[Danukem]

Spiker, on May 26 2009, 01:03 PM, said:

What's the point in creating LR-HRP? (Low Resolution High Resolution Pack) Especially if there is a classic mode

An HRP that has some textures scaled down, with polymer (including all the various mapping on the textures not available for the 8-bit art) will look like a modern game and nothing like classic mode.

[MusicallyInspired]

I still do hope that somebody also creates normal/spec maps for the 8-bit graphics as well, though.

[Tea Monster]

MusicallyInspired, on May 26 2009, 12:20 PM, said:

I still do hope that somebody also creates normal/spec maps for the 8-bit graphics as well, though.

GIMP and the normal map plug in are free. All the tools to rip the textures out of the GRP file are free.

Get to it!

[MusicallyInspired]

I actually did start on a couple of the textures already for a map I was making just to see what it would look like. Was pretty cool. But whenever a whole pack is finished it should be included as standard with the Polymer release of eDuke32 eventually (without the HRP).

[Mark]

It took 14 pages of posts before I finally put in my 2 cents worth.I see all these posts about computing power and frame rates. I see screenshots in resolutions as high as 1600 x 1200. With my older machine I'm wondering what the performance will be at the 1024 x 768 rez I usually play at. And it sounds like a lot of others have the same basic machine as I. And I suppose I shouldn't even worry until the final optimized version is released but it would be nice to know performance at that rez right now for comparison.

[Mia Max]

Marked, on May 27 2009, 01:35 AM, said:

It took 14 pages of posts before I finally put in my 2 cents worth.I see all these posts about computing power and frame rates. I see screenshots in resolutions as high as 1600 x 1200. With my older machine I'm wondering what the performance will be at the 1024 x 768 rez I usually play at. And it sounds like a lot of others have the same basic machine as I. And I suppose I shouldn't even worry until the final optimized version is released but it would be nice to know performance at that rez right now for comparison.

Well, I just made a stress test to see the performance for eduke32 polymer renderer.

So I found out that it doesn't affect framerate when I force 4xMSAA (with nHancer) or no anti-aliasing much at all. Changing resolution does nearly nothing.

Some examples for same place in my map:
1920 x 1200: 17 fps
640 x 480: 18 fps
1920 x 1200 + 4xMSAA: 12 fps
640 x 480 + 4xMSAA: 13 fps

And you won't believe it, but changing quality doesn't really nothing, that's no joke!
I can enable/disable HRP, set texture filter trillinar or nearest and I can change all options in nHancer, framerate is always the same!

That's why I think nobody should buy a new graphics card until we get the optimized version.

[Tea Monster]

I've got a Athlon X2 6K, 2 GB of RAM, a GeForce 8100.

My graphics card isn't brilliant, but it runs HL2 Ep1 fine and Q4 without any issue.

I too found that running the HRP and/or old sprites has no real impact on game performance. I didn't do a FPS test, but the game will hang for about 30sec to a full minute if you change weapons or try to fire a weapon.

[atlas]

MusicallyInspired, on May 26 2009, 01:20 PM, said:

I still do hope that somebody also creates normal/spec maps for the 8-bit graphics as well, though.

i do too. i've been trying to follow up on saj and parkar's testing on the 3DR forums. if alot of people are interested maybe we could gather a team of artists to work on a 8bit version of duke enhanced with polymer's features.

[Jokke_r]

Mia Max, on May 27 2009, 03:42 AM, said:

Well, I just made a stress test to see the performance for eduke32 polymer renderer.

So I found out that it doesn't affect framerate when I force 4xMSAA (with nHancer) or no anti-aliasing much at all. Changing resolution does nearly nothing.

Some examples for same place in my map:
1920 x 1200: 17 fps
640 x 480: 18 fps
1920 x 1200 + 4xMSAA: 12 fps
640 x 480 + 4xMSAA: 13 fps

And you won't believe it, but changing quality doesn't really nothing, that's no joke!
I can enable/disable HRP, set texture filter trillinar or nearest and I can change all options in nHancer, framerate is always the same!

That's why I think nobody should buy a new graphics card until we get the optimized version.

Well it is evident then that the CPU is the chokepoint on your end, not your graphics card. Guess it might have to do with the way the lighthacks work currently since it eats cpu resources to have to read the lighthacks file for every frame if i understood correctly. Which i think plagman mentioned earlier he was going to optimize.

[Danukem]

Jokke_r, on May 26 2009, 08:30 PM, said:

Well it is evident then that the CPU is the chokepoint on your end, not your graphics card. Guess it might have to do with the way the lighthacks work currently since it eats cpu resources to have to read the lighthacks file for every frame if i understood correctly. Which i think plagman mentioned earlier he was going to optimize.

I think you're half right. Lighting is cpu intensive, but surely that has nothing to do with reading a simple file. There's a lot of calculation involved in making the lights work, especially the spotlights.

EDIT: AFAIK, Mia Max isn't even using a light hacks file, he is placing the lights as SEs.

[Jokke_r]

Well there are tons of things that can make any computer crawl if they're done inefficiently, i wouldn't know about polymer since i haven't taken a look at the source code nor do i know C. Still here's an example of when doing an early homework in my java course at school, I was running a poker simulation 42000 times to check some probability, instead of using a list for something i used an array, very noobish mistake obviously for this particular thing which required deleting of elements. I thought that because the array was so short the subsequent moving of elements to the correct index after deleting one wouldn't make a big hit on the speed, surely it didn't when doing simply one iteration, but when doing it 42000 times it took nearly 2mins to do compared with perhaps 2 seconds with using a list.

[Lead]

What is required to contribute any artwork to the this Duke3D stuff?

[Hellbound]

Motivation

[Spiker]

Motivation and some beer.

[Tea Monster]

Prodigious and free-flowing amounts of hot tea. PG-Tips are best if you are in England. In the USA, you can make do with Red Rose. If you are lucky, you can find a British brand such as Taj Mahal at a Caribbean store. It has to be made very strong, with a splash of milk so it has that slightly orange hue.

Once you've done that, you need to fire up your media player or get your MP3 player going. I suggest something epic in scale and execution. Something that will be able to help you see what you are creating leap off the screen and into the game. That really helps with the motivation.

[Hellbound]

Och, sometimes 3d and 2d software is useful too.

[High Treason]

Hmm, a lot of people mentioned their computer power, i'm shocked that it goes so slow on those.

Itried it with that Polymer HRP that was linked a while ago, and not once did i drop below 60Fps except right at the start of levels. And my machine is ancient, you probably know the specs by now;

Pentium D 920 2.80Ghz
4Gb DDR-2-667Mhz
nVidia GeForce 9600

I suspect my graphics card is helping it an awful lot as well as all the many customizations i have done to things, but with everyone saying how slow it runs on their rig i am absolubtely amazed that my computer can do it this well - what with it being classed as Old. I was even more shocked to find that my machine has a tendency to load things a lot faster than my friends Quad Core Phenom / ATi 3870 machine.

Hmm, might try to rum Polymer on my P2 just to see what happens.

[chicken]

@Lead: check the to do list:
http://hrp.duke4.net...ext_hrp_release
Make your tiles 4x the size of the original.
And then: go ahead, dude!

[Mia Max]

@High Treason: You need to play a map with placed spotlights/pointlights. Then you'll see framerate droping.
I have many fps in maps without placed lights too. Sometime even more than 300 fps.

[Tea Monster]

High Treason, on May 27 2009, 07:27 AM, said:

Itried it with that Polymer HRP that was linked a while ago, and not once did i drop below 60Fps except right at the start of levels. And my machine is ancient, you probably know the specs by now;

Pentium D 920 2.80Ghz
4Gb DDR-2-667Mhz
nVidia GeForce 9600

(cries)

Methinks your graphics card is probably doing just about ALL the work. My CPU is pretty good (its not a quad core, but its no slouch either) and my FPS just plain sucks.

@ Lead - Check out the Tuts and Resources thread if you get stuck on anything in the game. Or dissasemble the DEF files to get how to get stuff into game (or post here ).

[High Treason]

Mia Max, on May 27 2009, 09:56 PM, said:

@High Treason: You need to play a map with placed spotlights/pointlights. Then you'll see framerate droping.
I have many fps in maps without placed lights too. Sometime even more than 300 fps.

I did, i added a load as well (which was fun and easier than i thought it might be - i figured it would behave like a "Kludge" but it didn't) which is why i am surprised.

Try closing loads of junk before you start it up, it makes a real difference, i have most of my games set up with a launcher i stuck together that kills explorer.exe and a bunch of other things before starting the game - it really does make a difference, gives me like 100Mb more RAM and an extra few fps after i have a set of processes killed, the launcher then restarts them once the game exits - i use the same trick to make crysis playable, it bought me about 10 more frames per second.

[Danukem]

High Treason, on May 27 2009, 03:18 PM, said:

I did, i added a load as well (which was fun and easier than i thought it might be - i figured it would behave like a "Kludge" but it didn't) which is why i am surprised.

Before you get cocky, open up your eduke32_binds.cfg, go down to where the cvars are listed, and make sure you have this line:

r_shadows "1"

If it says 0 instead of 1, then you aren't getting real spot lighting.

EDIT: Also, I doubt that your test is comparable to Mia Max's map. He has a large HRP only map with complex geometry, and a heavy rain effect from Duke Plus.

[MusicallyInspired]

Isn't it r_pr_shadows? I know both of them exists but I think r_pr_shadows is the spotlight one.

Also, you've gotta tell me how to make a similar launcher!

[Mia Max]

High Treason, on May 28 2009, 12:18 AM, said:

I did, i added a load as well (which was fun and easier than i thought it might be - i figured it would behave like a "Kludge" but it didn't) which is why i am surprised.

Try closing loads of junk before you start it up, it makes a real difference, i have most of my games set up with a launcher i stuck together that kills explorer.exe and a bunch of other things before starting the game - it really does make a difference, gives me like 100Mb more RAM and an extra few fps after i have a set of processes killed, the launcher then restarts them once the game exits - i use the same trick to make crysis playable, it bought me about 10 more frames per second.

And framerate never drops under 60 fps? I can't believe this.
I don't think I've problems with my computer, performance is good and I play most games in highest quality at 1920 x 1200 (stalker: clear sky sucks)

[Danukem]

MusicallyInspired, on May 27 2009, 03:39 PM, said:

Isn't it r_pr_shadows? I know both of them exists but I think r_pr_shadows is the spotlight one.

r_pr_shadows and r_shadows are the same thing. r_pr_shadows is what you would type in the console, and r_shadows is what appears in the binds file. I mentioned it because, if you were to turn off shadows in the console with r_pr_shadows 0, that setting would be saved and you might not realize it (in fact, that happened to me a while ago).

[High Treason]

@DeeperThought
I hjad a check, r_pr_shadows "1" is what it says. It does however fail to draw models a lot of the time for some reason - but i figure that's just down to it not being finished yet and so i am not about to whine about that.

@MusicallyInspired
Well, i usually write it in BASIC or C so i can have a .EXE at the end - there was a reason but i don't remember why it was anymore, you could just make a batch file like this (although i haven't really tested it in windows vista or 7 yet)

@echo off
title Launcher for: EDuke32 (or whatever it's got to launch)
color 1f
cls
Echo.Killing some processes, wait...
taskkill /f /im:explorer.exe
REM you can copy and paste the above line and replace explorer.exe with something else.
echo.Starting...
start /wait "eduke32.exe"
echo.Reloading processes...
start explorer.exe
rem Also start any processes you terminated before.
exit

I was thinking of writing one where it could start anything it was told to (from a single .exe file), haven't got round to it yet. Also some Antivirus software might think that the .bat is malicious (e.g. thinks it is W32:Bat.Dropper) but it is not.

[MusicallyInspired]

Wouldn't the processes you kill just start again? That's what happens when you kill them from the task manager.

EDIT: I tried one of my own and it says "'taskkill' is not recognized as an internal or external command."

[Tea Monster]

Dudes! The last time I had a dedicated config for Windows to play a game was for Quake 1.

[DarkyDan]

Wow guys I've lost touch with the 3drealms forums for a couple of years. When I was frequenting them (as dsotm) all I could contribute was 1 or 2 maphacks

Great work on the new renderer looks VERY nice, reminds me of booting up Quake Tenebrae around the time of the Doom 3 alpha, where it had some similar effects. I feel obliged to start following this project again

I will be patient waiting for an eDuke32 version that includes the Polymer renderer. The screenshots are enough to bring a smile to my face for the moment

...and once that is released and stable I guess the next step would be supporting a more complex model format?

[Chip]

DarkyDan, on May 29 2009, 04:23 AM, said:

...and once that is released and stable I guess the next step would be supporting a more complex model format?

With that said, I hope we'll have some kind of way of sticking 2 different models together like:
model A's sticking point is polygon 17
model B's sticking point is polygon 321
The 2 model's then become stuck to each other by having their listed above faces stuck to each other so when one moves, the other will automatically be moved with it. Think a gun model in an arm model.



However, I don't know if this'll ever be possible.