[Lightspeed]

eh?

I use red for the glows as it always was. The less glowy parts use a darker red, and each bit of the glowmap has a little of a dark red halo around it.

However, in ANY of the original textures the red value of 255 0 0 is absolute. There is absolutely no brighter glow on shivan ships than that.

[Xelion]

Music from 'Reloaded' in the first one, right?

The green/red Lucifer looks ok, I think it might look better if it has less 'blue' though and more green.

[JR2000Z]

Originally posted by Xelion
Music from 'Reloaded' in the first one, right?

Yep. Linkin Park - Session

[Lightspeed]

yep, BD nearly ripped my head off for choosing that music

Anyway. Another little goodie for you. Completely texture upgraded and shine/env/glowmapped Aeshma.

[MetalDestroyer]

Nice job

[MetalDestroyer]

Euh, How to install those Shinemaps and Glowmaps ?

[Lightspeed]

Check the first post, get the zips and unpack them to Freespace2\data\maps.

BTW:



[wiki]MetalDestroyer[/wiki]

[MetalDestroyer]

arg, i unpack all the file in the effects  :s
Thanks, i didn't see it.

[Lightspeed]

that doesnt matter. They'll work from \effects\ too. Actually, you can place the files in any valid FS2 directory.

The only reason to put them in \data\maps is to keep things organized and tidy

[StratComm]

That's about 99% accurate; missile pof maps must be in the maps directory else they won't work.  But for ships's you're right, it doesn't matter.

[CP5670]

When do you think you will get around to the other capital ships? These look great but they are hard to notice while actually playing since enemy fighters are generally fast and get destroyed quickly. I'm especially looking forward to seeing the shivan ones...

[Svizel]

I just downloaded and watched the 2 Lucifer movies and i wonder if anyone else than me also noticed the FPS... On graphic side it's realy nice work BUT... can you imagine what will happen in mission with 3 caps and 5 fighter / bomber wings all with such pretty textures and animated glowmaps?

Yea i know the official statement... "if you don't like it don't use it" and i won't cause i can't even run SCP with curent media vp files... but honestly i can't imagine anyone without super-hispeed PC will ever be ever able to run this with FPS above 5...

For sure this is no critic on you, the graphic work you made is really great but... this game was never made for such graphic and you can alredy "feel" that with current media files. Other games can run pretty fast offering much better graphic features than SCP on my PC simply because FS engine was never made for this and it won't get any better unless someone completly reworks it from the scratch... (and this would be caled FS3)

Again this is no critic on you or SCP coders or anyone, i just wanted to say... is it worth creating so large and animated textures if 9 of 10 players won't be able to use it?

[Ransom]

As far as I know the reason the FPS is so low on those movies is because of the video-capturing software. It's the same with screenshots, I think. Running it is one thing but running it and capturing and saving it to the harddrive is something entirely different and needs a lot of... computerness. Playing it without that shouldn't produce much of a slowdown.

Although I do admit you're right on the point that the game runs much slower than it should considering the graphic features. Many games have loads more polygons on the screen than Freespace does even with lots of HTL models on the screen at a time, and they often run faster. I don't notice this myself much because of my relatively high-end system, but I'm fairly sure it'd impact the majority of Freespacers noticably.

[Lightspeed]

I tone down the recommended version up to the point that I get no slowdown at all with it. No matter from where or how I look at the lucy, I solidly hit my 85 FPS v_synch limit.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn
As far as I know the reason the FPS is so low on those movies is because of the video-capturing software. It's the same with screenshots, I think. Running it is one thing but running it and capturing and saving it to the harddrive is something entirely different and needs a lot of... computerness. Playing it without that shouldn't produce much of a slowdown.

Whenever I tried capturing movies just from regular FS2, I'd get massive slowdown from the writing to the hard drive.

[Svizel]

Originally posted by Lightspeed
I tone down the recommended version up to the point that I get no slowdown at all with it. No matter from where or how I look at the lucy, I solidly hit my 85 FPS v_synch limit.

Well... i was more talking of playing real missions, no missions with single cap inside you can look at... For example in Breaking the Seal (i'm sure you remember that mission Lighty) my FPS go down from 45 to 15 whenever a part of Sathanash comes in my view. I'm only using -glow and -spec from graphic features and i'm using lite textures i made without any animated glowmaps.

If you are getting good FPS with Lucifer inside, will it be the same if you also add one Rakshasa, Moloch, Hecate, Deimos, 3 shivan fighter wings, 1 shivan bomber wing and 2 terran fighter wings and tell them all to mess around? (note that this is quite normal ship count for multiplayer missions, some have much more ships inside) If i imagine all of those have hi-res textures and all shivans have animated glowmaps i know FPS on my PC will be limitary closing to 0...

I'm just trying to point out that every 3 of 5 ppl i know are not using current media files because they cant run SCP with them on playable FPS. If you push it any further it will be really 9 of 10 not able to run it...

[Ransom]

Originally posted by Svizel
I'm just trying to point out that every 3 of 5 ppl i know are not using current media files because they cant run SCP with them on playable FPS. If you push it any further it will be really 9 of 10 not able to run it...

Well, and this is all in my opinion, but it seems to me the SCP is designed for newer computers. The main problem seems to be that people with quite outdated computers expect to be able to use the SCP's features and run it at the same speed as vanilla FS2. Now, there may be something I'm missing here, but to be honest I think you shouldn't be complaining, because if the SCP (with all of the hi-res textures and so on) had specified system requirements, your computer would probably be under them. Incidentally, what are your system specs?

[Flipside]

Well, the way I understand things is this :-

Freespace textures are dealt with mainly by software, the final computations are sent through a hardware system, i.e. HT&L, but most of the maths involved is figured out by the CPU. This is always how FS2 has worked. However it is possible these days to get most of this computational work done by the hardware, leaving the CPU free to do other stuff. Bobboau has said saveral times he'd like to look into this, and I'm sure that once he gets the time and energy, this will be high on his 'to do list'.

The slowdowns may be partially because of some kind of bug, I'm assuming these slowdowns on FS2 standard models are reported on Mantis? But personally, I think it is also partly because we still have a software texture system that is trying to keep up with a hardware rendering system.

I personally run a GeForce 5600 256Mb, using the Lite version of the VP and I get a pretty smooth ride, there are still one or two hiccups in gameplay, but FS2 is heading for a major evolution as far as graphics handling etc is concerned, so I think the best we can do is report the bugs and be patient for just a little while longer

Or, I could be completely wrong, but what the hell, it's 5:30am

[Svizel]

Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn

Well, and this is all in my opinion, but it seems to me the SCP is designed for newer computers. The main problem seems to be that people with quite outdated computers expect to be able to use the SCP's features and run it at the same speed as vanilla FS2. Now, there may be something I'm missing here, but to be honest I think you shouldn't be complaining, because if the SCP (with all of the hi-res textures and so on) had specified system requirements, your computer would probably be under them. Incidentally, what are your system specs?

I'm afraid i interpreted my thoughts wrongly... i'm not complaining, i'm just trying to pointing out current situation about hi-res textures.

My system specs are:
CPU - Athlon Thunderbird 1,3Ghz
RAM - 384MB DDR @ 266
Graphic card - Radeon 9700, 64MB RAM

Yes i agree my PC is quite outdated but still it can run games like UT2004(on middle details) or SW:KotOR(on higher details) much better than SCP with current default media files...

Anyway with release of new media files be sure i'll again rework them into lite versions (maybe even "liter" than ones i made last time) so more ppl can enjoy SCP with some decent level of details... My point was that right now most ppl use standatd media files and few ppl with older PCs are using lite version, if you keep improving it will end that few ppl with hi-end PCs will use standard media and most ppl will end up with reworked versions... This somehow doesn't seems right to me...

Why not split media files into more versions officialy? Soon there seems to be need of splitting media files into 3 versions anyway... On "hi-end" version you'r working on right now, on "standard" version for most ppl and on "lite" for older PCs. If you won't do it and i find out myself having some free time i'll do it anyway... just don't be upset about me destroying all your work and the poor resut of my attempts cause i'm no profi graphic...

[Cetanu]

no hostility here, ok? just want you to think about it for a moment

Originally posted by Ransom Arceihn

Now, there may be something I'm missing here, but to be honest I think you shouldn't be complaining, because if the SCP (with all of the hi-res textures and so on) had specified system requirements, your computer would probably be under them.

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

What are we talking about here? a 3d screensaver? a tech-demo? something to render pretty movies with?

If I remember correctly it was once a game that got played by a lot of people...

features over features get added to the SCP and the only ones playing (testing) it excessivly (and finding problems) are the ones who get named complaining or hostile... maybe some here accept and mentally allow themselves that there are other good reasons why observations get reported

but maybe I'm wrong and it is really a 3d screensaver, or tech-demo, or a movie renderer we are talking about