Dromed Crashing When Loading Mission

Ricebug on 14/2/2015 at 01:53

I have an email in to Soul Tear on this, but I figured I'd ask the community while I wait for a response.

I cannot get Keepers of Infinity to load into Dromed. Here's the monolog that spews out just before the editor crashes:

Quote:

Set light_bright to 1

STATUS: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
STATUS: Loading: miss21.mis
STATUS: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

32-bit 2X Lightmaps
lm32 params: attenuation_exp=1.07 saturation_factor=1.4
Lighting mode: Objcast
gedcsg_light_quad=0
animlight_cutoff=15
WARNING: 'texture' param in 'render_pass' block in material 'B23.mtl' failed to load texture "tex\envmaps\diagenv"
WARNING: 'texture' param in 'render_pass' block in material 'GENwinLint_D.mtl' failed to load texture "tex\envmaps\diagenv"
INFO: Loaded script module "GenBegin"
INFO: Loaded script module "NVBegin"
=== This is LgScript 1.0 Copyright (C) 2011 Tom N Harris
=== Using Lua 5.1.4 Copyright (C) 1994-2008 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
=== LgScript comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; see the GNU General
=== Public License for more details.
=== This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
=== under certain conditions; for details see the copyright file
=== that is distributed with this script module.

--- ScriptServices Thief2
*** GCCOUNT 73Kb
=== Rebuilding LgScript name cache...
--- Found 0 scripts
INFO: Loaded script module "lgsbegin"
=== Rebuilding LgScript name cache...
--- Found 0 scripts
INFO: Loaded script module "tnhbegin"
=== Rebuilding LgScript name cache...
--- Found 0 scripts
INFO: Loaded script module "convict"
cTag: enum-int mismatch for ObjType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for ObjType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for CreatureType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for CreatureType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for CreatureType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for CreatureType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for SwitchType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for SwitchType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for SwitchType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for SwitchType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for ObjType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for ObjType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for CreatureType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for CreatureType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for CreatureType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for CreatureType
cTag: enum-int mismatch for Material
cTag: enum-int mismatch for Material
cTag: enum-int mismatch for Material
cTag: enum-int mismatch for Material
cTag: enum-int mismatch for Material
cTag: enum-int mismatch for Material

It loads up and runs fine under the game engine. I know that Xorak also worked on it, so I'm interested to see what he's got to say.

To answer the obvious, I'm running a vanilla ND 1.22 install--no EP2, NecroBob, nothing. Except for the screen size, I've never played with any settings in any of the config files.

If one of you guys can load this monster, let me know what you've tweaked so I can get this last walkthrough written and out of my hair.

Yandros on 14/2/2015 at 02:04

I got the same thing when I tried to load it, and never figured out how, so I'll be interested if a solution is presented.

Soul Tear on 14/2/2015 at 14:06

To open it in DromEd need to disable Obj\Txt16 folder. :erg:

Yandros on 14/2/2015 at 14:15

So is it just too many hi-res object textures then?

Ricebug on 14/2/2015 at 15:28

I see why, after looking at some of the texture sizes. Now I can get to work. Thanks, ST.

EDIT: I sorted the txt16 folder by filesize and moved 59 of the largest files before Dromed would finally swallow it. I also had to delete all of the lights in the mission and about half (3000) objects before I could get a Generate Report to work.

Xorak on 14/2/2015 at 23:18

Initially, I was only able to open it in Dromed and it crashed when entering gamemode. Only by deleting all the objects and lights was I able to walk around in gamemode. I remember Soul Tear said to disable the obj\txt16 folder, but there was still some unrelated crashing going on so it had no effect at the time.

Soul Tear on 18/2/2015 at 15:15

How many textures (hi-res) can be used in the NewDark?

Yandros on 18/2/2015 at 15:54

It seems it would vary by the user's available video memory, so a given mission will crash or be unplayably slow for some people and be fine for other. I think we've determined that using DXT compression instead of uncompressed DDS is a definite improvement in performance, but in general reducing the resolution of the images to a reasonable amount is probably the best approach. If a texture is used on small brushes only, for example, there's no reason for it to be 1024 or greater, and perhaps even 256 would suffice without noticeable degradation of quality.

Lady Rowena on 18/2/2015 at 16:41

I have an old Ati x1950 with only 256 Mb of video memory. Yet almost all my terrain and even some objects textures are 512x512. Only a couple of them, which cover a large part of the terrain though, are 1024x1024. I have them all compreessed in DTX format, and I don't seem to have any slowdown.
I tried playing Keepers of Infinity , but I couldn't even move a step. :D
I have some "jerks" when a new ambient is loaded, but maibe it's due to the CPU?

Ricebug on 18/2/2015 at 19:29

Just for giggles and grins I batched all of KoI's textures, making them all 256x256 gifs. Dromed still wouldn't load it (hard crash). And I have a high-spec machine. It plays just fine as it was shipped by ST; it just won't load into the editor until, like he said, the txt16 folder is renamed. BTW, Dromed is configured to run in hardware rendering mode, not SW.

So it seems that textures are half the reason most people can't play it, but with 6000+ objects, that's the other half of the problem. In order to make a low-rent version, you'd probably have to gut the mission of most of this eye candy.

IMHO.