Common Issues

Audio crackling

ezQuake tries to give you the lowest latency sound possible. This is achieved by provided smaller blocks of data at a higher rate. If your system can't keep up with the demand for audio, you might hear crackling or popping noises. There are a couple of settings you can change to find the right settings for your system.

• /s_desiredsamples - this suggests an amount of data the sound card is sent with each request. The larger the buffer the less chance there is of hearing crackling/popping noises, but also the higher the latency before a new sound will start.
• /s_khz - if you don't want an increase in latency, you can try lowering the quality of the sound instead. The lower the sound quality, the lower the value of /s_desiredsamples can be.

If you are familiar with older versions of the client, /s_desiredsamples is roughly equivalent to s_mixahead, which has been removed.

Config files

Quake has used configuration files for twenty years now, and over time the rules have become somewhat complex. /exec config.cfg may not do what you expect.

ezQuake will look for configuration files in the following directories:

• The game directory
• User profile directory (typically Documents/ezquake/ in Windows, or ~/.ezquake/ in Linux)
• qw folder
• ezquake folder
• id1 folder

If the game directory is already added (because it is "qw" or "id1" for example) then first test (for the game directory) is skipped

The /path command will list all the files & folders being searched, in order. To see where a particular file is being loaded from, use the /locate command.

If you are working with a setup that puts default configs and media in the qw folder (such as nQuake) we recommend enabling the option "Save to Profile Dir" (either through the Config menu, or with /cfg_use_home 1). Otherwise the pak files in qw/ directory will override configs saved in ezquake/, and you may encounter confusing behaviour.

File search order

Within each of these folders, packaged files are searched in order: .wad, .pk4, .pk3, then .pak. All files named pakX are added, where X is increasing in number starting from 0. Then ezQuake looks for a pak.lst file. If it finds one, all listed files are added, otherwise ezQuake will add all valid files in the folder. (This means an empty pak.lst file will cause no custom pak files to be added).

When processing the pak.lst file, any pak/pk3 files starting "soft" will be ignored. Files starting "soft" were intended to be loaded when using the software renderer only. ezQuake is OpenGL only now, but still keeps this rule.

If you have multiple .pk3 paks with conflicting files, use a pak.lst file to specify the order. They should be listed in ascending priority (i.e. the last entry will be search first)

Saved configuration files

ezQuake has the option of making config files much smaller, with the /cfg_save_unchanged option. When set to 0, the current value is checked against the ezQuake default. If it matches, the value is not written out to the file, as it is the default anyway. This works well, if no other package has modified the default already - the value may have already changed from the ezQuake default, so ezQuake won't include it in your config file, and you won't be able to use the config file to restore the system back to its desired state.

If you are working with a setup that executes other configurations before yours (such as nQuake), consider setting /cfg_save_unchanged 1.