Author Topic: Shinemaps development thread [updated weekly!]  (Read 76789 times)

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Offline Ransom

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Quote
Originally posted by Svizel
My system specs are:
CPU - Athlon Thunderbird 1,3Ghz
RAM - 384MB DDR @ 266
Graphic card - Radeon 9700, 64MB RAM

Hmm, that's bizarre. I only recently upgraded from a machine with very similar specs and it ran the SCP almost perfectly. I had SD RAM though, may have had something to do with it. Don't think it should have had that much of an effect, though...

Cetanu, I wasn't trying to be offensive. It's just been my experience that when people say it's running slower than it should be, it's because of the system it's being run on. Clearly though, this isn't the case.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2004, 03:19:07 am by 1494 »

 

Offline Cetanu

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Quote
Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn

Cetanu, I wasn't trying to be offensive. It's just been my experience that when people say it's running slower than it should be, it's because of the system it's being run on. Clearly though, this isn't the case.


my comment was ment as questioning a lot of replies Svizel, tom and me got here lately - your complaining is just one of many, so don't take it to personally, ok? ;)
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Offline Svizel

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Quote
Originally posted by Cetanu

Whenever someone posts here that isn't on the line with "great" "uber cool" etc it earns the terms complaining or hostile and I start to think it's because whoever uses the later never heard of - constructive critiques

Honestly i must agree with this... I'm doing al lot of bug report, suggestions and similar posts here and so far i'm mostly threated as "annoying complainer who never appreciate your hard work".

Do you think i somehow enjoy telling you about errors in your code or about performance problems? No i don't! I'm testing almost every new build that comes out in real missions and post feedback for the same reason you code, i want this game to be better! Otherwise i would just stuck with some functional build and don't post here at all.

Anyway back to topic...
Quote
Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn

Hmm, that's bizarre. I only recently upgraded from a machine with very similar specs and it ran the SCP almost perfectly. I had SD RAM though, may have had something to do with it. Don't think it should have had that much of an effect, though...

Difference might be that i play multiplayer... Most of missions we play there are on FRED limits and it's much easier to notice any bugs or performance problems there.
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Offline Lightspeed

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Stay nice people. :)

I don't want this thread to degenerate to a level that's getting it locked for the main part of time (yes, this has happened before).

Now let's pick this apart. Actually, i'm SAVING you performance with these builds. As you may or may not know, DDS has the nice ability to be used compressed out of your video memory. If you used "-pcx32" PCX files were loaded to your 32 bit mem anyway and didnt have any difference to TGAs or JPGs.

Now, the general shine zip uses the following file formats:

Base map - DDS
Shinemap - DDS
Glowmap - 8-bit PCX (but will be loaded to 32-bit mem with -pcx32)

As for the texture sizes. Most volition maps have horrendous sizes (1382x739) - This map for instance would be SCALED UP by the game anyway to 2048x1024. This will take even more time - Now when I include a DDS map with 2048x1024 the game will not have to rescale anymore. This will speed things up. The memory consumption looks as follows:

FS2 (no -pcx32) | -pcx32 or the TGA shinemaps | the release from this thread

Example 1: one map 2048x1024 (1382x739 in retail), completely env/shine/glowed

FS2: 2 MB (base) 8-bit PCX + 8 MB (shine) TGA (ONLY TGA or DDS can be used for shinemaps since envmapping relies on alpha transparencies!) + 2 MB (glow) 8-bit PCX
==> 12 MB

TGA: 8 MB (base) 24-bit TGA/8-bit PCX + 8 MB (shine) TGA/8-bit PCX + 8 MB (glow) 8-bit PCX
==> 24 MB

NEW BUILD: ~2 MB (base) compressed DDS + ~2 MB (shine) compressed DDS + 8 MB (glow) 8-bit PCX
==> 12 MB

Now, if you disable -pcx32 with my new builds, your memory usage will be:

NEW BUILD (no -pcx32): ~2MB (base) compressed DDS + ~2 MB (shine) compressed DDS + 2 MB (glow) 8-bit PCX
==> 6 MB

Keep in mind this is a 2048x1024 pixels texture!!

And you can save HALF OF THE MEMORY SPACE that would be taken away using retail-esque maps (see above).

The animated glowmaps are a completely seperate download - they are for those people that can run the static versions without any problems, and they do not suck up infernal amounts of memory anyway (they dont get loaded into 32-bit memory). The scale of the glowmap is nearly always different than the base texture in the recommended version. Glowmaps can save much more memory in smaller versions and take hardly more (if at all) than one -pcx32'ed glowmap!
Modern man is the missing link between ape and human being.

 

Offline tom

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Until now I couldn't really test hi res textures. After special events I crashed to desktop. I'm sure I did something wrong (forgot some files or so) and will try again.

But that is not the point. I agree to Svizel. I DO NOT want to denigrate your work, but not everyone has a high end pc. So it is necessary to develop several versions of hi res textures and all users can enjoy it. :)

I ran fso without hi res textures and just some graphics features enabled. It required around 200 MB RAM. Using hi res features + RAM usage of Win and other programs would exceed easily the available RAM (in my case I had remaining RAM of 50 MB (512 total). And using the swap file...as everybody knows, the HDD's are....uhmmmm...compared to the speed of RAM. Maybe this is a further reason for tremendous slow-downs.
Looking at pc specs and you can see that many people have <512 MB.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Offline Lightspeed

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Read above, for the most part it should be as fast, or even faster, than retail maps.

On a side note, the new build is packaged and ready for upload, but somehow I cannot seem to upload it at the moment. Stay tuned.
Modern man is the missing link between ape and human being.

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Hey Lightspeed, you forgot another scinario in your ram useage comparrison.  There is also a -pcx2dds flag, which can convert the pcx glowmap into dds format and free up additional memory.  Unfortunately, it does this for ALL pcx files in use, so any pcx backgrounds run the risk of losing a bit of image quality.
The Trivial Psychic Strikes Again!

 

Offline Setekh

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Man, that Aeshma looks sharp. :)
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Offline Silent Warrior

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
*Sniff* I get a 404 when trying to download those builds. *Giving it one more try.*
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Choo choo, and that is the truth.

 

Offline Lightspeed

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
SilentWarrior, look at my last post :)

New one is being uploaded as we speak - give it a couple of mins for my slow DSL upload :D
Modern man is the missing link between ape and human being.

 

Offline Lightspeed

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Updated!

Build2.0 includes a total of 78 new textures, adding up to the total of 341 files :)

Included:
  • The Hercules Mk II
  • SF Aeshma
  • The Lucifer (both in green and red version)
  • ... and many others


:D
Modern man is the missing link between ape and human being.

 

Offline Liberator

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
I would assume that since there is no link, that the updated file is available from the link in the first post?
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Many names, but always me.

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Offline Lightspeed

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Look, and you shalt see.

Included version number and all - is it that hard to miss? :)
Modern man is the missing link between ape and human being.

 

Offline Singh

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Thank you LS.
Do you plan on converting all the base textures into .dds format as well? If so would it be faster than regular FS2 with just those textures and no Shine or glowmaps?
"Blessed be the FREDder that knows his sexps."
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Offline Lightspeed

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
look in the zipfile :)
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Offline Svizel

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Quote
Originally posted by Singh
Thank you LS.
Do you plan on converting all the base textures into .dds format as well? If so would it be faster than regular FS2 with just those textures and no Shine or glowmaps?

Well... on first half of sentence i agree with Lightspeed... "Look in the zip file..." but also i must add "...and compare it with retail textures in sparky_fs2.vp".

To correct a bit Lightspeed memory usage counting few posts above...  About one third of retail FS2 textures really are stupid sized and will be resized by FS2 engine and there really are about 15 very stupid sized textures in retail FS2 ship maps which are getting huge scaleup (thought there is no such texture Lightspeed was taking counts for in retail FS2 maps).

For example one of those textures is bomber08-01a.pcx (691x1126 -> 1024x2048) which really takes 2MB of memory uncompressed and after rescaling (if you are "sane" person who don't use -pcx32) and dds version really helps your performance, but that is because dds file is in same pixes size as pcx texture will be after rescaling.

But also truth is that almost all of fighter and bomber textures will have 256x256 pixels after rescaling and will take 75KB in your memory, while Lightspeed's hi-res textures are 512x1024 or 1024x1024 pixels and takes 0,5 or 1MB of memory even as compressed dds. This will NOT improve your performance for sure!

For more details about textures i recomand you to check it out yourself...
Well... lets wait till Lighty finishes his work and i'll start working on Lite version again.
...but what do i know, i'm just Drunk.
Proud deck swabber of BDHR,
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Offline Lightspeed

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Quote
To correct a bit Lightspeed memory usage counting few posts above... About one third of retail FS2 textures really are stupid sized and will be resized by FS2 engine and there really are about 15 very stupid sized textures in retail FS2 ship maps which are getting huge scaleup (thought there is no such texture Lightspeed was taking counts for in retail FS2 maps).


Who's talking about retail FS2 maps? Most of us, wait, all of us, use the higher resolution maps from FS1. The texture I was talking about is the Lucifer main texture.

Quote
But also truth is that almost all of fighter and bomber textures will have 256x256 pixels after rescaling and will take 75KB in your memory, while Lightspeed's hi-res textures are 512x1024 or 1024x1024 pixels and takes 0,5 or 1MB of memory even as compressed dds. This will NOT improve your performance for sure!


That is true. You can't expect to upgrade butt-ugly low-res textures (and yes, that's what I think of FS2's fighter/bomber textures) to reasonable detail without taking up more memory.

However, for modern video cards this is pretty much negligible, and the slowdown comes from other sources. I, for example, have found that I can use all the flags I have turned on, or do not use them, and will get EXACTLY the same performance in-game, something QD will be able to confirm.

-edit: most people use -pcx32 though, so even this example doesn't really hold :doubt:
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Offline Svizel

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
Well i guess we know very different ppl then... Most of ppl i know use only retail fs2 textures and have almost all of graphic features turned off... And even with -pcx32 flag turned on 256x256 texture will take about 250KB in memory which is still 2x or 4x smaller than hi-res dds files. (so this example do hold)

Anyway the question was if using of dds basic textures in your release will speed up game and answer you have to agree with is "no".
...but what do i know, i'm just Drunk.
Proud deck swabber of BDHR,
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Offline Taristin

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
-pcx32 uses the most memory. Haven't you people read anything? :wtf: And it doesn't do anything for your graphics, other than load PCX's into 32-bit memory, where they quickly suck it all up. Don't use it, and then record your memory usage.
Freelance Modeler | Amateur Artist

 

Offline Lightspeed

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Shinemaps development thread [updated weakly!]
-pcx32 is godsent. It makes things look 100000000 times better. Geez, the interface looks like a bunch of crap without it.

Quote
Most of ppl i know use only retail fs2 textures and have almost all of graphic features turned off...


When they have all graphical features off - what do they need shine, glow, and environmental maps for, then?
Modern man is the missing link between ape and human being.