[Micky C]

The ultimate goal of polymer should be to make this map, and in the future, maps like this, playable. If this map can be played at 20 frames a second on the average machine, than polymer should be able to handle anything that can be thrown at it.

In the meantime, is it possible that someone could write a mapster script that converts spotlights with an extra of -9999 into pointlights with an extra of -1? It'd be great if the script can also shave off a thousand or so units from the hitag.

[bullerbullerseven]

ok, but then if the polymer is optimized enough so that an average computer can run it, what do you do when something new comes? Start all over?

[Danukem]

Micky C, on 31 May 2011 - 01:55 PM, said:

The ultimate goal of polymer should be to make this map, and in the future, maps like this, playable. If this map can be played at 20 frames a second on the average machine, than polymer should be able to handle anything that can be thrown at it.

In the meantime, is it possible that someone could write a mapster script that converts spotlights with an extra of -9999 into pointlights with an extra of -1? It'd be great if the script can also shave off a thousand or so units from the hitag.

gamevar i 0 0

defstate convertlights
for i allsprites
{
   ife .picnum 1 ife .lotag 50 ife .extra -9999
   {
        set .lotag 49
        set .extra -1
        sub .hitag 1000
    }
}
ends

[Carl Winslow]

Jhect, on 31 May 2011 - 02:13 PM, said:

ok, but then if the polymer is optimized enough so that an average computer can run it, what do you do when something new comes? Start all over?

you're acting like this is something that will matter in a recent period. I don't think it'll ever happen.

[Tea Monster]

It's either Plagman optimizes this puppy, or we wait till Duke Reloaded is out and make a TC out of it.

[Stabs]

we could pool together some cash and get carmack to work on polymer for 5 minutes. that should fix it

[Mark]

I tried out the Project zero map and was getting very close to the same framerates as in the screen shots with my Nvidia 9800GTX. I couldn't imagine why such crummy FPS in small indoor areas until I looked at the map in Mapster. I counted 14 point lights just in the small Armory room in the beginning. BTW, a fantastic map that I missed first time around.

[Lord Misfit]

Did a short test run. Map started off at a decent 64-84 FPS in the first rooms (to which I was a bit surprised I didn't grind to a near halt then), but after the helicopter landing in front of the mansion's outskirts, the FPS dropped to 9-13, and I was experiencing a weird movement like I was sliding forward or backwards or all around in my last pressed direction automatically for a few seconds. Really couldn't do any fighting all that much, although I didn't actually get killed by the first wave of enemies either but I decided I wasn't going to go any further than that due to the low FPS. :\

BTW, using a Nvidia GTX460m w/ 16GB of DDR3 RAM w/ a i7-2720 processor to test it, on 1024x768 in Polymer. I'm not sure how much detail I had on textures, but it was probably at least moderate or high. And yes, my computer is 2-3 months old here, this is the new laptop I got back in March.

Hope this helps out any. o.o;

[Tea Monster]

DanM, on 31 May 2011 - 03:52 PM, said:

we could pool together some cash and get carmack to work on polymer for 5 minutes. that should fix it

If you read some of his blog posts, that is about right.

[Stabs]

just check some then, hasnt really written much since 2006

[Hank]

DanM, on 31 May 2011 - 04:35 PM, said:

just check some then, hasnt really written much since 2006

get him on twitter or email him!! I think Tee Monster was being sardonic.

@ Mickey C, I like the map. There was a saying "Framerate is god" - just a thought.

[Mark]

I'm guessing Mickey wanted to go "to the limit" with his lighting this time around to see what is possible.

But I think a compromise could be found between looking good and fewer lights to gain back some FPS.

[Micky C]

Marked, on 31 May 2011 - 03:56 PM, said:

I tried out the Project zero map and was getting very close to the same framerates as in the screen shots with my Nvidia 9800GTX. I couldn't imagine why such crummy FPS in small indoor areas until I looked at the map in Mapster. I counted 14 point lights just in the small Armory room in the beginning. BTW, a fantastic map that I missed first time around.

Marked, on 31 May 2011 - 07:18 PM, said:

I'm guessing Mickey wanted to go "to the limit" with his lighting this time around to see what is possible.

But I think a compromise could be found between looking good and fewer lights to gain back some FPS.

When I was lighting this map, I never had the intention of pushing polymer to the limit, if I did, I wouldn't have gone so much over the limit. Actually on second thought I would have put some more spotlights in two or three places, but I decided against that.
At the end of the day, I put enough in enough lights of both types to make the map look good, and moderately consistent. I ended up putting at least one spotlight in every room except for cases where several rooms were linked together or to a large area.

With the 14 point lights in the armory, I thought I could get away with it because those lights were tiny, and it was a small area so it was cut off from any power hungry lights. I didn't use that many lights in any other room though.


I'm surprised the performance is as slow as it is. In the first screenshot, which is an in-game screenshot, I got almost 60 frames a second, and I didn't add any other lights to that area or anything since then. It's quite strange.
Also I just noticed that in the above screenshot I posted, the room with the spotlight and the 14 point lights, I was getting a solid 30+ frames a second. Why this dropped down to 3 I have no idea.

Also thanks DT for the code, I'll try it out, and thanks Lord Misfit for attempting the map and reporting on the framerate with your 460GTX card and i7 processor.

[Micky C]

Ok I used DT's mapster script, turning most of the spotlights into point lights and removing some of their hi tag. I had a really quick look through mapster and from what I saw, 95% of the converted point lights looked pretty much spot on. (When you've placed as many lights as I have, you just know which values to use ) I'll emphasize again that I only had a quick look. I then went and removed the really big outdoor spotlights, as well as some other problem spotlights in the hi-tech area, and all the spotlights from the final boss area.

While I still consider the original version to be the official map, this will have to do for now.

So please try it out, the framerate should be at least 5 times better than what it was before. I'd still recommend a decent card though.

Attached File(s)

•  projectzp.zip (705.92K)
  Number of downloads: 405

[The Commander]

Not really a "what am I working on" but still a better place to post this than digging up an old thread.
While I was browsing You Tube I came across some videos recently recorded of my shitty old mod Duke Theft Auto.



Oddly enough this same person recorded a "play though/walk through" of the only two missions that worked in it.
http://youtu.be/cHG8D48fKYc Mission 1
http://youtu.be/ILlTw7fcul8 Mission 2

But I found this video the best as it would have worked pretty good for a trailer of sorts.



Looking at the download counter people are still downloading the piece of crap to this day, lol

[Mike Norvak]

The Commander, on 02 June 2011 - 11:28 AM, said:

Looking at the download counter people are still downloading the piece of crap to this day, lol

It could be a piece of crap, but it's funny, i loved to kill everybody with the cars! lol also i remember i tweaked the speed of cars to got supersonic...

[The Commander]

If I wasn't so busy with a fully time job and other commitments now I would have made it more playable by now. lol

[Stabs]

you have clipshapes now, no excuses

[Lord Misfit]

projectzp.map seems to run a lot better [I noticed] mainly once you exited the chopper to the mansion grounds. I was getting 24-55 FPS for the most part, sometimes as high as 63 FPS once inside the mansion [up from the 9-13FPS I mentioned in the last post]. I didn't proceed extremely far, but I did look around more than the previous playthrough. The beginning area only seemed to get about a 20-22FPS boost [to about 86-108FPS from 64-84 in the previous version.]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, both plays, I was running it on r1900 at 1024x768. o.o

[Micky C]

I don't suppose you could record a play through of the level? No pressure or anything, but you certainly have the rig for the job

[darkcaleb]

You know commander you could make this mod look even better by using the bike code for all the vehicles, i can help you with new cars and world models if you want.

[Danukem]

darkcaleb, on 03 June 2011 - 07:21 AM, said:

You know commander you could make this mod look even better by using the bike code for all the vehicles, i can help you with new cars and world models if you want.

A lot of the Dukebike code concerns stuff that would only make sense with the Dukebike. Getting generic vehicle code from that would actually be a lot of work; it might be easier to write generic code from scratch.

[The Commander]

DeeperThought, on 03 June 2011 - 07:32 AM, said:

A lot of the Dukebike code concerns stuff that would only make sense with the Dukebike. Getting generic vehicle code from that would actually be a lot of work; it might be easier to write generic code from scratch.

This is correct.
When I coded the cars as you see them now it was done in a very hackish/cheap way.
In simple terms I just killed the actor car and turned the APLAYER's ACTION into that of the same car, when you hit the button to get out of the car it just spawned another actor of that same car.

If from what I have seen of the DukeBike code it takes the model/actor of the DukeBike and places that to the same coordinates as the APLAYER and hides the APLAYER from view. (I could be wrong though)

There would be a lot of work to do to get it up to date though and better than whats released, I am not sure I want to commit to that as I am still waiting for the server/client MP to be ready so I can get Duke Nukem Red Alert out the door.

[Lord Misfit]

Micky C, on 03 June 2011 - 03:32 AM, said:

I don't suppose you could record a play through of the level? No pressure or anything, but you certainly have the rig for the job

In what way would you want me to record? I have accquired the power to livestream via the new laptop, but I'll freely admit that for the last so many years I've played Duke3D, I've done so via my own mod as proxy and thus I have very minimal experience with DukePlus and many of it's newer features. Also due to such, I don't have any previous experience at most if any of the DukePlus levels bunched in. I'd probably end up dying a lot and possibly using some cheats just to move on to finish the level so I don't get stuck messing with it forever. o.o

Also, I'm not sure if streaming or in general recording will possibly bring down my FPS in-game or not when it's already below 60 where it can be noticed or not. I'm not certain yet even with my rig I could play it while recording. I'll see if I can try messing with a non-lighted version that doesn't use Polymer/lighting or anything else intensive so I got the hang of what I need to do in the level first as to cut back on the need to use any cheats, but I don't know when or if I'll get around to it anytime soon. :\

[Mikko]

At least Fraps will bring down your FPS considerably while recording.

[Lord Misfit]

Mikko_Sandt, on 03 June 2011 - 04:36 PM, said:

At least Fraps will bring down your FPS considerably while recording.

Don't use it anyways, but thanks for letting me in case I consider it for something else down the road.

When I live-stream, I and a couple of people I know use a program called XSplit for it. It can connect to justintv and ustream [the former of which is where I do my streaming at], and although it usually runs pretty smooth on my end, there's a type of screenshotty-ness that happens at times for my viewers when I play certain games. I'm not sure how it would effect my attempt at projectzp.map if I try it. o.o

[Micky C]

Lord Misfit, on 03 June 2011 - 04:24 PM, said:

In what way would you want me to record? I have accquired the power to livestream via the new laptop, but I'll freely admit that for the last so many years I've played Duke3D, I've done so via my own mod as proxy and thus I have very minimal experience with DukePlus and many of it's newer features. Also due to such, I don't have any previous experience at most if any of the DukePlus levels bunched in. I'd probably end up dying a lot and possibly using some cheats just to move on to finish the level so I don't get stuck messing with it forever. o.o

Also, I'm not sure if streaming or in general recording will possibly bring down my FPS in-game or not when it's already below 60 where it can be noticed or not. I'm not certain yet even with my rig I could play it while recording. I'll see if I can try messing with a non-lighted version that doesn't use Polymer/lighting or anything else intensive so I got the hang of what I need to do in the level first as to cut back on the need to use any cheats, but I don't know when or if I'll get around to it anytime soon. :\

I'm not too knowledgeable on the matter of streaming, but as long as you can save it as some kind of video and upload it to youtube that'd be great.

All you really have to know for project zero in terms of dukeplus is that monsters can drop items such as key cards when killed, and in the outdoor area behind the mansion, you'll have to pick up fuses and place them in the box next to the garage door. Oh and you might want to assign alt-fire and reload keys.

Here's the first of 3 videos showing DT's playthrough of Project Zero with polymost if you're interested: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=W1OnESUDm2k

[OpenMaw]

Has anyone ever created a working pogostick before?

[Lord Misfit]

Micky C, on 04 June 2011 - 02:04 AM, said:

I'm not too knowledgeable on the matter of streaming, but as long as you can save it as some kind of video and upload it to youtube that'd be great.

All you really have to know for project zero in terms of dukeplus is that monsters can drop items such as key cards when killed, and in the outdoor area behind the mansion, you'll have to pick up fuses and place them in the box next to the garage door. Oh and you might want to assign alt-fire and reload keys.

Here's the first of 3 videos showing DT's playthrough of Project Zero with polymost if you're interested: http://www.youtube.c...h?v=W1OnESUDm2k

Streaming it will allow me to save a recording of what goes on if it's on JustinTV, which I'm sure where it would be done. And while it does have a "Save/Convert to YouTube" function in it too, the problem is I noticed over long videos or ones of decent size it de-syncs sound more and more over time. [I converted over a video of a sucky-ish blind run of Half-Life 1 so people on my small YT channel can see an example of some of the things I stream, but I found to my dismay of the de-sync.]

However, I will probably have to wait, for tomorrow, I have plans for a stream of my own mod for certain people, and unless they opt out, I'll be focusing on it due to my recent schedule after Sunday, meaning it probably won't be until later this week before I get any chance to try to play it on a recorded stream. So, hopefully you can hold out for a few days or a week [or possibly longer, depending]. o.o

[WedgeBob]

Well, since we only have one week (less for those overseas) for DNF to be released, seems like we are going to need to make one more mod or map that will actually count this time. I don't know how long the EDuke32 project will continue after DNF's in our hands, but what I can tell you is that this has been a blast ever since Duke 3D went open source. So with this in mind, I've been doing some whiteboarding and planning over the past couple of days, based on the DNF demo, to see what I could incorporate into EDuke32... This was no easy task, and I still may have to go back to the drawing board again. Because having a mine ride level in EDuke32 would be cool, imo, and with everyone's help, it could be done. Let's see what can be done.