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Author Topic: Two gripes  (Read 9657 times)
HelloKitty!
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« on: July 21, 2010, 04:45:54 PM »

There are two things annoying me with OpenArena at the moment.

First of all, every now and then it forgets my settings and asks me to set my connection speed, and resets all controls, sensitivity and other vars to some old values I don't use anymore, and sets the resolution to 640x480. Most of the keys are the same (it's the first thing I set when I started playing), but some of them are wrong and old. It seems like it's loading an old q3config from somewhere and overwriting the current one. I have a suspicion that this happens when I use a new mod, but can't explain it. It's frustrating to have your settings fiddled around with at unpredictable intervals, and then having to readjust them in mid-game. Yes, I did make an autoexec.cfg for this purpose, but it isn't copied to new mod dirs, which grab some ancient q3config from somewhere. And if I forget to put some changed setting into my autoexec.cfg, then this gets lost during such a regression. And if I update the autoexec.cfg in baseoa, the autoexec.cfg in insta, corkscrew, DM and other mods stays wrong. So what I did is I symlinked all of them to the autoexec.cfg in baseoa/, but that doesn't work with new mods either, etc.

Shouldn't it just remember my settings and keep them? Where does it get the old settings from? Why do my current settings get overwritten by some junk from 6 months ago?

Second, why is physics RESOLUTION-dependent? I know about fps effects, but why on Earth do I get completely different physics with each possible resolution? The result is that once a mod messes up my config, I can't even strafejump anymore.  Due to experimental drivers I'm using (Linux, ATI), I often need to adjust the resolution to make the game playable. And I have to relearn the circle jump, air-strafe, and can't make half of the usual jumps anymore. This CAN'T be by design?

I suspect that SDL is taking the relative position of the mouse pointer from X, and that the pointer speed is resolution-dependent in X. I guess that using DGA mode or something should work, but I haven't had luck with it.

It is really frustrating for the physics to keep changing :/ Everything is slightly wrong, you can't land any flick shots, all the jumps are short, etc.
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WaspKiller
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« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2010, 07:17:11 PM »

...First of all, every now and then it forgets my settings and asks me to set my connection speed, and resets all controls, sensitivity and other vars to some old values I don't use anymore, and sets the resolution to 640x480...

Off-hand I can think of 3 scenarios where this may happen:

1. You are either playing a Mod and baseoa alternately and changes to baseoa get copied to the Mod's q3config.cfg causing it to exceed the size limit (approx 16.99kb). Or, there is a new version of your Mod and the new cvars that get added to your Mod's config cause it to exceed the size limit.

2. You are playing 0.8.1 and 0.8.5 and your q3config.cfg is close enough to the limit that changes via the console for alternate name tags, commands, etc., result in the file exceeding the size limit.  Note, when you exceed the size limit play is not affected.  It is not until you restart the game that the file gets truncated.

3. Some backup or restore function is overwriting your current config or the OS is modifying your user directory (i.e., Windows can recreate a new user folder (hellokitty to hellokitty.001) if there is a registry issue and although all the files and sub-folders are copied, the path change will cause OA and its Mods to create default configs).


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...The result is that once a mod messes up my config, I can't even strafejump anymore...

I play lots of Mods on Q3 and OA, and while the Mods all use the baseq3/baseoa config as the base for their separate q3config.cfg I have never seen the Mod's config affect the baseq3 or baseoa's config.  Users always claim this but I have never been able to duplicate their assertions.
I'd appreciate if you tell me the name of any Mod that causes changes to baseoa's config so that I can test it.
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HelloKitty!
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« Reply #2 on: July 22, 2010, 05:07:32 AM »

Thanks for your reply. I'm sure it's not system backup or registry (I'm running Linux), but file truncating could be a culprit. I'll check when I'm back home. It would surprise me, though, i don't do anything super fancy with the cvars. I'm absolutely certain that it's not a writing permissions issue of any kind.

As for mods touching baseoa config, it might be the case that it's caused by the switching between baseoa 0.8.1 and 0.8.5, which is inevitable given how servers are half and half at the moment. But I seem to remember this happening before I upgraded to 0.8.5. It's also possible that it's a non-obvious mod (such as "DM", which appears to be a mod for some reason), which made a copy of q3config.cfg a long time ago, and when I enter a server running this, I get old settings.

Strange.

The problem is that I can't point at a mod either. I don't use many mods: insta, corkscrew.... that's it.
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GrosBedo
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« Reply #3 on: July 22, 2010, 06:07:18 AM »

Second, why is physics RESOLUTION-dependent? I know about fps effects, but why on Earth do I get completely different physics with each possible resolution?

It's not, the only reason why resolution can affect your strafejumping is because cg_fov don't get automatically adapted to the changes of resolution, and so your strafe angles may change.

Anyway, I had the same problems as you about config change and deletion, and so I addressed these problems by creating a launcher that you can find here :

http://www.superbots.org/modules.php?name=Downloads&op=getit&lid=19
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HelloKitty!
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« Reply #4 on: July 22, 2010, 06:13:48 AM »

I though that, but cg_fov should not affect the mouse sensitivity, i.e. the number of cm you need for a full circle. It only affects your visual understanding of the angles.

With strafe jumps, especially with the circle-strafe, it's all about muscle memory. Flick the mouse just the right amount at the right time. If the sensitivity is the same, you will get the same speed and jump the same distance regardless of the FOV.

It's good to hear that I'm not the only one with the config troubles, though.
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« Reply #5 on: July 22, 2010, 08:10:56 AM »

The autoexec.cfg problem is easy to solve in linux: don't make symlinks but hardlinks to baseoa/autoexec.cfg (e.g. use ln and not ln -s). As for new mods, I don't think it's possible for the client to execute shell commands, so I guess we're stuck to linking  the file manually.

I suspect some mods call cvar_restart when they are run first (without a q3config.cfg), and there are some (badly configured) servers out there which force a cvar_restart on every connecting player also.

I agree with you on the physics, I changed to the 64bit linux client which forces strange non-standard resolutions on me (can't run in 1024x768 mode anymore, OA forces a 1014x718 r_customPixelAspect resolution, even with videoflags 0) and I had to play around with sensitivity for days before I got the old feeling back.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2010, 10:29:04 AM by 7 » Logged

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« Reply #6 on: July 30, 2010, 03:36:48 AM »

Try This... it works for me.... Set up ur game settings etc. Then go to /harddrive/documents and settings/application data/openarena/.... now go to ur baseoa file, copy the q3history,q3config, and q3configdedicated, to a folder outside the baseoa. And from this point on, if ur game resets it's self, replace the original configs with the ones u have copied.                                     ktg, helping people...
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GrosBedo
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« Reply #7 on: July 30, 2010, 05:01:18 AM »

Try This... it works for me.... Set up ur game settings etc. Then go to /harddrive/documents and settings/application data/openarena/.... now go to ur baseoa file, copy the q3history,q3config, and q3configdedicated, to a folder outside the baseoa. And from this point on, if ur game resets it's self, replace the original configs with the ones u have copied.                                     ktg, helping people...

This is basically what does the OpenArena Launcher I linked, automatically, and each time you start the game.
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« Reply #8 on: July 30, 2010, 06:04:56 AM »

The problem is some servers forcing a cvar_restart on connecting clients. This means you start out with a working config, but as soon as you connect to the server you're back to default settings, so the copying makes no sense because the cvar_restart happens after you've copied the files.

One of the servers that does this is the "borg" server (the admin posted his server config on this forum but I can't find the thread).
« Last Edit: July 30, 2010, 06:51:50 AM by 7 » Logged

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GrosBedo
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« Reply #9 on: July 30, 2010, 11:11:25 AM »

One of the servers that does this is the "borg" server (the admin posted his server config on this forum but I can't find the thread).

I just tried connecting, had no effect, my config was successfully loaded. Anyway, I wonder how he can for a cvar_restart on you, I know there is a way to force some cvars, but I doubt he did use it since it's illegal, and the other legal method is totally impractical.

Anyway, the concept of the Launcher is that it removes all q3config, then copy _once_ your config to the OpenArena homefolder baseoa, and then OpenArena itself copies your config to each other mods when you connect to a server running a mod. OA does half the job, and does it well. And even if the server would do force a cvar_restart, it would anyway just after copy your config from baseoa and exec it (to my knowledge cvar_restart only flushes cvars in memory, it does not write them in the config unless you do /writeconfig).
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« Reply #10 on: July 30, 2010, 02:44:15 PM »

Hmm strange, you're right, it doesn't do it anymore. I tested it a few days ago and it definitely reset all client cvars, after quitting and restarting multiplayer I got the initial online gaming parameters screen again. I don't know how it happens (there are some q3  mods that can do it, but it could be funny behavior of the linux 64bit client too).

The cvar_restart doesn't write the q3config.cfg file, but AO does so automatically after quitting the server.

Anyhow, there is a real problem with q3config.cfg in the baseoa dir getting overwritten with default values, and I think this shouldn't happen (iow. it's a bug). Even more so if the server is running a mod: the config file should be written to the mods directory and not to the baseoa dir.
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