[QuantumDelta]

I said to myself when I first starting using the SCP builds that you guys put it, that I wouldn't congratulate you until I saw something that I considered a worthy upgrade.

Well I'm not wholely sure what changed between SCP 3.6 and this build 01082004_fs2_open_r.exe, but I'm impressed.

SCP has earned itself some recognition with me, which is rare for something like this .. (in most games, the modding community are all idiots, and I didn't really make much of an exception for this one, even if occasionally it threw out a couple decent missions).

Take it into context that you're the first mod group that I've ever actually said thanks to.



Anyway ... onto useful input

In playing that latest build after a clean install on a clean HD I came to realise that although much much better there's still a few major problems, some new(to me), some old.

First Off:
System Specs:

(CPU) 1-AMD Athlon™ XP 3000+, 2091MHz, 512KB (0% Load) @ 52°C .:.
(RAM) usage: 295/1024MB (28.81%) .:.
(GFX) RADEON 9600 (It's a Pro) SERIES - Secondary,
(Display) 1600x1200/32bit/85Hz
(OS) Windows XP Home Edition, Service Pack 1 (5.1 - 2600),
(installed for) 4w 5d 22h 28m,
(uptime) 6h 56m 7s .:.
(HDDs) 133GB/228GB(58.4%) free

Onto the SCP stuff:

Alt-Tabbing seems to be completely dead in this version, now, although I alt-tab less these days because of global hotkeys in mp3 players, I still tend to alt-tab especially when trying to arrange multiplayer games without the lobby atm..

Cross Hairs are still spliting, I realise the reason for this is that missiles travel at a different speed to primary shots therefore the two indicators are different, but it looks horrid...

Fire/Plasma Venting effects of damaged ships completely murder my FPS (!!! On My System?!). - This happened a little bit in FS2 Vanilla, but it's a major problem....anything that kills FPS is a major problem...

"Events" Such as speech, or ships that are supposed to come in, seem to be suspended whilst in an external camera view, I don't have a clue why.

The Tail of maximum thrust engines seems to have a problem in that it's not all transparent, some of it has little white lines on the very end that drags behind the ship, looks weird.

---

My Final thing for now:

FRAME RATE!!!

I don't mind if my frame rate locks at 42 FPS.
I don't mind if it locks at 24 FPS.
I would like it to lock at 85 FPS.

Obviously, I have vsync on...

There seems to be a problem or two with model processing at close range:

Depending on the size of the ship, and, then, depending on the range from the ship, frame rates half or double as the load changes.
This shift from 85-42, or 42-26/23ish - it's unbarable, if you're dog fighting, your aim goes completely out the window, because you're suddenly turning too fast, or too slow, god knows how a joystick user feels, I'm used to making corrections for stuff like that (for other reasons ...being that keyboard is on or off), but it's the biggest complaint I have.

No matter what flags I turn on or off, it still seems to have this problem...

That's all for now, I might find some more input later...

Anyways:
Like I said when I opened:
I'm finally solidly impressed, the frame rate problems have dropped a bit and most / all of my other problems are gone.
These I flagged up as annoying or major problems in my oppinion.

...Feel free to flame me to high hell for how I worded this post


Edit-
FYI RAM Usage is up because FS2 doesn't appear to have returned all the memory it took on upon exit...

[Lightspeed]

Welcome to the wonderful world that is the SCP, QD.

I'll get those comments one by one.

Alt-Tabbing seems to be completely dead in this version, now, although I alt-tab less these days because of global hotkeys in mp3 players, I still tend to alt-tab especially when trying to arrange multiplayer games without the lobby atm..
 

Alt Tab reliably crashes me to. This is a bug. Search for my bug report on Mantis and post your comment there.

Fire/Plasma Venting effects of damaged ships completely murder my FPS (!!! On My System?!). - This happened a little bit in FS2 Vanilla, but it's a major problem....anything that kills FPS is a major problem...  

When youre very close to them, this is a common problem. There is a HT&L fix in the works that replaces the rendering code, but it never made it to a final version yet because the scaling of effects was totally off with it.

The Tail of maximum thrust engines seems to have a problem in that it's not all transparent, some of it has little white lines on the very end that drags behind the ship, looks weird.

Youre using bad trails. I dont know why that problem is there with the mediaVP, but its there now(?). Youre not the first person to report this problem, and the fix is pretty easy. Install up-to-date trail graphics:

I recommend the L-B hybrids

Depending on the size of the ship, and, then, depending on the range from the ship, frame rates half or double as the load changes.
This shift from 85-42, or 42-26/23ish - it's unbarable, if you're dog fighting, your aim goes completely out the window, because you're suddenly turning too fast, or too slow, god knows how a joystick user feels, I'm used to making corrections for stuff like that (for other reasons ...being that keyboard is on or off), but it's the biggest complaint I have.
 

Yes, the frame rate instability is also my main grip with the SCP. Especially annoying if youre dogfighting humans, and some objects pass by in the background and it slows down to 42 FPS, then back up to 85. This. Sucks.

Great changes of the framerate are generally bad, but as it is now, there cant be done much to help that fact (except getting the detail down to a level where youre always maxxed out). I, for one, hope there'll be optimizations and stuff so we wont have this problem in the future anymore. Or, alternatively, the ability to "cap" the framerate to a certain value. If you were able to cap it to "42" it would run perfectly stable.

[MatthewPapa]

Originally posted by QuantumDelta
FYI RAM Usage is up because FS2 doesn't appear to have returned all the memory it took on upon exit...

I have noticed this too, because when I quit freespace, there is a significant loss of performance in my computer.

[QuantumDelta]

Trails fixed.

New problem (I don't tend to get damaged in FS so never noticed, but just before a cargo container exploded I noticed something, so rammed bosch's cap/installation until I was boned result was)
The lightning/whatever it is that skirts across damage ships now just appears to be blocks of blue, I was going to try to post up an image of it, but due to the random nature of it, it's hard to get a screenie of it

--
Basically, instead of thin lines which used to be what I saw, I just see blocks about
[ ] big acting as the lightning would, looks quite weird kinda funny

I also found some more 'proof' towards what I was talking about in previous posts about env mapping.

--
These series of pictures demonstrate as I have rarely had evidence before:

http://smalltimerivalry.com/sschost/scriptquantumdelta/screen00.jpg

Reflection of nebula/sun behind ship on cargo container, looks really oddly distorted..

http://smalltimerivalry.com/sschost/scriptquantumdelta/screen03.jpg

The view with my ship EXACTLY facing the sun, see a problem? O.o

Env mapping looks great, until you look at it in detail, then you see problems like this....everywhere.... once you start noticing them you can't get them outta your head.
Same problem exists on every ship I've seen, to varying degrees....

Originally posted by Lightspeed

Yes, the frame rate instability is also my main grip with the SCP. Especially annoying if youre dogfighting humans, and some objects pass by in the background and it slows down to 42 FPS, then back up to 85. This. Sucks.

Great changes of the framerate are generally bad, but as it is now, there cant be done much to help that fact (except getting the detail down to a level where youre always maxxed out). I, for one, hope there'll be optimizations and stuff so we wont have this problem in the future anymore. Or, alternatively, the ability to "cap" the framerate to a certain value. If you were able to cap it to "42" it would run perfectly stable.

I really hope a solution is found, I can ignore any other problem in SCP but this one is tantamount to show stopper for me/BD/Yourself heh...

[Overlord]

Thats why is Env-mapping still experimental.

[QuantumDelta]

Too true, but I was trying to provide some form of evidence towards earlier claims that annoyed a few peeps

[Fear]

god u complain about 42-86 fps... i barley got 25(Without shine/pcx/32 bit).:thepimp:

[Lightspeed]

New problem (I don't tend to get damaged in FS so never noticed, but just before a cargo container exploded I noticed something, so rammed bosch's cap/installation until I was boned result was)
The lightning/whatever it is that skirts across damage ships now just appears to be blocks of blue, I was going to try to post up an image of it, but due to the random nature of it, it's hard to get a screenie of it

New damage rendering code by someone... err.... RT? dunno.
Well, it was supposed to be expanded so it could use textures and look all nifty, but was never completed. Thats why were stuck with the blocks. The original lines had to go when we converted everything to HTL IIRC. This will surely be addressed at some point, dont worry. Thanks for bringing it up again, though

The view with my ship EXACTLY facing the sun, see a problem? O.o

Env mapping looks great, until you look at it in detail, then you see problems like this....everywhere.... once you start noticing them you can't get them outta your head.
Same problem exists on every ship I've seen, to varying degrees....

The envmapping is known to cause odd distortions and stuff, and with the latest builds its even more messy than it was before. This is made worse by the fact youre using generic env maps (not -alpha_env). When I got full env maps it will look infinitely better. Sadly, if you use -alpha_env and it doesnt have a special shinemap for envmapping the ship will have maximum reflectivity all over it, looking very odd - just hang on and eventually you'll be able to turn it on.

god u complain about 42-86 fps... i barley got 25(Without shine/pcx/32 bit).

If you read our posts correctly our issue isnt 42-86 FPS, but the problem that the game SWAPS between those two values, which is a great problem. Such a huge change in the FPS will cause the game to "shudder" unnaturally, which is even more disturbing if you're just "turning by" some objects.

[Fear]

i understood what he meant .
i was just crying that i got sucky fps in SCP.

[Singh]

you really have to try Taylor's latest build methinks. Its pretty sweet and fast-moving compared to the rest

(by latest I meant the last one he released, not the one you were testing Lightspeed)

[Kosh]

Alt Tab reliably crashes me to. This is a bug. Search for my bug report on Mantis and post your comment there.

It works perfectly fine for me, but only on OGL mode.

As for the slowness, I'd say go with one of Taylors latest builds. It's mostly a lot faster due to the fixed memory leaks.

[taylor]

Originally posted by QuantumDelta
Basically, instead of thin lines which used to be what I saw, I just see blocks about
[ ] big acting as the lightning would, looks quite weird kinda funny

This was something I changed to fix rendering problems in OpenGL.  It was originally just going to be a stop-gap and used only for OGL but I really liked the effect and so did others.  Rather than a plain line it uses rectangles (rods) and scales with the view so that the lightning on a ship close up and one far away looks more believable.

The creation of the rods will leave holes between them though and I have never had a chance to get them rendered right.  Strangely enough it was [V] that put this code in but later commented it out to go with the regular lines.  The OGL code for line drawing (not in CVS) should make the old way work again but I'd most likely just get the new effect working better than switch back to lines.  Unless of course I start getting a lot complaints about it from people who want to old lines back.

[Gloriano]

If you read our posts correctly our issue isnt 42-86 FPS, but the problem that the game SWAPS between those two values, which is a great problem. Such a huge change in the FPS will cause the game to "shudder" unnaturally, which is even more disturbing if you're just "turning by" some objects.

I notice that too many times when it change to 70-120 (or 40-80 FPS some times game start feel odd but that can't fixed

[Flipside]

Thanks for the comments QD

The frame rate jumping is an issue on my computer as well, I found a lot of things were smoothed out by using the lightweight version of the media VP, which replaces the TGA's with PCX's and halves the sizes of the new animations. The quality is still much improved from the originals.

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,25664.0.html

Hope this helps

[Tolwyn]

Originally posted by Flipside
The frame rate jumping is an issue on my computer as well, I found a lot of things were smoothed out by using the lightweight version of the media VP, which replaces the TGA's with PCX's and halves the sizes of the new animations. The quality is still much improved from the originals.

I can only confirm this

QD: welcome back, team boy :thepimp:

[Starman01]

The most worse slowdown is the one when you are close to
a particle-spewing ship. FPS drops extremy into the cellar (from 50 to 10)
And this will result into a big shudder while dogfighting, and
that's a real gameplay-problem.

Is there any chance that you can fix this within the next few weeks ?
I really don't want to rush you guys, but our demo-release comes
closer, and this should really be fixed before it (it will scare away
many users, which are all hot for the demo).

Isn't it possible to simply switch to the old partikel-method, or is it
rather a code-problem than a effect-problem. ?

[Starman01]

Hello Guys,

have you made any progress here ? While I'm working on our demo this particle-bug turns out as a real "We can't release before this is fixed"-Bug.

I understand that this coding is difficult, and I really don't want to rush you too much, but please understand my side too. I give so much energy in the WC-Saga mod every week, and such issues which affect the game negative really pain me, besides that we want to release the demo in a couple of weeks.

Or is there maybe a much simpler way in creating better effect-files ? Which files are displaying these particles after all ?

I would really appreciate if someone from the SCP-Team could give me a short note.

Thanks in advance.

Starman©


(edit) P.S. I'm still using the 290704B-build, because I have problems
running the 220804-one