Title : Air's Quake Camera Filename : qcam11.zip Version : 1.2 Date : 2/1/97 Author : Paul Jordan Email : jordan@crystal.cirrus.com (work) jordan@comland.com (home) IRC : Note : This patch and text file are based on a patch by Rogier R. Mulhuijzen called DMCAM. Type of Mod ----------- Quake C : yes 1 new file, and small mods to client.qc, defs.qc weapons.qc,world.qc and progs.src Sound : no MDL : no BSP : no Source Included : Yes! History ------- Version 1.0 * Initial Release Version 1.1 * Added new Camera points to the following levels DM1, DM2, DM3, DM4, DM5, E3M2 * Fixed a bug in the camera selection code. * Fixed a bug when people left the game in view of a camera, they would still be targeted by the camera. * Slight tweaks to the Camera AI, it should hang around longer on the current targeted player. Still switches in the case when the currrent targeted player leaves the screen. (Saying targeted makes me want to turn these Cameras into gun turrents!) Version 1.2 * Added new Camera points to some levels * Camera now "sees" players better, it uses 5 point to tell if you are in view. ToDo ---- * Add more camera positions to other default quake levels. This is tedious work, because you have to go through the levels in "noclip" mode, and record position and angles for each of the new cameras. They also have to be in cool places. I am allowing around 8 new cameras per level, but that is an arbitrary number I could add as many as I want. However too many cameras == to much switching of views. Introduction ------------ One day Air was destroying people at work on the server and really wanted to see other people's misery from a third person point of view, so Air went out looking for Camera patches for Quake. He found DMCam by Rogier R. Mulhuijzen (DocWilco) and liked where it started and decided to take it to new heights with some new features. You can judge if the improvements are as cool as Air thinks they are. Installation ------------ OK if you don't know how to install quake-c patches here is the trick: Let's say Quake is in C:\Quake, then you make a directory called C:\Quake\qcam and put the progs.dat file in there. That's it! How to use the patch to watch a game ------------------------------------ Run quake with the -game option followed by the directory name that you put the qcam file into. quake -game qcam Now like DMCam you just change the name of the client you want to use as the Camera to "CamClient". When that client connects it is automatically turned into the camera. If you forget, just change your name and rejoin the game. How to use the patch to record a demo of a network game ------------------------------------------------------- Bad News here, Quake only allows the server to record demos! Therefore the server must run as a listen server so that it can record. Fortunately this is not very difficult. Here is a basic command line that you could use for a 16 player game: quake -game qcam -listen 16 +record What This Patch Does -------------------- This patch is the a great way to record demos of you and your friends or enemies blowing each other into tiny little giblets. We will be posting a demo file that we recorded at Crystal so that you can see firsthand what is possible. First of all the patch uses intermission camera points as the origins for the view points of the camera. That means if the intermission camera points suck, then the demo may not be very interesting. If there are no intermission points, the demo will totally bite! Now once you have a good level with good intermission points, the camera works a little something like this. The camera that has the most people closest to it is the view that will be used. In order to stay with the action, the camera will stay locked on to one person for around 8 seconds or as long as the person doesn't leave the view of the camera. After this, the camera will rescan for a new action packed camera position. Without this 8 second lock, the camera can really jerk around between players and make you not want to watch for very long. The camera can pan through 360 degrees in the horizontal plane, and around 100 degrees in the vertical plane ( Quake hates more than 70 degrees off level ). This allows the camera to follow people/heads as they pass by the camera. Oh yes it will follow flying heads as they pass by, which I think is just about the coolest thing about this patch. Well that's the pseudo quick rundown, hit me with emails if you have any ideas/bitches/whatever. Designing levels for use with DMCam or qcam ------------------------------------------- Just put some intermission viewpoints (classname = "info_intermission") at cool places. Current problems ---------------- - Like DMCAM, "CamClient" shows up in the frags list. - Like DMCAM, levels without any intermission viewpoints get the first entry point as viewpoint and just use that the whole game. I like DocWilco consider this a bug in the level, not in my patch actually =)! Adios for now, I like DocWilco's Copyright so I'll keep it. * Copyright and Distribution Permissions Authors MAY use these modifications as a basis for other publicly available work, after all, I did. You may distribute this Quake modification in any free electronic format as long as this description file remains intact and unmodified and is retained along with all of the files in the archive. You may not publish or distribute this Quake modification in a non-free form without the permission of the author.