Interview with the ezQuake development team

The QuakeWorld lurkers and regulars got together on the quakeworld forum and made some questions to the ezQuake development team. The questions go from technical to personal and even some drama. Read more to find out what kind of people are working on your favourite quakeworld client.

1. Up2nOgOoD[ROCK]: Hi, how are you?

Disconnect: =:-)

2. Sprit: What are you doing for a living?

Cokeman: i’m a Swedish computer science student and part time sysadmin.

VVD: I’m programmer and sysadmin about 6 years. Complete faculty of Computation Mathematics and Cybernetics of Moscow State University in 2004.

JohnNy_cz added, Most of us study computer science or something similar.

3. Ruskie: What is the team in most need of in terms of contribution (code/art/other)?

JohnNy_cz: Webhosting with PHP&MySQL, reliable long-term testers, coders.

VVD: Testers for current CVS version who can compile ezQuake self. And testers and developers for soft - if community need soft version…

Volshebnik wanted to know the following…

4. In version 1754 when using s_loadas8 bit 1 the sound of the lightning gun firing is screwed up (It sounds like loud static and tends to drown out other sounds). As far as I can tell it is only that one sound.

Tonik: After several intense brainstorming sessions the team found a solution: use s_loadas8bit
0, that fixes the problem.

5. Quakeworld servers use 77 fps, that is 1000 ms/13 ms = 76.9230769230769230769230769230769 fps. Would it be better to use a whole number for this (server)? Does the 77th frame actually happen? Or do these numbers just determine the lowest possible ping at 77 fps being 13 ms? Should cl_physfps be set to 76.9230769230769230769230769230769?

JohnNy_cz: Your ping will never be exactly 13.000… ms therefore the number 76,923 doesn’t make any sense nor do the calculations.

6. I have noticed that with cl_nolerp 0 and pushlatency 0 the gameplay is at its smoothest, but there seems to be some extra (visual) latency going on. What is pushlatency 0 actually doing and how much visual latency is this actually adding, if any?

Disconnect: pushlatency 0 = let ezQuake calculate best pushlatecy value. Pushlatency is some crazy prediction, i dont know how exactly it works. If you have vid_vsync 0 (0.0 in last release due to some bug :P) and CRT screen there should be no additional latency.

7. Is there any way for ezquake to cap the hz rate of the mouse at inbetween values, such as 77 or 154 hz? Without using that miserable dinput?

Tonik: dinput or not, Windows USB drivers only allow certain fixed values for mouse poll rate (125/250/500 etc)

8. More quake used to have a wonderful feature of completely turning off explosions that I really liked. Any chance we could see that in a new release?

JohnNy_cz: Good feature request, we will have a look at it.

9. In the quest for the completely non-accelerated mouse, that is no positive _or_ negative acceleration… are the command line switches -noforcemspd -noforcemparms -noforcemaccel actually helping any? If so in what way? Also, is there any way to determine based on the code what might be the ideal yaw/pitch base to yield the least amount of acceleration? Ie. m_yaw/pitch 0.22 0.022 0.0022 0.00022 0.000022 . The bigger the number, ie. 0.22 seems to be accelerated and the smaller the number ie. 0.000022 appears to be negatively accelerated.

Tonik: In older clients, including FuhQuake and mqwcl, it so happened that starting the client without any switches would turn on acceleration. This is fixed in ezQuake, so you don’t need any extra switches. As for m_yaw and m_pitch, these are just multipliers, e.g. setting m_yaw to 0.22 instead of 0.022 makes your effective horizontal sensitivity ten times as high; setting m_pitch to -0.022 inverts the y axis (that’s the only useful application for it really). Neither cvar has anything to do with acceleration.

10. I suggested this in another part of the forum, but would it be possible for quake to differentiate the mouse input for left/right/up/down exactly enough to adjust the sensitivity for each? For example moving the mouse to the left being more sensitive than moving it to the right in game?

jogi said it would be possible. JohnNy_cz added, With such thing activated, if you would move your mouse somewhere and then back where it was, you will not aim to the same place as on the beginning. My bet is that this would be pretty much unnatural even to you.

11. I have heard that the visual lag that existed in glquake compared to software quake was removed. Is this really true or is there still a difference and if so how great?

Tonik: The combination of ezQuake’s independent physics and a fast video card (200+ fps) eliminates any visual lag in both software and GL.

phil the fakeshaft lover had some questions to fire away:

12. How did you (each individual member of the team) come to be an ezQuake developer?

JohnNy_cz: I offered shaman and hexum that I could help with anything around their new client, so I did some minor things here and there and the most important job was the documentation system. When adding some missing bits of the documentation texts, I had to browse the source codes from time to time, so finally like 9 months later I commited my first piece of code :-)

VVD: I’m project manager and developer of the MVDSV since Jan 2004. And than I saw new client I write few patches to ezQauke (bugfixes for server browser) It was before first public build 922. Then I send some more bugfixes/new features and hexum or/and shaman (don’t remember) invite me in ezQuake developer team.

13. Have you done anything technical (software) before (not necessarily quake 1 related), and if so, what?

Disconnect: Only some small programs at school/univercity.

Cokeman: I haven’t worked on any other major project, but done a bunch of small stuff… Nothing really worth to mention.

VVD: I wrote program for my father (for his work) at 1997 (last school grade). And I get money for it from his work. :-) Develope some small pathces for mpg123, FreeBSD kernel, samba and etc., many educational programs in school and in university, many small tools and use its now. 2 years ago I start to work with java (Eclipse as developer platform) and our developers team wrote servlet application - website core: apache+tomcat+struts+mysql (do u want url? :-)). Now I develop another website using analogous technologies: apache+IBM WebSphere community edition(tomcat5+J2EE apache geronimo)+jsf+hibernate+mysql+mssql - corporative portal.

14. Do you actively play quakeworld? How often, what are your favorite maps and your favorite weapons? Do you watch demos? What is your favorite mod (duel/2on2/4on4/ffa/etc) and who is your favorite(s) to watch players.

Cokeman: I don’t play much nowadays (last 6 months), busy coding. Played a lot 2004-2006 though. When I play I mostly play 1on1 against classmates. Haven’t watched much demos the last couple of months either, but yea. Favourite players to watch, Reppie, Griffin, Razor are some that come to mind.

Disconnect: Theese days no. Since to busy with real life and there are no 4on4 leagues. When NQR will began i’ll play much more (like every day for 2-3 hrs :P). My favorite map is ‘muskrat2′. Owned? :P It is TeamFortress map, pretty popular in Russia. In QW i like dm2@4on4, dm4@2on2 and ztndm3/aero@1on1. My favorite mod is TF–>4on4–>1on1–>2on2. FFA and DMM4 is only for warm-up. midair is 100% zzzz mode.

VVD: Yes. Last few weeks I play ~2 hours/day ~4 days/week = ~8 hours/week. ztndm3 & aerowalk in 1on1/2on2; e1m2 in 4on4; povdmm4, airar & tearena in dmm4. LG & AXE! :-D Watch, but only recomended by friends or from leagues/lans and tricks demos. :-) 1on1 dmm3/4. 2on2, but I better play 1on1. 4on4 - div6 (no time for pracs). :-( Doom, B1aze, xpr, Dag, Griffin, Mutilator; Rock&Reppie&Mortuary (when they turn off +forward at least half game) - don’t like demos when +forward more skilled player lose strategist (cs) player only because of his stupidity - “+forward and shoot me, I’m 0:100 with sg only!”.

15. Do you like cookies?

Jogi: i am kinda like the cookie monster in that family guy episode (if anyone has seen that ;])

VVD: Hm… Web cookies or food? :-D

Faustov wanted to put the heat on…

16. What’s the true story behind ezquake team getting rid of shaman?

Disconnect: I dont understand what was wrong for him. But he was crying and whining like emo for 2-3 days and then mysteriously disappear.

VVD: No comments.

17. Why did you stop cooperating with hexum?

JohnNy_cz: Hexum also left the QW scene completely, I tried to convince him to at least continue developing his security modules, but after some talks that first sounded promising he disappeared forever :-(.

VVD: No comments.

18. Did you really add hidden helpers for russian players in the recent ezquake clients?

qqshka: Yes.

19. Was Ilf the first one to test some beta ezQuake aimbot for russian (or any) players?

Tonik: ParadokS was our faithful tester from the beginning. Then Ilf came along, but he broke his promise never to set cl_shaftpercentage higher than 40, so we exposed him.

VVD: :-/ I saw Ilf’s lg-aim at MSKLAN on povdmm4 with top russian dmm4 players - doom, xpr, witka: he has lg from 37 to 42 (only 1 time 34.9) all 8 games! Demos at: http://quakeworld.ru/files/vvd/demos/msklan2006/1on1.pracs.rar P.S. Stupid question - disrespect. :-(

Ake_Vader was curious to know…

20. I want to know what big upcoming features they are working on and what they think about QTV. Will it ever take off and what’s needed to make it happen? :p Nice with a developer interview anyway as they don’t get as much recognition as they deserve. Personally, I am working on vid_restart, for windows its finished, only need to fix few issues. Trying add it to linux, dunno is this happened or not.

qqshka: About QTV, basically it workes, really :> Few weeks ago was fixed few bugs(in mvdsv and QTV), so it must be usable. Also in ezquake was added possibility stream mvd demo from QTV directly, this gives smooth playback. Probably we can try it on new TOT servers, just need to ask admin setup QTV and latest mvdsv.

Jogi: ive been working on a cam system and some menu stuff which i will include in ezquake once its done(the cam system at least, hope so ;])

VVD: FTE developers have to stop adding many useless unstable features in FTE Quake and make to work existing features, such as QTV, completely stable. :-[=] QTV support already added to MVDSV and ezQuake, but it work unstable: qtvproxy and MVDSV periodically crashes. :-(

Thanks for the question and thanks to the team giving some of their sweet $$ time.