose, the "lower texture detail" option just makes textures blurry rather than actually lowering their resolution, and, although it supports higher resolutions (which I look for in source ports), when I choose an internal resolution of 720p, it doesn't stretch the image to fit my 1366x768 screen, rather, it just centers the image, and surrounds it with a black border. Am I just being too picky? Are there any Quake source ports that live up to my standards? Do you think I should go to a Quake forum to complain about this? Do you think we will ever find a sustainable alternative energy source?
Oops, sorry for that digression at the end. Anyway, please answer the first 2 or 3 questions.

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Actually, after belatedly remembering the bit where I said it feels the need to better the graphics, I realize that your post did help somewhat, but it's still not good enough. I would prefer a source port which is either more flexible, doesn't do the bullshit with the black borders, leaves the textures alone, and still provides 16:9 video modes.

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I think Quakespasm and Qrack are supposed to be better, or at least more accurate source ports, maybe try those instead?

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AlekTheNerd said:

it doesn't stretch the image to fit my 1366x768 screen, rather, it just centers the image, and surrounds it with a black border.

Sounds like you need to adjust the scaling options in your GPU control panel. You have scaling disabled so that lower resolutions than your monitor's native one aren't filling the whole screen.

It also sounds like you're complaining about a source port - the sole purpose of which is to make Quake look better (subjectively) - making Quake look better. Finally, you seem to want to lower the resolution of the textures without making them blurrier... which doesn't make a lot of sense.

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AlekTheNerd said:

it just centers the image, and surrounds it with a black border. Am I just being too picky?


Often times with source ports, a higher resolution setting will take up less screen space, but will be a clearer, more detailed image. Are you sure you're not seeing a more detailed image? Also, have you tried tweaking the aspect ratio?

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I run GZDoom in 720p, and it scales to fill the screen. Also, the problem with the blurring was antialiasing, which, after finding the command to turn it off, made the textures just look blockier (which is ironically more appealing, and what I was looking for.) Also, my reasons for using source ports is as follows: More features, 16:9 internal resolution support, and not needing to open up DOSBox and rewrite the entire bloody Bible just to play a game.

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AlekTheNerd said:

To Caffeine Freak:
I'm sorry if this sounds asinine, but I'm not really sure what you're asking.


I just meant have you tried different aspect ratios? Seeing if maybe a different aspect ratio works better for your screen with Dark Places, regardless of which resolution it's set to?

AlekTheNerd said:

and not needing to open up DOSBox and rewrite the entire bloody Bible just to play a game.


I don't think I've ever had problems just using the vanilla .exe for Quake, but I have the WinQuake version. You have the old Dos version?

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AlekTheNerd said:

I run GZDoom...


Why not just use ZDoom if you want all the features ZDoom offers without the graphics?

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Caffeine Freak said:

I just meant have you tried different aspect ratios? Seeing if maybe a different aspect ratio works better for your screen with Dark Places, regardless of which resolution it's set to?




I don't think I've ever had problems just using the vanilla .exe for Quake, but I have the WinQuake version. You have the old Dos version?

None of the aspect ratios will touch the top or bottom of my screen, only center the image and surround the image with black borders. Also, yes, I do have the original DOS files, but I prefer not to use it, primarily because of the lack of 16:9 support, and the inability to keep mouselook permanently on.

Vermil said:

Why not just use ZDoom if you want all the features ZDoom offers without the graphics?

Well, there really isn't much difference in graphics between the two, except for the fact that looking up or down doesn't make things look warped, and my primary reason for using GZDoom is so I can look directly up and down.

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Put this in your id1/autoexec.cfg and darkplaces should have the magic sauce you're looking for:
gl_texturemode GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST
gl_picmip 0
cl_particles_quake 1
vid_width 1366
vid_height 768
vid_conwidth 640
vid_conheight 360

This should use pixelated textures, and the old particles (although they don't animate quite the same due to particle engine changes), and attempts to use your 1366x768 resolution if Windows will allow it (if Windows won't allow it you might want to install an EDID hack to add it to the supported resolutions), note that if you cycle through the video modes in the DP menu it will let you choose all the resolutions that Windows thinks your monitor can handle, if 1366x768 does not appear then that's more of an OS problem and not darkplaces itself.

This should look considerably more authentic than glquake, too.

The black border problem is either your monitor padding out 1280x720 with black borders or it is your video driver, you may be able to fix this in the control panel for your video driver.

Also you can make stock engines (such as dos quake) use mouse look permanently with:
+mlook

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AlekTheNerd said:

None of the aspect ratios will touch the top or bottom of my screen, only center the image and surround the image with black borders.


Are you aware that most "widescreen" PC monitors and TVs are not really 16:9 but often somewhere between that and 16:10, right?

Also "720p" is a vertical resolution used for video material, and never was part of a standard resolution used in any PC games, historical or current (unlike 480p), so of course if you ask presisely for that, it won't fill the screen but switch to the closest available mode and letterbox it (the "black borders" you're talking about). You said it yourself that your monitor has a vertical resolution of 768 lines, anyway....

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Maes said:

Are you aware that most "widescreen" PC monitors and TVs are not really 16:9 but often somewhere between that and 16:10, right?

Also "720p" is a vertical resolution used for video material, and never was part of a standard resolution used in any PC games, historical or current (unlike 480p), so of course if you ask presisely for that, it won't fill the screen but switch to the closest available mode and letterbox it (the "black borders" you're talking about). You said it yourself that your monitor has a vertical resolution of 768 lines, anyway....

Again, I have multiple source ports which stretch 720p to fill the entire screen, such as: ECWolf, GZDoom, Skulltag, EDuke32, etc.
(I should also note to anyone who is wondering, I prefer to use the minimal possible widescreen resolution, because I use a laptop from 2009, and using the maximum possible widescreen resolution is slightly harder on my computer.)

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LordHavoc said:

Put this in your id1/autoexec.cfg and darkplaces should have the magic sauce you're looking for:
gl_texturemode GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST
gl_picmip 0
cl_particles_quake 1
vid_width 1366
vid_height 768
vid_conwidth 640
vid_conheight 360

This should use pixelated textures, and the old particles (although they don't animate quite the same due to particle engine changes), and attempts to use your 1366x768 resolution if Windows will allow it (if Windows won't allow it you might want to install an EDID hack to add it to the supported resolutions), note that if you cycle through the video modes in the DP menu it will let you choose all the resolutions that Windows thinks your monitor can handle, if 1366x768 does not appear then that's more of an OS problem and not darkplaces itself.

This should look considerably more authentic than glquake, too.

The black border problem is either your monitor padding out 1280x720 with black borders or it is your video driver, you may be able to fix this in the control panel for your video driver.

Also you can make stock engines (such as dos quake) use mouse look permanently with:
+mlook

As I stated in my previous post, I prefer minimal widescreen settings (so this doesn't quite fit my tastes), and it's the source port, not my video driver which is the problem.

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If you want a clean, minimalish port for Windows DirectQ is a great candidate. He focused on fixing all the broken junk in GLQuake (which was more or less just a hack) without implementing a bunch of wonky special effects that look totally out of place. Since it uses Direct3D there's a chance it will handle your resolution better.

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AlekTheNerd said:

As I stated in my previous post, I prefer minimal widescreen settings (so this doesn't quite fit my tastes)

If you are picky as you claim, you should want to use the native resolution for your monitor. Not some arbitrary figure you made up.

AlekTheNerd said:

and it's the source port, not my video driver which is the problem.

Yeah, you tell him. What does he know anyway, right? He just made Dark places.

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kristus said:

If you are picky as you claim, you should want to use the native resolution for your monitor. Not some arbitrary figure you made up.
Yeah, you tell him. What does he know anyway, right? He just made Dark places.

How exactly is 768p the minimal possible 16:9 resolution? Have you never heard of 720p? Also, either Dark Places is just shit at rendering lower resolutions, or it simply doesn't like my video driver, because my video driver is perfectly fucking fine.

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AlekTheNerd said:

How exactly is 768p the minimal possible 16:9 resolution? Have you never heard of 720p?


You want the minimal possible 16:9 resolution, you get 9p.


What type of monitor do you use anyway? If it's not a CRT, you really shouldn't use a resolution that isn't a clean fraction of the native one. Trying to stretch 1280x720 on a 1366x768 LCD screen will give you uneven pixels which make everything blurry and eye-blistering.

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Gez said:

You want the minimal possible 16:9 resolution, you get 9p.

Okay, I almost WANT to see somebody try to play Quake like that.

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DarkPlaces does not add black borders. Whatever behavior you are seeing is a bug I'd like to investigate if you can describe it in more detail.

In particular I need to know:
Which OS? Windows? Linux? OSX?
Which darkplaces client? darkplaces.exe or darkplaces-sdl.exe or their respective variants for other operating systems?
Which darkplaces renderer? GL 2.0? D3D9? GL 1.3? GL 1.1? SOFT?
What graphics chip is being used?

The darkplaces renderers are selected by the vid_gl20, vid_gl13, vid_dx9, vid_soft cvars, the dx9 one is not available in darkplaces-sdl.exe.

If using the vid_soft renderer, you may wish to tune the vid_soft_threads cvar (requires vid_restart) for better performance on a given number of cpu cores, it might not be making full utilization of the CPU by default, depending on number of cores.

The SDL and non-SDL clients select resolutions differently so one or them may have black borders and the other have no black borders, the vid_dx9 1 renderer also chooses resolutions differently.

I recommend playing at 1366x768 rather than 1280x720 regardless of all else, but you can improve framerate of 1366x768 using r_viewfbo 1;r_viewscale 0.5 or similar settings to reduce resolution of the rendering.

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LordHavoc said:

DarkPlaces does not add black borders. Whatever behavior you are seeing is a bug I'd like to investigate if you can describe it in more detail.

In particular I need to know:
Which OS? Windows? Linux? OSX?
Which darkplaces client? darkplaces.exe or darkplaces-sdl.exe or their respective variants for other operating systems?
Which darkplaces renderer? GL 2.0? D3D9? GL 1.3? GL 1.1? SOFT?
What graphics chip is being used?

I'm using Windows (Windows 7, specifically). Darkplaces.exe, 64-bit variant. On the renderer, I'm frankly too inept to know specifically, but it's some form of GL. Finally, I use a Geforce GTX 260M.

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Gez said:

You want the minimal possible 16:9 resolution, you get 9p.


What type of monitor do you use anyway? If it's not a CRT, you really shouldn't use a resolution that isn't a clean fraction of the native one. Trying to stretch 1280x720 on a 1366x768 LCD screen will give you uneven pixels which make everything blurry and eye-blistering.

Allow me to specify: any 16:9 resolution that doesn't make me want to tear my eyes out. I guess that would be a minimum about 480p 16:9. I use an LCD screen, but I frankly don't notice much difference between 720p and 768p, though that's probably because I'm not a technology freak like you, and I don't wank to images of GeForce GTX 690s.

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