Bikerdude: - questions

[Serpentine]

Its not to do with the actual cards or anything, its the engine. The way the pipeline works is quite ok so long as things are kept pretty damn simple. Doom3 itself rarely has many persistent elements, let alone the level of complexity that TDM has with its AI. Pipelines dont work to well when things are hacked on. It would take a pretty decent amount of effort to redesign and even then its one of those "when we have the source" things. I have a friend who maaaaaay be interested closer to that time tho(he plays TDM and is my housemate, he is however a person who seldom gets involved tho he is an excellent programmer he does nothing outside of academics). Oh and a lot of what I'm saying is just based on thumb sucking how things work internally, I havent taken much of a scientific look at things... because I'm a lazy arse.

 

All of this however is compounded by your building style however, you like to build narrow and vertically while ideally a map would be a bit like a spiders web. 2D in nature, having simplistic nodes connecting, however as you get closer to the center performance would degrade as more possible nodes are rendered. Your style is a bit like starting in the middle of a spiders web and trying to restrict the flow outwards. It makes for a nice "free" experience, but its also the most challenging to squeeze performance out of.

[aidakeeley]

Its not to do with the actual cards or anything, its the engine. The way the pipeline works is quite ok so long as things are kept pretty damn simple.

 

Oh and a lot of what I'm saying is just based on thumb sucking how things work internally, I havent taken much of a scientific look at things... because I'm a lazy arse.

 

I think this bit about you being a lazy arse is the silliest thing I've read on here.

 

I hope the notion that this stutter-stuff is not fixable until the SC is released not true.

 

I will take the opposite thumb-sucker POV and assume that there is some (or a couple or few) watershed tweaking that'll clear things hugely. Something/s is/are accumulating and can be released! Or something to that effect...

[Neb]

Another question:

 

Why is it with TDM that when the FPS drops below the 45 mark, the games becomes micro stuttery..? and this stutter gets worse the lower the frame rate goes.

 

I get horrible stuttering at an FPS of around 45, but at 30 it looks fine.

 

 

Is there any way to stop my FPS from being anything between 30 and 60? Besides looking bad it makes me feel slightly sick.

 

 

[aidakeeley]

VSync On, I'm advised.

[Serpentine]

I hope the notion that this stutter-stuff is not fixable until the SC is released not true.

 

I will take the opposite thumb-sucker POV and assume that there is some (or a couple or few) watershed tweaking that'll clear things hugely. Something/s is/are accumulating and can be released! Or something to that effect...

 

Its certainly not set in stone at all.

The problem is mostly that diagnosing exactly what is eating up time (if its the issue I'm thinking of, which it may very well not be) and then coming up with ways to either optimize code/look for bugs, refactor it into a new hopefully better system or redesign and rebuild. So first of all you need to do some detective work which is made harder by this being a mod after all and a lot of things come into play which might be indirect or uncontrollable.

 

So yeah, things are always fixable, performance issues just requires good bug reporting and also pretty large chunk of time on the coders behalf.

If you notice things that make the game lag - especially if it causes lag that wasnt there in 1.00; please do either report it or make a post somewhere.

[Bikerdude]

All of this however is compounded by your building style however. It makes for a nice "free" experience, but its also the most challenging to squeeze performance out of.

Well I did mention that i have gotten the micro stutter in every other Fm I have played, but I digress. I have spent the last 16+ hours tweaking, deleting, creating, removing, moving parts of outside area of my map and what I have now is 60+ FPS at pavement level with the following settings (1680*1050_2xAA_8xAA_VSYNC-OFF_STD_FAST) on my 5870. The only time the FPS drops now is when you get higher up and at the highest point the player can get to the FPS never drops below 48. With vsync on I get 50-60 at street level and 30-50 where the fps drops.

 

I'm guessing the hammering I gave it above should be a good indication of how it will run on lower specs machines, so to that end I'm gonna test it on the laptop (8400mGS & 2.6ghz_C2D) - I post some comparative screenshots from each machine at the same locations on the map. In fact who among us what would be considered a low to mid spec machine for running Enhanced T2..? Simething like a sinle core cpu and a geforece 7 or Radeon X1000 series. so I can see how my map runs..?

[Bikerdude]

Another question:

 

is there a particle effect for generating a light mist, that localized enough not to grey-out like dustfrog partical

[Bikerdude]

Morning

 

Gotta another question...

 

in a room i have several candles, but they all flickers in time with each other - which is rather annoying... is there anyway to get them to flicker out of sync.?

 

[aidakeeley]

Interesting question, young apprentice...

Edited May 1, 2010 by aidakeeley

[rich_is_bored]

A few of the flickering light shaders from vanilla Doom 3 made use of the shaderparm "parm4" as an offset value. All you had to do was assign the light a "parm4" key/value pair and just use different values for each light.

 

Behind the scenes the light shaders incorporate the value assigned to parm4 into the mathematical expression that controls the flickering.

 

I can't recall if it was handled internally by the engine or if it was implemented on a per shader basis. Editing or creating a new light shader may be required. Shaderparms are covered pretty well here if need be...

 

D3W Discussion

 

Although I should mention that if editing the shader is required then the changes should be incorporated into a DM update as it will add new functionality without breaking existing maps.

Edited May 1, 2010 by rich_is_bored

[stumpy]

from the tdm_textures_base01.pk4 file that comes with thedarkmod

tdm_light_textures.mtr

 

// fire flickering shader

// shaderparm3 - speed modifier

// shaderparm4 - offset (set to different value for adjacent lights to prevent lockstep flickering)

 

lights/biground_candleflicker

{

{

forceHighQuality

map lights/biground1

colored

zeroClamp

red ((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) ]) +.95) * Parm0

green ((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) ]) +.95) * Parm1

blue ((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) ]) +.95) * Parm2

}

}

[Fidcal]

I think the range must be 0 to 1 so add to the lights eg, shaderparm4 0.5 and vary the 0.5 from 0 to 1 on different lights. I assume the default is 0. I'll add this to the table at...

 

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

 

Can someone confirm the above is correct?

 

[EDIT] PS I don't know what the type column means.

[Bikerdude]

lights/biground_candleflicker

{

{

forceHighQuality

map lights/biground1

colored

zeroClamp

red ((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) ]) +.95) * Parm0

green ((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) ]) +.95) * Parm1

blue ((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) ]) +.95) * Parm2

}

}

 

The above is just gobbledygook to me, sorry. what does the above refer too? if its anything more complicated than editing an entity's properties in DR, or making a small test file that gets dumped in the TDM folder then I wont be doing it..

Edited May 1, 2010 by Bikerdude

[Bikerdude]

http://modetwo.net/d...rParm_variables

 

I have 4 lights in the room and set them 0.1, 0.3, 0.5 & 0.7 but I must be setting shaderparm4 wrong as they are still flicking in sync.... hmm are there any screenshots of how its implemented..?

Edited May 1, 2010 by Bikerdude

[rich_is_bored]

I would guess that it needs to be added to the shader, in which case the shader stumpy posted above should look like this (note the addition of Parm4)...

 

lights/biground_candleflicker
{	
{
	forceHighQuality
	map	lights/biground1
	colored
	zeroClamp
	red		((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) + Parm4 ]) +.95) * Parm0
	green	((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) + Parm4 ]) +.95) * Parm1
	blue	((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) + Parm4 ]) +.95) * Parm2
}
}

[Bikerdude]

lights/biground_candleflicker
{	
{
	forceHighQuality
	map	lights/biground1
	colored
	zeroClamp
	red		((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) + Parm4 ]) +.95) * Parm0
	green	((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) + Parm4 ]) +.95) * Parm1
	blue	((.05 * sintable [(time * ( 2 + Parm3 ) ) + Parm4 ]) +.95) * Parm2
}
}

I have no idea what to do with the code above, where does it go and or where is it put..?

[Mr Mike]

The light shader lights/biground_candleflicker has no ShaderParm4 description in the shader file so adding a value in DR won't do anything. You will need to create a custom shader using Rich's code or find a shader that does have a ShaderParm4 value.

[Bikerdude]

The light shader lights/biground_candleflicker has no ShaderParm4 description in the shader file so adding a value in DR won't do anything. You will need to create a custom shader using Rich's code or find a shader that does have a ShaderParm4 value.

 

Ah that would explain why nothing happened, do you know which candle like entities have the shaderparm4 description already..?

[Mr Mike]

No, I can't say I do. Would seem sensible to add the code Rich posted to the MTR file but maybe this causes extra overhead.

[Springheel]

in a room i have several candles, but they all flickers in time with each other - which is rather annoying... is there anyway to get them to flicker out of sync.?

 

Are you talking about the actual light, or the glowing part of the candle? If the latter, there are three different candles for each type (wide_tall1, wide_tall2, wide_tall3), all of which flicker at different rates. You just have to mix and match.

[Bikerdude]

(wide_tall1, wide_tall2, wide_tall3), all of which flicker at different rates. You just have to mix and match.

Dosent have any effect, the glow on the wall by each candle flckers at the same time. And by flicker I mean the glow dimming and brightening, non of the candles having moving shadow. The models I trtied were:

 

atdm:moveable_holder_small_plus_candle

atdm:moveable_holder_small_plus_candle2

atdm:moveable_holder_small_plus_candle3

 

Then changed the candles completely:

 

atdm:moveable_holder_round_plus_candle_short3

atdm:moveable_kitchen_bottle_plus_candle_base

atdm:moveable_candle_default

 

And the same, the pulsing flicker glow on the walls is the same, as in its in-sync still.If need be I will make a small video to show what i mean..?

Edited May 1, 2010 by Bikerdude

[killhour]

Well, you could just change parm3. It would cause them to flicker at different rates, and thus be out of sync.

[Bikerdude]

Well, you could just change parm3. It would cause them to flicker at different rates, and thus be out of sync.

 

Acording to the info on the following page

 

http://modetwo.net/d...rParm_variables

 

parm3 is for fog..? and I tried parm 4 and it had no effect on the flickering..

Edited May 2, 2010 by Bikerdude

[killhour]

Acording to the info on the following page

 

http://modetwo.net/d...rParm_variables

 

parm3 is for fog..? and I tried parm 4 and it had no effect on the flickering..

 

 

In that code, parm3 definitely changes the rate of flicker.

[Springheel]

Dosent have any effect, the glow on the wall by each candle flckers at the same time. And by flicker I mean the glow dimming and brightening, non of the candles having moving shadow.

 

Yes, changing the candle models only affects the flickering of the candle itself. I don't believe there is an easy way to alter the pulsing of the light itself on those candles.