STiFU
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Posts posted by STiFU
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On 5/16/2025 at 7:05 AM, peter_spy said:
I'm sorry that you have such problems
, I can only guess that it's the matter of unlucky hardware and drivers combination. The only problem I encountered early on was resolution not switching in Fullscreen mode. Otherwise it was a flawless experience from start to finish...
I actually fixed it now.
My 3060 Ti OC used to overheat. I RMA'd it, but Gigabyte was having none of it. So, I had to undervolt it to prevent it from overheating, and it turns out, that undervolt is simply not stable in some modern games, most notably UE5 games. I had tested many games and benchmarks with that undervolt and never had problems. Then two years later, problems suddenly arise. I ruled out that the undervolt could be responsible for the crashes because I saw the game crashing even with "MSI Afterburner" (the undervolt / overclock tool) closed. However, this conclusion was simply incorrect, because closing MSI Afterburner does not revert the GPU to stock state, the undervolt will stick. I am now running a super conservative undervolt with a slight underclocking of my GPU and the game is absolutely stable and I can now even raise many settings to high or epic, which used to produce the crash much sooner. 
I finished the game by now and I too am blown away. Here's my review, if you care for it. I omitted all my technical issues with the game, because those were simply on my stupidity.
SpoilerMuch like the plot of this JRPG, you don't want to leave this beautiful virtual world after finishing the game featuring a very emotional and mature story about grief with many unexpected turns in a France-inspired fantasy world. Thankfully, you don't have to leave as there is a lot of more content to do afterwards. The graphics, acting and direction are absolutely gorgeous and it is one of the few Unreal Engine 5 titles that actually perform well. The dodges, parries and counters freshen up the traditional JRPG-Formula really well to make it more engaging, but other than that, it is as old-school as it gets. The first time I entered the overworld, I instantly thought "Yes, this is basically the original Final Fantasy VII" and I loved it. I really only have on thing to critisize: The enemy level is not shown so that, in mid- to late-game, you frequently load into battle against an enemy that is way out of your league. I get the design decision, they wanted to increase immersion while exploring, but a small skull symbol or something would have made this a bit less annoying. Still a 9/10.
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On 5/7/2025 at 11:04 AM, peter_spy said:
In terms of game mechanics, it uses a mix of ideas from JRPGs like Lost Odyssey, but I guess it's more like Nier: Automata in terms of world building and other things. Apart from that, the style and imagination that went into making the whole thing stands out as a class of its own.
Yesterday, I beat a minor boss on a beautiful island, and that alone made me sad for the rest of the day, for no explicable reason. If that's not art, I don't know what is.
Man, these crashes are getting out of hand, I am in the finale of act 2 and it keeps crashing on me...
It's so annoying that I am thinking about quitting, although I really enjoy the game and I am so close to the finish-line. It's a huge bummer!
Some people reported that switching to DX11 renderer would help with the constant crashes, but it didn't work for me. I tried various ini tweaks etc. Just now I even tried disabling DLSS and setting everything to low. Still crashes eventually. It seems to dependent on the area, as I had sections of the game without any crashes for a whole evening. Then again, there were sessions were I had 10 crashes. I eventually created a "kill and restart" batch so that I at least could quickly get back into the game.By the way, it turns out that those LOD issues were due to me using the DX11 renderer.
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Avowed looked like a 9/10 for me at first, because exploration, visuals and combat were great. However, after some time, I found the pay-off of the exploration was not very high, as the loot is mostly meaningless (yaaaay, a tree branch). Then there's the problem with the lacking enemy variety and, as a result, also lacking combat variety. The few basic enemy types are also grouped up in the wildest combinations, which kind of eats away from immersion. The soundtrack also gets old rather qickly, which led me to put on the "Epic Fantasy Music"-Playlist on Spotify in the background... Eventually, I stopped playing for these reasons, but would still rate it 7/10. For Anti-woke-warriors, this game will probably be more of a 4/10 or something like that...
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I like Clair Obscur quite a bit, but it crashes fairly often for me.
Also, in Act 2, some of the models look really broken, as if an LOD-model was loaded in rather than the high-poly model. It is weird, because I know that the game uses Nanite. Did they actually intentionally include such low-poly models or is this bugged?
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Sifu is free on Epic right now, but the offer ends in 50 minutes, so be quick. It is an awesome game. It adapts the combat system of Sekiro and extends it in interesting ways.
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I was always put off by the visuals of vampires survivors. Eventually, I tried it on my cell phone and it was a lot of fun. I think the phone is also a very suitable platform for this game, because the controls are extremely simple and you don't mind the bad visuals as much as on PC or console.
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I was just about to post here that Death's Door is free on prime, when I saw its thumbnail on Twitch.
However, apparently it is actually not on prime gaming right now. Hopefully, it will be in the future, it is fantastic:
"A darker and more difficult adaption of the Zelda-Principle. It is a lot of fun, has a great soundtrack and an atmosphere that compares to the also brilliant Hollow Knight. The only criticizm I have for this game is that it ended too soon after 11 hours of playing."EDIT: I just realized that half the Screenshot is German, but I guess you get the gist.
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9 hours ago, peter_spy said:
IMO switching to PBR doesn't help here; if anything, it only emphasizes how dated the modelling and texturing is.
If we were able to convert our existing materials to "good enough" PBR materials, we could make the switch to a PBR renderer. This would allow us to successively improve our materials and new contributions could be made directly with PBR.
If we had to first fix ALL materials manually up for PBR before making the switch, I don't think this small project would ever take off. That's the motivation for the investigation if the materials can be converted in a sensible way.
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The main issue seems to be to derive metalness.
What does our current specular map do? It basically encodes reflection intensity at a constant roughness. Isn't reflection intensity basically metalness?
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Congrats! Have to give this a shot soon!
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I have visited Marienburg (Malbork Castle) in Poland this summer. It is the biggest brick building in Europe and was built and used by the German Tuetonic Order. It was later used by the Nazis and many parts were destroyed during the war, but it has been faithfully rebuilt.
Here are the pictures I took:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17Vd-2kJG6sLfBi0cCJ6-g9wBT733T5lZ?usp=sharing
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7 hours ago, Taquito said:
Fallout Classic Collection is Free on Epic.
I played Fallout 2 back then and it was a great game. I vastly prefer the oldschool c-rpg Fallouts. Sadly, due to 16 bit color depth and low resolution, these games did not age too well. Here's to wishing for a Remaster.
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Yeah, I was not very optimistic about my idea to begin with. So, we'd have to painfully go through all materials (and custom FM materials) and convert them manually.
Makes me wonder if it would be feasible to support both PBR and traditional materials in a somewhat efficient way in our renderer, so we could still have a functioning game while not all assets have been converted. @stgatilov?
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PBR sure would be a major upgrade for our game. Problem is, all our assets would have to be converted and that includes custom assets from FMs.
I do wonder, whether there is any research on automatically converting traditional materials to "good-enough" PBR-materials, or if we should experiment ourselves with such a process. I imagine a heightmap could be "approximated" from Normalmap (I know this is not accurate, but would maybe be good-enough for starting), metalness could be derived from thresholded specular map (or material name), glossiness could be derived from normalmap roughness and maybe specular map and as albedo we could simply use the existing diffusemap (maybe try to get rid of any brightnessvariations on that map).
@stgatilov care to comment?
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I finished all Splinter Cell Games multiple times, except for Conviction of course, which I only finished once because it's horrible. It did have excellent coop, 'though.
If someone were to ask me if Splinter Cell or Thief/TDM are my favorite games, I'd have a hard time answering. Considering there is a shipload of content available for Thief/TDM, the longing for new Splinter Cell content is definitely a lot stronger!
Maybe I should seek another hobby game dev community called PooBeeSoft for developing a game called "Separated Agent Group" featuring Cam Wisher...
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Glad you enjoy it. And I can assure you, it will stay free forever.
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That changeset reads quite decent, actually. Not sure about your naming, 'though. "Ring helper"? Which bell is it going to help me ring? ;-D Jokes aside, here are some comments:
4 hours ago, snatcher said:Correct aspect ratio across different resolutions
4 hours ago, snatcher said:Ring removed when peeking or using the spyglass
4 hours ago, snatcher said:Pointers remain in the background when using readables / menus
Do these bugfixes also apply to the core mod, or are they exclusive to your mod-pack?
4 hours ago, snatcher said:Always On mode switches between the dot and the ring
That's a great idea and very consistent with your design approach. I can see the value of this feature.
4 hours ago, snatcher said:Extra dynamic brightness based on lightgem values
Something like this was frequently discussed when developing various features for the core mod. However, we always dropped that idea because the light-gem does not reflect how bright the object you are looking at is. It only shows how bright the player is. So, utilizing the light-gem here will lead to incorrect brightness of the helper GUI. I would suggest to better leave it at a constant value.
4 hours ago, snatcher said:Pointers designed to blend in with the user interface
4 hours ago, snatcher said:Little trick to make things flow when operating doors
Would you mind elaborating what you mean by these?
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So, you essentially replaced the dot by a ring and changed some cvars in addition to that bugfix you mentioned earlier?
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3 hours ago, snatcher said:
In my opinion the fade in speed (tdm_frobhelper_fadein_duration) must be discarded. Players should not be waiting to see if they can detect the helper but should wait because they know the helper is about to popup in its full glory.
Not sure if you confused tdm_frobhelper_fadein_duration with tdm_frobhelper_fadein_delay here, but if anything, I would discard the delay. The fadein_duration is supposed to smoothen the appearance of the frobhelper, thereby making it a bit more subtle. Why would you want to delay displaying the frob helper and then have it pop in instantly? If a player wants it to be intrusive, the hover option is the way to go. Subtlety was a key requirement in the design of this feature.
9 hours ago, snatcher said:Nobody?
While working on the mod I noticed that while "Fade In Fast" parameters apply it does not stick in the menu from session to session and it reverts back to "Fade In". The preset is missing in game/game_local.cpp:
int frobHelperPreset = 0; // Off if (cvarSystem->GetCVarBool("tdm_frobhelper_active")) { if (cvarSystem->GetCVarBool("tdm_frobhelper_alwaysVisible")) { frobHelperPreset = 1; // Always } else if (cvarSystem->GetCVarInteger("tdm_frobhelper_fadein_delay") == 0 && cvarSystem->GetCVarInteger("tdm_frobhelper_fadein_duration") == 0) { frobHelperPreset = 2; // Hover } else { frobHelperPreset = 3; // Fade In } }Thats probably something we should fix.
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I'd hardly call it a mod, if the functionality is already there and it's merely about presenting the settings in a different way. Anyway, I already said that I basically concur and that I would ideally like to see an extra accessibility settings GUI for all related features: frob helper, head bob, more subtle mantle animations, you name it...
Still, your reasoning is kind of wrong because the intention of the frob helper was not to detect frobably objects, but to help the player aim on small frobable objects. The "Always On" feature unconditionally helps the player aim, so this does not conflict with the intention of the frob helper at all.
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I always tweak the tdm_frobhelper_ignore_size such that it is enabled for all object sizes as well because I prefer it that way. However, back when I implemented this feature, it was common feedback that it shouldn't be enabled for big objects like doors etc. because it was intended to help frobbing small objects, i.e., it was not supposed to be an interaction indicator, which we already had in the frob-highlight. The reasoning for this feature still stands today, so I don't see how this qualifies as madness.
The "Always On" feature has indeed been added as an accessibility feature as it supposedly helps some people with motion sickness, and since there were now already multiple options, I also added the "fade-in fast"-option because I felt the delay of the usual fade-in was so long that the frob helper wasn't really that helpfull in more hectic situations.
Accessibility features should by definition never be hidden, so I would not remove the "Always On"-option. In fact, I would actually like to see an extra options page only listing accessibility options. On that page, we could then of course also add a checkmark-option to enable frob helper only for small objects.
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Sorry, I didn't mean to step on your toes and to dictate the title change on you. I was merely raising concerns, as the title and beginning of this thread reads an awful lot like one of these here...
Full disclosure: I haven't played your FM, yet, so maybe I didn't get the full picture. But then again, there are probably more people as clueless as me that don't get it at first either. Futhermore, you had some avatar come in and tell us about the loss of a beloved community member, wheras in myhouse.wad, it was the opposite, i.e., some random dude nobody in the community knew was gone.
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@Wellingtoncrab would you mind editing the main post by either removing those parts about you being lost or at least put an "april fools" disclaimer on it. I might be over sensitive, but given the actual losses of some beloved community members, I kind of feel like this is something not to joke about. And honestly, I completely fell for it at first and was really sad and shocked for a minute or two, and frequently checked your profile if you finally came back online.
By the way: Did you steal the idea from myhouse.wad?
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On 3/27/2024 at 11:38 AM, Bergante said:
Thanks
funny to find this pages (i´ll gona put them to my Fav´s)
but before i add some off my stuff i´ll need to listen to what you´ve posted !P.s.: can you give me the titel/link to : @STiFU's progessive music thread.
Forum search is king!
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Free games
in Off-Topic
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SIFU is sooooo good, if you enjoy brawler-like games.