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DarkXL Update 5 - Alpha Demo 1 Release!
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lucius
DarkXL Developer
DarkXL Developer

Joined: 17 Feb 2008

PostPosted: May 29, 2008 17:46    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

sheepandshepherd wrote:
Burning Gundam wrote:
Sorry, didn't notice how much more distorted in DarkXL there was than DOS. I was merely pointing out that even in the DOS version there was some distortion there.


Yeah, I noticed that too . . . I thought it was just my widescreen monitor at the time. Now that I think about it, I've never seen the ceiling texture used on that door . . . it looks like one of the door track textures, but that wouldn't be usable as a ceiling texture Confused


What do you mean that you've never seen the ceiling texture used on that door...? It you look at the comparison shots its clearly using the correct texture but something is off about the texture coordinates. Or do you just mean you'd never seen the texture other then on that door?

I'm thinking there is a texture offset for the ceiling but its not being applied to all the vertices for some reason. Anyway it will be fixed as I said before Smile

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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com

Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon

Joined: 28 Sep 2003

PostPosted: May 29, 2008 18:15    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

He means the texture in general for the game is "incorrect" . DF has a hard time keeping textures for floors and ceilings greater than 64 pixels properly aligned or stretches them. Makes for some weird graphical issues sometimes too. In other words, a larger texture was used instead of a smaller one for the door which caused the texture to distort.

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lucius
DarkXL Developer
DarkXL Developer

Joined: 17 Feb 2008

PostPosted: May 29, 2008 18:45    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

Burning Gundam wrote:
He means the texture in general for the game is "incorrect" . DF has a hard time keeping textures for floors and ceilings greater than 64 pixels properly aligned or stretches them. Makes for some weird graphical issues sometimes too. In other words, a larger texture was used instead of a smaller one for the door which caused the texture to distort.


Ok thanks, I didn't realize that this texture was the wrong size. That might explain why two of the door ceilings are having a problem but not the other textures in the level. Thanks for the insight Smile

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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com

sheepandshepherd
Trandoshan

Joined: 01 Apr 2008

PostPosted: May 29, 2008 19:46    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

Actually, I meant I've never seen it in WDFUSE, I forgot to clarify that in the original post. But I know why now, it's not a 64x64 texture. I didn't even know that was possible, DF wouldn't render the ceiling at all whenever I tried to use a non-64x64 texture.

lucius
DarkXL Developer
DarkXL Developer

Joined: 17 Feb 2008

PostPosted: May 29, 2008 20:02    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

sheepandshepherd wrote:
Actually, I meant I've never seen it in WDFUSE, I forgot to clarify that in the original post. But I know why now, it's not a 64x64 texture. I didn't even know that was possible, DF wouldn't render the ceiling at all whenever I tried to use a non-64x64 texture.


I can't look at the texture right now (not at home), but I'm curious: what size is it? Is it non-square?

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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com

Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon

Joined: 28 Sep 2003

PostPosted: May 29, 2008 22:00    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

It's a 128x16 texture I believe.

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sheepandshepherd
Trandoshan

Joined: 01 Apr 2008

PostPosted: May 29, 2008 22:44    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

It's one of the door tracks, ZWSTRIP1.BM. 16x128, as Burning Gundam said. Very strange if you ask me . . . especially if you look at how it's rotated 90 degrees.

Random question - what is the "Ceili Tx #" field in Sector mode for? I've never messed with it, but it seems to be filled in automatically . . .

The MAZZTer
Death Star
Death Star

Joined: 25 Sep 2003

PostPosted: May 30, 2008 02:09    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

Short Answer: It's basically an internal value used by the LEV format and handled entirely by WDFUSE that you don't need to care about and shouldn't modify.

Long Answer: The LEV file format does not specify full texture names in sector and wall definitions.

Instead, it has a list near the beginning of the file of all the textures the level uses. This is the only place in the file texture filenames are stored. The Tx # you see is an offset into this list, and it is that value instead of the full texture name that is saved in the sector/wall definitions.

Back when 66MHz was pushing it, this allowed for smaller level file sizes (less redundant data, IE no repeating of texture names) but mostly it gave Dark Forces a convenient list of all the textures it needed to load for a level (the same is done with sprites, 3dos, sounds, etc) and so it can just load the textures into an array and blindly use the "Tx #" values it finds as offsets into that array.

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Jon`C
Ree-Yees

Joined: 16 May 2008

PostPosted: May 30, 2008 03:08    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

That's still how things are done. Referencing assets by a string name is inefficient, and where it's not tabulated automatically by the toolchain it's invariably converted into something almost identical to this later in the content pipeline.

This is definitely what the DF team did. IIRC there are several resources pointing to a LEC network share and a number of comments referencing autocad in the level files themselves.

Marley
Gamorrean

Joined: 30 Sep 2003

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 16:50    Post subject: Re: DarkXL Update 5 - Alpha Demo 1 Release! View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

A) Did you make it through? You should get the mission complete text at the top of the screen.

Played, completed. Everything seemed to work fine except I had problems jumping to the secret little room that is off the floor in the first room you drop into.

B) How well did it ran and system specs. The engine is far from optimized, so this will get alot better. A rough guess is fine (smooth, slow, whatever).

Ran very smooth. AMD Athalon 2.0GHZ (I think) 2 Gig ram, GEFORCE GT 7600, Audigy2 ZS graphics card.

C) How did it feel? Does it feel like Dark Forces, and if not why?

As mentioned before it definately carries that DF feel in a way none of the sequals did.

D) Any bugs not mentioned or any comments.

The auto aim seems a little scewy, probably due to the mouse look - I know in the original game looking up always used to throw the aim off due to the perspective change. I think having the mouse look makes this problem worse - could purhaps correct by adding a crosshair or something.

All in all this is an outstanding piece of work - Keep it up - how long til we can play our own levels on it?

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sheepandshepherd
Trandoshan

Joined: 01 Apr 2008

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 17:01    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

Marley, is your resolution setting in DXL_Settings.txt set to your monitor's normal resolution? I know setting a wrong value in there tends to cause major stretching and perspective problems . . .
And I agree, a simple crosshair would help a lot Smile

Marley
Gamorrean

Joined: 30 Sep 2003

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 18:06    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

Yeah, it was set the same, it's not a massive problem per se but does make aiming difficult - I think this is made worse by the auto aim not exactly working like it should and the collision detection needing tweaking - sometimes you can shoot throgh baddies without them being hit.

Also I think the way Kyle moves isn't quite right yet. On my computer if I'm running its far too fast and the strafing have the right feel that original game did.

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lucius
DarkXL Developer
DarkXL Developer

Joined: 17 Feb 2008

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 18:22    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

Marley wrote:
Yeah, it was set the same, it's not a massive problem per se but does make aiming difficult - I think this is made worse by the auto aim not exactly working like it should and the collision detection needing tweaking - sometimes you can shoot throgh baddies without them being hit.

Also I think the way Kyle moves isn't quite right yet. On my computer if I'm running its far too fast and the strafing have the right feel that original game did.


Are you sure its too fast? The movement in the original game is very fast and atleast on my machine the actual movement speed is the same between the two. Also strafing speed is the same as forward movement speed in the original, but I'm not sure what you were trying to say the problem with strafing was in the bolded text.

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sheepandshepherd
Trandoshan

Joined: 01 Apr 2008

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 18:22    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

Hmmm . . . just out of curiosity, lucius, how are you doing the collision on the sprites?

lucius
DarkXL Developer
DarkXL Developer

Joined: 17 Feb 2008

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 18:29    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

sheepandshepherd wrote:
Hmmm . . . just out of curiosity, lucius, how are you doing the collision on the sprites?


They are basically cylinders with a height and radius. The height might not be enough on the stormtroopers though, which might be why people sometimes still have trouble hitting them.

I think you can see references to height and/or radius in some of the logic scripts.

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sheepandshepherd
Trandoshan

Joined: 01 Apr 2008

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 18:49    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

I'll check on it later when I'm not in a hurry Smile
Just a thought . . . you could set the cylinders to automatically be resized to the height and width of the sprite . . .

lucius
DarkXL Developer
DarkXL Developer

Joined: 17 Feb 2008

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 18:57    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

sheepandshepherd wrote:
I'll check on it later when I'm not in a hurry Smile
Just a thought . . . you could set the cylinders to automatically be resized to the height and width of the sprite . . .


That would be a bit weird with movement. For example a Commando is walking near a wall, his feet spread out (part of his walking anim.) and his cylinder becomes wider which would push him out of the wall. Or his cylinder is already big enough and he just doesn't get too close to that wall.

Anyway adjusting the cylinder size is something I plan on doing while working on the AI anyway.

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sheepandshepherd
Trandoshan

Joined: 01 Apr 2008

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 19:22    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

Ok, thanks . . . that's not really what I meant about the cylinders, just that you could get the approximate size of the cylinder from the size of the WAX, that way we won't have the problem of shooting through the sprite.

Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon

Joined: 28 Sep 2003

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 23:09    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

Just figured I'd let you know that I upgraded my RAM (which I needed badly, 512mb just doesn't cut it). I now run 2gb of RAM and have no problems with DarkXL.

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I don't think outside the box... I customize it.

lucius
DarkXL Developer
DarkXL Developer

Joined: 17 Feb 2008

PostPosted: Jun 03, 2008 23:20    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

Burning Gundam wrote:
Just figured I'd let you know that I upgraded my RAM (which I needed badly, 512mb just doesn't cut it). I now run 2gb of RAM and have no problems with DarkXL.


Cool, thanks Smile

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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com

Marley
Gamorrean

Joined: 30 Sep 2003

PostPosted: Jun 04, 2008 12:41    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

lucius wrote:
Marley wrote:
I'm running its far too fast and the strafing have the right feel that original game did


Are you sure its too fast? The movement in the original game is very fast and atleast on my machine the actual movement speed is the same between the two. Also strafing speed is the same as forward movement speed in the original, but I'm not sure what you were trying to say the problem with strafing was in the bolded text.



Hmm, after going back and playing both I think you might be right - I think the mouse look control system makes it feel like you are moving faster because I'm strafing alot more and there is more a feeling of speed when I do this.

As for the collision detection - this problem seems to be worse when the enemy is not on the same level as you - try shooting the comando next to the lift near the start in the head without dropping down - sometimes the lazer bolt goes right through his head.

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Nottheking
Kell Dragon

Joined: 29 Sep 2003

PostPosted: Jun 04, 2008 13:17    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

Burning Gundam wrote:
So amidst building the calibration levels, I discovered some player properties that might help things along.


Aren't these perhaps covered in the "DF Specs" help part for WDFUSE? Wink

Also, as a note in case you were wondering, 1 DF Unit is equal to 0.25 meters, so that means that Kyle is 5'7" tall, he can crouch under 2'4.5" areas, can walk up 2'10.5" steps, and is 2'11.5" wide. Fat bugger. Razz

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klasodeth
Trandoshan

Joined: 03 Mar 2008

PostPosted: Jun 04, 2008 18:09    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

Nottheking wrote:
Burning Gundam wrote:
So amidst building the calibration levels, I discovered some player properties that might help things along.


Aren't these perhaps covered in the "DF Specs" help part for WDFUSE? Wink

Also, as a note in case you were wondering, 1 DF Unit is equal to 0.25 meters, so that means that Kyle is 5'7" tall, he can crouch under 2'4.5" areas, can walk up 2'10.5" steps, and is 2'11.5" wide. Fat bugger. Razz



You would be fat too if you were loaded down with a Bryar pistol, Stormtrooper rifle, thermal detonators, Imperial repeater, fusion cutter, proximity mines, mortar gun, concussion rifle, and a Darktrooper rifle.

Burning Gundam
Kell Dragon

Joined: 28 Sep 2003

PostPosted: Jun 04, 2008 22:49    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

klasodeth wrote:
Nottheking wrote:
Burning Gundam wrote:
So amidst building the calibration levels, I discovered some player properties that might help things along.


Aren't these perhaps covered in the "DF Specs" help part for WDFUSE? Wink

Also, as a note in case you were wondering, 1 DF Unit is equal to 0.25 meters, so that means that Kyle is 5'7" tall, he can crouch under 2'4.5" areas, can walk up 2'10.5" steps, and is 2'11.5" wide. Fat bugger. Razz



You would be fat too if you were loaded down with a Bryar pistol, Stormtrooper rifle, thermal detonators, Imperial repeater, fusion cutter, proximity mines, mortar gun, concussion rifle, and a Darktrooper rifle.


Crap... That would have saved me a lot of time....

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Magic_Al
Gamorrean

Joined: 22 Mar 2005

PostPosted: Jun 09, 2008 06:23    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

I finally got to try this. I took the data files from Dark Forces for Macintosh and put/renamed them where the DOS version would expect, and hilarity ensued:



I don't know why the weapon is a black box, but the giant HUD is because the Macintosh-version HUD bitmaps are higher resolution! If DarkXL scaled it correctly the Mac HUD would look better than the DOS HUD. Maybe Dark XL should have a settings toggle like Mac: 0 or Mac: 1 that chooses which HUD scaling to use and also deals with whatever's different about the weapon bitmaps (they are not higher resolution on the Mac).

Maybe a better idea: the high-res Mac HUD bitmaps could be built into DarkXL so everybody would get them, but there would have to be a way for add-on levels with custom HUDs to override. Maybe another settings toggle like HiResHud: 0 or 1 that would toggle whether bitmaps included with DarkXL override the game data or not.

The HUD in Mac DF:


_________________
----- MagicAl`s DARK FORCES Niche -----
http://homepage.mac.com/anewmanagn/magic_al/

Armed only with a blaster pistol and an intimate knowledge of
Imperial methods, MagicAl prepares to go to lunch....

lucius
DarkXL Developer
DarkXL Developer

Joined: 17 Feb 2008

PostPosted: Jun 09, 2008 07:12    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

Magic_Al wrote:
I finally got to try this. I took the data files from Dark Forces for Macintosh and put/renamed them where the DOS version would expect, and hilarity ensued:

...

I don't know why the weapon is a black box, but the giant HUD is because the Macintosh-version HUD bitmaps are higher resolution! If DarkXL scaled it correctly the Mac HUD would look better than the DOS HUD. Maybe Dark XL should have a settings toggle like Mac: 0 or Mac: 1 that chooses which HUD scaling to use and also deals with whatever's different about the weapon bitmaps (they are not higher resolution on the Mac).

Maybe a better idea: the high-res Mac HUD bitmaps could be built into DarkXL so everybody would get them, but there would have to be a way for add-on levels with custom HUDs to override. Maybe another settings toggle like HiResHud: 0 or 1 that would toggle whether bitmaps included with DarkXL override the game data or not.

The HUD in Mac DF:
...


Weird, it makes sense though. I should be able to autodetect the HUD resolution and automatically adjust the scaling. As for the weapon sprites, I'm not sure why they are different. Are they named the same - "PISTOL1.BM" in "TEXTURES.GOB" for example?

As for including the hi-res hud in Dark Forces, I'm trying to avoid including any Dark Forces data with DarkXL - for legal reasons. However higher resolution hud can be distributed as a user mod, seperate from DarkXL, in the future.

Do the briefing screen and agent screen look alright with the Mac data? Unfortunately I don't have a Mac version (and no Mac to run it on) so I can't test Mac stuff myself.

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Nottheking
Kell Dragon

Joined: 29 Sep 2003

PostPosted: Jun 09, 2008 12:01    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

sheepandshepherd wrote:
Yeah, that kinda bugged me in DF . . . I'm glad it's fixed in DarkXL.


Oh, and just as a note to that, that was an unfortunate and unavoidable consequence of Dark Forces being based on a raycasting engine; such engines do not allow for actual vertical perspective, since it only does one perspective check for every vertical collumn of pixels. Technically, that up and down looking was accomplished by "faking" it; it simply continued drawing farther up, rather than running another perspective check. The result was a limited ability to look up and down, that didn't impose any further performance penalty.

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Wake up, George Lucas... The Matrix has you..

Magic_Al
Gamorrean

Joined: 22 Mar 2005

PostPosted: Jun 09, 2008 12:57    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

lucius wrote:
Do the briefing screen and agent screen look alright with the Mac data? Unfortunately I don't have a Mac version (and no Mac to run it on) so I can't test Mac stuff myself.



The briefing screen and agent screen look fine. I think those are the same as the DOS version. The only other major Mac differences I know of are the starfield behind the opening text crawl is higher resolution (inconsistently with the starfields behind the cutscenes it's sandwiched between) and WAIT.BM is also higher resolution and would be another good mod to distribute. At either resolution it would be cool if you implement the progress bar like this!



To check out the weapons spites I'll have to get some tools (all my old DF tools were for Mac and pre-OS X Mac software doesn't run on an Intel Mac). Maybe tonight.

Other Mac screenshots are here:
http://home.comcast.net/~ervind/dfmac.html
Of note might be the sharp graphic smoothing effect evident in the briefings. Mac DF does not have higher resolution menus or fonts but the smoothing creates the impression. In-game, the Mac's high-res map overlay seems like something DarkXL would do even better.

_________________
----- MagicAl`s DARK FORCES Niche -----
http://homepage.mac.com/anewmanagn/magic_al/

Armed only with a blaster pistol and an intimate knowledge of
Imperial methods, MagicAl prepares to go to lunch....

Jimmy Chicken
Gamorrean

Joined: 09 Dec 2003

PostPosted: Jun 09, 2008 13:33    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Reply with quote

I'm using the mac data for darkxl and it's working fine so far! What I've done was move all the weapon bm's such as PISTOL1.BM into the SPRITES.GOB (using the conman tool found on this very site).

As for the oversized HUD, I downloaded the dark forces demo for dos and "barrowed" the left and right hud bm's from it. Sure, they may be lower resolution but the mac HUD was taking up half the screen!

I did have one problem though with "barrowing" the hud bm's from the dos demo... When lucas arts released the dark foces demo, they did not have the lighon.bm or lightoff.bm images made yet (i'm talking about that red thing on the right weapons HUD that lights up when you turn on the headlight). So unfortunately, that's still scaled up.

I guess if the WAIT.BM is higher res then you'd have to use that from the dos df demo too.

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The MAZZTer
Death Star
Death Star

Joined: 25 Sep 2003

PostPosted: Jun 09, 2008 15:17    Post subject: View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Reply with quote

lucius should probably "acquire" the Mac version so he can make tweaks to DarkXL to support it.

He can probably fix the hud bug by scaling the hud to the final size for that screen resolution instead of assuming it's a certain size and scaling up by a constant.

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