KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

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King of Worms
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Re: KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

Post by King of Worms »

Thanks god for backups... Ive just changed a directory name, than changed it back, and all materials got messed up. Textures, normals, height maps, oclusion maps, all disconected from each other just a total mess. I restore the project now from a unity package I created 12 days back. And the changes during the 12 days are stored on the other place, so I might be able to merge those and get back to normal state of the mod.

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pango
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Re: KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

Post by pango »

Hi KoW,
I found another painting with wrong orientation:
wrong orientation.jpg
wrong orientation.jpg (176.75 KiB) Viewed 1357 times
Attachments
SAVE230.zip
(393.08 KiB) Downloaded 65 times
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When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
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King of Worms
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Re: KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

Post by King of Worms »

Much appreciated feedback Pango, thank you!
This is very hard to test just on my own, because these paintings are so rare to find

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King of Worms
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Re: KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

Post by King of Worms »

Ok, I have a bit of dillema on the release. Game core is progressing fast and Lacus is progressing fast with the new modding capabilities, so new options appear every moment. I can either wait until it settles, or just release it as it is now and add new features later. I think this is what I will do. Because its good to set a new base line of progress here aka RC4.

There will be always new things, and a progress, and its not ideal to wait too long and aim for a perfection.

So I just created new release candidate. Its quite a step up from last one.

Theres a complete new map system, more hud/menu files, better NPCs, better sprites, better artifacts and things Ive forgotten.
Ive decided to use the old textures from RC3 for now, because it will take longer than expected to get them to a new level and I dont want the whole package to be blocked by this. And honestly, Im quite content with how they appear, they are quite fine tuned as they are, eventho there are some "flaws" which can be also considered a matter of taste etc... whatever.

Ive also decided to use UNCOMPRESSED DFMOD setting for now. Ive tested BRIEFLY the new compression method which utilizes decompression on the fly of the chunks which are needed and Ive notices micro-stuttering while I was moving around some areas. The test was very shallow, and it will be tested more and in more depth, before final decission is made.

But for now, uncompressed just works and thats how RC4 will be distributed. RC5 might be different.

What Ive found out is, that using highest compression of RAR reduces the size of the whole package 4 times, yes!! So the distribution will be very simple and fast, and ppl just unpack the DFMOD on their disks to a final 4.8gb size.

I hope OSx and Linux users can unrar these files??


So the release date stands, this month...

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Azteca
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Re: KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

Post by Azteca »

King of Worms wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2019 9:12 pm I hope OSx and Linux users can unrar these files??[/b]
Yes, MacOS users have plenty of free tools that can do the job.
https://theunarchiver.com

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King of Worms
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Re: KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

Post by King of Worms »

Thanks for info!

Yesterday evening, small test and the micro-stutters were there even with uncompressed :D

Anyway, as Ive said, more tests are needed, and I dont like testing too much in this case :X because to do it properly, requires a lot of time, but I will do it, maybe during weekend.

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pango
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Re: KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

Post by pango »

King of Worms wrote: Fri Apr 26, 2019 9:08 am Yesterday evening, small test and the micro-stutters were there even with uncompressed :D
Well, I expect more micro-stutters with on-demand loading than with LZMA where everything was preloaded...
At least, on all computers that have enough physical memory for the whole working set to be loaded in; Otherwise things start to get swapped out and the performance is actually worse...
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Re: KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

Post by King of Worms »

Thats possible mate. I will try to run LZMA test and watch for microstutters in a Daggerfall city. Its possible they were always there and Ive not noticed as I have not payed attention to them.

I did a 1st batch of loading & initialization times comparing UNcompressed and LZ4

These tests were separated by the PC restart to keep all variables out of the game...

Result is that the initialization, one load to Dagger city, than one load to dungeon, opening inventory and load outside of the dungeon are EXACTLY the same time (UNcompressed vs LZ4)


So at least this is now confirmed somehow...

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MasonFace
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Re: KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

Post by MasonFace »

I'm pretty much done with the MOBs. I started uploading them last night and assumed it completed this morning, but when I checked this morning now that I'm at work, the file isn't there... I'll check when I get home and re-upload if necessary.

This update will feature all the enemies including the ghost and wraith and has emission maps for the ghost, wraith, fire atronach, and fire daedra only. The glowing red eyes, magic staffs, and magic effects for other MOBs will have to be masked by hand which is going to take a lot of time and I don't want to delay the release over just that. In fact, even though I believe it will have a huge impact on the final results and look fantastic, I just don't want to commit the time to doing it. If anyone else wants to finish off the emission maps, I would appreciate it. All the source PNGs will be uploaded and accessible to the community.

A word on the emission maps: The way TheLacus set up the emission system is sorta like how asset injection works in other cases. It checks the first record in an archive to see if it contains an emission map. If it does, then it will enable the emissive property. If there are frames in that archive that are missing an emission map, then it will insert the albedo map into the emission map slot. For this reason, MOBs that are self illuminating like the fire atronach and fire daedra only need their first emission frame inserted. Since the rest of the frames are absent, it will use the albedo map in the emission map slot and the MOB will be properly lit even when standing in a dark area as if he is emitting his own light source.

The caveat to this is that when you have only certain frames that you want to have emission maps, such as the red glowing self-illuminated eyes for the daedra and undead that are only visible from certain angles, then this method will require emission maps for every frame to ensure it doesn't put the albedo map into the emission map slot and make the whole sprite appear self illuminating. In order to prevent this, I'm using a tiny 1x1 black image and giving it the name of the frame that doesn't need any emission pixels just as a placeholder.

I just wanted to explain why the emission maps look so chaotic in the .rar file. :)
Of course the emission maps won't work until TheLacus' push request gets implemented into the main branch anyway, but the emission maps are there and ready for it when the time comes.

One last thing: I also recommend using the LZ4 compression, but it's your call.

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Re: KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

Post by King of Worms »

Hi mate, thanks for detail info! Im very much looking fwd the mobs and I might create the emission maps missing, why not .) Meaning, after I get used to the format you described here.

Last tests of LZ4 basically proved no difference between uncompressed in the terms of loading times, so I now tend to release in LZ4 as well. But I will make one last test with some tool which will monitor frame rates better and also re-test the legacy LZMA

Laters! ;)

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