bassoferrol on 31/12/2014 at 15:03
Keeper of Infinity: Bad Venture
At the beginning, without moving at all, measured with Fraps: 25 FPS
Moving here and there in that open scenario I get between 35-40 FPS
75 HZ in that cave with a zombie behind a banner.
My system:
Intel i7 3770K overclocked in BIOS (auto-mode) to 4.18 GHZ
ATI Sapphire 7870 2GB DDR5
8 GB RAM
CRT monitor: res 1152x864 - 75HZ
In catalyst control center: AA 4X Ani 16X Texture quality High, VSynch enabled
Happy New Year, There and Everywhere!
nbohr1more on 31/12/2014 at 17:46
Quote Posted by Judith
I'm always for graphic improvements and more up-to-date design. The problem is, you can't really decide for the players what FPS your mission should have. People are surprised that much more demanding games run fine on their PCs while they're experiencing slowdowns with FMs, rightly so. The improvements made with NewDark are impressive in comparison to what Thief 2 was, but there many games that look and run better (MGS: Ground Zeros for example).
Naturally, such comparison is unfair. I'm not a programmer but I understand that NewDark is mostly about using latest DirectX libraries and hardware to do what it does now. It's not like with Activision and Call of Duty, where the whole programming team adapts or rewrites whole portions of code, so the engine could go all the way from Quake 2 offshoot to what we see now in Advanced Warfare (I don't like CoD btw., it's just an example ;) ).
It's not like NewDark was in any way rewritten, right? Isn't it still a technology from DirectX 6 era, using a series of enhancements and hacks? If so, it should be treated that way. It means 1024 textures, tons of foliage, massive transparency and numerous static meshes are not a "normal situation".
Also, modern engines have sets of metrics and performance tools, so LDs can deal with such problems while creating a map. Maybe the cool folks at T2 Editors' Guild could come up with such tools or some kind of Performance Guidelines for NewDark? Maybe it would help to set "average system specs" after a poll among FM players? It would be useful for T3 and DarkMod FMs too.
As I recall, NewDark is a fairly extensive rewrite of the Dark Engine but is constrained by a few factors:
1) It is a patch that took the leaked Dark Engine source and used that to speculatively alter or replace code-paths in the existing executable
2) It must remain backward compatible with existing missions
I believe that the DX9 hooking that Taffer-patcher did before has now been natively integrated but the core renderer probably still does far more
in software than a typical DX9 renderer due to some of the unknowns around how the source leak diverges from the the production executable.
As I can tell, NewDark is still under development so setting a target specification for what "average system specs" are required might be premature at this point.
The best option is for mission authors to post what hardware their mission was tested at and what typical performance was seen.
The Dark Mod had an ongoing thread to collect a hardware survey of specs that successfully ran the mod\game and there players also noted
their typical performance experiences.
(
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/9970-post-your-system-configuration-here/)
It's much harder with TDM because the engine really does allow you to scale up or down performance-wise
so saying that St Lucia plays at 60FPS wont really tell you how well (for example) "Penny Dreadful 2" will play.
Also, since TDM is an open source project, improvements to performance can continue to arrive.
For example, TDM v2.03 will have Object LOD for animated meshes and AI along with an optimization to exclude particle rendering from the light-gem calculation.
We are hoping to have GPU vertex skinning working in the next release after that... And finally, Bikerdude (our resident map optimizer), has regularly gone back to help
other mission authors optimize their maps... sometimes improving performance up to 2x that of the original release (ie; more performance than small code tweaks and
optimizations to the game code would give)...
So a static performance tally is obsoleted pretty quickly for these active projects. I guess once we've fully settled-down that may make more sense
though.
I can't speak to how far NewDark will continue to optimize but I suspect that maps like Soul Tear's "Keeper of Infinity: Bad Venture" will motivate
them to squeeze more performance out if possible.
Someone with more NewDark insider info would need to pipe-up on any of the above obviously... I'm working with rumor and speculation...
taffedinthehead on 1/1/2015 at 19:22
hmm.. when I think back over the last decade of what FMs I liked and which ones I play multiple times, it's usually more about the overall atmosphere and enjoyment of the level itself - how it was built more than how it looked. Campaigns like Trickster's Gem Mine and Enterprise are favorites… on the other hand, the visceral impact of Rodamill will always be a highlight of gaming to me.
But really, playability trumps graphics. I may occasionally say, "wow, looks great!" but that feeling won't sustain me through a bland FM or encourage me to ignore lag.
downwinder on 2/1/2015 at 04:12
let it be written i was the first to post ,that less is more :)
Renault on 2/1/2015 at 06:08
It's a balancing act - everyone likes nice graphics, but without solid gameplay it doesn't mean much. To this day, my favorite FM is Broken Triad. Graphics level is probably higher than the original Thief levels, but not by huge leaps and bounds. However the narrative and objectives and mood of BT is hard to match. Even with the stock resources, you can create awesome atmosphere and cool environments with the dark engine. The challenge for modern FM authors is finding the right compromise between appearance and atmosphere/gameplay. With emphasis on the latter.
SneakyGuy101 on 2/1/2015 at 07:21
To me I think that it all depends on what you're building. If it's a small mission than I think you should do as much as you can and just be very outgoing:eek:
Now if you're building something very large then you should be a bit careful because things like the cells limit could be a problem if you're too outgoing. I don't know if what I said is true but it seems logical to me. For me I haven't done anything near as outgoing as missions nowadays but I do have good ambitions. But I don't know if ill be doing this forever as I'll probably get a job for gaming companies in the future after college to do level designing. I also don't know if thief will be around forever but I'm a very young person (15 and turning 16 on the 27th) so I still have plenty time before I have bigger opportunities. It's not that I'm saying Thief doesn't bring great opportunity because trust me it does and that's what my discovery of it has brought. Thief opens people up to greater opportunities and also gives them lots of experience which is a very great thing. I know that it's crazy that my opinion turned into this but I wanted to tell how my experiences have changed me. I have three years of experience and will have much more in the coming years. I'm being very outgoing with this comment actually ha ha! I'm sorry if I'm being too outgoing but I love expressing my thoughts with others :joke:
JoergA on 2/1/2015 at 12:22
As posted in the release thread, Keeper of Infinity runs fairly smooth on my system ( AMD FX-8320, GeForce GTX 770, video driver and cam_ext.cfg optimized for quality ).
I would encourage fm builders to push the engine to its limits, not because of my system beeing able to deal with that, but because of my surprise and astonishment, when I play fm's like this : wow, now that's possible with this engine !
I appreciate playing Thief "in a modern robe", combined with the game mechanics I know and love for such a long time.
Printer's Devil on 4/1/2015 at 03:20
My thoughts would be yes, push New Dark's visuals and don't worry about the stragglers. My machine choked on Soul Tear's recent FM, so I'm surely in the straggler camp. Nonsense? Not really.
TMA has a wide base of authors at the moment. They all have styles and that changes with their experience and exposure to other FMs. Keeper Of Infinity actually has a nice mix of gameplay elements and puzzles; the detail helps sell the story in places too (those earthquake holes/tunnels). Some of that is going to inspire other FM authors and make Soul Tear's next effort even better.
My main gripe was SLOW reloads, not low fps. I think we all love poking around and reloading from blunders. It's difficult to have fun doing that if a simple mistake results in 90 second reloads or crashing.
What really needs updating are the character models, voicework and AI. Probably a tall order, even today, but wall/ceiling spiders would be great. New guards with dogs, digging Burricks and other creatures too. THAT would be worth a bit of lagging, or even a new computer to play it properly, thus resetting the straggler clock.
baeuchlein on 7/1/2015 at 20:01
Quote Posted by Printer's Devil
I think we all love poking around and reloading from blunders.
No, I don't. At least not for a prolonged time or just because someone thought it would be more funny or more challenging to make something extra hard.
I don't quit a mission just because I have problems at a particular spot, but if there's too much Save & Reload involved, then my interest in that particular mission (as well as any other game, Thief surely isn't special in that regard) wanes. I'm not a masochist, I don't like to be tortured that way.
But concerning the original question, and taking "KoI: Bad Venture" into account as well as "Kingsbridge", I'm going into the direction already outlined by Brethren: Graphics are nice, but not the only thing that matters. There have even been a few missions which showed better graphics than average missions (for the time in which said missions were published), but still felt dull or even boring - mainly because gameplay didn't work for me.
The improved graphic content of "KoI" as well as "Kingsbridge" is nice, but it wears off comparatively quickly for me. Maybe it's because I usually want to finish a Thief mission successfully, instead of just being content with walking through a beautifully detailed landscape. Very few games and Thief missions achieved the latter for me.
Please, authors, try to follow the Keepers' way: Achieve and preserve a good balance of all aspects that add to a pleasant experience when we're playing your creations.;)
cavador_8 on 8/1/2015 at 02:23
I want to chime in on this thread. I have been a long time Thief 2 player (since 2003) and now I find myself preoccupied with something I have never even given much thought to and that's freaking FPS! I am currently playing Thief 2 on a GTX680 with 8GB RAM and a 3.5Ghz processor. That should be plenty powerful enough to run this game at 60 fps. In fact, on this computer, I can play every single FM I have (over 200) at a full 60 fps.
But now, starting with the FMs from 2014, I am taking frame hits in many places. Like turning around and feeling the game lag. Takes me right out of the game and ruins the immersion for me. There's only three things that drive me nuts in a game and that's crashing, screen tearing (which is of course eliminated with vsync) and frames per second lag. I find myself now running FRAPS with Thief 2 and watching the little number in the corner dip with all these new 2014 FMs. It's driving me CRAZY and I never used to have to concern myself with that.
I am currently playing Death's Turbid Veil and really not enjoying it because the fps dips that I am getting. I would rather play a FM from years back at a full 60fps with no lag at all. I'll take a full 60fps with no lag over the graphics of some of these new FMS anyday. I might actually delete FMs like Death's Turbid Veil just because of this issue. I really don't think upgrading my pc would help much at all either. I can still see some of these FMs lagging even with the most expensive pc you could buy.
