QdQFront v1.2 (02/12/97) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are going to be using QdQFront then you should already be familiar with Anthony Bailey's ReMaic and Uwe Girlich's LMPC. You may also be familiar with Stefan Schwoon's DemTool, Yonatan Donner's AutoCam and my own AutoMAP. Because of this, I will not try to explain the process involved in decompiling and re-recording Quake demos. I will just explain how to use QdQFront. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Installation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Just put QdQFront.EXE in a directory and run it. You can even run it straight from the ZIP file if you want. The most logical place to keep it would probably be in a directory with the other QDQ tools. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Description ---------------------------------------------------------------------- QdQFront is nothing more than a glamorised batch file writer. It is designed to offer an intuitive interface both for people who have experience of refilming demos and those who are just learning the process. You use a simple, methodical interface to tell it where various files are, and which files should be created by the various QDQ tools, and QdQFront will automatically create the correct batch file. It will create a batch file for any of the tools or any combination of them. If you want, it will even launch Quake and play the demo that you've created. In theory, it will allow you to completely refilm a demo without ever leaving the safety of your Windows desktop. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- How it works ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The options and file locations for each of the demo tools are set out on separate pages of the main dialog. To access the settings for a particular tool, simply click on its named tab at the top of the dialog. The pages for some of the tools also have a "More" button that you can click on to access a further page of options. To set the location of a file that a tool should read or write, type the path and filename in the appropriate text box. You may also click the "Browse" button at the side of the text box to determine the location of the file using a standard file dialog. To set / unset any option, simply click on it to toggle its state. Some options effect whether or not the content of a text box will be used. If a text box will not be used, it will be disabled. Some options allow you to select one setting from a selection of several. You do this by clicking on the option that you wish to select. When you have set all of the options for the tools that you are using, go to the "Filming" page. You tell QdQFront which tools you are using by selecting them and deselecting the others. You may also specify the name of the batch file that should be written, whether or not Quake should be launched, and any additional parameters that should be passed to Quake. (Please note that you do not need to use the "+playdemo" parameter when launching Quake. This is done automatically.) The final step of the process is to click the "GO!" button on the "Filming" page. This will run the batch file. If you want to see the batch file before it is run then click on the "Preview" button. When QdQFront launches a batch file, it becomes a separate task. This means that you can then go back to QdQFront, create a new configuration, and launch a new batch file. This is useful if you want to leave several demos compiling while you are away from your computer. You can launch as many batch files as your system's resources will allow. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Version changes and bug fixes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- v1.2 Added support for Stefan Schwoon's DemTool. Added "Use additional parameters" option to the ReMaic page. Useful for people that are using customised versions of ReMaic with options not in the release version. Changed the default filenames to "default_input", "default_output", etc. Some of the utilities may have crashed when reading and writing files of the same name. (Note: you're not really supposed to keep the default names!) Added numerical hot keys (alt+1, alt+2, etc) to the "Browse" buttons on all utility pages and dialogs. Also added hot keys to a few options. Should make things a bit better (and faster) for all the hot key junkies out there. Changed the name from QDQFront to QdQFront (small "d"). v1.11 The way the batch file was written failed to take account of the fact that people use more than one hard drive. Fixed. Improved some interface stuff. Now, when a text box is disabled, its description (and / or "Browse" button) is disabled as well. On the "Filming" page, when no tools are set to run, all batch file functionality is disabled. It didn't make sense to write a batch file that wouldn't do anything other than run Quake. v1.1 The file dialogs for several input files on the AutoCam and ReMaic pages would only accept files that already existed, even though they would not yet have been created by LMPC or AutoCam. Fixed. Added the "+playdemo" command to the Quake command line so the demo will automatically play when Quake is launched. When running ReMaic, the directory is changed to the directory where LMPC.EXE is located. This is so that ReMaic can use it to recompile the demo to DEM format. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Issues ---------------------------------------------------------------------- If you find that QdQFront will not run on your system, please ensure that you have a reliable version of COMCTL32.DLL in your Windows\System directory, which is necessary for some elements of QdQFront's interface. Some versions of COMCTL32.DLL have incompatibility issues and an unreliable version is the most likely cause of QdQFront not working (or working erratically). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments / questions / bug reports ---------------------------------------------------------------------- If you would like to make any comments about QdQFront, or there are features that you think should be added or improved, then please feel free to contact me. Also contact me if you find any bugs. If you find a bug with the way the batch file is written then please send a copy of it. Andrew Smith andrew@amorph.demon.co.uk