The QUAKE LIVE Console Guide

[Lorfa]

Hey Muffin I've been working on some of the commands/cvars you had listed as ??

Here's what I have so far:

Nextorder - Team arena legacy, 'next team order'
ineffectual in ql.

showip - shows the ip. This will be just the same thing
you find in your net settings. For example if you're
running through a router it will show the ip your
router has given you.

s_stop - stops the current sounds being played

r_glDriver - reports the current gl driver such as
'opengl32'

r_depthbits - sets z-buffer depth. 0 uses the desktop
depthbits. A setting of 16 can result in artifacts. So
24 and 32 are recommended.

r_drawSun - Controls the way lighting of models and
objects is handled by simulating effects of sunlight.
Defaults to 0 which is the suggested setting,
1 is enabled, 0 is disabled.

r_ignoreFastPath - This cvar determines if the
rendering engine uses the fast shader rendering
path of either diffuse lighting or multi-texture
lighting. Defaults to 1 and on some driver sets a
setting of 0 will give minimal FPS gain.

s_initsound - Toggles using the sound system.
0=disables;1=enables.

s_mixahead - Sets the time delay before mixing sound
samples.
This is for fine-tuning the mixer. It will mix ahead
the number of seconds specified.
The more you increase the better the sound but it
will increase latency which you do not want. Don't
expect any improvements in sound past the default.

Default: "0.140" (140ms)

s_mixPreStep - This is for fine-tuning the mixer.
It will mix this number of seconds every mixing step.
The more you increase the better the sound but it will
increase drastically the amount of processing power
needed. Don't expect any improvements in sound past
the default. Setting it to 0 results in hilarious
sounding plasma and machine gun fire, although that's
not to be recommended for anything more than a laugh.

Default: "0.05" (50ms)

r_maxpolys - Maximum number of polygons on screen
Values lower than default appear to have no effect,
even negative values. Unknown if higher values have
an effect.

r_maxpolyverts - Maximum number of vertices's from
polygons on screen.
Values lower than default appear to have no effect,
even negative values. Unknown if higher values have
an effect.

r_measureOverdraw - when set to 1, and if the hardware
supports a stencil buffer, overdraw will be reported.

r_offsetfactor - polygon offset factor for shader
stages that have polygon offset set. Testing resulted
in no change after vid_restart at multiple values.
May be ineffectual.

r_offsetunits - polygon offset units for shader stages
that have polygon offset set. Testing resulted
in no change after vid_restart at multiple values.
May be ineffectual.

r_debugSort - debug tool that only renderes those
sort layers that are greater than the value of the
variable (default 0)

r_debugSurfaceUpdate - (default 1)
When r_debugsurface is 1, and surfaceupdate is 1, the
bounding box will change places according to location.
When surfaceupdate is 0 the first one that appears
will remain and others will not appear.

net_strict - Hypothesis is that net_strict 1 forces
localhost to use port 27960. If this port is in use
quake live will crash when going to localhost. It is
unknown if net_strict 0 would prevent this, untested.
(default 1)

r_printShaders -
debugging tool that prints out all the shaders that
are actually used when loading a level. It is used to
generate a pak file (default 0)

r_skipBackEnd - debugging tool that skips the rendering
of the back end (default 0)

r_ignoreGLErrors - syntax: r_ignoreglerrors [0/1]
default: 1
Toggles option to ignore OpenGL errors and to attempt
to continue rendering. 0=disables;1=enables.

r_primitives - syntax: r_primitives [value] default: 0
Sets rendering method. Valid settings:
-1=skips drawing
0=uses glDrawelements if compiled vertex arrays are
present, or strips of glArrayElement if not.
1=forces strips
2=forces drawElements

r_drawBuffer - set which frame buffer to draw into.
basically you draw into a "back" buffer while
simultaneously showing a "front" buffer. next
frame you "swap" these. the benefit is that you
won't "see" the actual painting of the image take
place. In quake live, probably only gl_back
will actually render.

Default: GL_BACK

changeVectors - Supposedly "change to vector defined
by FIND_NEW_CHANGE_VECTORS as in vector graphics."
Either used internally by the rendering system,
or is just legacy and no longer effectual. Either
way it produces absolutely no effect.

cl_avidemo_latch - Setting this to 1 starts capturing
according to the value specified by cl_avidemo
the moment the game starts or the demo begins.
(default: 0)

r_noFastRestart - When set to 0 QL will attempt to
change from fullscreen to windowed mode without
re-loading all game data. (Yakumo's guide)
(default: 0)

timedemo - When set to 1 and a demo is played it will
run through the demo as fast as it can and report
performance info in frames per second.

cl_quitOnDemoCompleted - With this set to 1, if you
play a demo, the game will exit when the demo is over.

sys_cpuid - Returns a two digit number that is quake's
identification code for your CPU. CPU IDs are nothing
new and are well documented. How quake arrives at a
two digit number for them is another story.

cm_noAreas - Particularly mysterious. Judging by the
other cm_ cvars, cm_noCurves and cm_playerCurveClip,
the cm_ prefix probably has to do with collision
detection. The 'C' in cm may stand for collision, and
the 'M' perhaps 'mapping' or 'map' or even
'management'. No noticable effect in devmap.

win_wndproc - Outputs a number that is presumably a
code that corresponds to quake live's process in
windows.

There are plenty of others still and I'm looking into them.

Some of my definitions are a bit rough around the edges but there really is no information to be had. The developers have not responded to any of my requests for cvar explanations.

[KittenIgnition]

if cl_quitondemocompleted is set to 0 what happens? ive never seen this cvar in quake live, but it would be really good to have, since the auto-quit thing gets really annoying. q3mme has it perfect, where you just sit there when the demo is completed. very useful.

[DCR]

s_mixahead at lower values actually yields fps boost noticeable on timedemo by quite a large margin on my system.
Ie as in less overhead for the game on what to worry about. I've set this to 0.12 (.12) on my config which seems to work fine on my system, ie no sound cracks and so on.
S_mixprestep on the other hand allows you to let sounds play slightly longer or shorter or not being played at all, negative values. Lower value decreases fps higher values increases fps. It's a useful settings since u can get rid of the problem with sounds being chopped in a heavy action situation, where you f.eks could hear an item being taken such as mega, or not, depending on setting. Default value is good tho. I set mine to 0.06 (.06).

[Lorfa]

if cl_quitondemocompleted is set to 0 what happens? ive never seen this cvar in quake live, but it would be really good to have, since the auto-quit thing gets really annoying. q3mme has it perfect, where you just sit there when the demo is completed. very useful.

If it's set to 0 (default), it doesn't exit the game. Just goes back to whatever screen. Same as if you hit escape or some other key during the demo.

[KittenIgnition]

If it's set to 0 (default), it doesn't exit the game. Just goes back to whatever screen. Same as if you hit escape or some other key during the demo.

oh... not really what i hoped it was. meh, q3mme is better than anything else anyway

[Lorfa]

s_mixahead at lower values actually yields fps boost noticeable on timedemo by quite a large margin on my system.
Ie as in less overhead for the game on what to worry about. I've set this to 0.12 (.12) on my config which seems to work fine on my system, ie no sound cracks and so on.
S_mixprestep on the other hand allows you to let sounds play slightly longer or shorter or not being played at all, negative values. Lower value decreases fps higher values increases fps. It's a useful settings since u can get rid of the problem with sounds being chopped in a heavy action situation, where you f.eks could hear an item being taken such as mega, or not, depending on setting. Default value is good tho. I set mine to 0.06 (.06).

Interesting, thanks for the elaboration. I was wondering what your fps increase looks like from lowering s_mixahead from 0.15 to that 0.12.

I tried it and I got about 7 fps higher average on a bunch of timedemo runs (same demo of course).

I thought higher values of s_mixprestep would decrease fps, not the other way around.

[TheMuffinMan86]

Wow, nice work Lorfa and DCR. It'll be added. There's still a few of the new (August 11th) cvars I haven't bothered filling in yet, like the FreezeTag ones (someone posted them in some other thread but I can't find them now).
Planning to release the next edition for after next content update (next week?).

[RC13]

Awesome work guys. I stickied this thread.

[DCR]

For me those two sound settings boost fps timedemo , the four demo sittingduck made, by 60fps, and that at just the slight change. U can get houndreds of extra fps on timedemo by these settings alone. They are infact just about the most important settings in the game in this regard.
It really speaks volumes of how poor ql's performance is to a certain point. Because it's relative, being it's a fps game incorporated in the form throughout a browser. The settings area really sensitive and just increasing/decreasing small numbers can have great effects.
Also keep in mind there's com_soundMegs default value at 16 last i checked. I'm not sure but depending on if u have great/lower length of samples, tweaking this could possibly have an effect, tho i find it doubtful.
With todays computers, it's somewhat odd that there exist settings as com_hunkmegs, com_soundMegs and com_zonemegs, one would think the game would just say "hey i'm going to take all the memory i need and be done with it".

[DCR]

A note:
r_ext_multitexture "" //1. If disabled postprocessing doesnt do anything.
I keep in my config "" that equals 0.
Also i noticed a setting called cl_viewAccel, possibly used for accel when using joystick/keyboard? Just exactly what the hell are joystick possibility even doing in the game in the first place, is beyond me.