Depuis Juillet dernier et la sortie du patch 1.3, id software n'avait plus soutenu Quake 4. Il faut dire que la communauté Online du titre oscille entre quelques dizaines et une petite centaine de joueurs, bien largement en dessous de Quake 3 : Arena qui rassemble toujours quelques milliers d'adeptes.Ce patch, pesant 130 Mo, corrige quelques bugs et tente de faire entre Quake 4 dans la cour des grands en lui ajoutant quelques ajustements pour les hardcore gamers. Ainsi, ce patch annonce l'implantation de Quake 4 TV (Q4TV), à l'instar des HL TV, UT TV, Q3 TV, qui permettent aux joueurs de suivre la retransmission des matchs importants en direct. Le gameplay a subi quelques petits ajustements, dans l'optique de rendre le jeu plus orienté harcore gamers, les hitboxes passent d'une forme rectangulaire à une forme cylindrique, plus difficile à toucher. Les armes subissent des ajustement notamment le railgun qui voit ses munitions diminuer.
Côté serveur, des ajustements ont été opérés pour que le nombre de FPS (Frame Per Second) ne soit plus limité à 63 mais étendu à 125 rendant ainsi le jeu plus rapide et nerveux. Toujours côté serveur, la possibilité est maintenant offerte aux joueurs d'avoir un serveur HTTP facilitant les téléchargements. Enfin, le netcode du jeu à lui aussi subi un léger lifting et en ressort optimisé.
Le téléchargement du patch peut s'effectuer sur l'un des miroirs suivants :
- Version Windows :
- Version Linux :
Quake4 1.4 changes
==================
* Q4TV: games can be broadcasted live to clients connected as spectators. See README_Q4TV_broadcasting.txt for documentation
* the multiplayer game now resides in q4mp/. The game will automatically
reload to fs_game q4mp when starting a multiplayer server or connecting to one.
* si_fps server setting allows server administrators to customize the
game tick rate. Default is set to 60 fps, which is consistent with
previous releases. If set higher, server and clients will tick faster,
allowing for tighter input control and higher FPS.
You have to make sure however that server and clients connected to the
game have enough CPU power to keep up. We recommend leaving this to LAN
and competition games only.
* builtin HTTP server for autodownload. You have the option to serve the
files directly to the clients connecting to your server (in addition to
the seperate download server option from previous releases)
See README_builting_downloads.txt for documentation
* improved shotgun spread, more regular pattern
* railgun damage lowered to 90, start railgun ammo to 5
* update napalm weapons code, tweak damage value and range of napalm ambers
updated sounds for napalm
* added filtering by mod to the server browser TV,
* pak names are listed in the console when missing paks are required
to connect to a server
* improve mapDef handling for addons
addons should only have a mapDef entry in addon.conf, but multiple declarations
(in def and addon declaration) are merged together
* added r_ignoreHWGamma cvar
* addition of net_clientUsercmdPacking. client->server traffic is sent
once every net_clientUsercmdPacking frames. This reduces the
client->server traffic, and increases the predict ahead slightly.
Setting is ignored for LAN games.
Pre 1.4 behaviour is net_clientUsercmdPacking 1
* improved client->server user commands traffic
better predict ahead adjustment, and slightly smaller usercommand packet size
* new ear seperation algorithm for stereo software sound, used by default in multiplayer only
see s_earSeperationAlgo, s_mp_minVolume, s_mp_maxWindow
* made value overflows in idBitMsg::WriteBits into errors
improved bandwidth usage for ammo counts, and various other bandwidth improvements
* callvote and admin menu map lists show the server's maps. clients
and admins can load server maps that are not on the client yet.
* com_allowConsole -1 disables the console completely until the game
exits (or value changed via gamecode)
* access to ingame browser from game code:
custom filters and access to serverinfo data
* fixes to dropped sounds and stuck hum sounds
* added player handicap (reduces max health, and reduces damage dealt)
* warning don't get printed to the console anymore, unless you
enable developer 1
* multiplayer uses 8-sided collision boxes by default
* simple items drawn closer to the ground
* GUIs for r_forceAmbient and g_simpleItems settings
* fix networking of bound entities
* add key and button state query API from the core for mods
* extensions to the server<->master protocol allow better
cross-platform multiplayer compatibility
* Linux: fix console key on non-US keyboard layouts
* add a game API for mods that want to implement bots
* fix performance issues when switching between windowed mode when using OpenAL
* fix local 'serverInfo' command when net_ip is used
* add a 'listMaps' command to list maps for dedicated servers
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