Make Quake DC Run Faster!

Talk about Quake, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, or other DC first person shooting game ports and mods for those games in here.
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007Cheater
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Make Quake DC Run Faster!

Post by 007Cheater »

I recieved this email, not sure if its good or not, figured id post it here to see what you guys think :)
Hi!
I heard QuakeDC had memory problems because of WinCE's libs.
Because QuakeDC has no Multiplayer-support, network libs in the Wince-dir can be deleted.
My QuakeDC seems to run faster without them:


DPMODEMX.DLL (modem driver)
DPLDPLAY.DLL
DPWSOCKX.DLL (socket driver)
DPLAYX.DLL = (242 kb! needed for Multiplaying/direct play)
JSCRIPT.DLL= (330 kb! needed for Java-Script)
MRASDIAL.EXE (dialing programm)
MPPP.DLL= (ppp libary)
MSHTML.DLL= (1.82 MB!!!, needed for showing HTML-files)
OLEAUT32.DLL= (160 kb output lib, I guess..)
PHONETIC.DLL (don't know...)
URLMON.DLL= (188kb!, needed for typing in URLs)
WININET.DLL = (326 kb, needed for Network-support)
=
About 3.2 MB not needed data loaded into RAM!



There are also too big Fonts:
Mtheibd.ttf =8.85 MB!!!!!
Msming.ttf =3.02 MB!!!!!
Msgot.ttf =1.61 MB!!!!!
----------------
= 13.48 MB


replacing them with Tahoma.ttf (3x103kb) would save 13MB of space/(ram?)!
Deleting/replacing would also make download of QuakeDC much smaller!



I hope this information was useful for you and the next QuakeDC download will last less than 1 hour ;).



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Post by HyperG »

once its loaded in ram, its in there. So yes this may lead a step to making better mods, just maybe.
If you think typing 'make' is hard, forget coding.
If you can't figure out the commands to DC-Tool, forget coding.
If you think coding is as easy as typing printf("Hello World\n"); , shoot yourself.
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Post by TheDumbAss »

Hehe... thanks Cheater...
Id forgotten about that.

I'm going to put this link into the FAQ somewhere...
http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=7087

He did all that that was mentioned in that email... and he found much more other stuff for us too :)
I wonder where Moi went... he was only here for that one topic.
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Post by HyperG »

Why not update the web-site instead? :-p

You know how they sometimes we have surprise upgrades that wipe out the whole board >_< .
If you think typing 'make' is hard, forget coding.
If you can't figure out the commands to DC-Tool, forget coding.
If you think coding is as easy as typing printf("Hello World\n"); , shoot yourself.
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Post by TheDumbAss »

Yeah... I know.

I've been planning to upload a newer even smaller distribution to the quakedev site taking into account these new changes. What I have now is down to 3.5MB. I think I can get it a little smaller... I want to remove a few more things and get a couple burns off on it to make sure all is working properly. Then I'll have it uploaded to QuakeDev. :)

I've been working on the site off and on... but havent got enough done to upload it yet. I've been having a lot going on in my life (again) and its making my progress slow. I am working on it though...
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Post by Specially Cork »

Cool, speedier Quake DC. Maybe people will stop complaining about lag now.
Image
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Post by TheDumbAss »

I have not noticed any speed increase by removing all those files...
Only thing I noticed any differant... is that the size of the distribution would drop dramaticly.

Feel free to try it yourself and let us know if you notice any differance :)
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Post by 999 »

What's the average framerate on QuakeDC? I was pulling about 25fps on my iPAQ using my custom PocketQuake Maps and a small pak files.

We (pocketmatrix) had gotten our small pak file down to about 3.5 by stripping all the single player levels, monster models and sounds. We used this pak for playing against bots on small cf cards, not necessarily for saving system resources like you are attempting here. I woudln't reckon there is any speed difference in using the small pak files aside from their initial loading.

I'm intrigued as to how well Q runs on the DC. It used to drive me crazy to see "can someone port Quake to dreamcast? it uses SH4 just like ..." posts on our boards. I'll admit I deleted quite a few, and probably even mocked some of you here had you ventured over to those boards. Now a dreamcast owner myself, I appologize, but not until I enjoy the fruit of your labor :twisted:

Have a go on my map for some simplistic fast paced 1v1 action. You'll get a guaranteed 25fps on an iPAQ, and hopefully (I'll soon find out) a similar experience on the DC.

I've got quite a few mods running on the PocketPC version like FvF and RailArena just off the top of my head. They're in custom pak files with low poly maps w/ map rotation +bots etc. If they're applicable to the QuakeDC, I'd love to share them. I've got about 4 PPC friendly maps with a vis of no greater than 100 at any one time (i may be off a zero, but the point is, they're made with VIS in mind).

Thanks, and if there's anything I can offer which you guys don't already know about PocketQuake which might apply to QuakeDC (if infact it does)don't hesitate to ask.
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Post by TheDumbAss »

Something cross compatable with ppc would be a total rewrite of the progs.dat with ram useage in mind.
Removing many unneeded files from the precache would lower load times. Removing many of the sounds would lower the ambiance but it could be setup so the player can toggle what type to use/not use. Streamlining chunks of code... etc.

to that... I offer this little tech demo/code base/fully working botmatch mod.
http://quakedev.dcemulation.org/downloa ... eanfbx.zip

What is in that package is the combination of several things...

Electro's cleanDM v.8 is a highly optimized deathmatch only codebase.
All monster code has been removed.
Optimization of the precache have been made.
Several large chunks of code have been rewritten.
All to make the smoothest fastest DM play possible.

and FBXa Frik has already proven his FBX system works. This code includes his maxplayer hack and Frikmenu. Both could easily be removed for non DC use.

It compiles warning free with FrikQCC at level 4 detection.
It runs very smooth on dreamcast.

That package includes the compiled progs.dat and the source code.

Yes your mods would likely work well and they might be useful to some of the QuakeDC users.

QuakeDC is probibly a lot more forgiving with the maps then PPC... All of the singleplayer maps run with very little or no trouble. Though it doesnt seem to handle near as many polygons on screen at once as standard GLquake for PC.

Of course simpler maps should still mean slightly faster gameplay.

Something FrikaC found out while I was testing some things for him is...
Do to some endian related issues around inits some mods made after the release of qccx wont work correctly on dreamcast. This may also be an issue on some versions of pocketquake.
endian is how the cpu stores big (multi-byte) numbers

All of intel's chips (and clones) do it backwards. Just about everyone else does it in the correct direction.
Basicly... titanium didnt take into account which direction the SH4 processor stores the numbers. This doesnt cause any problems with stock quake because the problem inits (introduced by qccx) arent used.

Those problem inits can be coded around but the alternitives would likely be a tad slower. This also is not an automatic problem with mods compiled with qccx or its later incarnates (including frikqcc). It only matters if the author used those kinds of inits.

I'll have to get back to you on framerate...
I've forgotten how to check :oops:
But it can deffenately be called more than playable...
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Post by 999 »

Thanks for the reply.

I'll take a look at the link first, as it sounds like the Qdc to have.

I take it there are no command lines with Qdc as per forcing the game mod by overwriting the progs.dat file. I'm a little rusty, but from what I remember this pretty much negates using more than1 mod on a self boot Qdc at a time? Hope not, I'd at least like to have RocketArena, RailArena and plain old FrikBots on one CD. I reckon I could use Omnibots as a last resort for a single QdcCD since it supports standard DM and a pseudo RocketArena mode. I used configs to setup the gametype upon load. For instance, pressing up would initiate Obots in RA mode, while pressing down would be DM. Upon pressing, another cfg is execed rebinding up and down accordingly. You reckon the same is possible at the very least on the DC? Don't mean to overstep my welcome here, I'm just low on CDs for the next few days ;)

I'm mainly wantin' to play my maps and mods, on the tube for a change, I only get about 15 minutes of battery power on my iPAQ, and playin' on the on the PC just defeats the whole purpose with gams like wolfenstein installed ;)
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Post by TheDumbAss »

Yes... no command line options :(
One mod per disc, maxplayers of 4, etc...

Discs are cheap... and one good mod kinda deserves its own disc.

while your experamenting though you can use a nonselfbooting disc and keep burning new sessions to it until you get what you want. To do this you will need to find the utopia boot disc though.

With a little work frikbot could be trained to do rocketarena, railarena, normal deathmatch, and a few other things... and have it all selectable from an onscreen menu. :)

Oh and I released a set of small low r_speed maps last year... Electro made FBX waypoints for them and I just uploaded an updated release that includes them.
http://dumbass.hypermart.net/presents/released.htm

Hold off a bit on downloading the quakedc engine files for a bit (if you havent already) I'll try that new smaller distribution out before I go to bed.
[Edit- Done that here...
http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=72737 ]
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Here we go again!

Post by Moi »

Hi!
I havent been here for a long time!
There were some hard examinations at school :(

But I wanted to ask can you still save savegames without those files?
I cant....
I'll be back the next days...
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