peter_spy

Also, it looks like any stage in the material declaration that isn't image shortcut adds the equivalent of total triangles for the model to the count. "TDM Ambient Method Related" is an exception. Every other operation that needs to be between { } is basically a multiplier to the triangle count of your model.

It's MSI GP60 2OD with Intel i5 2,5 GHz CPU and GF 740M 2 GB, 8 GB ram, running at native resolution of 1366 x768. I think it's enough for a 60 FPS target platform, although I'm not 100% sure yet.

Thanks for the clarification, it's always better to know how such things work to avoid surprises later. I have one more question though. I built a simple room with one model lit by one omni light + one ambient light. The model is 500 tris, but the readout is roughly 6 times higher than that. Is it because of a light, or a complex shader? (diffuse+normal+specular+glow+cubemap reflections) But when I move the omni light away from the model, tris count is still quite high: When I delete the ambient light, it's still quite high: And when I put the omni light back (with ambient light still deleted): By the way, the omni light uses fallof_exp2, if that increases anything. Now I commented out some image stages in the model shader, leaving only diffuse and normalmap: That's a big difference. Then I tried commenting out different stages, and it looks like the simple image shortcut stages have no impact at all, here's diffuse, normal, and specular active: Looks like the emissive (glow) map stage (blend add) and the cubemap stage added 1500 to the tris count for the model. Typically I just use _d, _n, and _s textures with no fancy things in shader, but this means you have to watch for more complex stuff. Also, it seems like ambient world adds one more omni light calculation per object? When I deleted the ambient light, the tris count went down by 500, so the tris count for this model.

Okay, checking don't cast shadows option didn't make any effect. I also took a closer look at fog light. While everything is fine so far in terms of performance, it increases triangle count quite a bit. In my corridor scene I use both ambient world and fog light. I checked all the lights so they're not overlapping, there are 4 of them. Current readout: 144k tris. When I delete the ambient world light: 75k tris. When I delete both ambient world and fog light: 45k tris. Performance with vsync off (old laptop, GF GT 740 M, 1360 x 768): With amb_world & fog lights deleted: 120 FPS With amb_world light only: 58 FPS (!) With fog light only: 90 FPS I always thought fog is resource consuming in games, but here it's kind of the other way around.

I will remember that, thanks. Using monsterclip might not be such a good idea anyway, as you have to go back to 3dsmax to make any necessary adjustments.

1) No, actually. I never thought it might make a difference (will check it just in case). 2) It sure is. I use 60 FPS as a basic performance guide, i.e. if performance drops below 60, it's my fault, because I'm probably not using engine the way I should.

I finally had some time to test a few things on my laptop, and while everything goes quite smoothly, I noticed a few things, performance-wise. First and most obvious is about lights: 3 overlapping and shadowcasting lights can bring down the framerate below 60 (it takes 4 nonshadows to do so). Also player going through two overlaping lights can cause the framerate to go down because of more complicated lightgem calculations? Just my guess. But, my biggest surprise was that in some cases it's actually the ambient_world light that eats up considerable amount of performance. You can have no lights except the ambient_world, and the fps will go down, depending on your scene complexity. I turned off the vsync to see what numbers we're talking about, and it goes from 180 fps to 100 fps in a highly detailed, but also very static scene (basically a room full of meshes). So, when checking performance it might be useful to turn ambient_world on and off once in a while, to see whether it affects your map in any significant way.

Since my X360 days, I play everything I can with X360 controller, FPP games included, so pad support would be greatly appreciated.

So you can use multi sub-object material, and then just export the whole scene? That would make sense. I'll try that in the evening. Speaking of collisions, can you add the monsterclip material as a part of the mesh so the AI can walk on it (like for mesh stairs), or it should always be done in the editor with brushes?

Ugh, I'm an idiot. I was trying to use multi-sub object, because DR seemed to detect it, but in fact you have to split mesh into multiple meshes, as per required multiple materials, and then export the whole scene as .ase (not Export selected). I read that workflow for Blender like 10 times and I still missed it. It's basically the same process for 3dsmax. Still, it was quite productive afternoon/evening.

I narrowed down the skin problem – model browser doesn't like the ".ASE" in uppercase, which 3dsmax does by default when exporting. That's what was wrong with the path. It must be lowercase, file extension included. Typically I use lowercase everywhere, but I missed that.

It's not in the Matching skins, but it is in All skins, and it works in-game. I don't know how to make the skin appear as an option in the model browser though. I looked at similar ase models and tried to copy those settings, but no dice: The same goes for multiple materials. I don't plan to use them much (never, preferably), but when you need. e.g. a translucency for a lightbulb in lamp, that might be useful. I managed to get multiple materials using multi-sub object in 3dsmax. But in game it always shows the second material. I tried to copy the material structure from those flowers, but then I can only see the first material. No idea why that happens

I seem to have a problem with creating skins and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I have a pretty simple case of a lamp which has a primary "unlit" material definded in ase model. I also created materials for white and orange light in my material file. I created skins folder and a text file there (the name of the file is irrelevant I guess?) Now my definitions look like this: The problem is, they don't show up matched to the model in the browser, and when I apply the skin definition to the mesh, I am able to choose it, but it's black in-game. [Edit] Damn, it was my fault, I messed up the emmisive texture paths So that's solved, but I still don't have those skins matched in model browser, it would be useful to select those right away.

con_noprint 0 You can put it in your autoexec.cfg too (you can't do that with r_showprimitives 1, tdm will crash if you do).

Loudness war is over for quite some time now, if only for the health reasons: research showed that aggressively normalized recordings have destructive impact on hearing, especially with children and in-ear headphones users. Broadcasting commissions all over the world adopted perceptible loudness normalization standards (as opposed to RMS normalization). I think it's -24 LUFS in USA and -23 LUFS for Europe. Recommended value for Internet programming is around -16 LUFS. Everybody has to use it now, at least every legal TV or radio station. If anyone still uses RMS normalized recordings consciously, maybe they're just deaf, like Metallica. Besides, such recordings will get squashed by radio limiters anyway, because they use loudness normalizing algorithms.

You can go even smaller and build just one test room/location/scenery (like the inside section of "Bakery job" or warehouse in the "Matter of Hours"). This way you'll be able to use techniques you like (brushes, prefabs, modules, your own models, anything in-between, etc.) and see the results faster. And, you'll be able to see how much the engine can take in terms of scene complexity (before it drops below 60 FPS), which is also very useful for measuring performance and setting your goals as a designer.

IMO it depends on a lot of factors. Actually, it was during the "radio days" in the 90s when dynamics of recordings was completely destroyed by loudness wars. We're mostly past that, although there are still bands who get their material mixed like that, and even like it that way (see latest Metallica album). I'm 36 and know how the analog stuff sounded like. I have no problem with listening to digital recordings, although I do that with pretty good headphones (AudioTechnica), which have excellent separation and very neutral sound, which appeals to me most (I hate bumped up highs and lows). Obviously, a lot of depends on final quality of the mix. You can hear that especially with indie artists. I have this one vocalist I love, but it's obvious she mixes her stuff herself, on a laptop and Beats headphones at best. Her music is fine when you listen it on a phone, with generic in-ear headphones, but it completely falls apart, when you put a good pair of studio monitors. If mastering is good, you will hear a lot of subtle and interesting things going on, in comparison to generic headphones/speakers.

Damn, you're right, I must stop doing that! Maybe it was too much "Ride the lightning" in high school? Unfortunately there's no way for spellchecker to catch that.

They don't. They use tech that makes lightning and materials look more physically accurate, but there's always heavy emphasis on art style. Otherwise why bother, everyone would just use photos as textures. Also, who really expects any kind of realism from games like Doom?

Glad to be of help, and I needed the font too (I only had fonts from TDM package installed) Yup, not sure why that happens, good thing it works in the preview.

https://www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/Dark11.htm This one works with GIMP, just tried it.

Is is anywhere in tdm_fonts01.pk4? Fonts from that package install correctly and they work in Gimp as they should, at least from my experience.

It looks good, although columns have those horizontal splits that don't contribute to their shape at all, since they're all straight. The same goes for arches' shape: until you give them a diffuse/normal that shows that shape, it won't be visible in the ambient light (your image image in lower left corner shows it best IMO).

Not sure why this thread is in off-topic section, when it would be very on-topic in the TDM Editors' Guild (or Art Assets)

Yup, with games like Dishonored 2 or new Doom requiring 30-50 gigs of download, it's like in the old days again, when you had to leave your desktop on for the night to download a couple of songs from napster Good thing this game doesn't follow the trend.