Hello,

I have posted here before with screenshots on a port of the most recently released Quake3 engine to EliteForce. I am using the Quake3 version from www.icculus.org to be precise.
I have come a long way since the first initial patches were released and have implemented nearly complete networking compatibility to old Eliteforce versions.

This means: compiling the icculus.org engine with my patches will enable anyone on all operating systems that are currently supported by ioQ3, 32 and native 64 bit, to play EliteForce online.
Alot of bugs and security issues have been fixed in the icculus.org engine and thus have been fixed in my version of EF as well.

This sounds nice in theory. Alas, as it is so often in life there are a few problems as well. Some people here might remember that your framerate in Q3 affects jumping.
This effect is used to jump out of the trenches on ctf_voy1 / ctf_voy2 and is now very important for trick jumping.
The reason for the framerate dependant behaviour is a non-ansi rounding used to compute the velocity vector in the original engine the new engine won't do (or at least, it would be very very difficult to do) because of the many different ways VM code gets executed on different platforms.

A more comprehensive, very technical answer to why framerate affects jumping can be found here:
http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Quake3/FAQFPSJumps.html

To revert the new engine to the old behaviour, I have to emulate the behaviour of the original games right in the virtual machines and this exactly is the problem.
It would require ALL players and servers to install a pak4.pk3 with newly built virtual machines and all modders to hand out updated versions of their virtual machines
While you can play with the new engine on older servers, without this pak4.pk3 it would result in bad motion prediction particularly on high pings.
And when playing on servers with a new version you wouldn't get out of the trenches anymore.

I realize this would be an enormous effort to try to get people to install a pak4.pk3 - so this must be coordinated.
My idea is of establishing a codebase for the virtual machine with known bugs removed. Everyone who coded for EF will probably have stumbled over one or two obvious bugs in the released source code that could now be fixed.
This codebase can then in turn be used to produce improved modifications.
I recall Salinga releasing a couple of modifications (gladiator, pinball) with unlagged code etc. that could all be implemented in this one codebase.
I would be happy to hear about your opinions and suggestions, thanks.


P.S.:
My patches and my work in progress for EliteForce can be found here:
http://thilo.kickchat.com/efport-progress/

If you want building instructions feel free to say so and I will provide them.

I am interested, I will PM my email address

np... which operating system do you want the building instructions for?

Quote (Thilo @ Feb. 25 2006, 7:01 am)

np... which operating system do you want the building instructions for?

I'm on Windows XP sp2.  If you want mass dispersal maybe you should put a news article on ef files and upload finished .pk4 and Hazard team HQ and Elite force universe and so on. And Thank you. BTW maybe you would get this seen by more people if you put this on the general Elite Force board.

Ok, this is not going to be easy then. I can only give you a few pointers on what you have to do, but building this on windows requires a working compiler environment!

First check out the icculus.org subversion source repository, then apply my patch to the source tree:

http://thilo.kickchat.com/efport-....81.diff

under a unixoid environment, you'd use the command "patch -p1 < patchfile.diff" in the source code main directory to get the patches installed. There are certainly tools for windows that do the "patch" stuff as required, i don't know them though.

After patching you must make sure that there is the define:

#define ELITEFORCE
usually, one makes sure of that by using the -DELITEFORCE compiler flag.

enabled. Then build it in your invironment, copy the resulting binary to your startrek dir, and you're good to go.

Is there a legal reason you can't offer the compiled .exe for d/l?

No.
I just don't have a working Windows installation on my PC right now.

Oh. lol.  Okay.

The first builds for Linux are now available!
Please bear in mind that they are by no means some kind of final version but have their flaws still.

What is working:
- Full Raven MDR Model support
- Full Network compatibility to the original EliteForce
- MP3 support
- All multiplayer modifications

Known bugs:
- Weapons and head models are sometimes held at an odd angle
- On servers created with the new builds, you can't jump as high as on original servers.
- Not all render types (e.g. weapon effects) have been done yet.
- Ingame server browser will crash

Linux build, 32 bit:
http://thilo.kickchat.com/efport-progress/bin/eliteforce-v6.i386
Linux build, 64 bit:
http://thilo.kickchat.com/efport-progress/bin/eliteforce-v6.x86_64

Prerequisites:
A working installation of following libraries:
- libmad (decoding of mp3s)
- openal
- libSDL
Make sure these are installed using your distribution's package manager.

Just copy the appropriate build into your EliteForce directory and create a link named "baseEF" pointing to BaseEF in the same directory.
Now you're ready to go! Start the new executable.


Building instructions for non-Linux users:
The icculus.org engine all this is based on is pretty portable and can be compiled on other operating systems such as MacOSX, FreeBSD, etc..
Have a look at http://icculus.org/quake3/?page=status for all supported OS.

If you are a user of one of these OS, you can try building the sourcecode yourself.

Step 1: Get the icculus.org quake3 source: http://icculus.org/quake3/
Step 2: Apply following patches in this order:
http://thilo.kickchat.com/efport-....85.diff
http://thilo.kickchat.com/efport-....16.diff
Step 3: Make sure you have the header files for all needed libraries (see above)

Step4a: If you use Linux it's easy:
type in  "make eliteforce"  or "make eliteforce-debug" in the main directory, let it compile and you're done! You may want to comment out "USE_CODEC_VORBIS=1" in the file Makefile.local if you don't want ogg vorbis support.

Step 4b: Make sure the original Quake3 game, cgame and ui directories are ommited in your build! (very important!) (if your system supports "make" building of these dirs is already disabled)
Step 5: Make sure these two #defines are enabled:
ELITEFORCE
USE_CODEC_MP3
Step 6: build!

You may (or may not) have a working build in the build/ subdir.
If you succeeded in building these files on an OS other than Linux, please tell me about it!

That *whoosh* sound you hear is all this flying over my head...