Author Topic: A WoD dev blog  (Read 422606 times)

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Offline Spoon

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I was recently very suprised to see that it has almost been a year since I uploaded the WoD2 trailer on youtube. It feels more like yesterday... What have I been doing this whole time and why isn't WoD2 released yet?! Allow me to pretend these questions are frequently asked:

All of the assets have already been created, don't you just have to FRED the missions themselves?

There has been a whole lot of work done on the assets actually. A few models have been redone to some degree and there's a whole slew of new stuff to shoot with and to shoot at.

Well didn't you do all of that stuff for WoD1 too and didn't that get finished in one year or so?

orz
True. But one of the main reasons why WoD2 is taking so much longer to complete is that we're trying several new things that Freespace simply wasn't designed to do. So a lot of complex FREDery is required to make all these things happen.
For example, this is what the event window looks like (of course, minus the blurring that censor all of the possible spoilers) for the first part of WoD2.

Impossible to work without a dual screen setup  :p

Thankfully Swifty&Valathil have both been huge helps making a lot of the stuff going into WoD possible. Doing their coding wizardry
While Axem is a total FRED&Model boss and Sab0o has helped make WoD2 prettier with his texture skills.

Release date when?

Unknown but unforunately not in the nearby future.
Urutorahappī!!

[02:42] <@Axem> spoon somethings wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> critically wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> im happy with these missions now
[02:44] <@Axem> well
[02:44] <@Axem> with 2 of them

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Unknown but unforunately not in the nearby future.

My life is ruined. :(
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Offline Legate Damar

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Impossible to work without a dual screen setup

This is troublesome. If I wanted to use complex FREDdery in my missions, I would need this dual screen setup? But I only have one computer with one screen.

 

Offline The E

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This is troublesome. If I wanted to use complex FREDdery in my missions, I would need this dual screen setup? But I only have one computer with one screen.

What spoon showed there is very much an anomaly. You have to have an extremely complex mission to get to that point, and there are very few cases where a mission would require that many events.
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I really need lifе to touch me
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Offline headdie

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:wtf: fred is capable of handling that many objects no  :jaw:
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Offline Legate Damar

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This is troublesome. If I wanted to use complex FREDdery in my missions, I would need this dual screen setup? But I only have one computer with one screen.

What spoon showed there is very much an anomaly. You have to have an extremely complex mission to get to that point, and there are very few cases where a mission would require that many events.

You should not underestimate the potential complexity required to execute some of the ideas I have

 

Offline The E

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In FREDing, just as in programming, complexity can have two causes. Either because there is no simpler way to do it, or because the programmer in question didn't see the simpler way. I know that Spoon and Axem are aware of this and wouldn't introduce such complexity needlessly; but it is usually the case that even complex ideas can be reduced to rather simple sexps.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline Legate Damar

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Is there a simple way to do a time jump (player presses the button and all ships/objects are returned to the position and status they had 10 seconds ago or such)?

 

Offline General Battuta

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Is there a simple way to do a time jump (player presses the button and all ships/objects are returned to the position and status they had 10 seconds ago or such)?

I imagine it would start out from the same basic principles as this (saving states, then loading states on command): http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80383.0

 

Offline Legate Damar

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Yes, I have ideas on how to accomplish it, but it would be complex to be able to do it for hundreds of ships at once, and on the player's command, multiple times in the same mission, and being able to adjust how far back the jump is...


 

Offline Dragon

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The ship-per-mission limit is 400, so you wouldn't have to worry about "hundreds of ships at once". :)
I've also used to attempt to make missions with way too many ships in them. Even 100 ships at once would be very difficult to handle for any computer and you don't really need that many anyway. Pretty much the only way a well-designed mission could even near the limit would be to use a lot of "special objects", which are considered ships by the game. That, or have a large city made from single building models. Which don't move, so in case you had such a city (unlikely), you don't need to worry about it during the jump.
So, I think that a well-implemented (using argument SEXPs) checkpoint-like solution would work quite well in any reasonably designed mission.

 

Offline The E

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Yes, I have ideas on how to accomplish it, but it would be complex to be able to do it for hundreds of ships at once, and on the player's command, multiple times in the same mission, and being able to adjust how far back the jump is...

If you think you need to use hundreds of ships at once, you have usually made your first mistake. Second, you can't really use battuta's method (or any other method) to accomplish this, as there are three hard limits that will make it impossible. First, there's the ship limit, which limits you to 400 ships in-mission. Second, there's the object limit, which is the maximum number of objects that can be in the game at any given time, which is set to 3000. Note that everything, from single laser bolts to missiles to asteroids to debris to ships, count against this limit. Third, we have the sexp variable limit (currently at 250), which determines the maximum number of variables you can declare in a mission. Your idea would require at least 7 variables per ship (3 to store coordinates, 3 to store orientation, 1 to store health), which makes hitting that limit rather easy.

And that is before we get into the technical (im-)practicalities of missions with that many objects. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that you have 100 ships in a mission, all of which fire 10 shots. This means we have a total of 1100 objects in the mission, which means the collision detection code has to do 1210000 collision checks each frame (in a worst case scenario, that is. The real number is somewhat below this.). This will slow down even the fastest computers, since collision checks and collision rejections are not exactly easy to do in a game.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline qwadtep

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For example, this is what the event window looks like (of course, minus the blurring that censor all of the possible spoilers) for the first part of WoD2.
I can still see "facing high" and "facing low" waypoints! My WoD2 experience is ruined.

 

Offline Legate Damar

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Yes, I have ideas on how to accomplish it, but it would be complex to be able to do it for hundreds of ships at once, and on the player's command, multiple times in the same mission, and being able to adjust how far back the jump is...

If you think you need to use hundreds of ships at once, you have usually made your first mistake. Second, you can't really use battuta's method (or any other method) to accomplish this, as there are three hard limits that will make it impossible. First, there's the ship limit, which limits you to 400 ships in-mission. Second, there's the object limit, which is the maximum number of objects that can be in the game at any given time, which is set to 3000. Note that everything, from single laser bolts to missiles to asteroids to debris to ships, count against this limit. Third, we have the sexp variable limit (currently at 250), which determines the maximum number of variables you can declare in a mission. Your idea would require at least 7 variables per ship (3 to store coordinates, 3 to store orientation, 1 to store health), which makes hitting that limit rather easy.

And that is before we get into the technical (im-)practicalities of missions with that many objects. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that you have 100 ships in a mission, all of which fire 10 shots. This means we have a total of 1100 objects in the mission, which means the collision detection code has to do 1210000 collision checks each frame (in a worst case scenario, that is. The real number is somewhat below this.). This will slow down even the fastest computers, since collision checks and collision rejections are not exactly easy to do in a game.

The Inferno builds were able to increase the limits. It can be done again. These missions are not necessary until far later in the campaign.

 

Offline -Norbert-

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To my knowledge the Inf builds changed how many different ship-types you can have in a modpack, not how many individual ships and objects you can put into a single mission.

But even if they did, bumping that limit again isn't really a good idea. Right now the limit is so high that if you use it fully, most computers will give you framerates in the single digit area (provided they don't outright crash the game)...

 

Offline headdie

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With the stability of Inf builds confirmed from 3.6.14 RC1 forward Inf have become the standard build.  but yes inf builds were created to expand on the limits of the engine in terms of table entry numbers, objects in mission, variables and a whole heap of other stuff and i think most of the community have been using INF builds since 3.6.10 or 12.

I also believe it took *a lot* of work to expand the limits to what is seen in the Inf so good luck finding a coder willing to work on them again, remember the limits are not just simple digit changes but changes in how the code handles the relevant data and move that data to and from memory
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quote General Battuta - "FRED is canon!"
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Offline Legate Damar

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I will find a work around then. Or learn to do it myself. This campaigns must be made even if it takes me decades.

Also I am planning a mission where there is a supernova but you don't die and instead you fight in the core of an exploding star. I think I might be able to mess with skyboxes or something to work that out, but it would be complex.

 

Offline Spoon

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Okay, last time I checked this was the WoD dev blog.
I don't quite see why this is being hijacked for FRED/Mod related questions that are not WoD
Urutorahappī!!

[02:42] <@Axem> spoon somethings wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> critically wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> im happy with these missions now
[02:44] <@Axem> well
[02:44] <@Axem> with 2 of them

 

Offline Legate Damar

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I'm sorry sir.

If your assets are ready far before the missions, would you consider possibly releasing some to others for projects?