Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Bobboau on November 10, 2003, 12:49:40 am
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nothing specal in this one, just been doing a lot of debugging and I though it's gotten to the point were it's worth a publick beta test, so most up to date version of FSO is avalable now right here (http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/fs2_open.zip)
I think the biggest improvement will be in the nebula, I did a lot of work on getting thrusters to fade properly, and there is a general improvement to the rendering of thrusters, as well as a number of other small improvements mostly leading to stability (not nesasaraly crashproof but thereshould be less/none of that fireballs flickering beams disapearing bull)
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Note that this is an unofficial public test. I'm stickying this so that people will see it, but please understand that we're still squashing bugs. Don't expect bulletproof performance, but do tell us what goes wrong so that we can fix it. :)
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Do thruster trails scale according to absolute velocity yet?
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Beauty, downloading now.
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updated, better nebula poof code
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That y-key crashes still occur to me, and I think that it will be the end of the me :)
(DirectX 8)
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Just curuious. I saw a post where Kazan said that FS_Open was using like 172 megs of memory and mentioned that stock FS2 didn't use that much. Did any coder look into that?
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Just tried it, runs pretty smooth.
Good stuff:
- Rotating stuff works as it should
-Shine mapping seems very stable, no more flickering or over-shiny'ness
-Scaling of the models in Tech room is nice, not perfect yet, but nice
Buggy stuff:
-glowpoints sometimes are not where they should be.
-Some models (i.e. the jumpgate from TBP) cause massive fps drop down to 10fps, but only in certain missions. In other missions they work fine, haven't figured out yet what causes this.
-Sometimes gunfire is visible through objects, sometimes it isn't.
-Nebula missions crash after 10 secs back to wiindows with a D3d_help error. But what I've seen in this 10 secs was über-schweet...just awesome
BTW just noticed: Something with the engine glows has changed. I'm running FSO on 1280x1024 TFT which obviously is a ratio of 5:4. So FSO with its 1024x768 res is always a bit vertically stretched, but all recent FS2 builds (even stock FS2) somehow managed to keep the engine glows circular. But this newest build doens't, it stretches the glows also, so they becom ellipses which is a bit strange......just thought I'd let you know.
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Good job over most stuff...
I've noticed some problems however...
1) Everything is way too dark... you should raise the default lighting level...
2) Effects have an odd problem... playing at 1024x768 previous circular effects now looks elliptic... weird..
3) There's a strange slowdown that occurs when an object comes in view for the first time... just like it's loaded only in that moment...
My system: PIII 1ghz 512mb RAM GE-Force2 GTS
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Originally posted by Zarax
2) Effects have an odd problem... playing at 1024x768 previous circular effects now looks elliptic... weird..
3) There's a strange slowdown that occurs when an object comes in view for the first time... just like it's loaded only in that moment...
Same here. Plus the game crahes after a minute or so from starting the mission. The screen just freezes, and nothing happens.
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New bug: in some missions friendly turrets don't fire, and even friendly beams seems affected... they fires once per target and then nothing... yes, beam free all is activated, in this case by FRED Open default
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Bobboau, have you been experimenting with Environmental mapping again? Only I'm getting the wierdest effects going on with Phreaks background POF... I'll try and get some screenies, it'll explain it better.....
Flipside :D
Ok, I'm just having a casual dogfight, and suddenly, theres no other way of describing it, the sky falls off.
(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/bgprob1.jpg)
Next is a little later as it nears the bottom of the screen. Attempting to steer the ship towards your rapidly vanishing universe has no effect whatsoever.
(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/bgprob2.jpg)
And finally, another one (the thing rotates around the screen a bit as well).
(http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/images/bgprob3.jpg)
The very very wierdest part of it all is that the moment I kill all the Shivans, it all snaps back into place? It might be something to do with the Engine particles being used on my modded fighter, I'll give it a try without them and see what happens :)
Flipside :D
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I like it overall, havent had much time to play with it - but to address the lightness issue, can we make this adjustable via command line or something? I love it as it is (though some of the shines are still to bright) but others dont. Only fair to make it an option, right?
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I think the brightness issue has to do with RT's new gama code, so you'll just have to make an adjustment in the options screen.
are all you people useing DX or OGL, the thing with the sky falling off in particular sounds like matrix problems and it could explain the crasshing, but I'm prety sure my DX matrix code is working and I know for a fact that the backgroud pof thingy is causeing problems that I don't see in that pic.
I think I have fixed the glows not rendering quite right bug I'll post an update in a minute
[update done]
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I think that the position of the background pof isn't being updated every frame, because mine seems to occasionally become "jerky", where it starts to receed for a frame or two and then snaps back into place.
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WOW!
this beats the SS of doom 3 that I see in PC gamer. I'm not kidding, although I do need a new Vid card so FS2 run's faster then the screen shots...
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Flipside, whats going on with that beam cannon in the background. Thats really cool!
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I think that's the particle trail on a fighter. But it does look like a beam cannon; perhaps it's too intense for what it's supposed to be.
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Originally posted by Col. Fishguts
-Scaling of the models in Tech room is nice, not perfect yet, but nice
Yes, as the Colossus isn't showing entirely
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ambient light!! we want ambient light ! ;)
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bob i had to put the matrix initialization after the sky is drawn since there is no method to draw it in T&L yet. we also need a way to draw lasers with T&L too since it wont work in OGL
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
ambient light!! we want ambient light ! ;)
no actualy you want it, there have been a huge number of people asking for the abient light to be cut for years
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-Shine mapping still tend to flicker around
- non HT&L often crashes when explosions or missile trails are displayed
-scaling in tech room, ship info, and briefing icon info is totally screwed up (theyre way too huge in techroom and in briefing info, but the spinning ship model in the ship selection is around 30x30 pixles)
-Surprisingly bad framerates for HT&L, performance sometimes nearly as slow as non-HT&L mode, seems to happen randomly (didn't happen in earlier HT&L builds)
-Still getting lockups during game (which arent there with non HT&L)
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Originally posted by Bobboau
no actualy you want it, there have been a huge number of people asking for the abient light to be cut for years
i want it adjustable (both in fred and a multiplier in the launcher), so everyone would be happy. And btw FYI i'm not the only one who wants it... Ask Setekh :)
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Ok, yep, the Beam Weapon thingy is a particle trail and yes, it is way overdone, I was only adding the ships as a test.
The game was running in DirectX. I'm going to try it without the particle trailed ships in it shortly and see if that changes anything :)
Flipside :D
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it probly won't, most likely it's getting drawn in the same position as the ships your fighting
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You're right, it didn't, and that would explain why it suddenly fixes itself when the last Shivan is destroyed.
Flipside :D
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Originally posted by Lightspeed
i want it adjustable (both in fred and a multiplier in the launcher), so everyone would be happy.
This would be good. Right now I can't see what I'm shooting at :D
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This build is working alright for me. Feels slower than the last one I tested though.
The nebula feels better, there are still some issues like that some kind of debris and weapos impact can be seen through the fog on long range when the really should have been hidden by the fog.
All models in like tech database, briefing and targeting are too large. This wasn't in some other ht&l build, but I guess you know about anyway.
Sometimes gunfire (noticed it in a normal mission) seems to draw through ships. It's not that common and not that much though. This time I noticed a fighter mounted subach.
Perhaps sligthly off topic:
Otherwise I was mostly annoyed by the "ignore my target bug" and the "target in reticle bug". I have actually tried (like a week ago) to figure out the target in reticle bug. I got the point where I knew what the reticle targeting code did (sort of) but no further.
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Hmmmmm.... Just tried the background thing in the _t build, and apart from a slight case of the 'lines' problem, it worked fine :)
Just thought it might help :D
Flipside
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no launcher multiplier on the ambient light - but fred is good
(letting a user adjust it could be used to cheat in multiplayer)
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Everything is very dark compared to the last official release. Apart from that it runs well.
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Originally posted by Kazan
no launcher multiplier on the ambient light - but fred is good
(letting a user adjust it could be used to cheat in multiplayer)
i dont think setting high ambient light is cheating.
Also, if it is considered cheating, use missions with 0.0 ambient light, that way it will always be 0 since 0*x = 0.
Although you could simply turn the brightness higher.
I really dont think it would have any great advantage...
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stealth fighters, you can play yourself so the bright blue part is always pointing away from who you are fighting, they have a greatly hardler time trying to shoot you.
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Very slight update on the background thingy, it seems to happen with any ship I target, regardless of race....
My problem seems to be heading curiously towards Kakis' one ;)
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I have some problems using OpenGL. I'm with GF4 MX 420 (I know it sucks, but that's what happens when you're ill and your mother has to upgrade your PC). Some objects are rendered in front of other, but, in fact, they must be hidden behind the second objects. Example: Orion's turrets (V's Orion) render in front of the hull, thile they must be hidden behind it. Oh, ahd I have some rendering problems with Aracania. The walls around the hole aren't rendered while looking through them. They act like the polys are flipped.
I have taken some screenshots, but can't upload it anywhere therefore can't show it here. Anyone wanna help here? :p
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"I have some problems using OpenGL."
ok, I think I have identifyed the problem.
OGL isn't working yet, it is comeing along but it's not working yet, and especaly in that build it doesn't work
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aha, well, thanks for clearing that up... ;)
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HT&L OpenGL is coming along nicely. I'm hoping for a working release (With fully working lighting, and correct rendering of 2d stuff) before I go to the army in the worst case.
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uh when is that? almost everything but lasers and starfields work correctly, and im working on the lasers
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My army service starts December 14th.
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Ok, am I correct in saying that -fov settings influence the tech room as well? Because every ship was _way_ too big...
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Most likely :)
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The tech room ships are too big for me as well, and I am not messing with the FOV. I think the scaling factors are still being tinkered with.
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I've noticed some are really big, some are really small and occasionally some are untextured and blue.
Another bug I've noticed is there is no jump node model.
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Originally posted by PhReAk
uh when is that? almost everything but lasers and starfields work correctly, and im working on the lasers
not at the time that build was posted
and yes we know about the node model thing, it's realy turning out to be one of the biggest *****es to fix, I managed to get the stuff loaded and displying (to an extent) but it just refuses to show up in game
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Originally posted by Raa Tor'h
Ok, am I correct in saying that -fov settings influence the tech room as well? Because every ship was _way_ too big...
I'm pretty sure you are correct. I found that when testing some new models, adjusted the -fov and was able to fix it relatively easily.
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Ok, I know you're not allowed to make any changes till the current build is up and running, but little request with those Skybox things?
Would it be possible to set in Fred whether these are addition textures or 'normal' unlit ones? With addition, nebulas with lots of Dark or Black matter simply become transparent :(
Flipside :D
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Here's a bug for ya...
Every time (that I've noticed) when the player's ship enters subspace, it flies into the node, but keeps on going right on out the other side.
I'm using this build with -t32 and -htl.
Later!
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that sounds like the clip plane error, your card might not suport the clip plane, try updateing your drivers, or just see if i suports at least one user clip plane
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the build (http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater/fs2_open.zip) has been updated,
REJOYCE!
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link me (or is it the same as before - even so can u repost it?)
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Originally posted by Bobboau
that sounds like the clip plane error, your card might not suport the clip plane, try updateing your drivers, or just see if i suports at least one user clip plane
I'm using a GF2 MX (pre 200 or 400) 32MB AGP with the latest drivers.
Later!
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someone else with the same card has reported the same error and it seems to be his card not suporting the clip planes, and there realy isn't anything that we can do about it as there is no other way to cut a ship up like is needed other than the clip plane
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Oddly enough, IIRC it only happens with the player ship and not with any other ship. Also, a friend of mine has the same problem with the same build, same extensions, but he's got a GF4 based system... though I can't remember which one exactly.
Later!
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ok do big ships look right when they blow up, ie you don't get like two or three versions of the ship flying about
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bob, engine trails render on all the ships but dont render on the players ship
ambient light got cut? ooooo.....
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IMO, ambient light should default to the retail FS2 level unless specified otherwise in FRED. Likewise, shinemapping should be off by default, unless there's a specific shine map found. We need FS2_Open to look and play just like FS2 Retail unless the user chooses to use the extras. This, I think, is one of the gripes Icculus had with FSO... it's not the same game.
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Originally posted by Galemp
IMO, ambient light should default to the retail FS2 level unless specified otherwise in FRED. Likewise, shinemapping should be off by default, unless there's a specific shine map found. We need FS2_Open to look and play just like FS2 Retail unless the user chooses to use the extras. This, I think, is one of the gripes Icculus had with FSO... it's not the same game.
Agreed. I'm going to mention this in the internal. :nod:
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Do you get extremely low fps when facing big ships? I mean, my PC is good enough to hadle most of the recent games at full detail, btu FS gets some times at framerates like 18 - 29 fps. Mostly in battle or facing big ships. My config is:
Pentium 4 @ 2.2
Intel motherboard (can't remember the model now)
nVidia GeForce 4 mx 420 (I know, I know)
512 mg DDR RAM
WinXP & Win 98 (Dual-boot)
150 gb HDD
Seriously, I'll try running FS on Win98, but so low framerates...
One more thing: on the previous release i had my framerate constantly at 75 fps (I experienced framerate drops too, but not so big), now it's 66.
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Also, alas, the skyboxes are still centering on the targetted object :(
Flipside :D
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I'm gona wait untill OGL stops messing with the matrix code before I try to fix that
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bob, if you want to fix the skybox thing, go to game_render_frame() in freespace.cpp and move the htl functions (line 4100) before the call to stars_draw(). i need to figure out how to draw the skybox in htl
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Hei!!! what's the difference between the debug exe and the non-debug exe??? When should I use each??
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Debug builds are for finding bugs!!! Like when a crash happens it gives you lots of information about it!!! But you can't understand it unless you're a coder!!! lolololol ^______^
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Originally posted by Galemp
IMO, ambient light should default to the retail FS2 level unless specified otherwise in FRED. Likewise, shinemapping should be off by default, unless there's a specific shine map found. We need FS2_Open to look and play just like FS2 Retail unless the user chooses to use the extras. This, I think, is one of the gripes Icculus had with FSO... it's not the same game.
no, that'd look crappy, some maps would be shinemapped, other not. I'd say turn it on/off with command line FOR ALL MODELS like it its now.
I agree to the ambient lighting though, just keep an option in the command line to set a) ON/OFF b) % of lightness specified in FRED.
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Originally posted by Nifelheim
Do you get extremely low fps when facing big ships? I mean, my PC is good enough to hadle most of the recent games at full detail, btu FS gets some times at framerates like 18 - 29 fps. Mostly in battle or facing big ships. My config is:
nVidia GeForce 4 mx 420 (I know, I know)
I have exactly the same problems when facing "biggies" when I use large textures and the -T32 flag.
I have a GeForce 4 mx440 and...........I think it's the castrated version of the vid card because it doesn't happen in annother computer I tried yesterday wich had a GF 4 Titanium.
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Blah, that's really too bad, I won't have any upgrade soon....
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* $Log: pcxutils.cpp,v $
* Revision 2.3 2003/11/19 20:37:24 randomtiger
* Almost fully working 32 bit pcx, use -pcx32 flag to activate.
* Made some commandline variables fit the naming standard.
ooooo RT your getting rid of the 256 color limit on PCX? very kewl :D
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It's gone, FS2 now supports JPG and TGA files :)
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Originally posted by Flipside
It's gone, FS2 now supports JPG and TGA files :)
the 256 color limit on PCX was not removed. I coudldnt get KARMAS skybox working till i redid the PCX texture in 256 colors.
PCX's are alot smaller anyway; id rather use those than a 2 meg TGA file....
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I haven't tryed the skybox with lastest version, but with older htl build I was running it with textures in jpg format, you don't need to convert to pcx
anyway, I was trying 11_18_2003_fs2_open_r.exe and I received this message running the game from the launcher: "unrecognized commandline parameter -32bit"
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-32Bit has bee taken out because, apparently, it did nothing in the SCP. -t32 should be all you need :)
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FS check the CVS more :P
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doh I really missed this:)
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I missed it too, it's possible that with the internal it was never announced. Oddly enough though the launcher has a checkbox for it anyway, so it seems like they dropped the wrong tag.
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Just gave the latest build a whirl. Very impressive.
However, I've come across a few minorish bugs:
1) The mouse cursor, after flying a mission, stutters about pretty bad, but not to the point of being uncontrollable.
2) Probably has been mentioned before, but the Subspace Nodes (the wireframe models) do not show up.
3) In the techroom, I scroll down, and for an instant, the GVSG Ankh appears twice, but mouseover on the second name reveals it to be the Edjo entry. Selecting it permanizes the Edjo name until you scroll the list so it is out of view, then it returns to it's former behavior.
Using RT's launcher (ver. 2.4, which works great, btw ;) ): -t32, -htl enabled; DX8@1024x768x32
Pertinent Stats:
AMD Athlon XP 2200+
KT400 Chipset
GeForce4 Ti4400
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
Windows 2000 Professional