Need help with DarkPlaces (SOLVED)

[armadillo]

So I had recently installed the DarkPlaces Quake 1 engine, but the game lags really badly, especially when there's an explosion. I can't seem to find out why.

(I also intend on running QuakeWorld with DarkPlaces, so if anyone can explain how, that would be great. Thanks! )

[Lone Wolfe (Hoover1979)]

I'm in the same boat as you. I wish I had a solution Darkplaces is the only engine that runs worse on my GTX1080 than it did on my old GTX970. Not to mention the dev builds never work, they either lag even more, don't start at all or give me a white screen with sound. There hasn't been an official update in years (13th of May 2014, to be precise), and I bet it's an optimization issue. I bet Darkplaces is not optimised to run with modern (post 2014) hardware.

[armadillo]

Well my computer isn't exactly new. It was purchased in 2011 and still uses Windows 7. Nothing about the hardware has really been updated or replaced. So for a lot of games, they lag. But Quake seems like a weird case since it's an older game, and shouldn't really be suffering a whole ton of lag.

[Lone Wolfe (Hoover1979)]

Originally posted by placebo1218:

Well my computer isn't exactly new. It was purchased in 2011 and still uses Windows 7. Nothing about the hardware has really been updated or replaced. So for a lot of games, they lag. But Quake seems like a weird case since it's an older game, and shouldn't really be suffering a whole ton of lag.

Darkplaces is a beefy engine and required lots of horsepower to run. The real-time lighting and shadows take a lot of resources, it supports nice flame, particle and weather effects and if you use HD textures and set the gloss mode to 2 and enable Parallax Occlusion Mapping on older rigs Darkplaces becomes a slideshow, so if your hardware is old and other powerful games lag this would be why Darkplaces also lags. I would recommend a quad-core i7 and GTX970 for a good experience with Darkplaces, but you would need old drivers as features that took the sting out of the demanding shadows like shadow mapping which blurred the shadows and too some load of the GPU is broken in later drivers.

You should try QuakeSpasm as it is also compatible with HD textures but doesn't have the demanding bells and whistles Darkplaces has. On a 2011 rig it should run like butter even with HD textures.

[armadillo]

Alright. I'll look into it. I basically used Darkplaces because some guy said it would work with my OS. Thanks for the suggestion, though! I'll be sure to tell you if it works. :)

[Lone Wolfe (Hoover1979)]

Originally posted by placebo1218:

Alright. I'll look into it. I basically used Darkplaces because some guy said it would work with my OS. Thanks for the suggestion, though! I'll be sure to tell you if it works. :)

No problemo. I'll also save you time in searching

http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/download.htm

Also if you play with a Controller Quakespasm SDL2 has Controller support. I perfer Keyb+Mouse myself in FPS games, but also have a bad back as a result of an MVA back in november 1996, (ironically the same year Quake came out), and some days it's easier to lie down and play with a controller than hunch over a keyboard and cause further pain.

There is also a CVAR to set the FPS cap in quakespasm to whatever you desire (it is locked at 71FPS, I think).

host_maxfps 120
if you have a 120Hz Monitor and want to make full use of it

host_maxfps 85
if you have a 85Hz Monitor and want to make full use of it

host_maxfps 60
if you have a 60Hz Monitor and don't want quakespasm to render more FPS than your screen can display, to take some load off of your GPU.

[=RaggA=]

Originally posted by placebo1218:

(I also intend on running QuakeWorld with DarkPlaces, so if anyone can explain how, that would be great. Thanks! )

My advice, don't. If you want to play Quakeworld you want to grab ezQuake. It is the main client used in the Quakeworld comunity and is regularly updated. https://ezquake.github.io/

[TehSpoopyKitteh]

Originally posted by Lone Wolfe (Hoover1979):

I'm in the same boat as you. I wish I had a solution Darkplaces is the only engine that runs worse on my GTX1080 than it did on my old GTX970. Not to mention the dev builds never work, they either lag even more, don't start at all or give me a white screen with sound. There hasn't been an official update in years (13th of May 2014, to be precise), and I bet it's an optimization issue. I bet Darkplaces is not optimised to run with modern (post 2014) hardware.

You guys need to go through the options and change some settings
I have a GTX970 on a Core i76700K and dark places works perfectly fine without texture mods...but with a high resolution texture mods, I rarely ever drop below 50FPS. Dark Places is a beast of a sourceport engine.

First of all, because of the low poly count with Quake, you can safely use DarkPlaces at 1280x720 without any trouble at all if you max out the settings.

[armadillo]

Welp. After a bit of searching, I finally found an engine that works perfectly for me. It doesn't lag, and can cover my needed resolution, as well as plays the soundtrack (sort of). I found it here: http://www.moddb.com/games/quake/downloads/ultimate-quake-patch-v1-11 Although, I appreciate your effort to help me solve my problem. :)