Good to hear a solution for flickering/non-responsive monsters in big levels is near. Looking forward to playing Tears of the false good for the first time in Zircon.
This bug does not affect only monsters, ammo and heath pickups as well as random doors and other func entities are also bugged.
so much hyped
so much...
:-)
The sound problem is somehow related to antivirus check. Sometimes (not with every release) when I start new zircon beta for the first time my antivirus starts to test the executable. Test always ends OK, but sound is disabled. I need to restart system to get sound back. It already happened in the past but I forgot.
Congrats on the release Baker.
Thank you for making gl_overbright_models an item in option menu. Frankly, I don't like that feature. It just makes monsters not-part-of-the-scene because they stand out against the dark background too much. They are visible, I get it... some may like it, but not me.
Does sound work fine for you? My game is muted and console says something about failed sound initialization.
EDIT: mea culpa - sound is OK after system reboot. strange...
to Tireheb666:
There are like 10-15 maps in various mods that are bugged or wont load at all. 99% of mods/levels work just fine with zircon.
I run into strange problem - I tested flashlight with Dwell and everything was OK. Then I tried other mods and vanilla Quake. Flashlight works fine when I am looking down, the moment I look directly forward or up a huge white corona appears in front of me. It does not happen with Dwell though... strange
I fought it was a result of my tweaks but it happens with your original file too.
must be something in my settings but cant find out what...
EDIT:
it is caused by "corona intensity" settings in option menu. Setting for Dwell mod was 0. Setting corona intensity above 0 creates that blinding light. Interesting....
Hi Baker, thanks a lot.
I tweaked the settings a little so that flashlight cone is more narrow and but reaches longer distance. I also replaced cubemap with hires one from HL2 mod. It is a great addition.
only one thing could make it better - can flashlight alert monster?
Hi Baker, I am curious about the flashlight feature... Can the flashlight be somehow integrated into Zircon so that it would work with any mod? That would be great for hunting for secrets in dark corners... :-)
OK, I get it but still... RTX3090 is way faster GPU than RX6600XT. It should handle anything.
"r_dynamic 0 and everything is smooth, r_dynamic 1 and certain areas of some maps experience bad lag."
that is weird - I run a quick test with both r_dynymic 1/0 and found no change in FPS stability.
Hi Shot846
what is your PC specs? I have tested the latest Zircon build with Dimension of the machine and found exactly zero places with framedrops. There were several laggy levels in the past, but not anymore. At least not for me (Ryzen5600+RX6600XT+16 GB DDR4)
Some DotM levels wont load but that has been already reported.
I haven´t thought for a minute that fixing DP is easy. I have almost zero experience with coding except for tinkering with quakeC years ago. I tried that but it was too abstract from me. I only contributed a little to the SMC... small things here and there. Anything beyond that is black magic to me.
Finding problems and reporting bugs is a different case. Looking for errors in other people's work is basically what I do for a living :-)
I tried ad_tears again with r_novis 1 and flickering entities are gone. However r_novis in uber map like ad_tears is not a viable option unless you have NASA class computer.
What is strange too is that many enemies in ad_tears simply ignores you till you engage. Definitely not an intended feature.
anyway.. thanks for you hard work on Zircon. It takes time but you are getting there :-)
Hi Baker
I tried both executables and ad_tears ar alk_dismal (from Alkaline) are still bugged. Zicon loads both levels, but the old bugs are still there - flickering/invisible entities.
Another extra big level for Arcane Dimensions - Imhotep's Legacy still does not work at all and zircon CTD with out of memory error message while loading the level.
Should these issues be fixed now and the problem is on my side or protocol 999 needs more fine-tuning?
Choppy sound is fixed, thanks Baker.
Notice for new users - antivirus found zircon_beta_gcc.exe suspicious and decided to test executable upon first launch. Test was OK, but sound failed to initialize completely - game was totally muted. I had to restart system and then sound was back online.
Hi Baker, I encountered strange sound behavior in zircon_beta_gcc - sound gets "choppy" at times. It is hard to describe... sounds like some special distortion filter. I remember similar sound bug from games in 90s when PCs were slow and sound was laggy in demanding games/scenes. But now it happens high FPS levels. Sometimes it starts during level and bug continues even after loading of another map. In the end I have to restart whole game.
It is very inconsistent bug... it happens randomly in random levels. It happened sometimes with the early versions of zircon as well but never in the recent months. Anybody here with the same problem?
one more thing: engine culling is still too agressive sometimes. We have already discussed that topic - disappearing buttons and decorative stuff in the distance.
some minor thoughts:
decals and bloodstains are displayed on the transparent parts of the textures used usually for foliage or fences. It looks weird when you have these bloodstains or explosion decals floating seemingly in the air. Transparent textures are usually much larger than the visible part and when explosion happens near them part of the decal is imprinted on the transparent texture. Can transparent textures ignore decals/bloodstains?
small inconsistencies in surface shading here and there.
water deform slider is missing from the menu. Or maybe I did not find it?
nice fps speed up in big maps :-)
hi baker
there is something wrong with the sound. no sound at all.
screen of the console at start up, maybe it helps - Ibb.co
FALSE ALARM - sound works after system reboot.
I tested more cases of different textures in level_specific folders and QRP textures are correctly replaced in these specific levels. Another bug killed.
On the other hand, another HD textures related problem emerged - HD liquid textures are again no longer animated and also HD water/slime textures ignore transparency settings.
EDIT - above mentioned situation applies only to the HD textures directly in textures folder inside pk3 file. Water/slime/lava textures inside textures/mapname folder work as intended.
thanks Baker :-)
Hi Baker
I quickly tested this beta release with a suite of usual suspects - biggest maps from Alkaline, AD, Mjolnir etc... zircon loads all these levels and framerate is playable. This release can run ad_tears with rock solid 60 fps on my PC. the level itself is still bugged with flickering enemies and other glitches. However, there is no problem speedwise anymore. Same applies for alk_dismal from Alkaline.
I am sure are have list of bugs yet to kill, so I just mention two issues just in case they somehow slip under the radar:
bugged transparent textures - foliage sprites with pink areas that should be transparent
HD external textures for liquid surfaces are not animated
looking for the final release.
jakub
Wow... just wow. I tried to find a level that would bring FPS under 60 and simply could not. Incredible progress speed-wise. It feels like like I have skipped several generations of GPU+CPU.
magical..
Edit. so I finally found one - smej2m4, but still very playable, not at all like before.
of course there are some trade-offs and bugs that have been already killed but for the 20%beta... impressive
"What the proper solution is that if a combination of sound specs is rejected, to fallback to a lower setting."
well... you right.. it is more a cheap workaround than a proper solution. however, I once read that all software is mostly dirty hacks, cheap workarounds and ducktape. :-)
looking forward to the new version.
no sound bug solution
I tested fresh download of remobilize jam mappack. Started it in zircon for the first time. Zircon creates new config.cfg with snd_channels set to 8. To have any sound ingame I had to change number of sound channels to "2". Works in any mod I tested.
I have stereo speakers so for me snd_channels set to 8 is a no go. Seams like it is a default value for zircon. Sound is back the moment I rewrite it back to 2 or delete it from config.cfg completely.
OK. I thought you have some more recent DP release. It doesn't matter... Zircon is the best DP version by far anyway :-)
You mentioned in the past that more up-to-date version of DP is faster but does ugly things to you laptop so you decided to built zircon upon older DP version. That version I wanted to test on my system. Instructions how to compile executable on the DP github are not very helpful for somebody not skilled in coding. And guys behind DP do not publish new releases.
For me, Quake combat+ worked out of the box. I haven't played all the Q1 levels, I skipped through maybe 15 levels across all episodes and no bugs or glitches. Tested on Radeon 6600xt.
Baker, could you send a link to the problematic build of DP? I would like to test it. I have some ancient version of DP and I would like to see recent progress. I tried to compile executable from source code, but I failed. I am missing something or I am probably an idiot. 🙂
32bit version can't load ad_tears. 64bit technically yes, but only theoretically. Darkplaces/Zircon can't display all the entities without proper 999 protocol support so there are invisible enemies/ammo pickups/doors/lifts... Also frame rate is abysmal.
What is interesting that ad_sepulcher is also giant level and it runs flawlessly.
_jakub1_
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