DMT 2 v0.06 released

[Rasmus]

DMT 2 v0.06 released
-------------------------

Major changes since v0.05:
--------------------------------
- Monsters added:
Mummy, Mummyguard, Royal mummy, Screamer, Ancient Screamer (enemys)
Lightningguard (friend, as long as you don't start annoying him)

- Almost all original dm spells added:
All potions, Fireball, Lightningbolt, Poisoncloud, poisonbolt, open door (don't work yet), weaken nonmaterial.

- Runeboard added, it is possible to reach it outside the inventory by holding down the right mousebutton.

- The map in the upper right corner has been more detailed.

- Daroou added.

- Have given the champions a more personal look.
Daroou has gotten some fur, Iaido some scars and tatos, Gando some more wrinkels.

- All champions now move around as a party, so no freemoving Gando anymore.

- It is now posible to switch which champion you want in front.

- The inventory has been expanded so that it is now posible to see stats/skills/hunger etc.

- The champions can now fight monsters, and with this I have added experience so that they can level up.

- Alot of new items have been inserted.

- A beta version options menu has also been inserted for those how would like to cheat.

- I have added the posibility for those who are interested to switch beetween the hidden render target textures, displaying the scenes normals, lights, colors, shadows, depthbuffer etc.
This was mostly for me when debuging the game, but I didn't remove it because I thought someone would like to be interested in seeing how deferred rendering works. And also, if they see something wrong with lights or simular this is a great tool to check out where the problem really is.

- Lights comming from torches etc. doesn't "shake" the ground anymore.

- A collision problem have been solved, and with this some squares doesn't go black when viewing them from certain angels.

- The grass have been upgraded to a more realistic grass.

- Some items are small and hard to see in the dark, therefore I have added some flasing lights from them now and then.

- Doors have now been given hp and can also smashed in a easier way than before.

- Some more dungeon mechanics have been added.

- It is now posible to fall thru a floorpit and come down from a roofpit and then take damage (you can thank me later ).

- A totaly new level has been added to the game.

- The leveleditor have gotten some more visual aid, but can still be somewhat hard to understand in the beginning.

- A new improved setup program does also come with this beta. Instead of having only some specific resolutions the program searches for what resoulotion your graphiccard can handle (as it should be).
VSync are a option avalible to uncheck now (this havn't been tried yet because I need a laptop or something simular that doesn't like to high framerates).

- The items have got totally new homemade physics, I got tired of Tokamak because it didn't act the way I wanted it to. So now all the items falls, and gets thrown correctly. But maybe a bit more stiff.

I think this was the most of it... But there are still alot more minor stuff that have been fixed or added.


Known problems:
--------------------
- Pressing ALT+TAB in fullscreen will not work, the game will not reload in a correct maner after restoring it and a errormessage will accure.

- The fonts are still the same as the last version, I where going to change it but it is soooo boring But as there are still alot of other beta releases coming up in the future I will do it then.
I have been getting some opinions about the fonts because they can be abit hard to read, and I agree with this. So it is still on my todolist.

- The monsters will stop moving if they are too far away from the party. This is because all the collisionchecking etc. that the monster does takes pretty much on the cpu. 100 monsters that the party can't see collisionchecks and messures distances to the walls around them, No thank you!
Some alternative for this will be inserted in the future.

Some things I would like some opions on:
------------------------------------------------
- The inventory, I don't know what to feel about the layout.. When playing with it for a while I get use to it, but I still don't know if I should make it more simple like in 2D or something.

- That brings me to the next question, should I make the runeboard in 2D also. I don't like mixing 2D and 3D.. The background the champions head are in are in 2D, and also the bar where it is posible to set champions in specific order. Should this be made in 3D?

- I would like some opinions on the mosters AI.. If they act too predictible, damages too hard, dies too easely, what you think about their sleeping/eating/playing modes etc.

- Potions! When I have been playing the game I have been forced to run away from the enemys when mixing and drinking potions, because I have to enter inventory to do this.
How do you feel about potion fighting, is it to complicated? I have saved a couple of inventory spaces on the left of the character that aren't in use yet. I was thinking about something in diablo style with pressing a keyboard button to drink the already made potions there, will this destroy the dm feeling?
I can say that as long as I don't have unlimited spaces and flasks to make potions in they will run out.. And it is more simple to create and drink potions in DM than in DMT. So maybe this advantage will balance it out.

- Spells, fireballs etc. I have a feeling that they are too weak, but I am not sure

- How demanding is the game on your computer? You can check the "show fps" button after pressing 'esc' in the game to get your framerate.

And please, be as hard and pedantic as posible towards me but still constructive when giving me your opinions, this will help me in the long run


Note:
------
This dungeon are fully playable and there are almost nothing holding your party back from doing all the stuff you originaly could do in DM.
It is also a bit hard, the last hoard of undead monsters will need some training and technic to defeat. I got daroou to a hp near 200, and did almost defeat them but died, this took me about a hour.
You can not save your progress yet, therefore I have added a function that if you die, you will start over from the beginning of the level, but keeping all your experience and stats etc.
I wanted to make a hard dungeon because this really takes the monsters AI to the limit, and because this is the first beta with monsters in it, I think it is a good idea.
But ofcourse you can always cheat

And some screenshoots
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And for those of you who missed the new video
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http://dmtribute.webs.com/apps/videos/v ... mt-2-v0-06

You can download DMT 2 v0.06 here (29 mb):
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http://dmtribute.webs.com/dmt2.htm

Enjoy

[Beastman666]

I would like to try the new version, but I have a big problem. I only get 13 fps at best when monsters are around or when turning, 62 fps if I do nothing. Distance is at 50% (10 tiles), resolution is 1024x768 windowed. I turned shadows and mapping off - no improvement. It is unplayable at 1366x768. Guess I have to try even lower resultions. This version is a resource eater. I wounder what specs your computer has - Mine is Centrio Dual Core T6400 2GHz, 4 GB RAM, Nvidia 9600M GT...Any tips?

[Rasmus]

My computer specs aren't that good.. I have a intel 2Ghz dual core, 4 gb ram.. And a newer graphiccard, but still, I almost never get the fps lower than 60.. What really is strange is that the fps goes down when you are turning but not when standing still, and this goes for standing still when monsters are around to?
I don't know if you have the posibility to check it out on another computer?
I can fix a version til tomorrow (about 16 hours) that can messure what part of the game that takes the most cpu, this woun't fix the problem, but it can guide me in the right direction towards the problem.

The thing is that I havn't done that much cpu/gpu demanding changes that could affect it THAT much. But I still have a felling that it has something to do with the meshanimations or the monsters AI..

If anyone else that have played this version could report to me if they have been experiencing the some problems, it would be really helpful..

[Rasmus]

@Beastman: I would like too add one more thing, did you check out the refeshrate and v-sync option in the setup? Maybe this could cause some problems. And I don't think that DMT 2 are resource eater when you are able to reach 62 fps, there are something else wrong here.. You said that the fps went down when monsters are nearby, are we talking about one monster or ten? Even when you are doing nothing and no monsters are nearby, the three champions in the party are rendered and they are rendered with the same technic as the monsters.. So I fell rather confident that there are something evil in work here

[Beastman666]

Well fps is low at the start of the game where the two monster groups are battling each other but ONLY when I move at the same time (looking around or walking). I first tried to kill the two remaining monsters but got killed. I then decided (on 2nd attempt) to wait out the battle and then flee the two remaining monsters towards the dungeon entrance. Moving while only two monsters was no as "jumpy" but even when the monsters where out of sight, fps were low (when looking and / or moving). Seemed to get worse when there are the red dots on the radar even when monsters anre not in plain sight. I'll give you more specific info tomorrow with exact fps during the various situations and will also try v-sync.

[Rasmus]

Thanks for the detailed describtion!
Okey, now I know that it has nothing to do with the graphiccard, the only new demanding graphiccard stuff that I have added are the monsters, and if they aren't shown on the monitor they aren't drawn at all! The only new thing I upgraded my computer with the since the last version is a new graphiccard, the rest is still the same and therefore this low fps that you are experiencing should also be shown on my computer.. So I think there are something your computer doesn't like about my coding, maybe that you have windows 7, and a 64 bit computer (which is better than mine) could cause some problems

So this is what I will do til tomorrow, I will upload a new exe file where you are able to remove all monster/champions bone animations and see if this will help. I will also see if I can change the complier options, if this may have anything to do with it.. And see if I have time to to insert a timer for monsters-, dungeon-, items- rendering and updates so that you can see the percentage of how much they affect a frame. From what you have described I would guess that the monsteranimations takes about 90 % of the time it takes to render one frame (in my case it is about 3 %).

I hope you have patience with me, I will try to fix things like this a fast as possible so that you don't have to download and check these things too much..

Thanks again..

(By the way, the guards in the beginning are on your side, for the love of god, don't hit them! They will kill you in a sec! )

[Rasmus]

Just spoke with RAF that have tried the game, he didn't experience the problem with low fps, he have windows XP so this may be Windows 7 releated. Anyone else out there with windows 7 that could give my beta a try

[Rasmus]

I have uploaded a new debuger version file on DMT homepage.
Direct link: http://dmtribute.webs.com/Files/DMT2/De ... Debug1.rar

In the game you can press ESC and check the box for "show timers" debug text. I have also added a options so that anyone can inactivate the monsters AI and animations just to see if the framerate goes up. If this is the case I can narrow the problem down to less than 1 % of the code.

And here is a screenshot of a natural timer distubution in DMT 2 v0.06, all larger deviations should be reported to me so that I easier can find where the problem lies.

[Beastman666]

Ok. Part I: Started debug-game to get debug info - switched task to notepad to enter information - wanted to switch task back to game - the following error message appeared: The 3D3 devce has a non-zero reference count, meaning some objects were not released. Then game crashes No back to debugging...

Now, can you make it so that when a key is pressed a debug.txt is created? Because everytime I want to give you infos from the timers, I have to switch tasks and the program crashes...

[Beastman666]

Ok, at a quick glance it seems to be the render particles with 33%. I have a timer total of sometimes up to 575

[Rasmus]

I am sorry but I can't fix the fullscreen "ALT-TAB" crash right now.. The best solution for this is to run the game in a windowed mode..
In windowed mode and with the timer debug text on, you can press "Ctrl + Printscreen" at a moment when the fps is at the lowest, so that you get a screenshoot of the information. If posible you could upload the screen shoot for me too see... (I know I could have done this in a easier way, but I was in some hurry )

[Rasmus]

I think the particles can be switched off, if this would help.. It is one of the F1-F5 buttons, you can see this info in the debugscreen..

[Beastman666]

In windows mode, game runs better. Seems everytime the game "loads" a new part of the dungeon, it makes a "stop". Here are two three shots (debug3 being the most interesting)

[Beastman666]

Actually, particles off does not change anything, except for the particles timer being "normal". The game still hangs for half a second after making a few steps (when "entering" a new area ?).

By the way I do not have 64bit on the system I'm testing on. I have Win7 32 bit. I can test it on a 64bit Win7-system with 6GB RAM Dual Core 6600 and Nvidia 8800 GTX. I can also test on a 2 GHz P4 with 1 GB and ATI Radeon 9800 SE under WinXP but I think this machine has too low specs.

[Rasmus]

This is really weird.. The total render time is MUCH higher than when I add all the Rendering and Update timers together.. You accually have faster rendering times than I have (this could also be because of the low resolution that you are having, but still, the rendering timer are good!!), so it should run faster than on my computer. But this really helped me! When you say that it seems like the game "loads" a new part of dungeon it could mean that the it is doing some weird stuff outside the accuall renderinging and updating.. This is an easy check.. But as I am at work right now I can't upload a new verison that checks this at the moment, so this will have to wait until tomorrow

If we add the total rendering timers together and get a result bellow 17 ms, you should have a framerate on 60 fps.
But when you said that it was worse with higher resolution, I am not sure anymore.. Have to think at this a little more on this..

[Rasmus]

But try it on another computer, RAF managed to make it work on his computer without any problems.. I think it has something to do with your specific graphiccard or OS on your computer.. By the way, do you have two graphiccards installed on your computer or one..

[beowuuf]

I've downloaded it, but will have to try it next week I'm afraid!

[Rasmus]

Screenshot 1: 15,7 ms for redering and update specific timers here.. 552,9 ms per frame in total.. 552,9 - 15,7 = 537,2 ms that something else takes out of the computer per frame..

Screenshot 2: 6,1 ms for redering and update specific timers here.. 38,5 ms per frame in total.. 38,5 - 6,1 = 32,4 ms that something else takes out of the computer per frame..

Screenshot 3: 12,3 ms for redering and update specific timers here.. 20,6 ms per frame in total.. 20,6 - 12,3 = 8,3 ms that something else takes out of the computer per frame..

The framerate seems to be worst when monsters are nearby as in screenshot 1. But non of the timers indicates that this should have anything to do with it. I do remember now that I missed one timer that renders the lights (and outside the sunlight are rendered fullscreen), and that I have improved the shader verison to 3.0 instead of the original 2.0 since the last version. I could easely check this by uploading a new version for you to test til tomorrow..

[Rasmus]

@Beo: Take your time The longer you wait to more chance is it that everything works as it should.. But I do look forward to your opinion on my game!

[Rasmus]

Debuger version 1 didn't gave the result that I hoped for and the problem is still unknown. Here in debuger version 2 I have added more timers and the option to remove all lights in scene. I have also moved back to shader version 2.0 as in v0.05 from shader version 3.0.

Direct link: http://dmtribute.webs.com/Files/DMT2/De ... Debug2.rar (0,5 mb)

[Beastman666]

Well, next batch of debug-info with debug-version 2.

Tested on my Laptop Dual Core (Win7 32 bit, 4 GB RAM, Nvidia 9600MGT) It seems it has nothing to do with lighting, shadows, normal texturing - as the problem remains the same even when turning off the one or the other option or all of them. I have the feeling, that the hangs occur at roughly the same locations, as you can see at the pics: at the start, right behing the dungeon entrance gate, at the lock, etc. Same happens on my Desktop Dual Core (Win7 64 bit, 6 GB RAM, Nvidia 8800 GTX). Perhaps Win7 problem? Someone should try on a WinXP machine because:

I tried it on my old P4 2 GHz machine (WinXP 32 bit 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 SE), but the game doesnt run. It shows the screen with a brown border and where the message in yellow would appear on brown background only a black cube can be seen. This screen then turns into a totally black screen and nothing seems to happen anymore - not even harddisk activity.

Well here the pics from my Laptop:

[Rasmus]

If I understand right the fps isn't that much of an issue anymore, it has good fps but that the frame frezzes very often but not for a long time. Then I guess it has nothing too do with the rendering and updateing it self, but that it is something else behind the scenes that causes the game to frezze or "load" as you described it in the beginning.. It feels something like a mystery for me I have some friends that could check out if they are experiencing the same problem. I will send a new message a soon as I have gotten their answers. Maybe it could help.

If anyone else here on the board could just try and start the game and tell me if they have these problems or not, it would be appricated, just so I know if this is a problem everybody is having or just computers with a certain OS.

I tried it on my old P4 2 GHz machine (WinXP 32 bit 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 SE), but the game doesnt run. It shows the screen with a brown border and where the message in yellow would appear on brown background only a black cube can be seen. This screen then turns into a totally black screen and nothing seems to happen anymore - not even harddisk activity.

Why you can't see the text here is because your graphic card requiers textures that have the same width as height. The font texture in the game accually have a resolution around 4096x96, so what you see here are the font textures resized down to something around 128x128 I would image (about 1 pixels width per letter), and that is why you can't see the text and only a boarder. (Will fix this later)

But if you would like to try it again on your P4 with windows XP, you could only press "Y" when the game stops loading, the text that should be seen here is "Press 'Y' To enter game, 'N' to enter editor."

[Rasmus]

I had a friend try it on his windows Vista: Worked without any problems!

The thing is that I really need to sit down at a computer with these problems and start searching for the bug.
I have another friend that I could talk to that have Windows 7, if he is experiencing the same problems I may be able to move the source to his computer and have it fixed in a short time..

I will return with an answar as soon as I have gotten some..

(I have also posted and asked for help at the gamedev forums http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums ... _id=579383)

[Bit]

I just had odd hangups in my latest clone and did it solve that way:
I used interrupt-timers (thx to Allegro) and caught the time stealer that way:

Code: Select all

lasttime = timer();
badroutine();
if (timer()>lasttime+tolerance)
  int stop=1;   // breakpoint here 

That way I came deeper and deeper to the real timestealer and slapped the bug.

[Rasmus]

Good idea bit! There is a problem with the timers in the debug-version now, and that is that they calculate the medium time over 60 frames, if one frame hangs up this "hanguptime" will only be added over 60 frames.. I could make a output textfile that describes when one frametime exceeds the last frame rendered with a certain tolerance. This could really help alot!

[Rasmus]

Debuger version 3, still no luck in finding the problem. In this version it is possible to disable the deferred rendering and let the engine render directly to the backbuffer, it will be downgrade in graphic, but this should make it posible for a little bit older computers to run the game.
I have also inserted a output textfile (debug.txt) that will be filled in by the game as it runs, what I have done here is that every time it takes double time to render a frame in comperesment to the previous frame rendered, it will fill in all the timer details in debug.txt so that it is posible to backtrack and see why specificly that frame took so long time to render.
Before starting the game it is now also posible to read Beowuufs story about Idaio, here you can switch beetween the champions and take a look on how the future layout could look like.

Direct link: http://dmtribute.webs.com/Files/DMT2/De ... Debug3.rar

[Beastman666]

1) Test of Version 0.006 on Old PC after having been told to press "Y" when black screen appears:



If pressing escape, I get a blue screen with some (but not all) option boxes. No Text.

2) Test of Version 006 Debug3 on Old PC. The game starts I get to the character screen. I see the character in his "home" and the two arrow buttons. To the left is a stange bar running from top to button (I guess its a scroll bar for a characters history) When I choose a character he steps out, but there is no history (text) and the scroll bar disappears. After that I'm at a loss. I can't figure out what to do next. There is start game button. The only thing I can do is sending the character back "home".

3) No that my wife is away from MY (*cough* she would say her) Laptop, I will try Debug Version 3 there. Infos coming soon...

[Rasmus]

Press "Space"

[Rasmus]

Replace version 3 with 3b, this one has more accurate timers:
http://dmtribute.webs.com/Files/DMT2/De ... ebug3b.rar

I did a little change in how the timers are caluculated. Before I didn't think of that the graphic card can buffer its work, meaning that something that takes 0.1ms for the cpu accually can take a lot more time for the gpu. So I inputed a little stop in the program, forcing the cpu to loop until the gpu are done rendering, in this way the timers comes out correctly! Hopefully this will give me a answer in where too look after Beastmans problem.

Note:
The program only writes to the debug.txt file when the frame rendered takes double time in comperesment to the last frame rendered.
The program only writes to the debug.txt file when one of the debug timers are enabled.
The "gpuwait" only comes into action when one of the debug timers are enabled, this command may slow down the fps alittle.

[Beastman666]

I have had the chance to test Version 006 and Version 006 Debug3b at work and can confirm that it is not a Win7 problem. Machine specs: Core Duo T9300, 4 GB RAM, Nvidia 8600MGT, Win7 32bit. Runs smooth. No problems at all. So perhaps its a Nvidia-driver issue. At work I run an old driver (v195.62). On both of my home machines I use the newest one available (v258.96). More information this evening...