Quake Remastered

[NightFright]

Another annoyance: If you want to load a game right at the beginning (when a demo is running), it throws you back to playing the demo after you select a savegame. It will only work after you do the same a second time.

 

Also: When leaving a level with a powerup active (e.g. Ring of Shadows), it's on-screen effect will remain active on the level stats screen.

Edited August 23, 2021 by NightFright

[TheUltimateDoomer666]

On 8/22/2021 at 7:15 PM, TheUltimateDoomer666 said:

Another visual glitch: The Gremlin's Domain notification shows the Well of Wishes icon.

The notification for A Long Yard shows the Close Shave icon.

[NightFright]

So, after having finished the entirety of the four classic episodes, here's a summary of my findings (mostly repeating my previous posts). I am ranking the issues on a scale from 1 (peanuts) to 5 (really annoying):

 

Visual:

(5) Many models remain untouched (health/ammo/exploding boxes, projectiles, headgibs, SoA/DoE contents)

(4) Gravity of flying gibs too low (sv_gibgravity = 350 instead of 800, but changing variable in config affects Ziggurat Vertigo)

(3) Teleporters with transparency look bad (all alpha values in the config are "1.0", which seems to cause issues - "1" provides full opacity, but will revert to 1.0 on next launch and break again. Engine seems to use worldspawn keys from maps to override the cvars, but should be the other way round. How about adding menu sliders for water/slime/lava/teleporter transparencies, defaulting to 1?)

(3) Q3-style item bobbing should be optional and turned off by default

(3) In dirty water, brown instead of blue underwater tint should be used; in general, waterwarp effect intensity is a bit overdone

(3) Some monsters (especially Death Knight and Ogre) clipping into floor after death

(2) When leaving a level with a powerup active (e.g. Ring of Shadows), its on-screen effect will remain active on the level stats screen

 

Sound:

(4) Music could be louder

(3) Track 11 not being used / ExM5 music issue

(2) Remastered sounds are 44 kHz, but go through a 22 kHz lowpass filter, anyway

 

Gameplay/Technical:

(5) Trying to load an existing savegame right after game launch throws you back to demo playback once

(4) View weapon bobbing should be turned on by default (but off seems to be intended by devs, so I guess it will stay as it is)

(4) There should be a menu option to turn off intro movies (there's already g_showintromovie in the config for it)

(3) Cannot fully look up/down

(3) Backpedal speed too low (cl_backspeed = 200 instead of 400, will be corrected)

 

What's definitely a strong side of the port are the dynamic shadows which contribute a lot to the atmosphere of the game and create some nice illumination effects in dark areas in combination with explosions or active Quad/Pentagram powerups. In general, ingame movement feels good, weapons in particular are profiting from those remastered sounds and even some old map bugs (e.g. E2M1 Enforcer telefrag) have been addressed. I was also pleased about not having encountered any noticable case of z-fighting (texture flickering) besides maybe that Enforcer alcove near the gold key in E2M1 (only while its door is moving).

 

As a veteran player of the first hour, I consider this a good port, with potential to become great after the issues mentioned above have been addressed. After having taken only a brief look at SoA and DoE, I have to say more effort could have been put into updating their visuals, which is actually my biggest disappointment about the whole thing. In many cases, it's just about adding skins to models, e.g. the Multi-Grenade Ogre, the statues or nail/grenade weapons in DoE. Since the differences between old and new models are significant, I sincerely hope it will not stay like this.


 

Edited August 23, 2021 by NightFright

[Dweller]

I managed to fix most of my issues with Quake Enhanced, but does anyone here use the DirectX11 renderer for it and notice flickering or abnormal weapon movement, random stuff flashing on screen when you pick something up, or anything similar? I've been getting a lot of those things happening, but I haven't had any major gamebreaking problems with DirectX11 so far, which is at least good.

[Urthar]

I quite like the back-pedal change, it makes knights more engaging, and gives a 'push forward' momentum to combats in general.

[Revenant100]

On 8/22/2021 at 2:35 AM, Edward850 said:

You can't decompile lights, that's not how that works. The lights are culled out of the final data and in their place is just a lightmap texture.

All of the original light entity data is still in the final compiled BSPs. Case in point. You can definitely light an entire original Quake map using nothing but the ripped light entities taken out of a decompiled BSP.

 

In fact, I've gone ahead and done just that as an example with E3M3 as the test case. To be precise, these are the steps I followed:

1. Decompiled E3M3.BSP
2. Ripped all "light" entity data
3. Downloaded Romero's map sources (compiled E3M3.MAP in screenshot #2)
4. Deleted all light entity data in E3M3.MAP (compiled in screenshot #3)
5. Pasted in ripped light entity data from decompiled BSP
6. Compiled re-lit E3M3.MAP (screenshot #4)

Screenshot #1, original E3M3.BSP:

 

Screenshot #2, compiled untouched E3M3.MAP from Romero's map sources:

 

Screenshot #3, compiled E3M3.MAP after deleting all light entity data (only the skylight is left):

 

Screenshot #4, compiled with added ripped light entity data from decompiled BSP:

 

The results of lighting Romero's map sources using nothing but the ripped entity data directly from the decompiled BSP looks virtually identical to the original BSP itself, so maintaining near 100% lighting accuracy in Quake is well within our capabilities and none too difficult to achieve. Given these circumstances, I really can't explain why the lighting in the enhanced E3M3 is so arbitrarily inaccurate. It looks like someone intentionally messed with the lighting here to a very detrimental effect.

[Szymanski]

I'm getting a thin border line around the status bars health and ammo values

[Edward850]

4 hours ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

I managed to fix most of my issues with Quake Enhanced, but does anyone here use the DirectX11 renderer for it and notice flickering or abnormal weapon movement, random stuff flashing on screen when you pick something up, or anything similar? I've been getting a lot of those things happening, but I haven't had any major gamebreaking problems with DirectX11 so far, which is at least good.

DirectX 11 is not supported for this title. Use at own peril.

If your hardware doesn't support Vulkan, you are out of our support range.

[VGA]

I finished the first episode with Quake EX, pretty good!

 

@NightFright made some good observations. That thing with the savegame loading reloading the demo is annoying!

 

I just popped into vkQuake to compare, the removal of head bobbing and side-to-side head movement when strafing makes the Quake EX movement feel floaty. Like you are a floating head instead of a badass. Not sure how it was in DOS Quake. And slower backpedallng for no reason?

 

EDIT: Ah, ok, the backpedalling will be fixed.

[Edward850]

4 hours ago, Urthar said:

I quite like the back-pedal change, it makes knights more engaging, and gives a 'push forward' momentum to combats in general.

It wasn't a change, it's an unintentional side effect of how Quakes original run modifier works and is already fixed in the repo.

[NightFright]

I have edited my list above in the meantime, adding some stuff. Especially the part about transparency settings is interesting.

[Edward850]

3 minutes ago, VGA said:

I just popped into vkQuake to compare, the removal of head bobbing and side-to-side head movement when strafing makes the Quake EX movement feel floaty. Like you are a floating head instead of a badass. Not sure how it was in DOS Quake. And slower backpedallng for no reason?

Then turn it back on in the gameplay options. It's off by default due to how it easily caused motion sickness. It has no actual change on player movement.

And no we didn't change the player backwards movement for no reason, can you please stop weirdly accusing us of that, it's getting beyond infuriating.

[WadArchive]

I have been playing the new mission pack the last few nights and really enjoying it. Just need to learn to save more, too used to checkpoints these days 

[wheresthebeef]

The new episode is really cool. Completed several levels so far and the levels are absolutely huge and gorgeous.

 

The hub you return to after every level with runes you have collected reminds me a lot of Turok 2.

 

Excited to go back and finish it

[zzzornbringer]

anyone know something about the dynamic shadows? it seems to not disable all of them when you disable the option. in the difficulty select level for the newest episode there's one section with a rotating fan or something that casts a dynamic shadow. this is always there, doesn't matter what option you use.

 

the level select level is also extremely heavy on the performance. my 1660ti @1080p runs at almost full capacity in this level. i tried to run that in vkquake and the performance is much better. but i get error messages and the game crashed at some point. i'm hoping other sourceports get updated to support the new episode.

[Jayextee]

Kinda worried how DotM is going to chug on my base PS4, given that I've had the occasional framedrop on both the default campaign and Scourge of Armagon (I'm slowly making my way through the lot).

Ah well.

[Mr. Death]

It would also be nice if the particles automatically switched to circles when the texture filtering option is enabled, just so that it more closely resembles the original GLQuake.

[Dweller]

27 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

DirectX 11 is not supported for this title. Use at own peril.

If your hardware doesn't support Vulkan, you are out of our support range.

 

My hardware, as far as I can tell, does support Vulkan. Never had any issues with running GZDoom, Raze, Doom 64, and vkQuake on Vulkan, but Quake EX has been giving me consistent issues while using it. Looking in any direction makes the framerate drop and stutter like crazy, to the point where it'll slow down my laptop to a noticeable degree that only a restart can fix. I tried everything that was thought to fix it, but none of them worked, other than using DirectX 11 and some minor setting tweaks in-game and in driver settings. I even turned off some driver features to see if it would make a difference, and there were no changes to the performance of Quake EX. And other people, mostly on Steam, have mentioned similar problems on hardware several times stronger than mine. 

 

If it helps, I can provide my system information, maybe something specific to my laptop is screwing with it. 

Spoiler

Computer Information:
    Manufacturer:  LENOVO
    Model:  80XS
    Form Factor: Laptop
    No Touch Input Detected

Processor Information:
    CPU Vendor:  AuthenticAMD
    CPU Brand:  AMD A12-9720P RADEON R7, 12 COMPUTE CORES 4C+8G
    CPU Family:  0x15
    CPU Model:  0x65
    CPU Stepping:  0x1
    CPU Type:  0x0
    Speed:  2695 Mhz
    4 logical processors
    4 physical processors

 

Video Card:
    Driver:  AMD Radeon R7 Graphics
    DirectX Driver Name:  aticfx32.dll
    Driver Version:  27.20.14501.28009
    DirectX Driver Version:  27.20.14501.28009
    Driver Date: 12 4 2020
    OpenGL Version: 4.6
    Desktop Color Depth: 32 bits per pixel
    Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
    DirectX Card: AMD Radeon R7 Graphics
    Number of Monitors:  1
    Number of Logical Video Cards:  1
   Primary Display Resolution:  1920 x 1080
    Desktop Resolution: 1920 x 1080
    Primary Display Size: 13.50" x 7.64" (15.51" diag)
                                            34.3cm x 19.4cm (39.4cm diag)
 Primary Bus Type Not Detected
 Primary VRAM: 512 MB
 Supported MSAA Modes:  2x 4x 8x 

 

Memory:
    RAM:  7567 Mb

 

 

[Edward850]

24 minutes ago, zzzornbringer said:

anyone know something about the dynamic shadows? it seems to not disable all of them when you disable the option. in the difficulty select level for the newest episode there's one section with a rotating fan or something that casts a dynamic shadow. this is always there, doesn't matter what option you use.

You can't disable map shadows, given they are intentionally part of the design. The option only affects projectiles and other non static lights.

[Edward850]

1 hour ago, zzzornbringer said:

the level select level is also extremely heavy on the performance. my 1660ti @1080p runs at almost full capacity in this level. i tried to run that in vkquake and the performance is much better. but i get error messages and the game crashed at some point. i'm hoping other sourceports get updated to support the new episode.

 

44 minutes ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

My hardware, as far as I can tell, does support Vulkan. Never had any issues with running GZDoom, Raze, Doom 64, and vkQuake on Vulkan, but Quake EX has been giving me consistent issues while using it. Looking in any direction makes the framerate drop and stutter like crazy, to the point where it'll slow down my laptop to a noticeable degree that only a restart can fix. I tried everything that was thought to fix it, but none of them worked, other than using DirectX 11 and some minor setting tweaks in-game and in driver settings. I even turned off some driver features to see if it would make a difference, and there were no changes to the performance of Quake EX. And other people, mostly on Steam, have mentioned similar problems on hardware several times stronger than mine. 

 

[VGA]

9 hours ago, NightFright said:

all alpha values in the config are "1.0", which seems to cause issues - "1" provides full opacity, but will revert to 1.0 on next launch and break again. Engine seems to use worldspawn keys from maps to override the cvars, but should be the other way round.

Interesting. Also, I, too, find the water warping effect to be too exaggerated and cheap, it only goes side-to-side. vkQuake has the best implementation (after the good ol' software renderer). I think it properly swirls, can't check now, not at my PC.

 

2 hours ago, WadArchive said:

I have been playing the new mission pack the last few nights and really enjoying it. Just need to learn to save more, too used to checkpoints these days 

Just abuse the F5 key :D

[Dweller]

31 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

 

 

 

Tried that with the Vulkan renderer, but it didn't seem to have any effect, still incredibly choppy and made my PC a little slower like it was doing before. Gonna restart to fix the slowness, but if there are any other potential things I could try, let me know and I'll get back to you on it.

[Edward850]

If your PC is becoming physically slower after running a game, then there's a lot more going on with your system behind the scenes that isn't really related to our game. You have some serious technical issues going on with your hardware or OS.

[Dweller]

10 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

If your PC is becoming physically slower after running a game, then there's a lot more going on with your system behind the scenes that isn't really related to our game. You have some serious technical issues going on with your hardware or OS.

 

If that's the case, wouldn't it affect other games and applications? I've never encountered this specific performance issue outside of Quake EX and Blood: Fresh Supply unless I was doing more things than it could reliably handle at one time. Everything's up to date in terms of drivers and whatnot. 

 

And, if it helps, I found the information on the Vulkan Runtime Libraries I have. It's 1.0.39.1

[Edward850]

1 hour ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

If that's the case, wouldn't it affect other games and applications?

Correlation is not causation. Not all software is the same (if they were, they would be identical), and one piece of software can expose an issue in your system that others do not by straining or using it in different ways.

Additionally, it fails the smell test. The one very important thing to remember; our game can only persist for as long as you have it open. The moment you close it, Windows clears out anything to do with it from all active resources, we can't allocate memory out side of our applications page. Everything goes. If you are still having problems after it's closed, we can no longer be the cause.

 

Take for example the game New World, which recently came into beta. It was noted that people were complaining about their RTX 3080 GPUs being bricked by the game's main menu. But that wasn't what was going on, the game wasn't bricking anything (it's not able to do that itself, no combination of code can permit that level of hardware control), it was a bug in EVGAs firmware where if an applications framerate got too high, the firmware would overdrive the fans to absurd levels (i.e 200,000 RPM, and even without the heat being generated to necessitate it), causing the GPUs own power delivery to burn out from over voltage. The game was technically the trigger, but it was not the cause or at fault.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Edward850

[Rexen²]

1 hour ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

 

If that's the case, wouldn't it affect other games and applications? I've never encountered this specific performance issue outside of Quake EX and Blood: Fresh Supply unless I was doing more things than it could reliably handle at one time. Everything's up to date in terms of drivers and whatnot. 

 

And, if it helps, I found the information on the Vulkan Runtime Libraries I have. It's 1.0.39.1

Is by any chance the game using the CPU instead of the GPU? That might lead to issues in that case, also make sure your power plan is set to Performance instead to something like say Power Saver if on a laptop.  

[Tarvis]

11 hours ago, NightFright said:

(3) Some monsters (especially Death Knight and Ogre) clipping into floor after death

The enhanced ogre isn't just sunk in the floor after death, he is at all times.

I also noticed one of the zombie shotgun soldier death animations (where he falls backwards) is animated as if the last frame is missing or out of order, one of his legs stays up in the air when the animation is over.

Also, the rocket launcher has a frame of interpolated muzzleflash where you can see it moving through the gun to behind the camera. This is even visible in the release trailer. This can be fixed by hiding the muzzleflash model inside the gun instead of behind the camera as with the classic quake models.

 

Quote

(3) Cannot fully look up/down

To be fair, this was also true in the original quake unless you messed with a cvar.

Ditto for the "overdone" water distortion. Software rendered original Quake had that.

I don't understand why people always compare with GLQuake. Strictly speaking it's way less faithful to Quake than everyone's complaints with this one! It didn't have dynamic lighting without a cvar. It capped map brightness values instead of properly implementing overbright lighting. It didn't even bother to implement the glowing lighting on certain parts of textures. Let GLQuake die. It was a bundle of compromises from the getgo.

 

As far as lighting differences go. I don't think every single map needs to be revisited to disable light bouncing or whatever. Overall I think the new lighting is nicer. Just a handful of problem areas need to be addressed in my opinion (Shub's roof, the Door to Chthon dark bridge space) and itll be good enough for me.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Tarvis

[Dweller]

31 minutes ago, Rexen² said:

Is by any chance the game using the CPU instead of the GPU? That might lead to issues in that case, also make sure your power plan is set to Performance instead to something like say Power Saver if on a laptop.  

 

I can't figure out how to change it to Performance, do you know how to do that? EDIT: I figured it out, maybe it'll help, but I'll have to see.

 

54 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Correlation is not causation. Not all software is the same (if they were, they would be identical), and one piece of software can expose an issue in your system that others do not by straining or using it in different ways.

Additionally, it fails the smell test. The one very important thing to remember; our game can only persist for as long as you have it open. The moment you close it, Windows clears out anything to do with it from all active resources, we can't allocate memory out side of our applications page. Everything goes. If you are still having problems after it's closed, we can no longer be the cause.

 

Take for example the game New World, which recently came into beta. It was noted that people were complaining about their RTX 3080 GPUs being bricked by the game's main menu. But that wasn't what was going on, the game wasn't bricking anything (it's not able to do that itself, no combination of code can permit that level of hardware control), it was a bug in EVGAs firmware where if an applications framerate got too high, the firmware would overdrive the fans to absurd levels (i.e 200,000 RPM, and even without the heat being generated to necessitate it), causing the GPUs own power delivery to burn out from over voltage. The game was technically the trigger, but it was not the cause or at fault.

 

Is there anything I can do to see if there is a hardware problem? Any kind of diagnostic thing?

Edited August 24, 2021 by DavetheDoomguy

[Edward850]

34 minutes ago, DavetheDoomguy said:

Is there anything I can do to see if there is a hardware problem? Any kind of diagnostic thing?

Not to my personal knowledge, no. That's the kind of thing I would need to have the computer physically in my hands to even start taking potshots at. Though maybe someone else here could have a theory or two to propose.

 

54 minutes ago, Rexen² said:

Is by any chance the game using the CPU instead of the GPU? That might lead to issues in that case, also make sure your power plan is set to Performance instead to something like say Power Saver if on a laptop.  

There is no software renderer in this release of Quake, so that won't apply here.

 

Unrelated, as a heads up for any folks here having trouble playing Quake multiplayer on their Switch, I've just heard that one cause is people who have turned the time sync off (because they were cheating animal crossing, no I'm not joking). The encrypted network tunnel in Playfab requires an accurate sync'd time on your Switch to function properly, so you'll need to turn this back on.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Edward850

[Wavy]

3 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

I've just heard that one cause is people who have turned the time sync off (because they were cheating animal crossing, no I'm not joking).

And this is why you don't cheat: You won't be able to play Quake deathmatch