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My first map – questions & work in progress


peter_spy

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Tell that the guys always complaining about how bad idTech4 is in regards to performance. ;)

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It doesn't really matter how many objects a light is hitting - idTech 4 can sling polys into the hundreds of thousands without breaking a sweat. Problems typically start when you have too many overlapping, shadowcasting lights. Fortunately, hardware has advanced enough that you don't have to be as strict as in 2009, just don't go overboard with several lights hitting the same area.

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Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Tell that the guys always complaining about how bad idTech4 is in regards to performance. ;)

 

I can tell them that I also used 2x AA ;)

 

Who knew our little engine would beat the Unreal engine... :D

 

 

Technically not UE, it's so-called "Flesh" renderer that was hacked into Unreal Editor 2.x. Nobody really knows what it can or can't do, but man does it obey the "Lights that touch too many objects" metric like the law of gravity ;)

 

It doesn't really matter how many objects a light is hitting - idTech 4 can sling polys into the hundreds of thousands without breaking a sweat. Problems typically start when you have too many overlapping, shadowcasting lights. Fortunately, hardware has advanced enough that you don't have to be as strict as in 2009, just don't go overboard with several lights hitting the same area.

 

Well, that's still very good news! Typically calculating light and realtime shadows should put a strain on CPU (or is it GPU? not sure which process uses which hardware). In T3ed, I used one shadow casting light and a few "nonshadows" to fake light bouncing and such. I had a daylight mission prototype and it was pretty good for that purpose.

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  • Typically calculating light and realtime shadows should put a strain on CPU (or is it GPU? not sure which process uses which hardware)

In T3ed, I used one shadow casting light and a few "nonshadows" to fake light bouncing and such. I had a daylight mission prototype and it was pretty good for that purpose.

  • Note sure in our case, but think its the CPU.

It good practice to do the same thing in TDM, the only thing we need to be carefull of is what Melan mentioned above.

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Shadows should affect both cpu and gpu. The frontend, which utilizes the cpu iirc, gathers the information required for the shadows and the backend, which utilizes the gpu, constructs the shadow volumes and draws them.

 

I may add that, although having one light hitting several objects may not affect performance that high, having the shadows getting cast on several different object is another topic. It also depends on the complexety of the shadow meshes used by the models. In your screenshot there are many small objects, which most likely use some sort of cuboid as a shadow mesh. If the mesh is more complex the performance impact grows.

 

Also entities casting shadows on themselves can become a performance problem, which is why the developers added the possibility to disable this on a per-material base.

 

http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/renderer.php

 

http://kotaku.com/5975610/the-exceptional-beauty-of-doom-3s-source-code (This is a bit off topic, but an interesting read nevertheless. And there is a response by John Carmack :) )

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FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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That was interesting, thanks. Well, if I really want to see the framerate go down, tons of transparent objects probably will do the trick, as in any engine ;)

 

That said, I can't wait to tinker with the depth biased alpha for fog, haze or light shafts. I really missed that in T3ed, along with proper specularity. But I guess that was the whole problem with using DX 8.1, a lot of things went borked along the way. Or maybe that was because some guy wrote a renderer over a night or two, and then disappeared ;)

Edited by Judith
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Looks like the reason of performance drops on my laptor is mostly AI presence. More than 2 guards in my view and the framerate starts to drop, even without any lights. Btw. is there any property that makes entities not rendered in-game? Something like bOutofWorld in TDS. Sometimes I want to hide some of the AIs or meshes to check a few other things, without deleting them.

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Can find a post with the specs of your laptop listed, when playing TDM -

  • Do you have the mains adapter plugged in
  • Do you have the windows power profile set to maximum..?
  • Do you have the gfx card profile set to max..?

And regarding the Ai, its a good idea to have the following set on AI -

  • "min_interleave_think_dist" "1000"
  • "max_interleave_think_dist" "2500"
  • "max_interleave_think_frames" "10"

- http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Interleaved_Thinking_optimization

 

And set this on Ai that have very short or no patrol routes -

  • "neverdormant" "0"

- http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Performance:_Essential_Must-Knows

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The three questions: yes, yes, and I'm not sure what you mean. If that's power management mode in nvidia drivers, then no, the "maximum performance" setting makes the fans go like in a blow dryer, even when I'm just in the menu (although the descrption warned me that would be so). I will run the CPUz and post results when I get back home.

 

My desktop on the other hand, can't be used as benchmarking device now. It runs missions like Volta in over 60 fps in 1440p with 4x AA:

Clipboard01.jpg

 

Which is bloody awesome, but I'd like my mission to be playable for as many people as possible ;)

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You can use either the difficulty args to hide AI that aren't set to your current difficulty:

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Difficulty_Levels

 

or use the lod_bias args to hide items based on the object detail slider in graphic settings.

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=LOD_Bias

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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This is my laptop's system specs, it's the MSI GP60 2OD:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/va7u4hbf5axagky/LAPTOPPC.txt?dl=1

 

I think the overall problem might be with how OpenGL works with this dual gfx card setup. At first, DarkMod crashed a minute or two after I started a mission, because it used the Intel Graphics as primary card instead of nvidia. Changing driver options helped. I'll see what happens when I install the default gfx card drivers for that nvidia card.

Edited by Judith
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That laptop like most intel/nvidia gpu based setups - will use nVidia optimus. Whats supposed to happen is it used the intel HD 4600 (on the CPU) for 2D and the nVidia GT740 for 3D. Downloading the latest driver for both GPU's should hopefully fix the issue -

 

Download the intel/nvidia drivers -

 

- https://www.msi.com/Laptop/support/GP60.html#down-driver - main driver page for your laptop.

 

Then uninstall both GPU drivers, nVidia then Intel, then run driver sweeper and reboot -

 

- then install the intel driver, reboot.

- then install the nvidia driver, reboot.

 

And then come back here with the perf results :-)

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I installed the reference gfx drivers from the laptop support page, and the performance is much better now. Multiple AIs and lights etc. Looks like nvidia is still doing that thing, where newest drivers are slowing down older hardware.

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Interesting to see a reunion like that.

I sometimes wonder at people thinking T2, TDS, and TDM mappers are such different communities, although I get out of touch with the other forums too just because it takes time to follow everything. Well the Thief editing forums anyway ... I'm still a moderator over on TTLG so follow the other forums.

 

But generally I've always seen us as one big extended family sharing variations of the same basic passion. Then again I still play T2 & TDS FMs along with TDM ones, so I was never drawing lines between them to begin with (though I gather some people do play only one type.) I still have some T2 WIPs that I wouldn't mind finishing up, although now my time is so stretched I have to focus to release anything at all; one has to prioritize something; and for me that something would be flexibility in mapping out my vision, which I think TDM wins. But I still understand & respect that other mappers have other priorities in sticking with their preferred editors, including even familiarity and the learning curve to learn something new.

 

Edit. Sorry, that's kind of a derail, lol. I'm just interested when people switch editors sometimes, but no need to derail the thread about it. :angel:

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Interesting to see a reunion like that.

I sometimes wonder at people thinking T2, TDS, and TDM mappers are such different communities, although I get out of touch with the other forums too just because it takes time to follow everything. Well the Thief editing forums anyway ... I'm still a moderator over on TTLG so follow the other forums.

 

But generally I've always seen us as one big extended family sharing variations of the same basic passion. Then again I still play T2 & TDS FMs along with TDM ones, so I was never drawing lines between them to begin with (though I gather some people do play only one type.) I still have some T2 WIPs that I wouldn't mind finishing up, although now my time is so stretched I have to focus to release anything at all; one has to prioritize something; and for me that something would be flexibility in mapping out my vision, which I think TDM wins. But I still understand & respect that other mappers have other priorities in sticking with their preferred editors, including even familiarity and the learning curve to learn something new.

Hehe, well, for me it was just a little too much to be active in both forums. Especially nowadays, where my time is so limited that I don't even check TDM forums that regularly anymore. I'll assume many people think this way and focus their limited energy on the stuff they care most about.

 

But yeah, it is quite a nice reunion. :) We had been working on The Cabal for TDS for quite some time, which feels like ages ago. (However, my contributions are Null compared to Judith's.)

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STiFU's being way too modest :) Your insight was invaluable during the Cabal project and beyond. Sure it was so long ago, and I remember it was such a mess at some point... Kind of still is. Every mission feels like a different world. But hey, those were fun times :)

 

 

Interesting to see a reunion like that.
I sometimes wonder at people thinking T2, TDS, and TDM mappers are such different communities, although I get out of touch with the other forums too just because it takes time to follow everything. Well the Thief editing forums anyway ... I'm still a moderator over on TTLG so follow the other forums.

But generally I've always seen us as one big extended family sharing variations of the same basic passion. Then again I still play T2 & TDS FMs along with TDM ones, so I was never drawing lines between them to begin with (though I gather some people do play only one type.) I still have some T2 WIPs that I wouldn't mind finishing up, although now my time is so stretched I have to focus to release anything at all; one has to prioritize something; and for me that something would be flexibility in mapping out my vision, which I think TDM wins. But I still understand & respect that other mappers have other priorities in sticking with their preferred editors, including even familiarity and the learning curve to learn something new.

Edit. Sorry, that's kind of a derail, lol. I'm just interested when people switch editors sometimes, but no need to derail the thread about it. :angel:

 

No need to apologize, these are really good points, Dema. Like I'm at the point in my life where I feel like I have a finite time (and aging body). I have my main job (translations, sitting at the computer all day), my other sort of new job (photography, running around with tons of equipment, and then sitting at the computer all day), and I still like playing new games, learning about design. And, I really want to create "something in 3d" this year (and that means you know what).

 

I'd been carefully considering my next move since December last year. My first choice was obviously TDS, but even thinking about the amount of quirks and workarounds I'd have to deal with made me feel tired. It's been so many years, and until there's someone who completely rewrites the shaders for DX 9 and makes tools for material libraries and models... Even as I write that, I see how crazy and desperate it sounds. It's way too much to ask for, even from most dedicated community members. So my next idea was to limit myself even further: make environment art for UDK or UE4. At some point I even thought about a UT3 map. But then just making something pretty for a Youtube showreel didn't seem meaningful to me. I don't have much experience in making multiplayer maps either. Making use of all that stealth game theory made more sense, so I asked myself, what about Darkmod? I spent a week or two lurking here, reading wiki and thinking if I can commit to this, and finally make something good. My first impression was, that at least DR and TDM will work like intended most of the time, and that means a lot when you come from T3Ed world.

 

You are right about switching the editors though. Maybe it's an age thing, but rewiring your brain and changing your long-time habits is hard. It took me 2-3 days to get used to controls and get beyond childish resistance of my brain, aka "why this isn't unreal". I think it got easier when it ocurred to me what could be the general idea behind the type of controls DR has. IMO there are two goals here. One is to make sure you won't accidentally select and move something. I already developed a good habit of having my left hand over the Esc key very time I switch from perspective to 2D views or vice versa. It makes sense. The other goal is to make blocking out BSP and measurements as fast as possible. Rulers with numbers, so I don't have to count grid squares to measure things is a tremendous help. Also the resizing system, incredibly fast and efficient when you get used to it. Flexibility in how you can design things, from the good old "room-by-room" method to more professional iterative design. Floors without walls in big empty place to figure out gameplay, lightning, loot and enemy placement first. Quick and flexible BSP tools which can be used to create mockups of modular tilemeshes, so you can figure out the grid and spatial relations and model those later in Maya or 3ds.

 

To sum it up, I realized I need all of the above, because the day is only 24 hours long and I'm so not in my twenties anymore. And again, I really want to make something. It feels as compelling as other things I do in real life. Which kinda shows how big nerd I am, but oh well ;).

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I hope you don't mind I slightly changed the topic to reflect what's going on :)

 

Lately, apart from writing the story and thinking about general layout, I've been using DR to learn more about basic player abilities, mostly movement. I think I've got all the numbers down for mantling, walking, walking + jumping, and running + jumping.

 

Right now I'm looking at falling damage, and one thing occurred to me. Player's mantling reach is basically 128 u, jump + mantle (ok, it's actually 144 u, but for sake of simplicity...). Now, to make a ledge impossible to mantle, you need to put it up at ~160 u. Problem is, this is exactly the starting range for falling damage to apply. It's not much, just 5 health, but the idea is not to punish the player if he falls off the ledge or miscalculates a jump. Getting back to the position where you can reach the ledge can be frustrating enough (I'll try to use it in moderation...). What do you think I should do?

 

Hmm, I might have miscalculated something, I could swear at 160 u you get 5 falling damage. It looks like you get 9 damage if you jump and fall. That should do for now.

Edited by Judith
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