So, what are you working on right now?

[Baddcog]

Well, patches really aren't a worry, because they are already divided up into a lot of small tris.

 

And it's the shadowcasting lights that have the hit.

No casting you're just lighting the surface. casting you have a dynamic shadow being casted from each tri, and being calculated to each tri it lands on... So 6 lights are casting 12 shadows (from 2 tris) onto 2 tris, so that's like 24 calculations that noshadow lights wouldn't have.

 

A couple things in that pic that were getting too many lights ( using r_showlightcount 1) helps, anything white is bad. That rug was one brush (func_static) so it was being hit by all 6 wall lamps, and 3 lamps in the hallway at the end. The same with the brushes on either side (I had caulk under it for no overdraw).

 

So I cut it up into 4 pieces lengthwise, and the same with each of the floor brushes. Then turned it into 2 func_statics, every other piece so they wouldn't optimize back into one big brush. (Yes I just learned that as a 4 piece func_static they will still optimize back into one brush).

(plus I cut the floor up some with the blue wall trims)

 

So now the rug is 4 times as many tris (still it's only around 20) but each of the tris receives no more than 3-4 lights max. It's when they get 5-6 or more that PFS really starts to tank.

 

The roof also had the same issue, as each side of it was only two tris. Plus I was using the 3 candle chandeliers. So those two tris per side were getting something like 10 lights each.

Now it's maybe 50 tris, but again they are only receiveing 2-3 lights max.

 

Same with the walls behind those wall lamps. They were getting hit my 3 wall lamps, lamps in the hall behind them (it's the light volume touching, not the actual light on them that counts). So I changed half the pillars to worldspawn, that cuts up the walls into smaller tris that get fewer lights.

[nbohr1more]

If you want to go through the pains, you can have the best of both worlds.

 

Cut the carpet into 7 sections: 4 large Func_statics and 3 small strips of Worldspawn between them where the light intersections are. You probably wouldn't gain that much over what you've already done but mappers who want more control (less trial and error) can use that method.

 

 

Looks great BTW

Edited September 18, 2011 by nbohr1more

[DeTeEff]

Oh Lord, why is lightning so heavy on the calculations?

 

Someone with skills on this, will it be possible to improve this after open sourcing? Or is it too deeply/fundamentally coded?

[nbohr1more]

Every light generates it's own set of vertices and overlapping lights need to render to a new frame-buffer. The solution to those issues is "Deferred Rendering" (which has been implemented in the Wolfenstein game from 2009). Shadow volume calculations are done on the CPU, they can be replaced with Shadow Maps (at the expense of large amounts of graphic RAM) or the calculations can be moved to the GPU (Sebbi over at Beyond3D claimed to have done this with one of his engines on DX8 hardware... most are claiming it requires DX10 level hardware).

[AluminumHaste]

I'm pretty certain deferred lighting will work in dx9 but is more efficient in dx10

[nbohr1more]

I'm pretty certain deferred lighting will work in dx9 but is more efficient in dx10

 

Correct, deferred rendering can be done on DX9 hardware.

 

The question is whether you can do (Stencil) Shadow Volume extrusion on the GPU before DX10 hardware...

Edited September 18, 2011 by nbohr1more

[Tels]

Correct, deferred rendering can be done on DX9 hardware.

 

The question is whether you can do (Stencil) Shadow Volume extrusion on the GPU before DX10 hardware...

 

The much more important question how loud all the people who can't/don't want to afford even D8 hardware will yell when you announce that the render is now DX9 (or DX10) plus only...

 

(E.g. all the discussions we always have when even an iota performance is eaten by whatever new feature, where all the people who can afford an 80$ higher power bill per year to run their computer, but can't afford a 50$ graphic card to run TDM on more than 3 FPS come out of the woods and complain

[nbohr1more]

Can the Post Process shader in TDM be run on DX8 hardware? If not, we at least have those folks somewhat excluded . I dare say I'd like to see the DX8 card that can run RTTCv2 at all (I'm sure some vapor-chilled OC Geforce 3 Ti-5xx series owner will step-up to the plate...)

 

 

Yes, DX10 is a tougher proposition. You can easily get a cheap HD2600, HD3600, or HD4600 series AGP card for an aging system but tell that to someone who owns an AGP nvidia 7950GTS that they purchased for over $300.

Maybe Sebbi will share his knowledge with the Doom 3 community and a DX8 or DX9 version can be made anyway.

[Tels]

Can the Post Process shader in TDM be run on DX8 hardware? If not, we at least have those folks somewhat excluded . I dare say I'd like to see the DX8 card that can run RTTCv2 at all (I'm sure some vapor-chilled OC Geforce 3 Ti-5xx series owner will step-up to the plate...)

 

Not sure if it can be run. But anything that struggles with the post-process shader is seriously ancient (or one of these crippled laptop-wannabe graphic cards). Has always been my opinion that we shouldn't design to the lowest common denominator, but that's just me

 

Yes, DX10 is a tougher proposition. You can easily get a cheap HD2600, HD3600, or HD4600 series AGP card for an aging system but tell that to someone who owns an AGP nvidia 7950GTS that they purchased for over $300.

 

I think we can safely conclude that if your system has still an AGP bus inside, it is outdated. Ancient, even:

 

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/PCI_Express is from 2004. We have now late 2011. Dunno what people expect with hardware older than 5 years to accomplish, "modern" software or not.

[nbohr1more]

Actually, that is a wrinkle here.

 

AGP was given a lease on life via hybrid Core2duo motherboards and the longevity of the AMD 64 platform. The HD4760 AGP can still be considered better than most high-end mobile gaming GPU's. You can easily add an AGP card, it's not so easy add a new CPU.

 

Most engines still do no use either PCI-E bus bandwidth (except for level load times) or PCI-E bi-directional communication (except for GP-GPU) so we have AGP style engines that sometimes (but rarely) use more than AGP bandwidth.

 

Yes, 2004 systems are on the low-end of CPU capability but folks know that the UE3 engine runs alright on hardware of that vintage so that is the frame of comparison. The Doom 3 engine can be made to run about as well as UE3 if not better. What you will do with that new power is another question. Mappers could certainly push the newly optimized engine back to it's breaking point. Or AI coders, Physics coders (etc) could use all the new CPU bandwidth and make amazing new game-play and immersion features. Obviously folks with newer hardware are going to be more for not only optimizing but also expanding the features related to performance constraints (at least until their hardware feels the pinch too )).

 

Edit:

 

Here we are fretting over optimizations when commercial game engine creators are purposely wasting GPU resources on behalf of hardware companies:

 

http://techreport.com/articles.x/21404/1

 

:laugh:

Edited September 18, 2011 by nbohr1more

[Serpentine]

If you could that would be great Serps!

 

Will do - sorry went away for a few days.

 

Got a few ideas about what I can do with that texture, using the different alpha to cut out distant stuff etc. Just need to figure out a nice way to get some of the lit areas into diffuse.

[stumpy]

dx10 only works on windows vista and win 7 for those who have windows, doesn't work on xp, i've got a dx10 card in my computer but because am running xp am stuck at dx9. I cant afford win7 at current uk prices.

[nbohr1more]

OpenGL will utilize functions of DX10+ hardware on Windows XP (it's just easier to reference the DX version than to lookup the OpenGL versions...)

Edited September 19, 2011 by nbohr1more

[7upMan]

Most engines still do no use either PCI-E bus bandwidth (except for level load times) or PCI-E bi-directional communication (except for GP-GPU) so we have AGP style engines that sometimes (but rarely) use more than AGP bandwidth.

 

This is supported by the findings of various hardware sites who tested graphics cards under different PCIe bandwidth. Turns out that benchmark runs with PCIe 8x are just 1 % slower than with x16. Even PCIe 4x is just around 5-10 % slower than 8x, especially since most graphics cards have 512 MB graphics RAM or more onboard.

[Baddcog]

Not working on this but I can'tfind the inpirational ref shots, shouldn't that be pinned at the top of editors guild?

 

anyway, cool pic

[nbohr1more]

Nice!

 

Springheel merged the City Reference thread into a single Editor's links thread here:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/12558-important-editing-links/

 

I just added this one:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/11610-darkmod-inspiration-thread/

[Seuchensoldat]

Hey there,

 

I downloaded the Dark Mod some weeks ago and enjoyed a lot of the released fan missions. It's nice to see some authors from the thief community releasing missions (Melan, great work!). So I wanted to give Dark Radiant a try and I simply love this editor. Luckily I have some experience with DromEd and the Amnesia: The dark Descent level editor so it wasn't really hard to build something in DR. I want to show you guys a WIP screen of a city scene I'm working on. It's very rough, the lighting is not very good and there aren't much details but this is the best city scene I built in an editor (always had problems with citys in DromEd ).

 

Thanks to Melan for his speedbuilding thread (which helped a lot to get a streetlayout), Fidcal for his great beginner's tutorial and the overall community for the wiki and forum threads. I also wanted to thank the entirely Dark Mod team for creating this total conversion as it is simply a wonderful universe to build missions. The love of detail is overwhelming.

 

I tried to brighten the image a bit so you can actually see something.

Edited October 14, 2011 by Seuchensoldat

[SiyahParsomen]

Welcome to the board Seuchensoldat,

 

your first pic is looking so good for a newbie. I hope you enjoy using DarkRadiant. You'll have plenty of questions with time and there's great helpful community and wiki for it.

 

Btw. don't forget to check visportals over wiki for optimizing your city streets before progressing so far, it's essential.

[nbohr1more]

Looks fantastic Seuchensoldat!

 

What value is your Ambient_World set to though?

[Seuchensoldat]

Thank you!

 

@ nbohr1more: I set the value to 6. According to the beginner's guide it should be lower than 8 and higher than 4. Maybe it looks strange because I brighten the picture?

Edited October 14, 2011 by Seuchensoldat

[SiyahParsomen]

I use fraps. It captures what you see in game. However, if you use Doom3 capture key (F12), it captures dark.

[Baddcog]

Thank you!

 

@ nbohr1more: I set the value to 6. According to the beginner's guide it should be lower than 8 and higher than 4. Maybe it looks strange because I brighten the picture?

 

I appreciate someone around here lightening up there pics so I can see them

 

Looks great too, keep it up!

[grayman]

Nice work, Seuchensoldat.

 

Welcome to TDM.

[Seuchensoldat]

Thank you for this warm welcome!

 

@SiyahParsomen: I know Fraps but I never used it. Maybe I should give it a try! Also I know about visportals but at this point my mission is just what you can see in the screen. As soon as I expand the streets I will try to mess around with visportals. Hope I will get it to work...

 

There are two things that confuse me somehow. I don't want to create a new topic for this though.

 

- In the model section under architecture/windows there are some window models like bricked_window.lwo and the two warehouse_window.lwo models. These use some kind of redish warehouse brick texture. So I wanted to texture some brushes with exactly this texture but I can't find it. If it is supposed to be not included in the Dark Mod or am I just unable to find it? I remember seeing this texture in one of the early trailers.

 

- Also there is this elite city watch model with the no knockout helmet. As I remember correctly this one was also used in the early gameplay trailers. I absolutely love this model but it is not included, too. Are there any plans to release it in a future update?

 

Right now I'm looking through different AI spawnargs. Woah, it is simply great how many little details you can add to your AI.

[Springheel]

- Also there is this elite city watch model with the no knockout helmet. As I remember correctly this one was also used in the early gameplay trailers. I absolutely love this model but it is not included, too. Are there any plans to release it in a future update?

 

Yes, eventually. That models needs to be rigged to our new skeleton.