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ProQuake 4

From Quake Wiki

Revision as of 02:48, 8 January 2010 by 99.54.146.62 (talk)

ProQuake 4 is the official extension of JP Grossman's original ProQuake engine, which Grossman handed off in December 2007 and is maintained by Baker.

ProQuake is considered the baseline standard in the NetQuake multiplayer community.

The original ProQuake had the following extended features:

  1. High precision aim.
  2. Ping in scoreboard.
  3. NAT Fix.
  4. "Smoothcam" features.
  5. Client version detection.
  6. IP address logging capability.
  7. Support for CRMOD "team scores feature", which is supported by Clan Arena X and Rune Quake.
  8. RCON support (remote server console)
  9. Clock display always visible to increase awareness of time limits.
  10. Ability to stay connected to a ProQuake server without maps and models.
  11. Best-weapon support
  12. Record a demo at any time capability
  13. Crosshair positioning

Cheat-Free Mode

Cheat-Free mode was a security dll verified way to authenticate the client to the server. On Windows, this was a reasonably ensured on Windows that a client was unmodified and not using an assist patched or wallhacking client. And while this proved a strong deterrent to hacked clients, did not protect against cheat-oriented drivers, like "cheater" opengl32.dll files which could have wallhack or aim assist capabilities. An additional downside was that this cheat-free mode was only supported in ProQuake and caused users of other engines such as DarkPlaces or Qrack to be unable to participate on such servers.

In December 2007, the "Anti-Wallhack" feature in FTEQW was ported to ProQuake 3.91 and within a couple of weeks ended up installed on virtually every deathmatch oriented NetQuake server. This proved to be a more effective assurance against at least wall hacking and due to the client-neutral nature of the server, was quickly and widely adopted.

Cheat-Free mode by the end of 2009 is essentially a retired and unused feature as a result.

The original ProQuake reached version 3.50 in Summer '02 and essentially stopped.

ProQuake 4

ProQuake 4 is a continuation of the original ProQuake meant to resolve many severe problems that have cropped up over the years.

  1. FOV rendering issues
  2. Widescreen support
  3. CPU clock fix on Windows
  4. Multiplatform support
  5. Lack of a texture cache mismatch fix.
  6. Countless other small and troublesome issues.

Goals

The goal of ProQuake 4 is essentially to lift the baseline standard of the NetQuake community. As many users prefer the old GLQuake or WinQuake look, it is a "Quake purist" engine of choice for NetQuake multiplayer.

ProQuake 4 doesn't support any external media (replacement textures, colored lits, etc.) but does support 512x512 skyboxes and the Half-Life map format and basic fog support, but ProQuake 4 has a number of convenient features:

  • Video mode switching
  • Ability to switch to -dinput use on the fly
  • Gamma adjustment on the fly
  • Up and down volume sound keys (-/+)
  • Vid_vsync on | off
  • Countless small bug-fixes like SV_Touchlinks fix.
  • AVI creation ability on Windows
  • Windows, OS X, Linux builds (native -- not SDL builds). [And actually a FlashQuake build].
  • Support for 5 mouse buttons (both with and without DirectInput)
  • Gamedir switching
  • Clipboard copy
  • Ability to render views in software renderer that old software engines cannot due too many surfaces

And with modestly extended MAX_EDICTS (2048) is capable of playing all the single player maps that JoeQuake and FitzQuake 0.80 are able to play, but without the radically extended limits supported by FitzQuake 0.85, DarkPlaces, aguirRe's Quake cannot play the 16-20 largest single player maps.

ProQuake 4 has several other enhanced features, but they default to OFF or are server side features that generally only interest server administrators.

  • Interpolation (OFF by default, also known as animation smoothing)
  • Fullbright texture support in GL version (OFF by defaults)

By modding standards, ProQuake 4 has no modding advantages over the original WinQuake.