TA3D 0.4.1 TEST 4

Post by **zuzuf** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 3:03 pm

Since I'm going to do some weird things on the code (ie: try Lua, or start IA code) I decided to release a test package now before breaking things:
TA3D 0.4.1 TEST 4

It features bug fixes, support for standing fire orders, sounds in build/orders menus, debugged pathfinding (should work this time), D-Guns working properly, water color set from map textures for water quality >= 3.

So I think we're ready to start AI & networking stuffs.

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 3:29 pm

YEHHHAAA!!!

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:56 am

Small tweaks need to be done:

1. Metal extractors after building doesn`t spin, but do extract the metal for deposits.
After turning them off and on - they begin to spin correctly.

1.5. Construction c-bots still fails sometimes in reclaming. They can`t reach cloe enought to reach the object to reclaim.

2. You thought about adding glossiness (or reflection) to all TA3D models. Why not to do it now?

3. TA3D in desperate need of some kind of data cash, so each run with similar options it could directly load data to RAM and not to convert all TA resources again. It takes quite amount of time. Using AMD Duron 1100 loading process lasts for minutes!

More testing should be done.

Post by **zuzuf** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:46 am

The cache idea is a good one, using a cache will speed things up, but I'm not sure that converting data from TA format to something more OpenGL friendly is what takes time. Reading data from hpi is quite time consuming.

This will require some profiling in order to cache what really needs to be cached. That could really speed things up.

I'm adding bugs to the list

PS: adding reflection to all models would be nice but this will require some work -> you don't want reflective corpses for example

Post by **zuzuf** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 7:35 am

Also do you still have the bug with menu textures being of the wrong size ?

I've tested TA3D on a windows system with an Radeon card, and I've seen the bug.

It looks like ATI cards doesn't support non power of two textures when texture compression is set. So as a workaround I could deactivate texture compression with ATI cards (autodetected at first start, then stored in the ta3d.cfg file). That would be really bad for video memory since texture compression saves lots of video memory.

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:58 am

Yes, bug is still there. I`ll test today also on Riva TNT 2 card and say is it there too

Why I don`t like reflective corpses? They are made of metal, they should reflect even if they are junk! Maybe not as good as new ones, but still

!

Post by **zuzuf** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 11:25 am

corpses should be covered with dust, and not reflective, it's burnt metal. Metal is reflective only when polished.

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 11:40 am

Well, corpses are not always made totally from metal, there could be plastic, glass and so on. Also wet metal do reflect

Anyway, there`ll be two textures mixed on one model - it`s own UV and reflex texture, so if unit alive - you`ll get one result - if unit dead - you`ll get another, so I wonder how it will look like. Maybe nice, maybe not.

Dead corpses anyway should have glossiness, because they SHOULD. So maybe reflection map will add a small part of it.

Post by **zuzuf** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 11:55 am

well, we'll see that later since it requires some modifications to the 3DO loader code which isn't the priority at the moment -> AI & networking & Lua

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:08 pm

Some new things to fix:

- when using "video shoot" command, TA3D creates huge amount of jpg screenshots. I thought that it suppose to create video file. Is ti so?

- in script chose menu there are still two copy of the same scripts. Looks kinda silly.

Post by **zuzuf** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:40 pm

the video shoot isn't buggy it does exactly what I made it for : making screen shots at regular intervals which is much easier than making a video directly. But it should be possible to improve video shoot performance by decreasing the quality when in video mode -> it will decrease jpg size and then the hard drive writing speed won't be a bottleneck any more.

The double script bug is really strange, I forgot to test it on a windows machine, but this is really strange behaviour since there is a call to std::list::unique that should ensure there are no duplicated entries. Maybe this call isn't executed ... strange things happen sometimes.

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:43 pm

Yeah

I`ll do some tests with GoK and Talon

Post by **zuzuf** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 4:09 pm

good idea

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 4:26 pm

Results of GOk Testing

- When selected GOK mod - font became green in menu and in console.
- build menu distorsion is still present, but now left half of menu is moved to right, when right half of menu is in it`s correct place. Left half drawn under right half, so "Move" buttond doesn`t have "e" at the end, cause it`s under right half of menu - under "Stop" button.
- explosion srite drawning are still not using transparent color and drawn as green quads with animation.
- extractor (metal extractor) don`t animated.
- units VERY often can`t leave factory, maybe rotation of buildings is responsible for this.

Post by **zuzuf** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 5:31 pm

ok, it seems like a texture problem. ATI cards seem to be unable to use texture compression with some other texture related extensions.

So I will deactivate texture compression in a special binary I will send you, so we'll see if it really comes from there.

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:38 am

Sorry for slow answer, was unable to use PC yesterday evening.

Well, you will laught, but the bug still remains with new binaries. All just the same, so it looks like compression doesn`t the cause.

Post by **zuzuf** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 7:12 am

ok, it's not texture compression, that's good news since deactivating it would increase video memory usage. I'll send you another one with texture filtering set to LINEAR so it won't use mipmapping.

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 8:03 am

Bug is still there. All the same.

Post by **zuzuf** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 4:29 pm

hmm, I'll have to test it myself on a system with an ATI card and debug

.

Currently I am rewritting the script module using lua, which builds and links successfully on both Linux & windows, if we want to support more platforms, then we'll have to take them into account at configure time because the configure script build lua to make sure everything to support it is there (normally it shouldn't require too much dependences, but I'll add them to the list of required libraries because we need their headers to build it).

Then lua is merged with the TA3D binary like AllegroGL, both are statically linked. lua's size is small, so TA3D's size won't increase much, but the script module is much cleaner (but it's not finished yet, I have to implement the required functions to interact with the game).

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 4:41 pm

ATI card doesn`t matters.

I`ve tested on Riva TNT 2 - the bug IS THERE ALSO!

SO you should look somwhere else

Post by **zuzuf** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:04 pm

I think the problem is related to ATI cards too, they doesn't support some kind of extension that is required to do the job here, because the Riva TNT 2 is very old, it's one of the first to support T&L (Transform & Lighting -> means the card does all geometric & lighting calculations). So it doesn't support all OpenGL extension, it only support a few like multitexturing but with something like 2 texture units. So the bug is there because TA3D assumes some extension is supported whereas it's obviously not on ATI cards & old cards.

Balthazar · Post by **Balthazar** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 7:03 pm

Well, maybe so. I`ll try to test tomorrow on some of GeForce-type cards.

TA3D 0.4.1 TEST 4

TA3D 0.4.1 TEST 4

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