Fan Mission: A Matter of Hours, by Springheel (28/4/2017)

[Bikerdude]

This has nothing to do with Springs incredible modules, but is likely the result of building, recording, and testing a mission in such a short time (which was the whole purpose to begin with).

I didn't think to mention the shadow tweak before now - so well spotted.

[Ladro]

Super nice and lovely mission, thanks!

 

And I REALLY appreciated your video with your comments and toughts about mapping (and that's not so difficult and super time consuming). Really useful and inspiring stuff.

 

I hope you'll do more video like this!

Thanks!

Edited April 29, 2017 by Ladro

[peter_spy]

Lovely mission, thank you! I quite enjoyed the challenge and its very impressive this was all done within a matter of hours. I didn't experience any performance issues myself.

 

On that note, saying the performance issues are exclusive to a couple polys on a wall asset is bogus. As Spring mentioned above, its likely due to shadow count but could be a myriad of issues including a hardware one.

 

For example:

I removed the AI (to focus on the environment performance), tweaked the wall mounted light volumes and removed the shadows on the wall meshes.

Before:

hours_after2.JPG

After: This may not be ideal, but about 20k less shadows and 400 less draw calls. (10 - 20 fps gain on my machine, YMMV obviously)

hours_before2.JPG

 

This has nothing to do with Springs incredible modules, but is likely the result of building, recording, and testing a mission in such a short time (which was the whole purpose to begin with).

 

This is a very good observation, but kind of an afterthought. Why don't you use r_showtris 1 command, take a look at these modules, (both in the warehouse and in the living quarters) and take some screenshots as well? And try to tell us that these are good models.

[Springheel]

Super nice and lovely mission, thanks!

 

And I REALLY appreciated your video with your comments and toughts about mapping (and that's not so difficult and super time consuming). Really useful and inspiring stuff.

 

I hope you'll do more video like this!

Thanks!

 

Thanks!

 

I've had a request to do a video about the new module prefabs, so I may do that. If there are other specific things you'd like to see, let me know.

[RPGista]

 

There's no sense in releasing your work if you can't deal with criticism, especially if it's valid. That's part of the fun, and the opportunity to grow. I can only guess you're used to constant praise and noone in your circles is able to fairly judge your work. Sure you can throw a tantrum like that, it's both funny and sad. Those models will snowball on you and us players later, unless you plan to include 2 SLI GTX 1080s and SSD drives as a requirement for a game that doesn't even look 2010. Getting back to good work then

I dont remember watching someone being so anal about a free contribution asset they were just gifted in a long time. Perhaps when you actually spend more time working on mood, flow, storytelling in your mapping, you'll realise technical details are not really an issue, you get whatever is available, whatever technical limitations there are, and you tell your story and thats all there is to it. Springheel could have gifted us models with a zillion polys and who cares, people would still happilly find a way to use them to enrich their maps. Its well known by everyone that its the mapper who is in charge of budgetting polys and lights and AI inside each of the scenes they create, trading between geometry detail, lighting setup, AI population to find the balance they need to tell the story they want in that particular area of his map. Its his responsability, alone. You'll use whatever is available to you (map manually, use prefabs, import models, model your own, etc), and find that balance, it as simple as that. So, please dont let us hear anymore of unoptimised models and how inconsolable that makes you. Just start using them. Scene getting a bit heavy? Go in there, change some things around, find that balance. Simple.

 

Springheel doesnt have a "circle". But the amount of work he has put in, innumerable to count, plus the amazing quality of it (his was the first map I played and it is still my favourite (Score)), that must have gotten him a good number of fans, thats for sure. I know I am one. Specially of his impecable work leading tdms art direction to where it is today. Lets just appreciate what people are contributing and try to match it with our own quality contributions, or simply aprreciating it by playing the damn thing. Which I just might, a Springheel mission is a pretty good reason to dust off your copy of tdm and give it a go.

[AluminumHaste]

I dont remember watching someone being so anal about a free contribution asset they were just gifted in a long time. Perhaps when you actually spend more time working on mood, flow, storytelling in your mapping, you'll realise technical details are not really an issue, you get whatever is available, whatever technical limitations there are, and you tell your story and thats all there is to it. Springheel could have gifted us models with a zillion polys and who cares, people would still happilly find a way to use them to enrich their maps. Its well known by everyone that its the mapper who is in charge of budgetting polys and lights and AI inside each of the scenes they create, trading between geometry detail, lighting setup, AI population to find the balance they need to tell the story they want in that particular area of his map. Its his responsability, alone. You'll use whatever is available to you (map manually, use prefabs, import models, model your own, etc), and find that balance, it as simple as that. So, please dont let us hear anymore of unoptimised models and how inconsolable that makes you. Just start using them. Scene getting a bit heavy? Go in there, change some things around, find that balance. Simple.

 

Springheel doesnt have a "circle". But the amount of work he has put in, innumerable to count, plus the amazing quality of it (his was the first map I played and it is still my favourite (Score)), that must have gotten him a good number of fans, thats for sure. I know I am one. Specially of his impecable work leading tdms art direction to where it is today. Lets just appreciate what people are contributing and try to match it with our own quality contributions, or simply aprreciating it by playing the damn thing. Which I just might, a Springheel mission is a pretty good reason to dust off your copy of tdm and give it a go.

 

Damn, too long for a signature.

[Destined]

I understand, Judith, that you want any submitted models to be as high quality and as perfect as possible and I completely support this attitude, but I also think you are currently beating a dead horse. I don't think that your criticism is unvalid and I don't think that it is ignored. However, as the models are already in use, it is not possible to change them anymore at this stage, so the only thing we can do is: learn from the mistakes that were made and avoid them the next time. From what I have seen in this forum so far, it is not that there is only praise and no critisism. I vaguely remember a person, who wanted to contribute some voice work, being shot down for the lack of emotions in the voice and the low quality of the recording. We all want assets with the best possible quality and constructive criticism is always welcome to improve ourselves. In this case, a couple of flaws were not noticed until it was too late. This might be unfortunate, but it is not that the models are unusable. As I said: The mistake was pointed out, the critisism has been noted and I am pretty sure, it will be applied for future models. However, pointing them out time and again, when you already know that they can and will not be changed, is not constructive anymore. The only things I can imagine that further continued criticism will achieve is, that either the opposite of what you say is done, simply to spite you (although this would be childish and I would not expect it from anyone on this board), that people get discouraged to submit new assets for fear of being nagged all the time even for minor mistakes (I still cannot say, if the high polycount is a minor or major issue; I follow this discussion here, but have not enough technical knowledge for that. The origins being not in the centre of the modules is annoying at times, but you learn to live with it, when you have worked with them for a time), or that people will be annoyed and as a consequence start to ignore you, which would be a shame as your insight is valuable and can improve the quality of assets in the future. If I were to start modeling, I would certainly ask for your advice for models, before I would submit them. Still, for these models it is unfortunately too late.

[nbohr1more]

The wiki says this mission is "A Matter of Balance". Is there some sorta coded meaning there?

[Springheel]

The wiki says this mission is "A Matter of Balance". Is there some sorta coded meaning there?

 

Oops. I use a story called "A Matter of Balance" in my short story unit at work--must have stuck in my head.

 

Thanks for pointing it out.

[NeonsStyle]

I have to agree with Destined, we should be happy to have such a complete set of models for modules that speed up the mapping process a lot. If I had

any gripe about modules is that we don't have enough, however it's not hard to make more in prefabs. Springheel didn't have to release his models,

and bitching at him for his generousity is a bit ungrateful I think.

[peispud]

Plays lag free with my 1050ti and ancient 1055t CPU. I found this a fun little mission, particularity given the amount of build time. Thank you. That wasn't hard now, was it ?

[raymeld]

Thank you , really enjoyed the mission!

My desktop would be described as ancient by most on here I expect , but I never

experienced any lag at any point.

[Springheel]

Glad to hear it!

 

No promises, but I have another idea for a speedbuild simmering in the back of my head....

[esme]

One thought occurs to me

 

If you aren't happy with the models, prefabs, other bit and bobs you've been given for free and you have the skills, ability and time, then make some better ones & donate them to the project

[peter_spy]

Already on it I'm in the process of making a test environment to demonstrate how models with clean wireframes, as few materials as possible, and actual low-poly modeling approach contribute to better framerates and better visual quality. The result will be a design doc in a thread similar to one I made here, and a "Builder outpost model pack" released either with the thread, or with the map I'm making it for

[AluminumHaste]

Already on it I'm in the process of making a test environment to demonstrate how models with clean wireframes, as few materials as possible, and actual low-poly modeling approach contribute to better framerates and better visual quality. The result will be a design doc in a thread similar to one I made here, and a "Builder outpost model pack" released either with the thread, or with the map I'm making it for

 

We await with bated breath for the second coming.

Good luck.

[esme]

Played the mission through, didn't notice any major issues, couple of cosmetic things like a floating crate or edges not quite aligning so there's a hole in the scenery

 

But for 6 hours work that's damned impressive prefabs or no prefabs

 

Also on expert it's a sod to complete

[V-Man339]

Disclaimer: Pretty much none of this criticism is really warranted since the purpose was of a speedbuild philosophy, but my opinion is important to me so I'm going to type it out like over analyzing person I am.

 

 

I feel like an interesting observation to make is that I can see some of your gameplay mentality and structuring popping up, but for the most part this is an incredibly far cry from your regular output.

I'm used to amazingly well realized world building, lore and contextualization, but here you made very cubic environments with very, very tight patrol patterns. This is probably the closest to a Metal Gear Solid 1 mission I've seen a Dark Mod mission come, if that makes sense.

 

What was quite interesting for me personally was how hard it was to ghost the loot under the light.

While your last levels were tough because of how realized they were (of course there would be doors around a vault / candles lighting near the door to knock out), this one was ... Two guards watching the well lit spot, with occasional synchronization to look away simultaneously, along with about four or so guards visiting in the meantime. It isn't as rewarding as robbing a safe from under a transaction, or knocking a guy out next to his whore and dunking him in his toilet, or stealing deeds out from a holed up guard mid-raid/occupation due to inquisition, or simply killing a thief leader and robbing his guild blind.

I hate sounding like some weird fetishist here but this just wasn't all that personal next to Corvus's other deeds, so I hope this isn't the last you make featuring him.

Something tells me you left the noise arrows and moss arrows in for this specific purpose but it ended up being a total crap shoot due to how unpredictable reaction to noise arrows are, along with the sheer amount of guards.

 

All that said, it was really nice to play a level without any notes or twists, not to mention one I can point to and say "there is no reason you aren't making stuff right now" when someone complains about putting in the effort.

This is an okay level where every other mission you've made is an amazing one. I like your more focused, time-consuming developments more.

[Springheel]

I agree with those criticisms. Extreme speed builds are not especially good vehicles for world-building or storytelling.

 

 

Sadly, I think massive projects like A Score to Settle or A New Job are behind me. The only big mission I'd be willing to take on at this point would be helping to finish the 3rd and final mission of the New Job storyline.

[Sotha]

Played this just now. Fun little mission. Wow, it was difficult. I really struggled getting through. Lots of light, guards and even that damned torch guard. Very tense mission.

 

 

 

In my case, I ended up KOing the non-key guard and dragging him to the starting room. The torch wielding guard I tried to shoot from a safe distance, but my first shot only injured him. As he walked towards me with the torch and the sword at hand, I shot again and missed (Damn I suck!). Just when the torch light was reaching me I made one last quickshot and got him right in the face. I managed just to drag the corpse behind the barrel when the key carrying boss came around and started commenting and inspecting the dropped sword. He started searching and while he was looking the other way I stole the key from him and moved to the apartment.

 

Just as I had KO'd the lady in his room, the door opened and the boss came in... For some reason he did not much care about the KO'd woman lying on the ground, but instead he said "someone else must do it." What a creep! (He was commenting about the candle I had doused.) Well, there he stood as part of his patrol, non-alert and I jumped out from the shadows and KO'd him too, stole the candies and left the couple lying on the floor.

 

 

 

Quite the story, eh? Not bad for a speed build. Not bad at all! Thanks for the mission!

 

Oh and I did not have performance issues.. Well other than MY OWN performance.. heh

[Springheel]

said "someone else must do it." What a creep!

 

 

Lol! His callousness was his doom.

 

Great story. Glad you enjoyed it!

[HMart]

Nice work Springheel and i just can't praise you enough for the work you did on your modules, having said that i most also agree in some part with Judith (at lest on the part modelers should be careful with polys), I think he could had been more sensible with his critic (that i don't really know if fair, i have not tested the modules my self), because i'm sure he knows how hard and time consuming is to model, specially for free, so some modesty would suit him well.

 

Judith, Springheel has done immense work for this mod, i most say more than you and certainly more than me, he deserves that recognition and respect, imo instead of you coming out this aggressive, and almost like has if you will teach him a lesson, that personally i find of really bad taste, what you could have done was volunteer to help him, for example create LOD's for the modules, in that way you would help bring more performance to the game (to those willing to implement LOD) and at the same time not make anyone feel has if his work is not welcomed.

 

I'm sure the last thing you and all of us want, is to create a atmosphere that make developers, old and new, rethink the time they spend on this game.

 

Springheel why i most agree with Judith, i most agree because with heavy modules (again i don't know how heavy your modules are, so don't take this has my critic of your work), mission makers have less freedom on how complex and vast their missions can be, specially if they want them to run with acceptable performance on older hardware.

 

Just my two cents.

[Springheel]

I've always said the modules are not perfect, and plenty are certainly higher poly than they could be. I could have spent time trying to save every poly, but then instead of six module sets we might have only two. Judith is a perfectionist, which is fine. By contrast, I'd rather have five or six 'good enough' models than one or two perfect ones. Different approaches.

 

But I don't think there's any need to go into this again months after the fact.

[peter_spy]

Yup, there's no reason to re-ignite this discussion.

 

Spring and I kind of represent two sides of a spectrum, and he’s right, I can’t help being a perfectionist, which has its major downsides as well. (We're talking about things like spending a week obsessing over materials for a background prop. A. Fucking. Week.) The thing is, both approaches can happily coexist and influence each other. Ultimately, it will be mappers’ choice to use whatever models we provide, either as a core package, or in an optional download. Learning from each other is what’s really important — and encouraging people to get to modelling. It’s fun, it gives you more control over your content, and there are tons of cool things to learn.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Judith

[peter_spy]

Also, since then I managed to learn a bit more about TDMs performance problems. While I’m all about using every polygon in as meaningful way as you can, that’s not the biggest problem for the engine. You can waste polygons here and there, and you’ll be fine. And, if the shadowmesh triangle count is too big, you can always use a simplified substitute.

 

IMO it’s the drawcalls that are much bigger problem. Number of tris per scene scale nicely with better graphic cards, but DC rely on CPU -> GPU pipeline, which isn’t something you can upgrade just like that. The thing is, number of DC rise quickly when you use meshes with multiple materials. Actually, I read somewhere that’s the “easiest” way to clog the CPU->GPU pipeline.

 

Now, TDM relies mostly on tiling textures, and TDM models use like 3-5 materials per model, on average. Some use like 8, 10, I think the highest number I saw was 12-15. That is generally avoided in other games, mostly because any model that uses multiple materials is split into smaller models, as per material, before rendering. So you might think you’re using one mesh, but you actually use 5, every time. Now every model uses DCs, every material uses DCs, every additional material stage in curly brackets uses more DCs (and increases the model triangle count).

 

To avoid this, models have to use as few materials (and textures) as possible, 1-2 at best. Making mesh tilesets, mesh varations that use the same materials, so the number of meshes used is higher than the number of materials is a good idea too. There are big compromises to be made here though. One is simplifying the surface sounds: if you have a model that is part wood, part metal, you have choose which surface is more “important”. It also makes modding more difficult for others. Only the original author knows reasons behind particular UV island placement on textures, and if someone uses mirrored UVs, the whole mindset and reasoning becomes too complex to recreate by anyone else.

 

Personally, I’m all for unwrapped meshes and using all low-poly tricks we know to save on performance, but, as you see, it’s not that simple, and it takes a lot of time. And it’s not like we’re going to see a major switch to that technique in TDM’s assets, for the reasons stated above, and because it would render a lot of current textures and materials obsolete. But that’s probably something for another topic

Edited August 14, 2017 by Judith