My ideas was that three pillars hold up a good product, the performance, the visuals and the functionality. Visuals and performance have had their weeks in the sun, and good things came from it. The last pillar, that of functionality, will focus on adding those features to the software that we felt are critical, and agreed an order in which they should be done. I cannot remember the order exactly due to two pints of Guinness, but it includes extra terrain editing controls, multiple levels, improved explosions, melee combat, the material system, importing custom characters into the AI system (for Zombie fun) and a bunch of IDE clean-up tasks. The result is a piece of software that will closely resemble it's final shape on Steam (minus the CONKIT and MP).
I prepared some side by side shots for the meeting but never used them, so I am posting them here instead so the effort in making them was not wasted.
Hopefully I don't need to explain which side is which, but you will be pleased to learn you get this extra visual eye candy in addition to a jump from 40 fps to 60 fps (which is a sizable jump at these speeds).
I also took the demo to the Ultrabook to profile with Intel Frame Analyser last night but after about five hours, I discovered that it would crash the app unless my app used only a little amount of system memory. If I used a lot, so did the frame analyser, and it would bomb out. My new plan is to analyse something like Get To The River level which uses a lower system memory amount and I can study the GPU side of things and understand what in the scene is consuming SO much processing.
My task for this evening will be to continue pushing the odd wires back into the engine so it does nothing naughty under regular use, such as not removing a lightmapped object when one is deleted in the F9 edit mode. Before I crack on with the next series of major tasks, getting what I have done so far squared away with nice commented code and a clean desk is a good way to prepare for the ordeal to come. I also have the 'multi-core lightmap crash' issue to investigate as well, which will need to be sorted in order to accelerate the feature of lightmapping the test game on the fly. Looking good so far though, and I am very happy with the work from the last two weeks.
Great to see you're continuing to work at improved performance. I think it was a good call and will pay off. Everything seems to be going great.
ReplyDeletehave you a zx spectrum as you seem desperate for more fps? ;)
Deleteperformance is key to it all and shouldnt be given up on, some people seem to think reloaded has an abundance of performance whenin fact it does not, the more fps lee can get the better for all the low end systems lol and up of course.. personally i think lee is going great but performance should be visited again and again as much as possible to balance out the features vs fps changes each beta. i think your in the minority when it comes to being happy with the performance of the engine tbh but thats just a guess from the few people i know and talk with about the engines fps ratings. ;) im guessing you have a nasa supercomputer or some thing lol must be getting 1000's of fps right lol ?!
Delete@science man as it is running great on some users PC (you must be one of them) but not so great on other systems (i am one of them) this is why alot of us feel performance is key as what may run great for you may not for others i for one don't have a zx spectrum but i see low fps.
Deletelol i am just kidding note the cheeky wink, i understand and if i was being serious you would know, i was in a way saying hello, as to the spectrum tattie glad to hear you have a better than that, dont take me serious when i mention zx spectrums, all in good fun xx
Deletesorry for double post but forgot, i believe i have a moderate desk top. as if you are to think about gaming seriously and in a budget you can throw laptops and notebooks out of the window if serious, you would take on a desktop with lots of space so you can alter and tinker and slowly build up the machine, common sense really, but then some people are always on the move so i guess be a bit hard to carry a desk and chair and wall sockets or portable generator and the beast itself so i guess it is lifestyle, i don't see a point in a laptop myself, as my galaxy 3 does all i need on the go. anyway all good
Deleteno worries science man i know you were kidding ;) that was my poor attempt to be funny back i am a commodore 64 man lol but i do believe lee may need to have a closer look at amd as i feel it is getting lower fps not sure why when he gets the time of course :)
Deletei aghree with the above, good to know you will continue with the performance work :) lets see if it yields another big + in fps :).. visuals are looking better also :).
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear you are going to be moving on to functionality features, but shocked that you didn't include Lua scripting enhancements in the list. Lua scripting needs so much more than what we have right now for this to be a functional engine. Camera control, player physics control, collision triggers, and so on.
ReplyDeleteyes i agree with tom above lua needs abit more if not abit more than that.
DeleteIt is better that you can have one more week for performance it is easier to do it now then when everything is in and you have to crawl all over the place to get some FPS back.
ReplyDelete'extra terrain editing controls, multiple levels, improved explosions, melee combat, the material system, importing custom characters into the AI system (for Zombie fun) and a bunch of IDE clean-up tasks.'
ReplyDeleteSounds like a list of my favorite things, and also the Reloaded is getting close to release!!
I must say lee i feel sort of cheated with the above screen shots they don't look that different i know you have still have alot of work to do anyway keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteI still have some spherical ambience and tone mapping to work in to the visual engine, and some scene balancing, but bear in mind the buildings cannot suddenly turn into fruit so you'll always be looking at the same identical assets when you do a side by side. I welcome any feedback on what the new scene 'should' have in it that is currently missing (without changing the assets)...every little helps!
ReplyDeleteYea i guess i would need to see when they are added but i guess its more the lighting for example the wall is so bright and the terrain in the bottom looks reflective like the sun is shining off the ground and hill im sure it will look great when the above is added and tweaked.
ReplyDeleteOne thing is for sure you are not likely to ever have too much performance so anything that helps with that is welcome.
ReplyDeleteThe screens shots are somewhat different and I guess users may have some level of control for adjusting to suit their game and preferences/needs for it. Visuals on the eye is somewhat a subjective and personal thing and perhaps with regard to the comparisons here somewhere in the middle is about right to me personally. What seems to be missing in the list above that could do with some help is the AI quality. This round of updating seems to be aimed largely with perhaps potential Steam sales and users in mind and perhaps they have a certain range of preferences and have a thing about Zombie level AI to provide for that mentioned Zombie Fun.
If the next release works at all with any level of stability and is an improvement on the recent previous versions and hopefully not worse then that would be a good thing and a step in the right direction with or without any additions.
Hopefully users will see some improvement but we have to wait and see in practical application in day to day use in the hands of existing pledgers when they have a chance to evaluate it, notwithstanding any Steam considerations too.
As always time marches on and all will eventually become clear or not at some future date.
:-)
so when are you going to experiment with cube map lighting and shaders? hopefully in november, something as to be addressed as rocks should not be glowing unless magic rocks, eai's car is very good at showing what was a nice graphic engine to the what i would call dare i say zx spectrum, jus kidding, but do look look, you started te project with very smooth and lush graphics, then suddenly we are in a worse situation, since beta 8 or 7 its gone right down hill. but agree need other things to have some attention.
ReplyDeleteThe one issue with the above screenshots that still annoys me is the apparent lack of AO where the buildings connect with the terrain, making them appear to float somewhat.
ReplyDeleteAlso, please remember that make a screenshot look good, the skybox MUST match the lighting in the level or it'll look awful. In that last comparison, the Before looks better than the After (despite the AO on the rock... which is nice in itself, btw) simply because in After the sky is all wrong for the lighting.
Oops, forgot my compliment: Other than the above issues, I'm excited to see the improvements in action - it's all looking very good!
DeleteWow, thanks for pointing that out. I knew something was really wrong. Definitely the wrong sky. Maybe Lee should look at implementing a functionality Unity 5 has. Skybox-based lightning. That the scene can be lit based on colour values from the skybox.
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