Beyond Illusion - a 30x30x30 level

[Piega]

It's like spot the differences game I can see some plants missing. My PC is 5 years old and I guess its very old compared to others but no matter I would never press LOW option off! Its like lowering your work. Old engine wich depends on the processor a lot but he what can we do.

[Level NextGen]

Thank you Piega

Indee how hard it was to lower my work... but there is lot of scripting behind that slow down the game on some computer - so it's better to let the player choose if he'd like to get low framerate or low graphics

I wanted to render TressFx hair and swap the ponytail with the LOW option On - just to make a joke but I too much work for that

[Titak]

Oh, nice idea!

I now wonder how I could use that somehow since my games tend to lag as well...
At first I thought it would be nice to just not render the extra plants I want to add to some levels, but then I remembered those extra plants will be added with Meta2TR... so they are merged with the roomgeometry.
And since I think this trick involves making statics invisible/visible through the flipeffect (or is it an action trigger? ) that won't work...
So much for that idea then...
Well, I could try it with the object plants that I do have now. I do not merge them with the roomgeometry and then they can be rendered invisible/visible.

I hope you don't mind me using your idea...

[DJ Full]

Originally Posted by Piega

I would never press LOW option off! Its like lowering your work.

It's still an option, not a must. And one can switch to LOW just for a little while, in order to make a difficult jump or time a trap (I died many times because of traps where fps goes down and Lara has no chance). Then when this is done and high fps isn't that needed, one can switch to HIGH again. I consider it an improvement, because all lands in player's hands.

Also, one may like to see all places in both "forms". All in all this is a Hindu game, so it should have many . If the mood changes a lot because of this, the game gains replay value.

And sometimes it's really inevitable. If lagging strikes a 30x30x30 level, imagine what happens to a 100x100x100 one built with the super-heavy Steampunk pack and filled with hundreds of transparent railings... The game was already lagging even though not furnished yet (!). So I also allowed darker apocalyptic sky and ominous close fog distance to match the emptiness.

Originally Posted by Level NextGen

there is lot of scripting behind that slow down the game

Scripting never slows down the game. It's a 7-KB notepad. It only matters what Lara sees. First of all:
- antitrigger that moving trap which is active even when Lara is outside
- same for animating monkey and loads of lightrays when she's inside
- same for flames and waterfallmist, sprites take more power than it seems (compare a game with snow to the one without)
- try that Turbo= command with flags to deny off-camera computing.

Originally Posted by Titak

At first I thought it would be nice to just not render the extra plants I want to add to some levels, but then I remembered those extra plants will be added with Meta2TR... so they are merged with the roomgeometry.

Ah... so there is a downside of Meta2TR...

Originally Posted by Titak

Well, I could try it with the object plants that I do have now. I do not merge them with the roomgeometry and then they can be rendered invisible/visible.

Remember You can disappear animatings as well.

[Titak]

Originally Posted by DJ Full

Ah... so there is a downside of Meta2TR...

Remember You can disappear animatings as well.

Yes. In this case there is a downside indeed.

I could try adding the plants in the wad, but I already had a crash due to the amount of textures with those levels before.
Hmmm... come to think of it, I could just make those objects and texture them with some random texture from the wad, place those in the prj where I want the extra new plants to be and UV-map them later on with Meta2TR, without merging them.
Then I can also merge some with the roomgeometry so those will always be there.
Yeah, that could work.

Yes, I also know about the animatings.
That could work in one of the levels for sure, but not in the other I think. That other level is kinda open world when it comes to the looks of the place.


@ Level NextGen:
If you don't mind sharing the setup, it could be added to the tutorial on how to reduce lagging.
That way we might even be able to make the setup work with F8 and F9 ( makigng those keys for it the standard keys as much as possible.)

I always think it is kinda frustrating how some things that are the same in different levels have to be done with different keys.
I try to make things as intuitive as possible... all jump moves are done with the jump button, all kneeling moves with the duck button etc. Doesn't always work unfortunately but then I try to find the closest thing that still makes sense.
And things like T for Torch, N for Notebook (P for PDA would not work since P is already used in the game, but the PDA is called PDA - Notebook in my game. )

[Enya Brennan]

I'm in awe! This project looks amazing! Everything involving India and its history is a win for me

Eager to play it! *checks if a release date is mentioned* June 2015... I can wait!

[Seth94]

Looks great so far, good luck with the project.

[DJ Full]

Originally Posted by Titak

And things like T for Torch, N for Notebook (P for PDA would not work since P is already used in the game, but the PDA is called PDA - Notebook in my game. )

Tab would be good for Notebook. It's used for info panels in many other games, and it's right below Esc responsible for similar Inventory function.

Originally Posted by Titak

I already had a crash due to the amount of textures with those levels

If You mean the global info count at TOM output is more than 8000, this can be easily reduced - each texture has 4 forms which add texture infos: quad, flipped (mirrored) quad, triangle and flipped triangle (shiny and transparent don't add). You open the wad with StrPix and Ctrl+LMB click on a texture to see which form it's in. You of course need triangles and rectangles, but You can almost always discover loads of accidental flips that unnecessarily take up space, and can free much if removed

[Level NextGen]

Originally Posted by Titak

@ Level NextGen:
If you don't mind sharing the setup, it could be added to the tutorial on how to reduce lagging.
That way we might even be able to make the setup work with F8 and F9 ( makigng those keys for it the standard keys as much as possible.)

I think it's a great idea to share such feature (I mean not only me). I added my tut to the Tutorial Section :
TRNG - [LOW] Less Objects in World to prevent framerate issue

I hope you will discussed about this (here of course not on the tut) to improve the setting. Btw tell me if it's enough understable

[Titak]

Thanks for the tutorial!

Could you change the images to jpg's please. Those take less time to load.
I'm going to leave the tutorial open for now, so it can be changed.
I could also download the images and reupload them onto the HUB server so we don't risk those imageshack links going dead or being recycled.


*** EDIT ***
I've also added the "Optimizing" paragraph from the first post with TRLE tutorials in the INDEX thread to the second post with the list of the TRNG tutorials.
And I've added this tutorial to it.