nobody on 5/8/2005 at 13:56
minor progress report:
I finaly have schism version 1 running. I copied the entire editor over to my game file with the exception of the T3.exe. I first tried to follow the instructions used by glaswolf but they didn't work. I had other problems. installing the entire editor into the game folder was a last ditch effort to get it working. I'm glad it did, but now I have another issue. the Vertex pool fix bothers me. I see a severe performance drop when I change the vertex pool numbers by a multiple of ten (adding a zero at the end). I discovered that if I doubled the first two digits (DynamicVertexPool0=3145728 becomes
DynamicVertexPool0=6245728) that it still worked and my performance was much better, though still not as good as it was for the OMs. I tried to only increase the vertex pools by a multiple of about 1.5 but it wasn't enough.
my system (because I know you'll all wat to know):
P4 2.8Ghz with hyperthreading
512MB RAM (the fast stuff, I can't remember the exact speed but was fastest out there as of 6 months ago when I bought the system)
ATI Sapphire Radeon 9600 256MB Video card
120GB hard drive (75 GB free)
60GB hard drive slave (28GB free)
I was able to run the original version of the game with maxed out detail and bloom and resolution and all that, even John P textures and minimalist. I didn't expect vertex pools to be such a problem but at 10X the original settings the game is almost completely unplayable even at the lowest settings with no bloom, no John P textures, and no minimalist.
I am dissatisfied with this method. triggers don't work and the vertex pool increase destroys performance. I was able to snuff candles and I had door sounds unlike Glaswolf, so adding more of the editor did improve the game but not to where it should be. I feel the triggerscripts problem is fatal to any method that we would like to use long term not to mention the large down load. so tell me, do you all think it is worth the effort for me to systematically remove editor files one by one until I discover the bare minimum for functionality? I don't understand triggerscripts or how they work so we'll need someone who does to test them out and see if we can find a solution. I haven't tried to run the editor from the united game/editor directory yet nor have I installed the Minimalist Project. I think I'll try minimalist tonight. sorry I didn't get more done but I had little time last night.
I have Ziemanskye's triggerscripts downloaded but I'm unsure where to put them so maybe if I load them into the right spot they'll work? any suggestions?
ProjectX on 5/8/2005 at 14:34
Z's triggerscripts go in Contents\T3\TriggerScript\Defs
Ziemanskye on 5/8/2005 at 15:09
I've never noticed performance dropping when using the expanded vertex pools, though I don't use the bloom effect or supersampling (since either cripples my graphics card regardless). I don't have either the texture packs or minimalist either, so can't comment on that.
I suppose that might be why the lights outside slow my system down so much, but didn't bother ProjectX. Might have to experiment with that later.
I just muliplied my pools by 10 because putting a zero on the end meant I didn't have to do any maths to work out what doubling them should be, even though I later worked out the pools sizes seem to be about 16Mb in total anyway normally (ever notice how the back of box says which chipsets you need, but not how much memory is needed on the graphics card?).
And is it worth trimming the editor-related stuff till you get to the minimun for Schism?
Absolutely Not.
It'll probably be bigger than the ibt file, and isn't worth the effort to try get the sets needed by each mission as it comes along.
I think someone said before that if the game can't find things in the ibt file normally then it'll use the resources on the disk if it can get them, so if/when one of our more programming type peoples cracks the ibt file format so we can strip all of the unmodified stuff out, then a 260Mb or whatever 'default' dl of stuff to make custom missions go is probably acceptable, but for now, it's not worth the hassle or the bandwidth to work out what's needed to make a still not right version of the level go.
nobody on 5/8/2005 at 17:59
I turned Bloom off and set all the detail and resolution settings to the minimum and I have not re-installed minimalist project or John P's textures so right now all I have is the basic game, patched, set to minimum detail and that's it, but the vertex pools still kill me if I set it to 10 times original. thanks for your input Z I was feeling the same way about digging through the editor files. not sure what more I can do for the good of the cause but if I get any inspirations or good suggestions I'll jump on and give it a fling.
Ziemanskye on 5/8/2005 at 18:13
You wanna help - then enter Komag's comp. The more levels we have to experiment with the better.
:cheeky:
Otherwise, well, I might rebuild Schism as a multi-area mission anyway, since I sacrificed having an outside area to keep the framerate up. It it's got to be split up by loading screens, well we can have missions bigger than the main game's 2 maps, it's just not as good as having a big single area.
Ziemanskye on 6/8/2005 at 11:02
Also, nobody, I wasn't meaning to be disparaging about the effort you (and GlasWolf) have put into this.
It's still a shame it doesn't work, but now it quite systematically doesn't work.
The time you've spent on it means we have more experienced people around here willing to offer advice on where the lines of "Too far" are.
And with the vertexpools - maybe they do reduce performance, mine have been at the 10x since about march! I could've just got used to it.
GlasWolf on 6/8/2005 at 14:03
Certainly no problem here, Z.
My gut reaction to this is that if you've got two missions using essentially the same shared resources - Schism and Townhouse - and one works and the other doesn't, then it must be to do with the way the mission is either built or packaged. It may be that there's a particular procedure that "poisons" the mission making the ibt unworkable. Why, for example, does the Schism ibt contain hardcoded path information whereas townhouse doesn't?
One way of attacking it may be to test the mission at various stages to find out where the ibt started failing. Z, if you have WIP backups of Schism as you were building I'll be happy to do the grunt work on this.
Ziemanskye on 6/8/2005 at 14:30
That's kind of you to offer Glas', but I didn't think to make backups as I was constructing it (too used to the auto-increment in Max, where as in T3ed I'm more concerned with making a version that works rather than worrying about crashes).
If you're feeling somewhat masochistic, then thiefmissions has the unr for the first version of the ibt, and is (mostly) sensibly grouped off, so you could rip entire rooms out quite easily to test, and somewhere around here is the custom triggerscripts, and the zip includes the books and things, so it's just the smesh skins (which T3Ed can help with) and the smesh collistions (which you'd need to experiment with, though the main thing is the arch at the start which defaults to non-passable for some reason) needed to rebuild it.
Two main differenecs spring to mind though -
One: Simply that Schism is a lot bigger, the first ibt was about 45Mb, and in v3 went down to 40Mb, but is still bigger than the largest OM section. I've made a version that's trimmed another megabyte off, and am thinking of how to reduce (and maybe cut up) the level more. The subdivision isn't going too well though because it'd mess with the objectives something chronic, much like the main level it wasn't designed to be split up.
Two: Schism has some rather odd brush work, and while Townhouse had some too, it never gave me BSP errors, while Schism was plagued with them - which meant that areas of the level I wanted to use I couldn't (which may ultimately be a good thing, since it would have had even more stuff in it if I could build there). A large part of could be that Schism has odd shaped subtractive brushes, while I think all of Townhouse's odd shapes were additive.
nobody on 6/8/2005 at 16:25
Z,
I didn't think anyone was being disparaging about glaswolf's and my work, I'm actually glad I could do SOMETHING that might help. I might try to build an FM but I really have little to no clue about working with the editor. I learned how to use DromEd when it came out but it was always right at the upper limit of my ability and the only things I ever made weren't good enough for release to the public. I wish I could find some way to reduce the performance hit I take from those vertex pools though. I'm only upset about the method I was working on not being good because it means that we haven't got the problem worked out. YET! I'm gonna continue to fidget around with it, who knows maybe I'll stumble accross something.
Ziemanskye on 6/8/2005 at 16:32
Well, good luck to you.
I'm still trying to experiment a way around it (in terms of new versions of the level), so at least we're not all duplicating the same work.
And as for the work not being up to scratch, well it's quite easy to build something okay with T3Ed, because it comes with the textures and smeshes. Just takes some practice - the only reason I've been able to get into this so quick is because I was working in UnrealEd for Action Unreal Tournament before this, though I miss a whole load of stuff from that version of UEd (mostly the texture browser/importer, and the ability to import *.ase files as smeshes).
Out of curiosity though, can you load Schism with the editor stuff in place but BlockLoading turned on? [I can, but I think Glaswolf said he couldn't]
