Question to devs about FPS and game performance. Can we ?

[emenance]

Can we or that is ED develop a all in one patch to address fps improvment or take advantage of community tweaks that have been made.

 

Alot of these make since like the overcast fsb improvment, the med to high water fsb improvment., or fast overcast high quality underside.

 

There arent very many and loman 2.1 is easy enough to understand and install these add ons and tweaks but insted of just turning everything down to low quality can we get someone at ED to bless a patch that would be meant for people who want these kinds of improvments in this kind of give and take way.

 

For example: if most people say low water sucks but with a mod I can get much better looking water with no fps hit !

 

I used to be heavy into playing ghost recon and still do , there are very many mods for the game and allso a famous guy dark angle who has modded mods to make ghostrecon easier and more fun for all players.

 

Because when there is just one mod to load then getting into games on a majority of servers becomes alot easier. PLus other benefits in GR are also enjoyed.

 

Seems to me with not too much money and time someone could take alook at these mods in the Lock on community and simpley roll them all into one install. Not only does this make it easier on everyone esp new players of the game but it also gives a reassurance that the mods have been checked out and approved stable by ED too!

 

For whatever reason or maybe cause of name calling someone hasnt rolled all these mods into one yet. It would be great if ED could just take alittle time and look at these mods and help us in making the game more computer friendly. An official statement about modding Lock on would be great too. I mean the game has been out there we all know theres things that need to be done but a little guidence from you Devs woulld be greatley appriciated.

 

thank you

 

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[emenance]

is that a yes or a no? :?

[VapoR]

A patch of third party mods? Umm, I don't think ED will supply that . . .

[emenance]

The question is for either a dev or someone close to them............. to do the deed.

 

Give a mod that tweaks for higher fps with some compromise. Ill bet there are guys at ED that would do it . Just do it and get the dev team to look at it and if it looks ok just post it up for download. I mean modders do this all the time. If a 15 year old kid can wip up mods for a game , im sure we could find someone at ED to get involved in doing this. Doesnt seem like much to ask.

 

Hell i suppose anyone with modding knowledge could take the mods already available and roll them into one working mod. Then what will ED give an evauluation on the mod . Will they try it out for us and tell us what they think?

 

Im sure someone at ED would find this entertaining!!!???

[SwingKid]

They already did this for v1.1. A couple of community-made skins were "blessed"! :D

 

Many of the most popular mods though are not additions to ED's work, but rather replacements of it - very difficult for ED to officially "bless". You'd end up with this tiny little patch with very little in it, and still have to use LoMan to get the stuff you really want. Then there's overhead of NDAs, beta testing, IP laws, getting things submitted on time... And in the end, creative people are going to keep adding to the mod pile after the release of such patch anyway. A good idea in theory, but every time we've tried to do something like this, we run into unforeseen obstacles.

 

-SK

[Dark_Sceptre]

Actually I do not think that it's right for the developers to be gutting their own product by taking hacks and sanctioning them as approved fixes. A better idea would be for them to implement certain FPS improvements as ingame options in a tested and proven manner; removing all water texturing might be a suggestion for something that's probably easy to implement and which has a proven positive impact on slow computers.

 

But what IMHO should really be their first priority for performance improvements is locating bottlenecks and fixing them. Things like rewriting pixel shaders to consume less processing power or using PS 2.0+ shaders when available. That would be the Right Way, rather than stripping away features that were put in there for a good reason.

 

Meanwhile, we are free to create our own hacks, rip gobs of stuff out of the game and generally make a big mess .. on our own, and with clear warnings to the user that these are unsupported fixes that are used only with full knowledge that something might stop working.

[emenance]

I think it would be great if ED at least thought incorporating some of the FPS savers.

 

To use the water example, they could have another option for water without texture (like the mod).

 

 

I think I see where the poster is going wth this. Good idea!

 

(And I'm not just saying that because I made the water mod :-) )

 

I can assure you that anyone who is into ghost recon and playing those mods is very familier with Dark Angels compilation MOD [ a mod of mods ]

 

Dark angels compilation has truley improved everyones fun with ghost recon and has made lplaying ghost recon on line a whole new game.

 

For example when a newbie can install just one mod and get 300 more guns to choose from many more maps to play it really improved the game and kept alot of players iin the ubi game rooms. If ED cant get involved in anyway what so ever then I am sure that someone somewhere will someday do this. I just dont understand why ED could be prevented from releasing such a mod of thier own files and created Original content useing ideas and examples from the community that have been proven to work.

 

I dont get it? :idea:

[emenance]

Actually I do not think that it's right for the developers to be gutting their own product by taking hacks and sanctioning them as approved fixes. A better idea would be for them to implement certain FPS improvements as ingame options in a tested and proven manner; removing all water texturing might be a suggestion for something that's probably easy to implement and which has a proven positive impact on slow computers.

 

But what IMHO should really be their first priority for performance improvements is locating bottlenecks and fixing them. Things like rewriting pixel shaders to consume less processing power or using PS 2.0+ shaders when available. That would be the Right Way, rather than stripping away features that were put in there for a good reason.

 

Meanwhile, we are free to create our own hacks, rip gobs of stuff out of the game and generally make a big mess .. on our own, and with clear warnings to the user that these are unsupported fixes that are used only with full knowledge that something might stop working.

 

 

Well to understand any of this you have to be willing to install a mod and mod a game you are playing. Mods that I have incoporated into ghost recon can all be deactivated with a click of a mouse button. The mods I have in Lomac can all come out too via loman with a click of the button.

 

Some people actually arent interested in mods. In this case we have Lomac beautiful flight sim . I started with a top of the line computer last year and since in a year upgradeed memory to 1 gb diff processor , and new video card , but some of that i would have done anyway.

Regardless Lomac is a special case, most players simpley do not have the hardware to play Lomac in a visual way that is comparable to thier other games on thier coomp like half life doom 3 etc .

 

This Mod of Mod im suggesting for Lomac is something that someone by thier own free will can use to help compensate for a middle of the road box. Forget the " oh ED cant go hacking or moding thier game that just isnt right " Well what do you think 1.1 is ? Its a add on and my idea is to simply produce , or review a all in one mod so when someone comes into the forums with a new Dell or a new Gateway or Compaq or whatever and is disgusted with performance we can say " Here you go install this its one tool that just may make it worth your while".

What is the benefits? More players and more money . I mean just think about it?

 

I can assure you that I appreciate the mods even though I am at xp 3200 speed got a 9800 pro got 1 gb of pc 3200 got a big power supply , got a high air flow case etc etc.

 

I suppose if its that big of deal for ED then so be it maybe this thread will inspire some skillfulle people to at least get the compilation done. thanks for the replys.

 

Well I guess thats all :)

[Fellblade]

But what IMHO should really be their first priority for performance improvements is locating bottlenecks and fixing them. Things like rewriting pixel shaders to consume less processing power or using PS 2.0+ shaders when available. That would be the Right Way, rather than stripping away features that were put in there for a good reason.

 

Look here. Mathematically exact replacements for LOMAC PS 1.1 shaders, that run faster. I have insufficient knowledge / time to benchmark them to see any difference, but I know they are faster - they do less processing, or parallelize existing processing.

 

I have started a new job and haven't had time to work on the PS1.4 shaders that should see significant improvements in speed for Radeon 9500+ / GeForce 6-series cards.

[olaleier]

 

Look here. Mathematically exact replacements for LOMAC PS 1.1 shaders, that run faster. I have insufficient knowledge / time to benchmark them to see any difference, but I know they are faster - they do less processing, or parallelize existing processing.

 

I have started a new job and haven't had time to work on the PS1.4 shaders that should see significant improvements in speed for Radeon 9500+ / GeForce 6-series cards.

 

I'll do some benchmarks, which scenario/settings do you recommend?

 

(Fire? Overcast? Water? Explosions?)

[Dark_Sceptre]

Look here. Mathematically exact replacements for LOMAC PS 1.1 shaders, that run faster. I have insufficient knowledge / time to benchmark them to see any difference, but I know they are faster - they do less processing, or parallelize existing processing.

 

I have started a new job and haven't had time to work on the PS1.4 shaders that should see significant improvements in speed for Radeon 9500+ / GeForce 6-series cards.

 

Actually I've been using your shaders since you released them and even forgot I had them. They did improve performance noticeably, and this was actually part of the reason why I specifically mentioned shader effects as an area ripe for improvement. In my opinion it would be wrong for Eagle to release your shaders as part of an official hack collection; they should instead devote their resources to rewriting the shaders from scratch and possibly using newer pixel shader APIs when available. It just doesn't make much sense to me for them to take workarounds and downright hacks (such as deleting texture files, sound samples etc) and saying "Here, take this, it'll make our game run faster. Oh and btw, half of the game content is also gone".. in my eyes that's bad bad bad. And it's never going to happen hehe :)

[Fellblade]

Suggested settings would be anything that uses the updated files. I don't know what a fair number of them are actually used are - I simply looked at the code and at ways to optimize it (lots of co-issued alpha / colour instruction stuff was added, lopping off 1 cycle here and there). I definately one that changed cockpit reflections / scratches, because I remember screwing it up and really wierd stuff started happening with the colours. Very funky.

 

PS 2.0 support would be great - especially if ED implement the exhaust blur in it... as you can actually do distortion effects loads faster in PS 2.0