Some Questions From a PQ Newbie

[Guest]

Some questions from a PQ newbie:

1. has a bunch of visual quality settings... how and where would I go about changing those manually?

2. (More of a general Quake question) Other than using a frontend launcher or the -game switch, how can I load a custom game in Pocket Quake? (I'm hoping for a console command here, but for some reason I doubt there is one.)

2.1 Is there some kind of command prompt program for the pocket PC that I can use to run PQ with command line switches?

3. So far I've gotten PQ to play LAN multi with my destkop running WinQuake with the desktop as a server, but when I try to host the game on my PPC it just acts like it isn't there. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,

- Max Radomsky

[esw]

The quality settings in PQL changes some console variables. I think it just changes the texture quality (d_mipcap and d_mipscale). moosemaster also suggested these settings for better performance:

d_mipcap "3"
d_mipscale "4"
r_maxedges "1600"
r_maxsurfs "400"
r_maxparticles "10"

You can add these to your autoexec.cfg file (The autoexec file is just a list of console commands that get excecuted when the game starts)

2. You can't But you can load maps with the map console command. (ex: map start)

2.1. Not that I know of. You CAN do one of the following though, other than using PQL

a) Using the PocketPC 'run' dialog, you can pass command line options. Here's how to get to it:
Close any programs that take over the start menu bar(wisbar, gigabar). Hold down the action button on your PPC (push straight in on the directional pad or on the scroll wheel), and while doing that hold down your stylus over the clock (top right corner of screen). Then tap on run on the menu that comes up.

b)Make a shortcut.

3. I don't know

Hope this helps you

[max1milion]

Thanks esw -- I'll definitely try that.

Oh, why do my posts come up as anonymous? I am signed up here. Do I need to post more before it starts revealing my name?

- Max Radomsky

[(TSC)Bender]

You just need to log in...ah theres your name

[max1milion]

Ohhh. There we go. Thanks -- guess I forgot to login until after I posted.

[Dan East]

You can create shortcuts to specify specific runtime parameters. The free version of can create shortcuts with parameters.

I'm not sure why Pocket Quake can't host games. To be honest I've never tried to have it host a game; I've only connected to games hosted on my laptop. It may be that the Windows CE TCP/IP network stack does not respond to broadcast messages, which is what I believe Quake uses to "find" games on the local LAN.

Dan East

[sponge]

[max1milion]

It's a shame that you couldn't host a game solely between PocketPC's -- I envisioned a glorious commute of the future where everyone gets on the subway, sets their WiFi card to Ad-Hoc mode and plays PQ multi. (Although this is the distant future, so maybe PQ3 multi?) But you'd need PQ to be able to host for that. Oh well.

Today I decided to go a step beyond just connecting to my desktop and actually had a friend host a quake server at his house. This proved to be quite a challenge for a less-than-ovbious reason: To connect to a WAN address, you have to enter the IP manually. To do that you need to have access to the keyboard, but PQ covers it up except when the console is down. I'm hoping that Dan can make the keyboard pop up automatically for text feilds (as it does now for the console) in some future release of PQ, but until then I've figured out a workaround:

Step 1: Open PQ.

Step 2: Minimze PQ.

Step 3: Open some program that has the 'bring up keyboard' button in the lower left.

Step 4: Open PQ.

When PQ opens again, the button will still be there. You can now access the keyboard whenever you like, including at the WAN IP prompt.

NOTE: If there's some way to connect to a specific IP from the console you could use that, but I don't know if you can.

When I played that game I also found out just how serious an advantage people with graphics accelerators and mouses and keyboards really have, and it's pretty serious. That makes me wonder... is it possible to restrict access to a Quake server based on the client? If it were, you could set up a public server that accepted connections ONLY from PQ clients. It could even run only maps designed specifically for PQ. Does such a server exist already?

Oh, Dan, now that there's OpenGL for the PPC, when can we expect Pocket Quake 3? I guess it will be more plausible with PPC .NET when MS finally bothers to optimize an OS for XScale with ARM v5, though by then there will probably be a yet faster processor that they won't support. I'm not going to hold my breath for that, but I can always dream of PQ3...

Thanks,

- Max Radomsky

[sponge]

Why can't you just use the connect command in the console? Everything in the menus can be done by console.

[max1milion]

[sponge]

[esw]

[James S]

[max1milion]

[max1milion]