man fteqcc (1): FTE QuakeC compiler

SYNOPSIS

fteqcc [options]

DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the fteqcc command.

fteqcc is a program that compiles QuakeC sourcecode to binaray game data of Quake1 or QuakeWorld based games.

OPTIONS

--help: Show summary of options.
-Fautoproto: enable automatic prototyping
-Fwasm: dump all assembler code to qc.asm
-Kkeyword, -Kno-keyword: turn language keywords on or off. Keywords available to toggle are: asm, break, case, class, const, continue, default, entity, enum, enumflags, extern, float, for, goto, int, integer, noref, nosave, shared, state, string, struct, switch, thinktime, typedef, union, var and vector.
-O0, -O1, -O2, -O3,: use optimisation level between 0 and 3. With 0, no optimisation takes place, other values include more or less of the options in the section OPTIMISATION.
-src directory: Specify a directory to look for source files (progs.src) in.
-Wall: show all warnings

FORMAT

fteqcc supports several output formats.

-Tstandard, -Tq1, -Tquakec: This is the default setting and generates code compatible with original Quake1.
-Thexen2, -Th2: Outputs Hexen2 compatible code.
-Tkkqwsv, -Tkk7, -Tbigprogs, -Tversion7, -Tkkqwsv: Generates KK Version 7 compatible progs
-Tfte: Generates code specific to FTE Quake.

OPTIMISATION

The following options may be used to fine-tune optimisation. Some of them are activated automatically.

-Oassignments: c = a*b is performed in one operation rather than two, and can cause older decompilers to fail.
-Oshortenifs: if (!a) was traditionally compiled in two statements. This optimisation does it in one, but can cause some decompilers to get confused.
-Ononvec_parms: In the origional qcc, function parameters were specified as a vector store even for floats. This fixes that.
-Oconstant_names: strips out the names of constants from your progs, resulting in smaller files. It makes decompilers leave out names or fabricate numerical ones.
-Oconstant_name_strings: strips out the names of string constants from your progs. This can break addons, so don't use it in those cases.
-Odupconstdefs: merge definitions of constants which are the same value. Pay extra attention to assignment to constant warnings.
-Onouplicatestrings: compact the string table that is stored in the progs. It will be considerably smaller with this.
-Olocals: Strips out local names and definitions. This makes it REALLY hard to decompile
-Ofunction_names: This strips out the names of functions which are never called. Doesn't make much of an impact though.
-Ofilenames: This strips out the filenames of the progs. This can confuse the really old decompilers, but is nothing to the more recent ones.
-Ounreferenced: Removes the entries of unreferenced variables. Doesn't make a difference in well maintained code.
-Ooverlaptemps: Optimises the pr_globals count by overlapping temporaries. In QC, every multiplication, division or operation in general produces a temporary variable. This optimisation prevents excess, and in the case of Hexen2's gamecode, reduces the count by 50k. This is the most important optimisation, ever.
-Oconstantarithmatic: 5*6 actually emits an operation into the progs. This prevents that happening, effectivly making the compiler see 30
-Oprecache_file: Strip out stuff wasted used in function calls and strings to the precache_file builtin (which is actually a stub in quake).
-Oreturn_only: Functions ending in a return statement do not need a done statement at the end of the function. This can confuse some decompilers, making functions appear larger than they were.
-Ocompound_jumps: This optimisation plays an effect mostly with nested if/else statements, instead of jumping to an unconditional jump statement, it'll jump to the final destination instead. This will bewilder decompilers.
-Ostrip_functions: Strips out the 'defs' of functions that were only ever called directly. This does not affect saved games.
-Olocals_marshalling: Store all locals in one section of the pr_globals. Vastly reducing it. This effectivly does the job of overlaptemps. It's been noticed as buggy by a few, however, and the curcumstances where it causes problems are not yet known.
-Ovectorcals: Where a function is called with just a vector, this causes the function call to store three floats instead of one vector. This can save a good number of pr_globals where those vectors contain many duplicate coordinates but do not match entirly.

AUTHOR

fteqcc was written by David Walton <[email protected]> and J. Smith <[email protected]>.