quake 3 smoke looks crappy?

[marooned]

After I got my new rig I wanted to try out q3 naturally so I fired it up and set it to 800x600 highest quality ( all options on ) but I noticed that the smoke trails, fog and sky look really bad.. ie. cheese cloth effect, just like if 16 bit color and textures were enabled, but they aren't. Is there a setting that needs to be changed? or is this a flaw of my geforce 2 mx card

 

[Finality]

Type this in your console.

/r_ext_compressed_textures 0

Quit the game and join again.

You probably have an older version of Q3 installed.

 

[Compellor]

Check to make sure that both the desktop color depth and OpenGL color depth in the advanced display properties are both using 32 bit color. Also, make sure 32 bit color and 32 bit textures are enabled in the game settings menu.

 

[marooned]

Ok, for sure 32 bit color and textures are enabled (via desktop properties and in game options) but the smoke trails and stuff still look bad. btw r_ext_compressed_textures is 0 too. Is there anything else that might be wrong? Overclocking wouldn't cause this would it? bleh Thanks for listening

 

[BFG10K]

Overclocking wouldn't cause this would it?

It might. Overclocking has the potential to cause all sorts of artifacts. Try running the board at stock speed.

 

[Compellor]

I just checked it on my GeForce 2 GTS and I get the effect you describe only when I'm playing it in 16 bit color. The smoke effect looks fine under 32 bit color. I also have compressed textures enabled, so, that isn't the problem. It could be that your Q3A config file isn't initializing 32 bit color.

Check these strings in your Q3A config file:

seta r_colorbits "16"
seta r_depthbits "16"

Make sure they're both set to "32"

To fix the sky problem, a patch is required. Go here to get the patch:

Quake 3 Arena universal patch for NVIDIA GeForce S3TC

 

[marooned]

compellor thanks loads for the info man. I'm going to try reinstalling quake 3 to see if things go back to normal. Thanks again for the link.

 

[RoboTECH]

unless you have Team Arena or the latest patch, the command already listed won't work

try this one

/seta r_ext_compress_textures 0
/vid_restart

note the lack of the "-ed" and the vid_restart

 

[SYST3M]

you can also try r_picmip 0, i have found that the game looks a lot better that way. default is r_picmip 1

 

[RoboTECH]

SYST3M, moving the texture quality slider to the far right is the same as setting r_picmip to 0, rather than its default of 1 (which is less detailed)

good point.

 

[SYST3M]

i know, but i am so used to doing console commands i just do it that way. plus it is a whole lot easier to explain this way 🙂

 

[marooned]

If it isn't too much trouble would one of you guys mind taking a screenshot of q3 in 32 bit with all options on... preferably one with some smoke or fog. I would be very appreciative. Thanks a lot guys.