Comments - jezek2

We're working on it, an update is to be expected in January.

That seems ok, have you tried online play? The engine test spawns dedicated server on background and it's too much for this CPU (at least with current level of optimization).

Yeah it's inspired from it, can you send me your HW specs (CPU/GPU/type of drivers/resolution you used/32 or 64bit distro?), also have you tried to disable dynamic shadows?

That depends solely on what Apple will do in future. Otherwise I'm fan of crossplatform apps and games. I'm not fan of closed systems though, so as long as OSX will remain open platform we'll support it. And even if it's stops being one, there is high chance we'll continue supporting jailbroken versions at least as it's quite easy to support multiple platforms for us.

Currently the default setting in 10.8 is to disallow running unsigned apps, so users need to bypass it by either opening it by context menu or disabling Gatekeeper. I haven't yet tested RF on 10.8 so I don't know how exactly it behaves (except for the known incompatibility with Java7 that's being addressed by 3rd party).

Most likely problem with OSX 10.8. There is some problem between Java7 and LWJGL (library used for OpenGL/AL access). Also it might be case you have no Java installed. Gatekeeper can be also in the way.

These issues should be fixed in the future by 3rd party and Java would be bundled with the game as it's done on other platforms (not possible previously because of licensing problem).

As of Gatekeeper, there is high chance that in future it won't be possible to disable it (Apple is heading into more and more closed platform). In such case we'll stop supporting OSX, except maybe jailbroken one.

What OS? Can you show me the log (located in logs/resforce.0.txt)? You can send it using Pastebin.com

The prologue was really awesome, somehow it's how I imagine how COD (and similar games) singleplayer really should be... And this video is way more awesome than I ever imagined! Thanks a lot for all your effort into this mod. :)

You can host dedicated server by passing these options to resforce: -console -server -port PORT
And connect to it with these: -host IP:PORT
Internet access is still required for autoupdater (in alpha versions at least).

There are no regular plays yet. Best is to play around the time new build is released or arrange play via chat/irc. Yes, new build is planned in upcoming weeks.

Hi, thanks for the articles and videos, it's quite inspiring for developing my own game/engine: Moddb.com For example thanks to your article I finally got that depth peeling is so easy, I've always avoided it because it sounded complex and slow and nobody stated it's not complicated at all :)

While I won't use your engine as I have my own, I think that your engine will be one of the best open source engines once done as you really design it, not just blindly adding bunch of features, but thinking about them, inventing new approaches or mixing them in unusual ways.

Hi, what is your graphics card?

Thanks for the test and observations. While they're already on plan, it's good to see what people prioritize. About the jumping, I'll add it later in some way preventing using it for advantage in fights, the climbing is also on the plan.

About ability for killing each other, I consider it as a feature, but it needs to rely on some ping handling, like setting the maximum ping for server play (say 150-200ms at maximum) with graceful handling when sometimes over. I may also consider choosing the one with lower ping when the difference gets extreme (to allow servers to have high ping players when desired).

There are some vague ideas of additional gameplay modes with various levels of issues, it's really hard to come up with something new and enjoyable and fit the theme and overall 'mood' of the game. Maybe some day something emerges :) On the other hand I don't feel it's CS-like given the other features and general direction of the game, leading to quite different experience than in CS.

The engine is currently quite unoptimized, I work on optimizations as I add new features. There is performance bug in the latest release related to shadows (as mentioned in the news), so no surprise it does bad.

Hi, thanks for the bug report. I've observed this bug on my computer for the latest release. I was not sure if it's not because of my GPU/drivers as on other computer with the same GPU it worked flawlessly. What video card do you have?

It's probably some mistake resulting from changes in renderer code between the previous release and the current one, I'll investigate more. It uses normal OpenGL 1.5 + extensions (practically OpenGL 2.0 functionality). It's not Java related in any way.

That most likely isn't Java starting issue as the updater is itself Java based. Maybe some problem with loading (could been some temporary network glitch on either client or server side, or me updating it on server in meantime), or in the updater itself, remember the game is still alpha version :) Have you tried to run it again before restarting?

However, can you check the Console app (in Utilities) for possible errors, though not sure if such messages are preserved between restarts and how much long. But it's there to look if it would happen again.

Hi, probably insufficient graphics card (you can check log in "logs/resforce.0.txt" file). I'll add a warning before starting a game when run on unsupported graphics card.

Hi, why was restart needed for you? The last time I tried it on a Mac it worked the first time. On Mac it uses Java as provided by the OS, on other platforms it uses bundled one, so no Java tinkering is needed on Windows/Linux.

Yeah, it's on the plan. But before that I want to make the map filled with (much) more models, which itself will improve that a bit too.

Hi, had to temporarily suspend development for few months to do more money involved activities. On the bright side this suspension comes to end and I will resume development in upcoming days and plan to release next alpha version before the end of this year. Also some backing technologies developed within this period will be later used in the game and web/server parts.

This card is below minimum requirements so no surprise it does badly. However it's very likely this card must do some operations in software emulation because the HW lacks support for them. Usage of these operations was already removed in the development version so you can try again once the next update will be available.

Can you send me the log? It's in "logs" folder, you can use eg. Pastebin.com to send it.

I said hard to impossible, not impossible :) Also I meant mainly team cooperation and stuff. Major fun factor for this game comes from playing with real humans, so bots would be just minor feature that would take huge effort to create, I don't have resources for this. Even if I had I wouldn't implement them most likely :)

From my experience from gaming, if there are bots, they can be quite advanced, but they're still poor and always was filler until enough people join in. They don't help for populating empty server though. When there are just few players and rest is bots, the game is very unfun and people tends to leave.

GF 6100 is very poor, but having just 1 FPS either means that the current usage of high resolution textures are simply too big for your card (there is currently missing option for setting lower quality), or even that some feature is done in software rendering as it's missing on this type of card, I know some features are missing in 6200 for example.

Also HL2 has three different renderers for DX7, DX8 and DX9, the lower performs better on lowend computers/videocards. Whereas Resistance Force uses DX9-type functionality + more advanced shader model.

The engine is still quite unoptimized and there needs to be more work on compatibility with eg. Intel video cards. So if it doesn't work now, you can try it with future updates (I've already done some optimizations for next version). However your card is very lowend and it will be probably unplayable even after optimizations and compatibility fixes.

GF 6100 is very poor, but having just 1 FPS either means that the current usage of high resolution textures are simply too big for your card (there is currently missing option for setting lower quality), or even that some feature is done in software rendering as it's missing on this type of card, I know some features are missing in 6200 for example.

Also HL2 has three different renderers for DX7, DX8 and DX9, the lower performs better on lowend computers/videocards. Whereas Resistance Force uses DX9-type functionality + more advanced shader model.

The engine is still quite unoptimized and there needs to be more work on compatibility with eg. Intel video cards. So if it doesn't work now, you can try it with future updates (I've already done some optimizations for next version). However your card is very lowend and it will be probably unplayable even after optimizations and compatibility fixes.

Yes, there will be only small urban maps. The terrain will be used for smaller areas combined with standard brushes geometry for buildings, and areas outside playing area to make the player believe he's in a real world. It will be also used for some other static meshes than terrains.

While I'm using quite detailed textures, nothing prevents to use lowres ones for bigger terrain and by having unlimited number of layers you can place multiple highres control textures on places such as roads or whenever you need a more detailed control (similar to decals but for control texture).

For really big terrains some sort of swapping/streaming would be needed. This technique has quite potential for different usages and extensions beyond my primary usage.

The control texture size of all used layers is 1024x512 stretched over the whole model as seen on the screenshots. It can be even lower for most used layers without much quality degradation. However this texture as a whole is used only when editing, the processing creates internal engine specific and optimized textures quite different from it.

The soft transitions can be fluently tweaked by sharpness layer setting, from completely smooth (the default behaviour of texture splatting) to pixel sharp. It's a cheap operation on the sampled value. You can then create various shapes with various angles even with quite lowres texture using gradients (similar technique as alpha testing).

The authoring process is very simple: just create model with single UV map, there is only one requirement, no duplication/repeating of texture is allowed. It's then exported as simple .obj model. You then open the model in Composite Texture Editor and paint over the model with as many layers as you want. This process is manual, it's aimed for precise control of detailness and not only for terrains. Of course, for bigger terrains a generator can be easily created which would mix some layers according to terrain rules. I don't plan this extension any time soon as in Resistance Force there won't be really big terrains and manual approach is preferrable.

Engine integration is done also in a friendly way. While you have to "bake in" the actual model into custom map format, for reasons like precomputing static lights, radiosity, etc. The composite texture can be changed at any time without recompiling of the whole map. Just like normal texture can be changed at any time.

By using edges directly you can only obtain hard transition between textures, both composite texture and texture splatting is working with soft transitions. Additionally in case of composite texture it can do (semi-)hard transitions on any place, not just on triangle edge. This is achieved by layer sharpness setting which allows to have sharper shapes using low resolution control texture (eg. the asphalt marks uses this). Comparing to texture splatting it also typically uses higher resolution of control texture so it has more control on details.

The terrain on the screenshot is normal mesh using subsurf modifier in Blender. It has single UV map and yeah it's texture layering. While I can do soft transitions manually with triangle meshes by either having multiple UV maps or by creating geometric decals, there are limits (eg. number of layers, uv mapping not compatible with other type of geometry like brushes) and issues with that (extra cumbersome workload, some things more complicated).

The beauty of the composite texture is that I don't need to touch the geometry by hand at all, it's done automatically for you. For an artist it works just like regular texture you can edit (just fancier). By having automatic tools it can exploit engine dependant optimizations the way that's hard to create manually in modellers. In future it will have ability to automatically split the geometry depending on decals used, minimizing rendering of more layers than needed.

Another nice thing is that the painting on texture is done using sphere and not just flat circle over UV map. Thanks to this (and the specific processing) it works quite well across UV seams as long as you use UV mapping not dependant on original UV map (like with axis mapping).

There is no plan for bots as it would be hard to impossible to create intelligent tactically cooperating bots. The game is designed as multiplayer only and the big part of fun factor comes from playing against other people.

It uses engine created from scratch with features optimized for the game. Currently still in development along with custom editor.