Vsync plans?

[Alexandra]

Today I was looking at some Wolfenstein stuff and I thought, why don't I have a Wolf3D source port on my computer? I searched around and I'm glad I found ECWolf. I'm a big fan of ZDoom, and first impressions of ECWolf's snappy mouse control are excellent. Great job! (The responsive mouse is so useful that I'm wondering if Wolf3D can ever be challenging again; so far the enemies seem outclassed.)

The only real issue I'm having now is brutal horizontal tearing and generally stuttery movement, most apparent when strafing in front of a wall. I tried several ways to force on vsync but no dice (Win7 x64 Radeon 5850). Is some form of vsync on the to-do list, perhaps?

In another thread it was mentioned that the engine runs at 70 Hz? If that's so, will it be possible to lock it to a non-stuttering 60? I ask because I recently checked out the Quake port Dark Places, and it turned out that had an internal tic rate or whatnot of 72. This resulted in fairly awful stuttering when fps was locked to 60, which is my monitor's max refresh rate. Luckily there was an obscure console variable that allowed me to adjust the tic rate down to ~60, which solved the problem. I'm curious if ECWolf / Wolfenstein in general has similar concerns.

[Blzut3]

There aren't any immediate plans. For the most part the tearing is minor so it's not a very high priority for me.

It is true that if I were to just limit the frame rate it probably would develop a noticable stutter, but that shouldn't get in the way of doing things properly. ZDoom has an unlocked frame rate which includes interpolation and ECWolf should be able to do the same. This is definitely something that I would like to have in the long run.

That said, I swear my Windows development machine vsyncs the game since it never exceeds 60fps. What operating system are you using?

[Alexandra]

Thanks for the reply.

PC is Win7 x64 / Radeon 5850 w/ 13.2 beta 5 / Core i7 920 2.66 oc'ed to 3.6 ghz / 18GB RAM

I can't get the OSDs of ATI Tray Tools, MSI Afterburner or RadeonPro to work with ECWolf, so I can't give you framerate numbers. Is there a built-in FPS check function?

edit: Oh, one more Q while I'm here. Is there a way to make ECWolf portable / self-contained? I'd like it to not store settings, saves and such in \Appdata, if possible.

[Blzut3]

I'll double check my Windows machine when I get a chance. One thing to note is that ECWolf is completely software rendered so the settings in the ATI utilities likely will not make any difference. The built in frame rate counter can be accessed by shift+alt+backspace and then tab+d.

You can manually set the savedir and configuration file with a batchfile:

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ecwolf.exe --savedir C:\Path\To\ECWolf --config C:\Path\To\ECWolf\ecwolf.cfg %*

[Alexandra]

Thanks, everything works as expected so far. As you'd expect my FPS is mostly pegged at 70, with minor, random, visually undetectable drops.

I was concerned about multiple games using the same savedir but after a quick test Wolf and Spear saves seem to play nicely. (With ZDoom I give each game its own save folder.)

I was going to apologize for not RTFMing but aside from one reference to SHIFT-ALT-BKSPC in the bugs database I wasn't able to locate this info elsewhere. I'll list the debug keys I found in case anyone else reading this might benefit.

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shift-alt-backspace - debug mode

tab-b    -border texture prompt
tab-c    -actor count
tab-d    -framerate
tab-e    -finish level
tab-f    -coords
tab-g    -god mode
tab-h    -hurt player
tab-i    -get items
tab-k    -give key
tab-l    -gameplay stats
tab-m    -mouselook
tab-n    -noclip
tab-p    -screenshot
tab-q    -quit
tab-s    -slow motion steps prompt
tab-t    -no target mode
tab-v    -add extra VBLs prompt
tab-w    -warp
tab-x    -give
tab-z    -summon

[Blzut3]

I guess I must have been seeing things since my Windows machine is showing 70fps as well now.

As far as the separate save directories go. There's an intentionally undocumented --data parameter which will skip the iwad prompt (--data wl6, --data sod, etc). It's undocumented at this point since it will probably change to --iwad within the next version or two when I add proper support for custom iwads. Like you said though, ECWolf is aware of all of the saves that it doesn't show so it should safely work with a common directory. It should be the same deal with ZDoom as well as ECWolf does share some of the save game code.

I was going to apologize for not RTFMing but aside from one reference to SHIFT-ALT-BKSPC in the bugs database I wasn't able to locate this info elsewhere. I'll list the debug keys I found in case anyone else reading this might benefit.

Well, it's the way to get to the debug mode in vanilla. The tab+d code comes from Wolf4SDL. But it is true that ECWolf's has new code and modified codes so I've gone and added the information to the wiki: http://maniacsvault.net/ecwolf/wiki/Debug_mode