Descentforum.DE

[Atan]

Town of Bree
The first suggest was to design this level as a terrain level only. But we thought that is would not be such a good idea because we wanted to insert a lot of details. So Roadi had the idea to build this level in a special way, connecting all the mine with the terrain. This way we could work at the same time, each designer at his 'rooms' i.e. Roadi room a,b,c Fischlein room d,e,f and Atan room g, h, i. Second thing was the hope to increase the fps by this way because the details forced up to 1200 faces per room.. But.. we run into a problem, had slideshow at a few places. Now we searched for this problem and at least we found and fixed it. Here some technical notes:
Roadi
I build the terrain first (pcx) and placed a wall at the middle of the terrain to increase fps. My idea was to own places for roads and houses so every designer could work at his 'place'. PIC1 After finishing that part I placed above each of this rooms new 'connecting to terrain rooms' (the link to terrain) PIC2 No we could start building and run into a lot of problems, sending each ones part via email around very often, and after a long time of talking and building around we could say: that's it, we will give it a try for a beta test now. Sure there are some places with problems left in the level, but we think it's as good as it can be now. The levelstats: PIC3
Fischlein
My task was to build room 7, 12, 17 and 22 and my goal was to build all like I saw it in the movie, with all details and.. run into problems in the moment I started building I tried to build the bushes with different textures but my computer didn't show all that 'transparent' textures in D3. I asked for help, but all infos didn't fix that problem. This was the time I wanted to throw my computer out of the window. So I first build my houses, they really look like the movie ones I think. That one of my rooms you can fly into, costs me the most time to build, I inserted some nice things, look for the bedroom .
Atan
I thought that I would like to make that level looks like that evening colour too. So action takes place in the evening, all outside is lighted blue and a little dark. Light comes from stars, moon and houses windows. Human houses and hobbits houses btw, the level is not as dark as pics may possible let suggest it. PIC4 I didn't design the houses as they are done in the movie, made them as I thought they could have look like. But I liked to have that 'sign' (shild) with the pony too. PIC5
Weapon layout is Terrain level like, MD, Vauss, Homings, Cyclones one Mega. For the inside part I inserted Quad, Fusion, Plasma, Mortars and Frags. No rapid fire, chaff or bombs are included, frames are critical The level owns two energy center, maybe you will run out of energy in beta test, please report. So you want to play it now?
ToB
Remember that action takes place in the evening, set the brightplayerships flag. Take a look for the details which are inside the level, enjoy it. Tell us if you like or dislike, all feedbacks are welcome. (German & English)

[DwnUndr]

The beta is going up on my server NOW!
TCP/IP is 66.207.66.19

All Descentforum.de members are welcome to come and play. Your comments here can only make our levels better.

As per Atan's request, I have turned brightships ON. I can't wait to see this level!

Remember 9-11

[DwnUndr]

Wow, seeing IS believing! What a beautiful level! All the town buildings look like they came out of the movie and the lighting is fantastic.
Wait until you see the Pony! Much, much, more. So don't wait...go and see it now!

The level will autodownload.

Remember 9-11

[DigiJo]

wow, all this details, the lightning, this is looking great !!! only flaw is, you need at least a 1.4ghz class cpu (athlon or p3) to fly this smooth. my 1.1 celeron is really on the limit sometimes with under 30 fps. but i think thats ok, cause average d3-player already has this equipment and in the middle of the year, 1.8 or more will be standard.

just flying in sp through the beta is a pleasure hehe.
greats,
DgiJo

[Atan]

@DgiJo @DwnUndr
thx for the nice words.

FYI
my system: 1.2GHz Athlon 512MB RAM G4TI4200
and I'm playing this level online without any problems. But sure this level is hard at limits, we know that. As I said before it wasn't that easy to make it such playable as it is now

[Shark]

Very nicely done! The bar is set pretty high for these levels!

I'm working on level 9, hope to have a beta ready soon.

"The Game does not build character, it reveals it."

[Atan]

Thx Shark,
I don't hope the bar is really set too high now.
We had the chance to build such way because it's a 'town level', that's all

BTW: (LL)Dark found a lighting problem at the water area in the mine. I can't see it on my computer, but I got some screenshots and will try to fix that in the release version later.
Any other problems spotted up to now?

[DwnUndr]

While I was experimenting with the terrain in Shire, I took renderstat before and after moving almost all the weapons and player starts underground.
Before was 1700 polygons (with about 6 starts and 13 weapons). After was 1100 (with 2 starts and 3 weapons). Since the starts probably aren't posting polygons (unless you placed them in terrain rooms), then removing 10 weapons saved 600 polygons which means each weapon you removed from the terrain and put underground or in a building saves about 60 polygons each.
Something to consider.

Remember 9-11

[DigiJo]

you could also remove the palm (plant)-structure and insert the original object instead, i think object-faces are rendered much faster then structure-faces.

another prob (general prob) with textures:

due to texture-unload-bug in d3 we have a problem with my custom textures.
i have replaced 23 textures with custom textures in tower of isengard. and when i load in the same d3-instance (without restarting d3) a level using one of the textures i replaced, the faces is white and fps goes down a lot.

(for example, when i load tower of isengard, play it and directly after that load town of bree, some few faces in bree are white and fps is going down a lot. its that texture i replaced)

only solution i know is (waiting for 1.5 patch ) or if someone replaces textures with ct, no one else can use this original texture anymore in an other level from the set

if someone want to use the same custom texture as in a level before,
he has to take the ogf and replace a different
original texture in his level.

well i think thats overall not a problem cause d3 has about 4000 textures, but we have to coordinate that.

i´ll post all my textures used in a new thread here and mark the replaced textures.

DigiJo

[Atan]

@DigiJo
Can't see why this should be different
All faces have to be rendered.
Looking into the D3 stock gam shows up that every object is inserted 3 times, low, med and high -'polygoned'
Depends on distance to object which one is rendered by the D3 engine, that's the way how they increased the fps in the game.
BTW:That distance is given in the gam too.

@DwnUndr
Maybe it would be helpful, but I believe it's not neccessary to hide all 'life' into the underground.
This would not really be as I see a town. On the other hand I don't know which polygons are counted, low med or high by using renderstat?

Last thing, textures...
hm ? Must we use other textures now for our level or are u switching over to other texture places?
The best would be for all 'mission packs' using D3 stock textures only I believe.
But DwnUndr, tell us how to do.

[DigiJo]

hmm.. not exactly sure, probably a object that isnt in LOS (line of sight) isnt rendered, while a struckture belonging to the room and its neighbour-room is rendered regardless its in LOS or not. i tried to put a lot of palm-objects on the terrain without much fps-loss, but 300 more structure-faces do a fps hit.

about the textures, well i try to switch them, have still a lil work to do on tower of isengard.

DigiJo

[Atan]

@DigiJo
I'm not sure, not enough info about the engine. If this is true what you checked out(and why should it not be true?) we would better build our levels out of Objects only.
There must be some more ideas behind all.., we don't know. One thing is how big this LOS cone really is, (0.1f or 100.0f and so on)
To increase fps in a normal mine we know to build rooms in a way way to break the LOS because all (up to how many rooms ?) in sight is prerendered and slows down fps by this way. Sooo many things are unknown, we have to try out the most. Even the 'limits' are not correctly sometimes
A lot to learn..

Bearbeitet von - Atan am 15 Mrz 2003 18:06:56

[DwnUndr]

I see what you guys are saying about the textures glitching from level to level. I'm looking into that right now. I'm not sure why it is happening.

I decided to stop adding things to the inside of the Hobbit House. Almost 3,000 faces already, heh. I decided to stop building in there and closed the doors to the bedroom. I hope the house comes out nice. I have only used 7 custom textures, but will probably borrow 4 from DigiJo once I figure out the problem between levels. Only a few more days for another Shire beta!

Remember 9-11

[DwnUndr]

DigiJo, I believe I have discovered the texture glitching problem. I am sending you some files by email...

Remember 9-11