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Time for a new TyrQuake release because, well, it's been a while ;). There a couple of bug fixes in there which people have been asking for which help with the Soul of Evil and Contract Revoked mods.
TyrUtils version 0.4 is up now. This release was mainly to fix a glaring bug in the light util, which caused a crash when trying to compile any map with ".lit" style coloured lighting. Also included is a little bit of optimisation work I've done on qbsp - it can be significantly faster, depending on the map.
New release of TyrQuake (v0.58) is up. This fixes the MAX_PRSTR problem a number of people reported, along with a bunch of other minor fixes and code cleanups.
Who would have thought I'd ever get back to another release of TyrUtils? Version 0.2 is up there now since qbsp is now somewhat usable as my main compiler. I thought it's a good time to cut a release before I get back to some more optimisations. Currently it's not very fast but at least it can handle the worst of my maps.
The next TyrQuake (v0.57) release is out. Nothing terribly exciting, just some bug fixes and basic 64-bit support on Linux. I still have some patches sitting around for Win64 which I'll probably incorporate eventually.
Still not much happening on other fronts, though I have recently taken a positive step to reclaim some of my free time by quitting World of Warcraft. It was fun while it lasted, but the amount of dedication required to participate in the higher level raids and such was just too much for me.
Time to push another TyrQuake (v0.56) release out the door. This release was primarily for adding support for Linux on PPC.
So another year has passed without me having produced any new maps - kind of sad really. Anyway, not to dwell on that too much I have hopes that 2007 will bring some more good things. This has been a very difficult year for me personally but I'm glad to say a lot of the issues which were preventing me from spending any time on my hobbies are behind me now.
Most likely this web site will evolve a bit to become more than just purely Quake stuff. I'm not sure how much more Quaking I have in me, but a couple more maps at least, I think. For Quake mapping to remain interesting I'm probably going to need to get involved with some work on the map editing tools. The current editors are getting a bit frustrating to work with.
I don't really know what 2007 is going to hold, but I'm actually looking forward to finding out.
New version of TyrQuake (v0.55) is out. This release includes some patches from the FreeBSD port and reworking the CD audio drivers. Taking the next step from my maintenance of individual patch files, the source for TyrQuake and TyrUtils are now stored in a Git repository. The history going back to v0.47 (where I started keeping track of my changes) has been imported just to get things started.
The utils stuff is coming along, but a bit slowly. Thanks to those who emailed me some encouragment to finish the idbase map. Sorry to the beta testers who were expecting the next version a while ago. I can't promise anything other than that I will finish it eventually.
It seems I made a mistake and added the wrong version of qbsp to the utils package, so I've taken it down for now. It might take a little while for me to find my old changelogs, but I'll try to upload a fixed version soon.
Good news! Greg Lewis got in contact with me and gave me the okay to go
ahead and use his source code under the GNU GPL. Thanks Greg! I've now updated
the utils page with info about the new packaging.
Version 0.2 is up there now.
Just a quick update. I was going to put up a booth at QExpo, but I just don't have the energy right now. Anyway, just to get this out there, here is version 0.1 of tyr-utils (and source). This packages together my light and vis utils, as well as bspinfo and the beginnings of a bsputil tool. The version of tyrlite included is unchanged from version 0.99b, but the version of vis has a few tricks added to reduce compile times. I'll update the utils page later to reflect this new packaging. Qbsp will be added later, once I get a clean GPL version done (the TreeQBSP source isn't GPL compatible as far as I can tell, and I haven't been able to contact the author to get it changed).
Well, I thought this might happen - Yes, I have to confess that I don't think I'm going to have the map ready for QExpo. Disappointing, but better than spoiling the map by rushing it through without enough testing and polish. I will have something to release during the expo though - I've got some updates for vis I'm going to release, which help make it a bit faster. Hopefully the map won't be a long way off after that, but I'll stop boring you with these minor updates until it's actually done now.
Finally, the first beta of my new map is in the hands of the testers. Still a little bit of work to do and then a long compile job (my previous estimate of 48 hours was only off by 14... days!), but at least it's looking like there's a reasonable chance I'll actually be able to have it ready for Quake Expo.
Finally after a couple more mapping sessions I feel like I've turned a corner with the map. The end of the excruciating rock/terrain triangle brushes seem to be in sight, only a little further to go. It was a big relief to get enough done that I could seal the map up and compile it again for the first time in over a month. Good to see that the compiler still isn't a problem. Up to 44k+ clipnodes now, but that's totally unoptimised. Now it's becoming apparent that the long vis times required (~48 hours I'm guessing, still waiting...) will be a bit of a problem for testing. I'll have to hope that a fast vis will be good enough for the testers, otherwise there could be a bit of a problem making the QExpo deadline. Fingers crossed.
I've uploaded another update to TyrQuake (v0.54)
as well. This includes the removal of the gl_texsort 0 rendering
path, which isn't really an advantage on any cards I know about (and usually a
big disadvantage on slower cards). Like I said with my May update, this also
makes sure the particle rendering looks correct. Other than that, nothing else
really user-visible; just more juggling of the code internals as usual.
Gah! I'm in hell. Shit like this is all I've been staring at for the last three days...
Sometimes it seems like this map is never going to be done. Still, the QExpo is only a month or so away and that's what I'm aiming for right now (though I would understand if you were still a bit skeptical).
Uploaded a new version of TyrQuake (v0.53) which fixes the particle depth buffer bug in glquake (used to make the particles look like triangles when rendered in front of water textures). The fix was taken from Fitzquake (thanks Metlslime), which has had this fixed for ages. I thought it was a lot more complicated than that, so I had been avoiding doing it. Also for those building from the source package, the build system has had a fairly major overhaul. Now it's got proper auto-generation of header dependencies, which makes it a bit nicer to deal with from a coding point of view.
Update: Note that you'll need to make sure you set gl_texsort
1 for the particles to look right. I'll have to make sure that's the
default next time (and probably remove the option altogether).
Uploaded tyrlite v0.99a
v0.99b which fixes a silly bug with the memory allocation when calculating lit
file coloured lighting in v0.99. Thanks to Bengt for
picking up on that.
Update: fixed the silly colour data alignment bug in v0.99a.
Just some minor updates to the tools this time:
I also added a maps in progess section so you can see what maps I'm currently working on (or not working on, as the case may be).
Ok, I spoke too soon. I couldn't sleep last night and got to thinking about the clipnode limits. Today I experimented with it a bit and came up with a patch. So, here's the new version of TyrQuake (v0.52). It should be able to handle a BSP with up to 65520 clipnodes, but so far my test map is only topping out at around 37k clipnodes.
No engine updates this week - I've been busy mapping ;-)
This week I finally came up against the dreaded clipnode limit, requiring me to add a hack to tyr-qbsp to properly handle the (short) integer wrap around. Somewhat disappointingly, this now means that I can't test my map in my own engine until I make the necessary changes there as well. Luckily, Bengt's engine can already handle this, so I don't have to stop mapping to fix it up - I can just use his and fix mine later.
My third weekly update - I haven't been this consistent for a while... Anyway, another TyrQuake update (v0.51) has been uploaded. There's been a whole lot of changes, but mostly it's just re-organising the code. I've now completed replacing all the old command completion code with my new string tree approach. Probably the only user visible change would be the slightly cleaned up console printing for command completion. Not sure if/when I'll get to doing any renderer enhancements - there's still a few more things I want to finish up with the console first.
Yet another engine update. This one actually brings together some of the things I've been working on previously. It's now possible to use tab completion on the console for looking up map and demo names. e.g.
]/map e1<TAB><TAB> e1m1 e1m4 e1m7 e1m2 e1m5 e1m8 e1m2ish e1m5duel e1m3 e1m6
The same thing goes for the playdemo and timedemo commands. It should be relatively easy to add others as I go now, at least for other file based completions (e.g. exec, play, ...)
I've uploaded another update to TyrQuake.
The most interesting change is the addition of a maplist command. You can type maplist to get a list of all map files in the current search paths or, type maplist prefix to get a list of all maps starting with prefix.
Also, the ABI issues with glXGetProcAddress and the problems with Nvidia's really long gl extension string under linux should now be fixed.
I've uploaded a minor update to Tyrlite which fixes the Not 3 values for ... errors (now only a warning as it was supposed to be). Lacking time, I've just blindly made the change and compiled it, so if there's anything wrong with it give me a yell. Also, I've decided to try and keep my changes to TyrQuake better organised and make the individual patches available.