Beta Testing 2.06

[nbohr1more]

@tapewolf:

 

Please post your Darkmod.cfg

 

Thanks.

[grayman]

The first release package is ready for final testing.

Instead of the tdm_mirrors.txt file you've been using for beta testing, use the following to pick up the release package.

# This file lists mirror sites for The Dark Mod, which are used by the
# tdm_update utility to update your TDM installation.
 
[Mirror TDM Root]
url = http://update.thedarkmod.com/
weight = 10

7398 – Nvidia workarounds (nbohr1more)

7399 – Fix linux compile & set SSAA to the cube root of MSAA (nbohr1more)

 

15200 – dragofer's updated stagecoach (Springheel)

15201 – Updated stagecoach prefab (Springheel)

15202 – Change stagecoach model exclusion instructions from ase to lwo in devel/manifests/darkmod_maps.txt. (grayman)

15203 – Release stagecoach changes (grayman)

15206 – Remove broken stagecoach prefab (Springheel)

15208 – fix for slovak strings (nbohr1more)

15209 – More changes for horse animations (Arcturus)

 

[Spooks]

r_useFBO 0

"Nvidia Hardware Detected. Forcing FBO"

 

Is this a part of the latest commit? This means that warp materials will be broken for anyone with Nvidia cards. At least uncheck http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4684 as solved and shelve it for 2.07.

[nbohr1more]

Set r_nvidiaOverride = 0 to disable that.

 

 

Edit:

 

I'm sorry if that was rather terse. I posted that on my phone.

 

The way this works:

 

1) If you have Nvidia hardware

2) And you enable Soft Shadows

3) And r_nvidiaOverride is set (default)

 

(all 3 conditions must be met)

 

4) r_useFBO gets enabled to prevent buggy flickering soft shadows.

 

 

5) if r_useFBO is enabled

6) MSAA settings become resolution scaling settings akin to SSAA

 

Since the resolution down-scaler is a simple bi-linear setup, it wont really give you modern SSAA quality

like rotated grid AA (etc). It's also way too expensive.

 

I recommend leaving AA of and using FXAA in your driver settings.

 

You may prefer to have better looking (less buggy) glass and transparency along with MSAA at the expense

of buggy soft shadows. That is where you disable r_nvidiaOverride and r_useFBO. (or disable soft shadows and r_useFBO).

 

The setup is an attempt to give users an easy mode when enabling soft shadows.

[Atomica]

I just want to make sure I understand this correctly, but if I update using the update.thedarkmod.com mirror as specified above, the version of TDM that I end up will be the officially released version of 2.06 if no further (major) bugs are found? Sounds kinda like a pre-release almost, or a release candidate.

[nbohr1more]

Yes. Release candidate. We are really hesitant to make any further changes as the release cycle has taken far too long.

Only emergency show-stoppers like easily reproducible crashes (etc) are being considered for fixes at this point.

[Atomica]

So how much time will you give for major issues to be raised before it gets pushed out to the regular mirrors for regular users to update from?

 

Also, in 2.05 I like using the in-game anti-aliasing option (4x). Technically speaking what kind of AA is this, because it sounds like it'll mess with the soft-shadows tech? I have an NVIDIA card if it means anything.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Atomica

[nbohr1more]

So how much time will you give for major issues to be raised before it gets pushed out

to the regular mirrors for regular users to update from?

Probably a week or less.

 

Also, in 2.05 I like using the in-game anti-aliasing option (4x). Technically speaking what kind of AA is this,

because it sounds like it'll mess with the soft-shadows tech? I have an NVIDIA card if it means anything.

In 2.05 there are no Soft Shadows. If you don't want to fiddle with AA issues don't use the "Experimental" Soft Shadows feature.

 

In fact you can return to all 2.05 visual attributes:

 

r_useFBO 0

r_softShadowsQuality 0

r_useGLSL 0

 

But if you want to use Soft Shadows you have a choice:

 

r_useFBO = 0 with some amount of flickering shadows and AA works just like 2.05

 

r_useFBO = 1 with practically perfect shadows but when you change AA settings you are really changing video scaling for a down-scaler.

Again, FXAA in your driver is the best option. Even in 2.05.

[Atomica]

Almost sounds like you're saying "hey our engine's AA option is shit, get your GPU driver to do the job". Also I know 2.05 had no soft shadows, I'm just saying that I'm used to the AA done in the engine in 2.05, but it sounded like if I wanted to use the soft shadows that's available in 2.06, that wouldn't be an easy option. Still, it's good to see there are console commands to restore the classic renderer so nothing has to change if necessary.

 

The shadow tech is more of a curiosity - hard shadows never really bothered me because frankly, no-one uses calculated stencil shadows in games anymore, it's all shadow maps I believe. The Doom 3 shadowing style is kinda unique and I love it, but I'm always interested in what you guys come up with.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Atomica

[peter_spy]

Btw. did you agree on which sounds should be excluded from EFX by default, or that has to wait for the next release?

 

Atomica – AFAIK, the FXAA option wasn't even around when the Doom3 engine was made, and it's much faster, if not the fastest of antialasing options (as it's done per-pixel, it doesn't analyse 3d models). And you know how it is with this engine, you should take any performance improvements you can get

Edited May 18, 2018 by Judith

[cabalistic]

I just implemented MSAA with fbos in my VR fork. It was pretty straightforward. Would you be interested if I tried to implement it over the weekend for 2.06, or is it already too late?

[Atomica]

OK I gave 2.06 a go, but there's something annoying about the menu. The mouse definitely feels sluggish/floaty in the main menu screens in 2.06, whereas the mouse responds nicely and sharp in 2.05. This is without adjusting any console settings and just using my existing Darkmod.cfg. However, in the game itself, the mouse input lag disappears entirely. It's only present in the menu screens. I should also mention I'm not running with vsync, which commonly ads some input lag. It's very weird.

[peter_spy]

You mean you copied your 2.05 cfg over to 2.06? I hope not. If you have your specific settings you want to keep, you should use separate autocommands.cfg for that, or autoexec.cfg, if you need to define something before the engine is loaded (like info on your VRAM). The former works in most cases.

 

I should also mention I'm not running with vsync, which commonly ads some input lag.

 

If you have vsync off, you may be running the game in very high FPS, and that may cause the lag too. I found that the best performance is when you run the game windowed. You have vsync and double or tripple buffering this way, and when fps drops you get the same FPS as in fullscreen with vsync off, but without that ugly screen tearing

[Atomica]

You mean you copied your 2.05 cfg over to 2.06? I hope not. If you have your specific settings you want to keep, you should use separate autocommands.cfg for that, or autoexec.cfg, if you need to define something before the engine is loaded (like info on your VRAM). The former works in most cases.

 

 

If you have vsync off, you may be running the game in very high FPS, and that may cause the lag too. I found that the best performance is when you run the game windowed. You have vsync and double or tripple buffering this way, and when fps drops you get the same FPS as in fullscreen with vsync off, but without that ugly screen tearing

If you have a 2.05 install, and the update comes through to update to 2.06 (which you can do already, there's a differential update already available), the user's Darkmod.cfg is obviously going to still be there. Do you expect the user to blow away their old config file and start from scratch? What about keybinds for example, those are stored in the config file.

 

Also I enabled com_showfps. Seems like the menu is forced into around 58-59 FPS, even if you select the option to uncap the FPS (which I only tested to see what options would change things, I probably wouldn't run uncapped normally). Having it capped or not makes no difference in terms of responsiveness.

 

EDIT: For the record I deleted the Darkmod.cfg file and, sure enough, the mouse lag exists in the menu on a fresh install. Try the same with an no-config 2.05 install. There's a clear difference in the menu mouse movement between the two. This is the ONLY thing that's bugging me at the moment - the feel of the mouse in the menus in 2.05 was snappy, now in 2.06 it's not, config file makes no difference. This might seem trivial since it doesn't seem to affect the main game, but I HATE mouse lag and feel it to the point where I'd rather have tearing than input lag.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Atomica

[peter_spy]

Hmm, I didn't notice the change, because mouse cursor is equally responsive in windowed mode in 2.05 and 2.06. But in fullscreen mode it's much more snappy in 2.05. There's a difference, but nothing game-breaking (yet).

[Atomica]

OK... well at least I'm not losing my mind, thank you.

 

I agree that it's a subtle thing, and I'll admit if it seems silly to some. But some people are more sensitive to lax mouse input responsiveness than others, we're all different people. But you're right, it's not game-breaking on its own. I dunno, maybe all I need to do is change a single console command and it'll fix it and be like 2.05. Beats me what it could be though.

 

But you play the game windowed? How do you get immersed in it if you can see your desktop? I never play games in a window so excuse the confusion.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Atomica

[peter_spy]

I have a thing called Dexpot, it's basically a win 10 virtual desktop option, but for windows 7. You can have several desktops, as if you had multiple monitors, and you can configure them not to have any desktop/taskbar icons or wallpapers. So I have a separate screen for e.g. DarkRadiant and TDM, another one for 3dsmax, and my base screen for browser, music, and the like

[chakkman]

Sorry if i'm late to the party, but, how many more frames are we talking about, with the new multicore support? Just approximately, i get that you can't say that in general, for every kind of processor.

[AluminumHaste]

Try it out, it's free, find out how your system responds to the new tweaks.

On my computer I get a nice boost in certain situations but for the most part I get more consistent frame rates in heavy scenes.

[chakkman]

B-b-but... it's beta, and could eat my cat and stuff.

[peter_spy]

Yup, it really depends on system and your settings too. Using stuff like soft shadows and EFX will probably offset the performance improvements, you'd have to test 2.06 with 2.05 settings to see some difference. I don't see much of it on my desktop, but on the laptop the performance improved a bit. In terms of CPU load, I don't see difference: 2.05 uses only 18-19% of my i7, and 2.06 shows more or less the same values.

[Springheel]

Sorry if i'm late to the party, but, how many more frames are we talking about, with the new multicore support? Just approximately, i get that you can't say that in general, for every kind of processor.

 

Be aware that the feature is experimental. I experienced random crashes with it on.

 

 

the mouse lag exists in the menu on a fresh install.

 

 

I had the opposite happen. My mouse was extremely fast and difficult to control on 2.06, at least at first. Something to do with uncapped FPS.

 

 

You mean you copied your 2.05 cfg over to 2.06? I hope not.

 

 

Your config file isn't removed when you update from 2.05 to 2.06.

[chakkman]

Thanks. I might try it, even though i usually wait for the final. Quite interested in the multicore option especially, TBH, because, TDM always lagged a bit here.

[nbohr1more]

I just implemented MSAA with fbos in my VR fork. It was pretty straightforward.

Would you be interested if I tried to implement it over the weekend for 2.06, or is it already too late?

Calling grayman...

 

Ping ping ping...

[grayman]

Calling grayman...

 

Ping ping ping...

 

Too late.

 

Commit to SVN for testing, but I won't merge it to 2.06.