[Tea Monster]

Spiker, on Jun 11 2010, 12:24 PM, said:

And you haven't mentioned that in the tut? You ..... !!!?!! What other useful things you don't want to share ? Anyway. I'm leaving for a few days. Hope to come back with beerinse out brain and apetite for textures and models http://forums2.duke4...tyle_emoticons/default/smile.gif

that falls into the "Plenty of other, tutorials on rendering" section. The AO pass is used to 'fill in the creases' with a bit of light and dark.

[Bibendum]

@ozz: Doom3/Quake/Unreal/Half-Life all have static lightmapping which have the luxury of implementing AO through preprocessing. When you make a map for any of those engines you have to compile the lightmaps. You end up with really flat static lighting which is why no one really does it anymore.

@TeaMonster: Crysis and pretty much all other realtime AO games for that matter use screen space ambient occlusion, it's not the same as approximate AO (or at least not as it's implemented in Blender.) SSAO is a shader effect that uses a depth buffer to simulate AO. You still need to bake some AO into your textures, even in Crysis because the depth buffer only takes into account actual geometry and can't tell where the cavities are in your texture.

[Night Wolf]

I see ... seems to alot more complex then just implementing a code... I wasn't exactly sure what AO really was until now ... but it did look pretty cool...
if there is a way to implement it to the game engine without having to bake it into everything it would be pretty nice , though it sounds pretty complicated

[Tea Monster]

The screen space AO would require Plagman to write code in the game renderer.

Till then, a quick and dirty effect is to render out an AO pass from your 3D app and overlay it on Multply.

People were experimenting with the game engine using a separate AO texture. You wouldn't bake it into your texture, but would have a seperate AO tile to compliment your normal, diffuse and spec maps. The game engine would mix it to compliment the lighting situation. Waiting to see what happens with that.

There are a couple of great modern texturing tutorials that I followed to make the pistol.
This is by Stefan Morrell; http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotligh...e-painting.html

It will explain the basics of what is going on here.

[Night Wolf]

Hmmm I have a question ... I accidentally ticked off the "always show this window at startup" and now the little box doesn't show up when I launch eduke and I need that box lol

how do I get that to show again?

[TerminX]

Go into the options menu and turn it back on.

[Night Wolf]

TX, on Jun 13 2010, 06:30 PM, said:

Go into the options menu and turn it back on.

Its already set to show at startup from the options menu in HRP menu , but yet it still doesn't show

EDIT: I had to delete a mod that was conflicting the settings , after I did that the options worked properly again

[Bibendum]

Tea Monster, on Jun 13 2010, 12:57 AM, said:

The screen space AO would require Plagman to write code in the game renderer.

People were experimenting with the game engine using a separate AO texture. You wouldn't bake it into your texture, but would have a seperate AO tile to compliment your normal, diffuse and spec maps. The game engine would mix it to compliment the lighting situation. Waiting to see what happens with that.

Is he unable to do that? I mean it's a lot of work I'm sure but once you're pulling down the depth buffer as a texture you get access to a lot of effects aside from SSAO like soft particles, volumetric fog, depth of field, motion blur, etc. You'll have to forgive me as I don't know the exact amount of work this is, I'm sure it's substantial, all I know is it looks pretty sweet And what makes modern engines look good is largely their custom shader support, mainly post processing shaders.

Having AO in a texture is still only half the solution. It's great and not having to bake it into the diffuse map will give you a lot more control over how it's displayed in game but you still don't get AO for actual game geometry. The only way you're going to get that is from SSAO.

[Tea Monster]

Bibendum, on Jun 13 2010, 07:43 AM, said:

Is he unable to do that? I mean it's a lot of work I'm sure but once you're pulling down the depth buffer as a texture you get access to a lot of effects aside from SSAO like soft particles, volumetric fog, depth of field, motion blur, etc. You'll have to forgive me as I don't know the exact amount of work this is, I'm sure it's substantial, all I know is it looks pretty sweet And what makes modern engines look good is largely their custom shader support, mainly post processing shaders.

Having AO in a texture is still only half the solution. It's great and not having to bake it into the diffuse map will give you a lot more control over how it's displayed in game but you still don't get AO for actual game geometry. The only way you're going to get that is from SSAO.

All questions on the Polymer renderer are answered by Plagman. The reason I said 'AO from game geometry' is that if I said SSAO, very few people here would know what that meant. But SSAO was what I was talking about. Remember, we only got a next-gen renderer a while back.

[Micky C]

I'd just like to point out to anyone who's interested that I got a decent framerate of 15-20 fps when using polymer in a large room with roughly 2 dozen 6000 hi-tag coloured point lights, a dozen troopers and a cycloid emperor miniboss all when using DukePlus AND recording with FRAPS!

It's certainly alot more optimized than it used to be

[Night Wolf]

Micky C, on Jun 14 2010, 04:44 PM, said:

I'd just like to point out to anyone who's interested that I got a decent framerate of 15-20 fps when using polymer in a large room with roughly 2 dozen 6000 hi-tag coloured point lights, a dozen troopers and a cycloid emperor miniboss all when using DukePlus AND recording with FRAPS!

It's certainly alot more optimized than it used to be

15 - 20 is still bad... but I suppose its getting there

[Lt.Havoc]

Hello. Its awhile that I posted here. I recently got back to playing Duke nukem 3D and got me the HRP with Duke plus and all. I updated Duke plus but now I have the problem that the game crashes for me. I can play the game without any problems, but then the screen freezes and Vista tells me that EDuke32 does not work anymore and needs to be closed.

I have no idea why that happens. My computer should be powerful enough to use Polymer and all.

I run it on a AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 6000+ with 3GHz
ATI Radeon 4960
4GB DDR 2 800 RAM
on Vista 64 Bit Ultimate with Service Pack 2

So any ideas why the game randomly crashes when I use the newest versions of EDuke and Duke Plus?

[Danukem]

Lt.Havoc, on Jun 14 2010, 04:51 AM, said:

Hello. Its awhile that I posted here. I recently got back to playing Duke nukem 3D and got me the HRP with Duke plus and all. I updated Duke plus but now I have the problem that the game crashes for me. I can play the game without any problems, but then the screen freezes and Vista tells me that EDuke32 does not work anymore and needs to be closed.

I have no idea why that happens. My computer should be powerful enough to use Polymer and all.

I run it on a AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 6000+ with 3GHz
ATI Radeon 4960
4GB DDR 2 800 RAM
on Vista 64 Bit Ultimate with Service Pack 2

So any ideas why the game randomly crashes when I use the newest versions of EDuke and Duke Plus?

Attach your eduke32.log after it crashes. You say you are using the "latest" eduke32, but that could be either the latest official version (from March 11), or the latest revision from a few days ago. The more recent revisions can be found in the synthesis folder here:

http://dukeworld.duke4.net/eduke32/

[Lt.Havoc]

Okay let me attach the log file. Hope that helps.

Attached File(s)

•  eduke32.log (1.13MB)
  Number of downloads: 1094

[Danukem]

Lt.Havoc, on Jun 14 2010, 06:32 AM, said:

Okay let me attach the log file. Hope that helps.

Click on the "Latest DP Code" link in my signature and replace the contents of the dpcons folder with what you download there. That will fix the "duplicate case" errors that are being reported in the log -- it's almost certainly unrelated to the crash, but worth doing. Next, grab the latest build of EDuke32 from the link in my previous post. That will be revision 1657 in the synthesis folder. Once you have done all that, try again and see if it still crashes.

[Lt.Havoc]

How do I install the latest EDuke 32 version? Simply copy and paste the files into the Duke 3D folder and replace the old files with the new one?

[The Commander]

Provided you have downloaded this file:
http://dukeworld.duke4.net/eduke32/synthes...100607-1657.zip

Then yes, just extract the zip to your folder where "eduke32.exe" is and overwrite the existing files.

[Lt.Havoc]

Well, no dice, still have the crashing after updating it I post the log file again.

Attached File(s)

•  eduke32.log (526.58K)
  Number of downloads: 1038

[Danukem]

Lt.Havoc, on Jun 14 2010, 08:48 AM, said:

Well, no dice, still have the crashing after updating it I post the log file again.

I can see you are still not using the latest CON files for DukePlus, because you still have those "duplicate case" errors in your log. Also, try deleting nedmalloc.dll and see if that helps. By the way, how long can you play before it crashes?

[Lt.Havoc]

DeeperThought, on Jun 14 2010, 06:02 PM, said:

I can see you are still not using the latest CON files for DukePlus, because you still have those "duplicate case" errors in your log. Also, try deleting nedmalloc.dll and see if that helps. By the way, how long can you play before it crashes?

But I do, I put the latest con files you lined me into the Duke plus folder just as you said. So no idea why there is still that error.

Well, depends, between 30mins to one hour, then the screen freezes and then either I get a "This program has to be closed" message or it simply exits without anything.

[Danukem]

You must not have put the new CONs in the right place, then. Anyway, I don't think it's related to the crash. I wish I could help, but there's nothing I can do. EDuke32 has some bugs. There's a serious one that gives a lot of people trouble as well, which causes it to start hitching or freeze up after a while. I don't think it's the same bug, though, because the one I'm referring to only started in May, and it doesn't exit or give an error message.

[Lt.Havoc]

AS I said, I put the DP con file folder into the Duke Plus folder, was that wrong?

[Danukem]

Lt.Havoc, on Jun 14 2010, 09:29 AM, said:

AS I said, I put the DP con file folder into the Duke Plus folder, was that wrong?

If you overwrote the old CONs, then that's right. But I know for a fact that those new CONs do not generate the 'duplicate case' errors. I have them on my own computer, after all.

[NNC]

Hi! I'm planning for a new laptop, but this time I need OpenGL support on it, and maybe even Polymer. I don't care for the HRP, but the polymer lighting effects are cool, I want to see them on my laptop.

What the minimum requirements should be? RAM, graphic card etc... Thx for help.

[TerminX]

Just get something with recent NVIDIA hardware that's at least a bit better than the lowest of the low end and you'll be set. You'll want at least 2 gigs of RAM so you can comfortably run a modern OS (Windows 7) and be able to run games without hitting the pagefile much, and any reasonably speedy dual core CPU (or quad, if there's a quad core laptop and you're made of money) should be fine.

The main thing to keep in mind if Polymer performance is a primary concern is to remember that no matter what your personal preferences have been in the past in terms of video card vendor, Polymer will always run better on NVIDIA hardware because, well, Plagman works there.

[Stabs]

you will probably want an 8800 minimum

which is also basically a 9800 / gts240

for best performance you will probably want a gtx260 / gtx280 if you can afford it.

[TerminX]

Better widescreen support:

[TerminX]

Btw, mods that use rotatesprite will want to make note of two new bits in "orientation"... value 256 will align something to the left of the screen and 512 will align something to the right.

Without the new bits set, stuff will render in the center of the screen, like this:

[Hendricks266]

TX, on Jun 17 2010, 09:06 PM, said:

Better widescreen support:

Incredibly awesome.

[TerminX]

This needed fixing too: