Beta testing 2.13

[wesp5]

Done, and I still have the same problem. But I could narrow it down a bit! Before I moved my fms folder over everything worked fine, but once I did the error occurred when switching e.g. between the two official missions. Copying only my missions.tdminfo didn't cause it. So one of the other missions must have introduced the problem, but I wasn't aware that TDM does even look at other missions besides the one you have selected. Or does it?

 

Edited March 19 by wesp5

[wesp5]

I have done some experiments now, moving missions to another folder and then moving them back until the error happens. I suspect that 2.13 has a limit on how many pk4 files it can handle and once you are over the limit, the game crashes. In my current setup this happens as soon as there are more than 210 mission pk4s. Normally this would have not been a problem as I believe there are only about 100 missions, but many of these now have additional small pk4 due to translations or updates.

Edited March 20 by wesp5

[Geep]

About those Stone 24pt artifacts... I've finally had a quiet hour to figure this out.

I made a mistake in my 2025_Jan_Cumulative_2024_Font_Updates.zip release. That had 2 subfolders

1. tdm_fonts01_updates_only
2. tdm_fonts01_updates_plus _unchanged_from 2.12

Of interest here are stone 24pt font files, particularly: stone_0_24.dds, stone_1_24.dds, fontimage_24.dat

In (1) these Stone 24pt files are the correct updated and tested ones, originally packaged in my June 20, 2024 release.

In (2), these files are older, of 2.12 vintage; I evidently missed replacing them when merging old and new files.

@Amadeus or @nbohr1more, please correct this for the next beta (or final) of 2.13. Thanks.

@snatcher, @wesp5, kudos for catching this.

[nbohr1more]

6 hours ago, Geep said:

About those Stone 24pt artifacts... I've finally had a quiet hour to figure this out.

I made a mistake in my 2025_Jan_Cumulative_2024_Font_Updates.zip release. That had 2 subfolders

1. tdm_fonts01_updates_only
2. tdm_fonts01_updates_plus _unchanged_from 2.12

Of interest here are stone 24pt font files, particularly: stone_0_24.dds, stone_1_24.dds, fontimage_24.dat

In (1) these Stone 24pt files are the correct updated and tested ones, originally packaged in my June 20, 2024 release.

In (2), these files are older, of 2.12 vintage; I evidently missed replacing them when merging old and new files.

@Amadeus or @nbohr1more, please correct this for the next beta (or final) of 2.13. Thanks.

@snatcher, @wesp5, kudos for catching this.

Committed at Rev 17318 ( @stgatilov )

[snatcher]

On 3/19/2025 at 9:01 PM, wesp5 said:

I have done some experiments now, moving missions to another folder and then moving them back until the error happens. I suspect that 2.13 has a limit on how many pk4 files it can handle and once you are over the limit, the game crashes. In my current setup this happens as soon as there are more than 210 mission pk4s. Normally this would have not been a problem as I believe there are only about 100 missions, but many of these now have additional small pk4 due to translations or updates.

I have 193 folders in the fms folder (therefore 193 missions / pk4). I duplicated 30 missions bringing the number of pk4 up to 223 and I cannot reproduce your issue.

You really should download a 100% fresh copy of the game, including all missions, and see if the issue persists.

[wesp5]

2 hours ago, snatcher said:

I have 193 folders in the fms folder (therefore 193 missions / pk4). I duplicated 30 missions bringing the number of pk4 up to 223 and I cannot reproduce your issue.

Copying the same missions will probably not trigger this bug, as the game won't count them as new pk4s. Have you all translations included? Why do you have 7 less missions than I have? I know I have 4 beta missions that were never added to the main list, like graymans last work, but what are the other 3?

Edited March 22 by wesp5

[snatcher]

5 hours ago, wesp5 said:

 [...] but what are the other 3?

I don't know.

I just deleted all folders inside the fms folder. I launched the game and selected all missions for download.

The game says: 190 missions successfully downloaded. I have: 190 folders / 190 pk4.

I then selected all translations for download.

The game says: 109 missions successfully downloaded. I have: 192 folders / 299 pk4.

I then restored newjob, stlucia, and training_mission.

I have: 195 folders / 302 pk4.

And indeed the game (often but not always) crashes when switching fms.

Well spotted, @wesp5

[TheUnbeholden]

Well, this is a major issue. The engine has a limit to how much it can display and load for the mission screen? 

[nbohr1more]

4 hours ago, snatcher said:

I don't know.

I just deleted all folders inside the fms folder. I launched the game and selected all missions for download.

The game says: 190 missions successfully downloaded. I have: 190 folders / 190 pk4.

I then selected all translations for download.

The game says: 109 missions successfully downloaded. I have: 192 folders / 299 pk4.

I then restored newjob, stlucia, and training_mission.

I have: 195 folders / 302 pk4.

And indeed the game (often but not always) crashes when switching fms.

Well spotted, @wesp5

2.12 doesn't crash with these steps?

[wesp5]

I did a quick test by installing 2.12 and moving the fms folder over and the same happens! I guess nobody noticed this before as only between 2.12 and 2.13 the critical number of pk4s were reached due to more missions and translations.

Edited March 22 by wesp5

[nbohr1more]

Please create a bug tracker.

It's too late in 2.13 development to work on such a deep issue but we can prioritize it for 2.14.

It would be helpful to see whether the same happens on 2.10, 2.06, or 2.0.

If it goes back to the 2.0, then it's probably a very fundamental problem but if it is newer we can bisect the code changes that caused it.

[wesp5]

20 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

Please create a bug tracker.

Done! It's not really critical as you can play any mission if you actually start it after selection, but the crash still looks ugly.

Edited March 23 by wesp5

[datiswous]

On 3/16/2025 at 1:52 PM, nbohr1more said:

How do uncompressed textures get their mipmaps ? We auto-generate them on mission load.

How does this work for textures in jpg or png? Or maybe we should never use these formats for textures?

[datiswous]

On 3/16/2025 at 1:52 PM, nbohr1more said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmap

Mipmaps are lower resolution versions of textures that are used by your graphics driver when objects are further away. Uncompressed textures typically don't include them because the default uncompressed formats don't support them ( not designed for 3D game engines ). DDS textures can include them in either uncompressed or DXT \ BC compressed formats and we typically do "generate mipmaps" when encoding DDS. How do uncompressed textures get their mipmaps ? We auto-generate them on mission load. ( That used to be painfully slow until stgatilov changed the mipmap generation code to use SIMD instructions and multi-core. )

What does the texture quality slider do?

For uncompressed textures, it downscales the images before uploading to the GPU. For compressed images, it simply omits loading higher mipmap levels. It works perfectly as long as you properly encode your DDS with mipmaps.

Maybe it's too much to ask, but if you can, can you update the following info on the wiki with some info on mipmaps:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=File_formats#DDS

[stgatilov]

18 minutes ago, datiswous said:

How does this work for textures in jpg or png? Or maybe we should never use these formats for textures?

DDS is the only "special" format which has its own special code path.
All the other image formats are read to produce RGBA 8-bit buffer on CPU, and after that their treatment is the same regardless of which format they came to (TGA/BMP/JPG/PNG / maybe I forgot something).

[stgatilov]

By the way, the 2.13 is finally released.

I'd like to thank everyone for taking part in the testing!
This is very important for making releases stable.

[datiswous]

26 minutes ago, stgatilov said:

All the other image formats are read to produce RGBA 8-bit buffer on CPU, and after that their treatment is the same

So the mipmaps are not generated ingame for jpg and png, but it's not necesaary?

[stgatilov]

37 minutes ago, datiswous said:

So the mipmaps are not generated ingame for jpg and png, but it's not necesaary?

The mipmaps are generated automatically when necessary.
I believe there is some keyword which can block generation of mipmaps.
In a sense, mipmaps is implementation detail.

But DDS is sort of "engine-internal" image format, it works differently.