Q3A Sky problem - any luck fixing it?

[LocutusX]

I read an article at Game Basement describing how to hex-edit your quake3.exe executable so it uses a different compression method, thereby fixing the problems of ugly sky and ugly textures, when r_ext_compress_textures=1 in Q3A 1.17. Anyways I tried it. I also tried using the S3TCFIX.ZIP or something that was being distributed there.. no luck with either of them, I've compared screenshots and everything looks the same (the s3tcfix.zip file can convert your quake3 executable into 6 different DXTC modes - they all look the same).

Anyone had any better luck with this?

Hopefully BenSkywalker will read this...

 

[LocutusX]

bump

 

[BenSkywalker]

Did you download the files we had up over at the Basement?

When you did, what steps did you follow, and which board/driver revision are you using?

We'll get your skies fixed

 

[LocutusX]

Actually I did the hex-edit way.

I fired up my hex editor and changed the a1 83 00 00 chain to a3 83 00 00. That chain occurs twice in the 1.17 version of Q3A, so I had to change it twice.

Before I changed it I went into Q3DM7 and Q3DM3 (i think.. either that or Q3DM1) and made screenshots using F11. I compared the scrnshots from the pre-modified to the post-modified EXE's and they both looked almost exactly similar. Maybe I'm not sure what to look for? I thought that doing this hex-edit fix will make the skies look nice, but won't affect the "textures on buildings looking weird" problem.

Other info:

GeForce DDR @ default core / 320mhz memory
Using DX 7.0a
Using Det 6.31 official
Windows 98 SE
Pentium 3 - 800EB

Do you have any screenshots of the above-mentioned levels that I can compare to my own screenshots? Apart from the ones at GameBasement that is. Also, is there any settings in System | Video that might be keeping the skies looking bad? <shrug>

And in case you're wondering, r_ext_compress_textures is always equal to 1 here.

Thanks in advance, Ben.

 

[LocutusX]

bump

 

[BenSkywalker]

Hmmmmm,

In display properties, is &quot;Always Use 32bit&quot; selected for textures?

Trying to look at what you are doing differently, we have very close setups, including driver revision.

I don't have any screenies posted anywhere, &quot;Wumpus&quot; took the ones at GB but the difference is just like mine. Try firing up QDM7 and see if you can tell a big difference in the sky. If you can't, errr, something is wrong

One other thing you could try, switch to A5 83 00 00 instead of A3, that is what I use. The only other thing I can think off is to try the exe that I modified that you can download from the Basement. I know for certain those work, while some Hex editors miss some of the strings and report some improperly(one out of three that I tried worked properly- &quot;Hackman&quot.

 

[LocutusX]

I'll give it a shot...

 

[LocutusX]

I tried your Q3117 file. I noticed that there is one &quot;a3 83 00 00&quot; chain, and one &quot;a5 83 00 00&quot; chain; shouldn't they both be the same? Also is it correct that &quot;a1 83 00 00&quot; only occurs twice in the original, unmodified quake3 117 executable?

Anyways I still can't seem to get the sky to work. I'll try running the different executables in Win98 (I've been doing all this in Win2K so far) and see if I get a difference there.

BTW, which GeForce and driver set are you using?

 

[LocutusX]

Ben,

I think I've discovered the source of my sky-fixing problems. It's me! I am too much of an image perfectionist. I was expecting that by applying the hexedit fix, it would make the skies look EXACTLY like uncompressed skies! I guess that was a bad assumption. It would be impossible to apply lossy compression and achieve the SAME picture quality. Silly me. I compared the two screenshots very closely in an image editor, and yes there are differences. In the hexedited version, the different &quot;blocks&quot; of the sky are blended-in together. So there is no step-like effect. Kind of like anti-aliasing. So I guess if someone had told me that was what the hexedit fix really did, I wouldn't have gone all crazy wondering what was going on.

BTW: To be honest with you, I think the uncompressed sky textures look pretty bad as well.

Anyways thanks for your assistance. This doesn't really bother me that much anyways, I just use Q3A for benchmarking OpenGL; the only Q3A engine game I play is Star Trek Elite Force, which doesn't suffer from the problem anyways.

 

[mikelou26]

what is bump?