hexarith on 12/4/2006 at 12:10
Quote Posted by OrbWeaver
You appear to be operating under an assumption that every physics-enabled object in a T3 map has its physics simulated every frame, which is totally untrue.
Indeed.
As I said: I don't know the code of the engine. My own engine uses the ODE dynamics engine. With ODE you don't have to care about active/inactive states of an object, since ODE figures them out itself. You can set them yourself, too, of course, but it's not recommended.
Quote Posted by OrbWeaver
Physics calculation MAY be set to start from the beginning of the level, but the default is for calculation to begin when an object is touched and to end when it comes to rest.
That it how it should be. Ok, then I'm mistaken here. But still there must be something that technically limits the level size. And don't come me with "console gaming", because there are console games, featureing huge levels.
Quote Posted by OrbWeaver
Experiments with physics in the TDS editor have shown massive performance drops by having too many active physics objects, on the order of 30 seconds per frame in some cases.
How many objects? I hope it's something far above 500 objects, because 250 objects is the amount current dynamic engines can deal with in realtime.
New Horizon on 12/4/2006 at 12:13
Quote Posted by hexarith
Indeed.
That it how it should be. Ok, then I'm mistaken here. But still there must be something that technically limits the level size. And don't come me with "console gaming", because there are console games, featureing huge levels.
As I said earlier, the engine has hard coded limits to prevent going over xbox memory limits. When you only have 64 megs of ram, and a rather memory intensive engine...then yes, the console you're developing on is going to limit the level size. It's not just consoles in general...if the xbox had been more powerful, then we would have had much larger level sizes. Check out our T3 editors guild. The guys down there will give you the straight up. We even have a few ex-T3 developers who hang around and help out.
OrbWeaver on 12/4/2006 at 12:28
Quote Posted by hexarith
That it how it should be. Ok, then I'm mistaken here. But still there must be something that technically limits the level size. And don't come me with "console gaming", because there are console games, featureing huge levels.
Just because SOME console games can accomodate large levels, doesn't mean that all games can. There may well be techniques available on consoles to increase level size (such as streaming resource loading) which were not used in TDS.
The fact of the matter is that the current incarnation of the Flesh engine does not allow large levels on the XBox (and hence on the PC, because they did not have time to release two versions of the engine), irrespective of what other games may do.
hexarith on 12/4/2006 at 12:43
Quote Posted by New Horizon
The problem with the small level sizes of TDS has little to do with physics. We've been through all of this many times already.
And what was/is the conclusion?
Quote Posted by New Horizon
The TDS engine is not even Unreal anymore really, it was rewritten and rather poorly optimized.
What's the point of licensing then? :ebil:
Quote Posted by New Horizon
The small level sizes are a combination of poor optimization, and low memory constraints of the xbox. The Thief 3 engine has a lot of hard coded limits that were put in place to help the developers stay within xbox constraints.
Gah' never hardcode anything, that's my motto. The editor for the engine I'm developing shows the overal memory consumption of the loaded map with full detail. Also the engine has the ability to limit it's memory use dynamically, even if the maps are larger, and if it is about hitting system constrains it will reduce some details, use less textures etc.
Quote Posted by New Horizon
You simply can't have a game like TDS, with all the AI functions, sound prop and light/ shadow calculation on a system with only ...what...64 megs of ram? I'm surprised the levels are as big as they are.
AI can be done in a few kB, sound requires some MB. Level geometry, that's a different story, because every engine does it different. But for what I know TDS is using a BSP representation, right (At least the Editor looks like Unreal, which is BSP)? Lemme see. Every BSP plane requires about
4 floats for the plane (16 Bytes)
1 pointer for the parent node (4 Bytes)
1 pointer to the list of adjantent nodes (4 Bytes).
The list of nodes is nPlanes * 4 Bytes (Pointers to the Nodes)
Then grouping Node groups with textures, add about 16 additional bytes (MaterialID 4, Node Root 4, Starting Frame 8)
Ok makes roughly 48 Bytes per Node. Let's say 64 byte for other stuff.
XBox class graphics hardware can deal with up to 200000 triangles in a rendering pass. Let's say, that you got a BSP with 4 very detailed rooms, every room having 150000 triangles. A node needs 2 triangles to render (depends on BSP implementation, but I assume this from my BSP experiences). So we've got 38MB alone for the BSP. Then you've to render that stuff, requring vertex-, normal-, texcoord- arrays. That are - say we go to the HW limits - 200000 triangles, making 3*200000*3*4=7.2MB
Say we are at 50MB now. Remain 10MB. Okay, that's a problem since the XBox uses shared memory AFAIK.
Ok, that was a rough sketch, but I see the problem now. Poolrly optimized engine, Microsoft saying "64MB are enough" (or was it 640kB :tsktsk: - hey my PC had 512MB at the time the XBox came out and I could afford it), very detailed levels and for a console game quite hi res textures.
Oh and I completely forgot NPCs, they use memory of course, too.
Dia on 12/4/2006 at 13:01
(Not caring that this poll is two years old because I haven't been a member here that long either.) I always detested the fact that TDS was so damn linear! There were so many places I thought could have been explored that just weren't accessible. Very frustrating. Go here and do this; now go there and do that - no real options for just messing around in between. (I'm pretty much in agreement all the other options on the poll.) I honestly tried to remain objective, but my disappointment was just too overwhelming. I did enjoy the game; marginally. :(
tiger@sound.net on 14/4/2006 at 06:24
(Are we supposed to stop caring about T3 and only about T2 and its mods?)
:cool:
I voted for "Generally poor AI awareness" for the general lacking and silly comments of the T3 "dangerous guards" and for Garrett's lack of AI for any sort of decent reverse-mantling for a basic edge that he just climbed.
Tack-on the general lack of anything much to do with those climbing-gloves, created to compensate for that missing rope-arrow, perhaps and it all looks very much like a quickly plopped-in piece of FX crap? (Leaving most walls as a complete waste of time to even start climbing.) :(
Soul Shaker on 14/4/2006 at 08:57
Never used the gloves ot their full potential, have you?
Those gas arrows are always above the streets. Flashbombs, mines, loot (all in the city) and in the clocktower, you need the gloves for a special loot item. They are quite useful. Like widow moria's. There's the front entrance to the mansion, and if you climb up a nearby wall, get on top, and look near the ground...TADA!!! Another entrance.
They are just as useful as rope arrows, just used in a different way. TDS is designed with the gloves in mind. T1 and 2 are designed with rope or vine arrows in mind. Actually, I take one thing back...they are almost as useful as rope or vine arrows. You can kill people with the arrows, climbing gloves...well...you can exploit the fact that jumping on top of the AI is completely silent...though, neither of those are really something to do. However, I would love to have a rope hanging out of the corpse above me, but that doesn't happen.
Don't dis the gloves.
Otherwise, what really pisses me off is the loading zones. They're there. Big, obvious, and with John-P's textures installed, loading is around 30-40 secs. A pain in the arse when you realise you need to get to South Quarter from Auldale...
On other reasons-
Invisibility potions-cheap (not price, but you're a master thief, sneak past someone damnit!)
AI Awareness-I have the patch so who gives a rats?
Lockpicking style- the old one was stupid. Press this button and see if anything happens. If nott, press the other and hold it down until it unlocks or it stops so you can switch it over again...
Keeper Enforcers- I'm sure there's a reasoning behind it.
Blackjacking & backstabbing- I'd prefer backstab alert guards, blackjack unaware. T1 and 2 was alright, but, still cheap.
Storyline- was teh roxors1111!!11 (i can't be screwed doing it in leet)
Other? What other?
And no, we only care about T1 and 2 anymore these days. T3 is only really looked back on for mistakes and "What not to do" 's. And the cradle. As well as still life with blackjack. The rare times when we look on for sucess. I love T3 myself, but it has lost it's replay value because of the story. The story was good and memorable, and the gameplay wasn't all that good. I could go back on T2 and replay the whole thing once I'm done. It's got the gameplay element as well as the story (well, some parts were crap, but Karras just sounds funny...One of those people who you just wanna smash their face in.
Dia on 14/4/2006 at 12:56
Quote Posted by tiger@sound.net
(Are we supposed to stop caring about T3 and only about T2 and its mods?)
Definitely not! From everything I've read in these forums posted by the taffers working in earnest to create interesting/fun T3 FMs, there is hope yet. I've already played two T2 FMs wherein the author integrated a bit of the more favorable aspects of T3 into his FMs. It's going to take awhile, but I think by the end of the year we're going to see some very interesting and favorable changes made to T3 FMs. I've said before that there were T1 & T2 FMs I've played that I felt were even better than the original games; so I firmly believe that with the creative minds we have working on the T3 FM issues the same will be true of T3 FMs one day.
Aside from all that; I had to force myself to play T3 as if it was a game totally unrelated to T1 & T2 in order to try to remain objective. Unfortunately, sometimes I lost that objectivity and just downright cursed the T3 creators.
(edit) Since my PC crashed a few months ago I haven't had a chance to reload T3 yet, so there have probably been some favorable advancements made to the T3 FMs already.ZylonBane on 14/4/2006 at 15:02
Quote Posted by Soul Shaker
Those gas arrows are always above the streets. Flashbombs, mines, loot (all in the city) and in the clocktower, you
need the gloves for a special loot item.
Ugh... "special loot". There's something that was missing from this poll. The old Thief briefings at least tried to be creative about how they presented the special item objectives, but in TDS they just went pure brain-dead "Grab THREE special loot yo!".
T-Smith on 14/4/2006 at 17:05
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Ugh... "special loot". There's something that was missing from this poll. The old Thief briefings at least tried to be creative about how they presented the special item objectives, but in TDS they just went pure brain-dead "Grab THREE special loot yo!".
I know what you mean. For instance, "Still Life with Blackjack" (museum mission) could have had in the objectives:
* The museum recently recieved a valuable piece known as the Coethe Medallion. Take it off of their hands.
* Rumour has it the curator wears a golden monocle. It may not look too good on you, but there's bound to be some other rich fat noble out there who needs one. Find it.
* Weildstrom plays host to a famous painting known as 'The Taciturn Lady', and the only thing better then looking at fine art is stealing it: Add the painting to your collection.
But instead -
* Find at least two of the three special loot items.
