Sword of Moonlight Forum
Sword Of Moonlight Games => Complete Games => Trismegistus => Topic started by: Holy_Diver on November 23, 2010, 01:18:38 pm
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Here (http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/Trismegistus/Downloads/TrismegistusEx.zip) is a trial/teaser for Trismegistus with Ex :cool:
It's not the official Trismegistus I want to go up for outsiders, but please try it / tell me what you think / if it works for you. Hopefully Todd and I will be able to integrate Ex into everything available on this website etc throughout this month, or next 30 days-ish anyway.
This package incorporates everything I think Som can do for Trismegistus at this time. There's just a few more things I wanna work on before an official release, including trying to get rid of the restart soft-requirement. Basically once you unpack the archive and run the game it will ask you to restart. You can either A) restart or B) until you do restart you'll have to edit the Trismegistus.ini file by hand and if you change your settings in game they won't be remembered.
I remember a day when putting anything new on your Windows OS meant you'd have to restart your computer, but now days you can pretty much run Windows for weeks until it finally crashes and you have to restart. So I do wanna get rid of this requirement one way or another. Personally I won't restart my computer for some program.... I'll as soon wait a month until I happen to restart, so...
It's not really a requirement that Ex work that way, but its the only way to make a game work out of a readonly drive, like a CDROM or a network share -- and also the only way to have a non-ascii .ini file name. The main reason I wanna do better somehow is because it doesn't work if the path to the folder has any non-ascii characters in it. The only prob is afaik the only way to make it work is to somehow replace an interface in an other process. I'm guessing it's possible but its a whole other level compared to the trickery Ex has indulged in so far.
I also wanna clean up some rough spots around the edgess that no one will likely ever see. And there is some trouble with shadows not blending correctly into fog, but I'm pretty sure there are no shadows in Trismegistus. The included SomEx.dll should look virtually identical whether your video card is Shader Model 2.0 or 3.0 (I reckon most of us have 4.0 or 5.0 cards these days, I really don't know) and I plan to add 1.0 (if possible) before done here and hopefully spruce up the other possible targets just in case anyone ever sees them.
The only problem I'm aware of is if you stand in a certain spot near the beginning of the game a phantom tower will pop into view in the distance over the wall, but its a really small spot. That tower is really the only thing in the game (first 6 maps or so anyway) that really dictated the draw distance. Normally (when extending the draw distance) it is visible from the starting point basically, I'd thought I'd gotten rid of it, but I'd noticed it still popped up in one specific spot earlier today. If Tom rebuilt the map with optimization disabled it would probably become a non-issue. The tower would still be there, but the problem is really that it pops in/out so. In fact I think if one map tile was just lowered .5m it might not show up either.
Maybe something could be done about the Status/Compass display options because I'm pretty sure Tom is not using them.
I used the debugger to explore many of the maps but not all. I reckon if you get that far into the game a glitch or two more won't deter you. Plus I don't wanna spoil everything for myself :rainbow:
The main improvements are:
-Smooth windows experience
-No sound dropout
-All around solid graphics (wysiwyg)
-Unlimited lamps / more vibrant lighting
-Further draw distance caps off sky (fog is same)
-Fog saturated stuff blends into the sky
-Cleaned up a handful of graphical eyesores
-A slew of little Ex features/bugfixes
-Probably much better performance
-Fonts come with game
Mainly there is a lot of quality stuff the untrained eye will probably totally miss even with a side by side comparison, but your subconscious will thank you I think.
The game can also be easily translated into other languages (http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/ex/lang/Trismegistus/) and I may look thru the script at some point inserting Unicode in place where it would seem to help (pretty quotes, arrow symbols, etc)
You may need this (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en)
Below is the Ex.ini configuration.
TRISMEGISTUS
[Boxart]
game_series = Trismegistus
game_title_with_sequel = Trismegistus
game_version = 1.1
game_edition = First Ed
game_year_published = 200X
;game_date_published =
game_first_edition_year = 200X
;game_first_edition_date =
game_legal = This game is a product of From Software's Sword of Moonlight KING'S FIELD Making Tool. It is not produced by nor is it endorsed by From Software.
game_auteur = Tom Eversole
game_thanks = From Software
[Author]
;This section is for authors especially. Players should not make
;changes without authorization from the author to do so. The values
;of these settings should not change if/when this file is trans-
;lated into different languages.
international_production_title = Trismegistus
software_company_name = Hguols
[Legacy]
;settings in this section override the settings in the game
;ini file. If this file or the game ini file is readonly (such
;as on a CD-ROM or part of a compressed archive) this section
;will have no effect. Any key value pair will be written over
;the initial ini file each time the game is played.
[Launch]
launch_title_to_use = Trismegistus
do_fix_controller_configuration = yes
do_fix_spelling_of_english_words = yes
[Folder]
;Uncomment this to save your game in your Saved Games folder
;for Vista users, and in your Application Data folder for pre-
;Vista Windows operating systems. This will be done by default
;if playing Dark Destiny from a CD-ROM.
;do_use_users_saved_games_folder = yes
;Alternatively you can manually specify a folder for your game
;by uncommenting and setting the following setting to the address
;of the folder you would like your games to be saved to. Environ-
;ment Variables (eg. %HOMEPATH%) will be expanded if set.
;saved_games_folder =
[Locale]
;Note: only Microsoft Windows defined locales are supported and
;may be required to be installed. Microsoft's "Locale Builder"
;custom locale creator can be supported on demand if need be.
;Locale settings are one iso639 language code and one iso3166
;country code separated by an underscore (ll_CC) with an optional
;@variant modifier, ie. (ll_CC@cyrillic)
;Eg. play in Japanese if your Windows locale is not Japansese
;locale_to_use_for_play = ja_JP
;your computer/user locale will be used by default
;locale_to_use_for_dates_and_figures =
do_use_builtin_locale_date_format = yes
do_use_builtin_english_by_default = yes
do_use_abbreviation_prefix = yes
[Window]
window_title_to_use = Trismegistus
restrict_aspect_ratio_to = 4:3
;Set to 9 for Direct3D 9 mode. Defaults to 7
directx_version_to_use_for_window = 9
shader_model_to_use = 3
do_force_fullscreen_inside_window = yes
do_auto_pause_window_while_inactive = yes
;This will keep your game from from changing to 640x480 resolution
;during the intro/ending screens and in game movies.
do_scale_640x480_modes_to_setting = yes
;1:1 (pixel perfect) mapping to your digital TV/monitor.
do_center_picture_for_fixed_display = no
;Under Direct3D 9 this puts the game in true fullscreen mode.
do_not_compromise_fullscreen_mode = no
;Might help interlaced TVs/monitors. Direct3D 9 only.
do_use_interlaced_scanline_ordering = no
;Disable "vsync" when set to yes. Direct3D 7 not yet supported.
do_force_immediate_vertical_refresh = no
[Option]
do_pause = yes
do_cursor = yes
do_mipmaps = yes
do_alphafog = yes
do_rangefog = yes
do_dither = yes
do_highcolor = yes
do_anisotropy = yes
do_lights = yes
do_sounds = yes
[Detail]
;set to 1 to disable anisotropic filtering.
;mipmaps_maximum_anisotropy = 1
;Ms wait before showing hourglass. Or 0 to disable.
cursor_presentation_timeout = 250
;Use 80% calibrated, 20% original Som parameters
lights_calibration_factor = 0.8
;number of Shader Model 1.x light calculations
lights_vs_1_x_unroll_x = 7
[Adjust]
sky_distance_multiplier = 1.7
sky_fadeline_multiplier = 0.8
[Bugfix]
do_fix_slowdown_on_save_data_select = yes
do_fix_graphics_device_interfacing = yes
do_fix_oversized_compass_needle = yes
do_fix_clipping_item_display = yes
do_fix_lighting_dropout = yes
do_fix_elapsed_time = yes
;EOF/Enjoy Trismegistus~
Maybe you can help with the dates?
UPDATE: If you're considering downloading this at this point, there is a patch download (patch.zip) on the next page. Probably should've attached it to the top post, but didn't.
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UPDATE: The "spectral tower" is actually not on the starting map thankfully. It's on the "other side" map.
Also I'm pretty sure there are supposed to be numbers beside Intellect/Magic Ability Level (for the record) ... I will have to take a look at the translation file to see what's up with that. It's just a trial, but I will let you know when you can download a new translation file from the translation website to fix this :sweatdrop:
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Here is a fix for the Intellect/Magic Ability parameters...
You just need to add "do_use_contextual_prefixes = yes" under/around "do_use_abbreviation_prefix = yes".
I guess this feature had never been tested thoroughly... there were some bugs, that require the attached SomEx.dll to be copied over the one in the EX/SYSTEM folder.
Probably "Magic Ability Level" should be translated to Magic Ability.... with the correct fonts there is no space between that and the number when 2 digits.
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I didnt even notice this was here until I read a different post of yours.
I am going to download it when I get home and see how it goes. Will leave you some feedback so you know all went well.
Good job.
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It's taking me a little longer than I'd anticipated to prepare a final version of Trismegistus, so I recommend downloading it/checking it out in the meantime. Just remember with the final release time comes to open regedit, and search for "IniFileMapping" (Local Machine) and delete any keys there that look related to Som games.
If I can get the lights back to looking ok I will try to upload a new copy of SomEx.dll (along with a new Ex.ini file) with some of the recent improvements later today or tomorrow.
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I intend to do some further work with Trismegistus' sky. I'm going to use the images.key file to replace the sky texture with one that is just double resolution with four copies of the texture (assuming it wraps) in each quadrant, which should have the effect of making the clouds smaller / less pixelated. I'm also going to try to see if the halo/band texture can be replaced so it can be made softer towards the top...
And anyway there is one last touch I don't know enough about to bother with, but I know some of you do. Basically I'd like a new dome .mdo file (I'm pretty sure they are .mdo) with a fair amount of polygons to the following specs...
Logging sky Y-coordinates...
1.875
1.72276
1.72276
1.875
1.72276
1.72276
1.875
1.72276
1.72276
1.875
1.72276
1.72276
1.875
1.72276
1.72276
1.875
1.72276
1.72276
1.875
1.72276
1.72276
1.875
1.72276
1.72276
1.28921
1.72276
1.72276
1.28921
1.72276
1.28921
1.28921
1.72276
1.72276
1.28921
1.72276
1.28921
1.28921
1.72276
1.72276
1.28921
1.72276
1.28921
1.28921
1.72276
1.72276
1.28921
1.72276
1.28921
1.28921
1.72276
1.72276
1.28921
1.72276
1.28921
1.28921
1.72276
1.72276
1.28921
1.72276
1.28921
1.28921
1.72276
1.72276
1.28921
1.72276
1.28921
1.28921
1.72276
1.72276
1.28921
1.72276
1.28921
0.640367
1.28921
1.28921
0.640367
1.28921
0.640367
0.640367
1.28921
1.28921
0.640367
1.28921
0.640367
0.640367
1.28921
1.28921
0.640367
1.28921
0.640367
0.640367
1.28921
1.28921
0.640367
1.28921
0.640367
0.640367
1.28921
1.28921
0.640367
1.28921
0.640367
0.640367
1.28921
1.28921
0.640367
1.28921
0.640367
0.640367
1.28921
1.28921
0.640367
1.28921
0.640367
0.640367
1.28921
1.28921
0.640367
1.28921
0.640367
-0.125
0.640367
0.640367
-0.125
0.640367
-0.125
-0.125
0.640367
0.640367
-0.125
0.640367
-0.125
-0.125
0.640367
0.640367
-0.125
0.640367
-0.125
-0.125
0.640367
0.640367
-0.125
0.640367
-0.125
-0.125
0.640367
0.640367
-0.125
0.640367
-0.125
-0.125
0.640367
0.640367
-0.125
0.640367
-0.125
-0.125
0.640367
0.640367
-0.125
0.640367
-0.125
-0.125
0.640367
0.640367
-0.125
0.640367
-0.125
I'm assuming it's a half sphere (inward facing) starting at -0.125 and with a radius of whatever the highest number in the list is plus 0.125.
I'm not sure how many polygons is ideal, however the ones that come with Som are squares just about as tall as the screen, and about 8 per the entire 360 degrees. So I figure we can do better. At least four times that.
I'm (third time's the charm) not just shouting into the wind about this. I really want/expect one of you to step up to the plate.
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I found out a little bit about skies last night / and managed to tweak the first map of Trismegistus to great effect, though I still need to formalize a lot of the stuff I did.
A) The band/halo around the sky is because the sky background doesn't actually go all the way up to the top.... the top is capped off with either the fog colour or some fixed background colour (probably fixed) ... it might definitely be interesting to use the fog colour instead as some kind of extension, though Ex doesn't yet have a per map framework in the .ini file it's definitely doable since Ex does know what map is loaded. Actually there must be three parts I'm thinking, because I don't know otherwise how the cap is rendered. The halo seems to get blended over.
B) All parts are in the .mdo file, and I only see two textures. Which means the cap must be a solid colour defined somewhere. Complicates preparing a .mdo file anyway a little.
C) The band/halo not blending seems to not be intentional. It happens because colorkey knocks out the top row of pixels which should be blended instead, but they fall below the knockout level (less than 8,8,8)
I can fix it by adding a colorkey disable fix to the images key, but I want to see if there is not a more systemic reason for this. I think anyway the dev team did not intend for the colorkey to be interpreted the way it actually is. They only specify to knockout 0,0,0 but for 15bit textures that's <8,8.8 ... so I wanna see if maybe the sky textures are 24bit and if so whether or not they are in both 16bpp and 32bpp mode. If possible it may help to distinguish between the two types and apply colorkey differently. If the textures drop down to 15bit in 16bpp however the only way to know for sure is to track the texture through the GDI interfaces where the colour conversion likely occurs. Anyway, if things go well it may offer a fix for holes in some files like the Triple Fang. There's probably a good chance though more files previously without probs would start sprouting black pixels where they don't belong, but anyway... it's worth investigating. It may also be I that I should be tracking the colorkeyenable state... but it's caused probs in the past. It may be it's only supposed to apply to textures and not blit operations. Will have to revisit that as well.
D) Raising the resolution of the sky will definitely help I think, but it dawned on me the unique way the sky swims like a flame might be lost with a higher res model... so I wonder if the design was intentional. Still I think a higher res sky would on the whole be better, and might just make the swimming more subtle. It may even be possible the animation code has the swimming built in, but I more suspect it's just a side effect of linear interpolating the texture versus spherical interpolation. You could also probably jitter the sky vertices a little to give them some more swirls. Kind of reminds me of the animated water in the opening area of KF2.
E) Bumping the mist texture up to 512x512 (by making a 2x2 quilt) really made a difference in terms of a polished feel. It probably seems to move faster. But let's be honest, the skies are more like an etheral snow globe than a real sky of any type. It definitely seems to work with Trismegistus to create a haunting / lush environment, and it felt good to see everything just so for the first time.
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Actually on second thought, it's not much trouble to do a rolling fog, like across a landscape. However I think a point sampled fog would be easier to manage. I think ground fog tends to settle at a natural elevation and level out. But I'm not positive. I can see like outdoors fog rolling across the landscape. I'd have to look outside on a foggy day to get a really good idea. The only trouble with a rolling fog model is how to deal with the edges once you want to stop the fog. Basically if you stopped the fog suddenly it would still ramp up/down to the next pixel on the fog map, so you'd need to hide those areas. Whereas with a flat shaded fog so to speak it would just clip off. Though you'd also need to hide that. Ideally on a 200x200 map you could divide a tile between a wall, but I'm not positive that will always work.
There is also the question of whether you want a smooth fog like the fog we have, or like a dry ice fog where you can clearly see where the fog terminates. For a dry ice fog noise could be added to make it appear to boil a little.
My idea for this stuff is to do everything on a 200x200 map, and use the 56 pixel border (256x256 total) to store meta info about the texture, like what kind of fog you want, and where the elevation of the map is, units etc. I'd go ahead and implement this tomorrow-ish if I had a test file. Maybe when I start mucking around with the .mpx files I'll toss together a tool to generate an elevation map from the .mpx file. That would give you a kind of place to start anyway. An interactive painter (where the changes become immediately visible) would be nice but probably won't come for a while... not without a custom map editor anyway.
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Sorry to report that this doesnt work for me. I tried to run the trismegistus application and nothing happened other than getting two registry edit boxes, and a restart prompt.
There was alot of loading going on though. I couldnt really use any other apps until it was finished and when it was nothing happened when i tried to run trismegistus.
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Holy, try John's custom sky out, it was a lot better than the sky that came with SOM and might have what you need.
www.swordofmoonlight.com/SOMTools/CustomModels/Map/NewSky.zip
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Sorry to report that this doesnt work for me. I tried to run the trismegistus application and nothing happened other than getting two registry edit boxes, and a restart prompt.
There was alot of loading going on though. I couldnt really use any other apps until it was finished and when it was nothing happened when i tried to run trismegistus.
The dialog boxes are normal. It should be fine if you answer no to both. There shouldn't be any odd loading behavior. But you should check in task manager to see if there are not still two processes going called like Trismegistus.exe and Trismegistus.bin. The window doesn't manifest until after Som's drawn the first screen. If there is indeed something wrong then we need to get to the bottom of it. Make sure you don't have a window open that you missed. Something that often happens on Vista is the registry/restart window gets hidden from view. I've gone to considerable lengths to keep things from getting lost in the background. Ex even monitors the launcher in case it's closed via the taskmanager (causing the actual game to become an orphan process)
Anyway, I'll be uploading a patch for this tonight which no longer uses the registry/prompts. I think probably there should be some timeout on the window so the processes don't get stuck in the background because of some weird behavior that doesn't technically manifest as an error. I'll see if I can reproduce this behavior on another computer later tonight.
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Holy, try John's custom sky out, it was a lot better than the sky that came with SOM and might have what you need.
www.swordofmoonlight.com/SOMTools/CustomModels/Map/NewSky.zip
I'm aware of this. But we don't need a custom sky, as much as one that is as close to Som's skies as possible. And anyway I only asked because I feel like I shouldn't have to do absolutely everything and it's something I know for a fact you all are way more comfortable with / better equipped for than I. I won't losea any sleep over the 8 sided sky dome being in place, but games would look better if the horizon line better approximated a spherical curve than an octagon.
In general I try to avoid doing custom modeling stuff. I see offers now and then to help contribute with new models but whenever something is fundamentally needed it's never sexy enough or whatever to warrant attention.
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Here is a patch with some of the latest features etc. Please see if it magically works for you / let me know. After copying it over your files, it's best to open regedit (Start->Run) and search for IniFileMapping (local machine) and delete any keys there with familiar Som names.
This version uses what should be identical to Som's lights for objects afaik. I'm really not crazy about the lights (they really have so many problems) but they'll do until I can give them a proper/studied treatment here in the next few days.
I will test this release on a machine which is not my dev station asap. Hopefully tonight. If every release has new probs on other peoples machines I'll have to work out a logging system (do_log or whatever) for non-debug builds so we can get a better idea of where things went wrong.
FYI: Will edit patch attachment in...
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I had no problem at all with this patched version playing and what have you. There are a few issues though if I can recount them all which are new to this computer for me / could use some work.
A) There are some sound issues which need investigation. I often hear a pop after some sound effects, though not always. And the volume seems unreliable. Might just be the USB soundcard (cheap FM transmitter) or my audio system.
B) My monitor actually went off while playing. Maybe because I was using a joypad :doh:
C) There is some z-fighting, especially where the square column tiles meet the outdoor wall tiles. I'm pretty sure the walls aren't flat against the columns, so that seems really weird. All I can think to do is try to get a better depth buffer. My performance was pretty good, but I kind of expected this newer computer to out perform my older portable machine, but it probably doesn't.
D) The vsync (off) setting I turned on in the patches config file was really intolerable. I don't recommend turning that on for your players in the Ex.ini file. I was kinda under the impression most everyone looking for peek performance turns that off these days, but that doesn't seem to be an option on this computer.
Anyway, I recommend game authors test Ex thoroughly while developing your games, otherwise you might mind yourself with a longer testing cycle.
I hope this build works for you guys, otherwise it's going to be a head ache to troubleshoot stuff.
So I can personally vouch for Windows7 and XP SP3.
UPDATE: The sound probs did go away when using the onboard sound card. Should maybe look into forcing software audio on (if what I was experiencing wasn't software)
The controls in the menu are also really shoddy. Should really try to figure out why that sometimes is. I hope it's correctable.
Also noticed on the big screen the New Game / Continue bitmaps overlap one another while making your choice.
EDITED: On two different keyboards I'm unable to hold down the dash key while moving say backward and turn say left at the same time. The left turn doesn't register. I seriously doubt that is the keyboard hardware. I hope it's not a bug in Som. I never noticed it before, but it might make using a controller to drive the keyboard input impossible / not be good in the keyboard dept period. Might end up in the odd situation of using a keyboard to drive a fake controller :rolleyes:
UPDATE: I noticed one keyboard I can't turn right instead of left, but I'm pretty sure on the other I can. If it's a limitation in the keyboards, that seriously makes me wonder how PC gamers possibly manage to play games. My portables keyboard definitely should not be limited anyway. Will have to check the raw input sometime.
UPDATE: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_anti-ghosting
I looked at a ton of reviews for keyboards and the gaming keyboards had like at most 6 or 7 simultaneous keys allowed, where my keyboard bolted into my gaming portable only allows 2-3?? I wonder if it can be replaced. Still 6 or 7 is crap. We have 10 fingers... that should be the bare minimum?? And "gaming" boards should allow for at least 20 (I can hold down four keys with one finger)
EDITED: My computer/motherboard is as far as I know identical to this (http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-MSI-Megabook-GX700-Extreme-Gaming-Notebook.7841.0.html) one (without any of the ridiculous decals etc) but the review does not mention sometimes you can only press two keys (including the spacebar and arrow keys) ,,, if those "extreme gaming" editions have a special keyboard I might look for a spare :crying:
...
This (http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=118686.0) is ridiculous... it's like we're living in the stone age. When's the last time you heard 8bit???? Apparently this is mainly a problem with the up arrow key -- presumably not the numpad up. I may try to at least re-map some of my keys (I had to pull half the keys off and shuffle them around / monkey with the key in the registry that lets you rewire you keyboard to be able to program proficiently after buying this thing)
The crappy USB keyboard I bought as is out of a rummage bin when Circuit City was going out of business (for my PS3) is probably hopeless (funny how saying "I bought for my" makes you sound really possessive, but afaik there's no other way to put it)
I just don't understand why every key doesn't have its own wire / channel on the bus... it's certainly doable. Back on topic...
Back offtopic: while looking back in that MSI forum keyboard thread for the model, I just noticed in the last post the guy said he fixed the problem by choosing some preset in the bios??? Will have to try that I guess...
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Gonna download this at work and see how it goes here.
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Loaded it at work, pc was missing a dll which i replaced.
tried relaunching and now the .exe does nothing when i double click it.
this is SP3 XP
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^Did you apply the patch.zip attachment?
The XP SP3 machine I tested the patch on (worked fine) has practically nothing installed on it. I wonder what the hell the prob could be if there really is one.
It might be a driver related thing. Though the only thing I can think of is the driver rejecting textures with an alpha channel for GDI usage. My drivers just ignore the alpha channel, but the software renderer rejects them. Docs say that is undefined.
If you get in touch with me I can give you a debug build with extensive logging enabled that will generate a huge file / hopefully point to where things are going south (mainly by whatever the last log entry says)
PS: I setup Ex to promote the zbuffer as high as possible up to 32bits, and that pretty much fixed the z-fighting, though that machine still feels a little dirty... I'm guessing the hardware is just skimpy (ION chip)
Need to figure out how to keep the computer from shutting off the monitor (and probably eventually going into auto-sleep) while the joypad is the only input. I suspect that's just an XP thing. Only I can't get at the joypad interface last I tried... though I was able to overwrite individual entrypoints in the virtual function table!! So I can probably just keep doing that. I suspect I can also fix the jankiness of the menu press detection by switching over to buffered input. I hope so anyway, because that's the best idea I got. And that is a serious bug.
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I had applied everything, when you get a sec ill bug you for the version with the logging.
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Here is an HD screenshot for everyone who is not having luck with this :razz:
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Looks really good, would love to have it working.
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Looks really good, would love to have it working.
It works fine for me, so someone is going to have to work for that (an enticing screenshot is about all I have to offer at this point)
EDITED: I sort of wonder if maybe the download didn't make it up in one piece, or maybe I left something out. Other than that the only thing I can think of which might be different on your PCs is the system locale. But that shouldn't be a problem, even if the shift_jis codepage is not installed, which I reckon is almost by default, because browsers always offer it as an encoding. Graphics drivers maybe... if not some memory bug with random effects.
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Here is an HD screenshot for everyone who is not having luck with this :razz:
I think this is actually a pretty nice vantage point. I will save my game here and maybe try to improve upon the quality this way and that over time. The plants in the distance are kinda disembodied for instance and other stuff. I kinda wonder if it might be an effective technique to try to do a higher quality render when the player is not moving. While they are moving everything is a blur anyway. Though I'm not sure at this point where you'd gain the extra cycles from, and if the framerate dropped considerably animated stuff would suffer, though technically I suppose you could skimp on anything that's moving, because it will also be naturally blurry (edited: though that would probably call for a special screenshot extension; so to do best quality for animated stuff also for the shot... nothing fancy in this screenshot though; ie. ~2 posts up)
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Can you upload the version with the logging so I can try to troubleshoot my problem?
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Can you upload the version with the logging so I can try to troubleshoot my problem?
I'd rather pass it to you over messenger or email if necessary. Just on principle don't wanna a debug build being confused for anything helpful. If I'm visible on Live messenger for more than two minutes I'm available (regardless whatever it says my status is... it has a mind of its own)
I'll need about 5 minutes to prepare it.
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Here is a kit you can try at your leisure based on tonight's debug session.
I think the last launcher I had given you was no good in the logs dept, but it shouldn't matter.
Anyway the debug launcher/dll in this archive should work, and should generate a clog.txt file for some previously unlogged territory between the remote thread that hooks the .ini API and the point at which Som would normally load Ex (instead of various DirectX libraries etc)
The bug, whatever it is anyway, seems to reside within that space.
My clog.txt looks like this...
Redirecting std::wclog to clog.txt
Initializing off back of launcher
Installing API hooks courtesy Easyhook library...
API hooks installed (presumably)
Exiting DllMain entrypoint
GetPrivateProfileIntA(C:\Users\Michael\Saved Games\SoM\Trismegistus\Trismegistus.ini)
GetPrivateProfileIntA(C:\Users\Michael\Saved Games\SoM\Trismegistus\Trismegistus.ini)
DeleteObject: hdi object is 2F054E94(Bitmap)
Initializing virtual memory state...
Virtual Memory Page mapped at (thread lost)
SomEx initialized
Direct3D9 initialized
Software Device Library RGB9Rast_1.dll loaded succefully
DirectDraw initialized
...
Llog.txt...
Redirecting std::wclog to llog.txt
Creating subprocess thread main
Subprocess thread main created
OverwriteString()
OverwriteString()
OverwriteString()
OverwriteString()
OverwriteString()
OverwriteString()
OverwriteString()
OverwriteString()
Injecting SomEx.dll in order to perform early hooking
Sending code: c0000001...
Awaiting answer...
Answer received (a0000001)
Sending code: c0000002...
Awaiting answer...
Answer received (a0000002)
Sending code: c0000000...
Awaiting answer...
Answer received (a0000000)
Resuming subprocess thread main
Exited subprocess thread main
Please let me know how yours goes.
PS: Will try to remember to remove this attachment before too long.
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Here is a better rendition of the previous screenshot. I may do a better one with the do_antialias (good for screenshots, but not ready for play) extension, though I like the flame in this one. The flame animations are not normally synchronized afaik, but those two pedestals they seem to just happen to be so. Funny, twice when taking the screenshot the flame disappeared. I've never noticed it do that... though I suppose you might not notice unless things slowed down. Weird either way.
I took care of the major artifacts in the previous image by adding a lodbias setting to the images key. Only one level (-1) was necessary to fix the grass and the tree. The grass seems a little too sharp, but better than having disembodied portions. I think it may be possible to do multisampling (sub-pixel sampling) only for specific objects (versus fullscreen) which may be more practical than doing everything... you'd still incur the cost of a fullscreen copy (with D3D9 anyway) and allocating multiple depth buffers... but at least you would not be rendering everything 4 times or more (more or less) ... anyway, I think that's about the only thing that would really help the grass at a distance. Still I think the colorkey textures are pretty effective / in most cases the way to go for delicate filament like features.
Something like this might look nice in the Gamefaqs (gamespot) gallery if there's nowhere better to hang it. Just don't tell anyone it's the product of major league hacking :evil:
PS: It's not a bad concept shot for Trismegistus either. The NPC in the background I think Tom never meant to be visible. He's not there anyway when you walk over to that side. He adds to the overall mysteriousness kinda, and in the screenshot anyway (if you let your imagination run wild) could even fill the shoes of the player character (from a 3rd person pov) almost being watched by "The all seeing Eye of Horus" :geno:
EDITED: I notice a little speck under the tree leaves. Dunno if it's actually something, or a stray texel from the leaves. Photo edit it away and clone tool the cut across the tree top out, and you'd end up with something close to perfection (by Som standards)
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nothing new, replaced the .dll and the .exe to no avail.
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nothing new, replaced the .dll and the .exe to no avail.
Well the build was not meant to be a fix. I would like to know what your logs now look like. Please IM me asap if you can.
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attached
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attached
Does the clog.txt file look right for you when you open it with Wordpad? The attached version seems mangled somehow. I can still make it out in a hex editor.
Anyway, it looks like everything is going normal, but Som itself is crashing before it even gets to reading its ini file.
SomEx goes on ahead and installs all the hooks first thing at this point, even though only the ini file read API needs to be hooked earlier than normal. So it's possible there are many other hooks being called before SomEx is properly initialized which might be causing trouble, because I hadn't even thought to look (because I haven't had any trouble)
So anyway, I will add some log stuff to the top of every hook and actually check to make sure the hooks install, though not installing shouldn't be fatal. If none of those log entries show up then there is something wrong with the hooking process itself. Which would probably be because of other something installed (or possibly not installed) on your computer.
UPDATE: I don't see anything that could possibly cause Som to crash before getting to the ini API (which doesn't show up in your clog.txt) so I'm pretty stumped. I'm attaching another SomEx.dll with some additional log information. I'm hoping there is just something stupid going on this might shed some light upon. However my guess is there is something installed on your computer that's getting in the way. So many things people install on their computers these days hook into every single process and muck around with stuff.... pretty much the same way SomEx mucks around with Som. Microsoft even provides an API for that.
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I think I've got it :wink:
Try this...
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I think I've got it :wink:
Try this...
I'm going to put an error box in there about a missing Project.dat file, and make it possible to put the the project.dat file somewhere else / use a .som file instead if present. The project.dat file seems a little out of place in the game folder.
PS: This...
EX::CreateFileA()
EX::ReadFile()
EX::CloseHandle()
EX::CreateFileA()
EX::CloseHandle()
EX::CreateFileA()
EX::CloseHandle()
Is the only stuff that showed up in the logs before the point I knew Som wasn't getting to, and I started thinking about what files those could be. Obviously one was project.dat. I'll probably look to see what the other is, if it's even Som related.
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That did the trick, at least at work, I assume it will work properly when I get home.
This is cool, can't wait to rerun through this game.
Thanks for the update on this Holy :)
Maybe I can get Tom to give it a go.
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Well I said before it was very possible I'd left a file or something out, but I did not think the file would be so obvious. It's easy to forget about that dinky project.dat file, but as a Som vet you probably could've figured that one out yourself if you'd stopped to think about it.
A number of very good things came out of this interlude anyway, so it was not all for naught. I've found some bugs, and thought about some nooks and crannies of the execution space-time-continuum or whatever which I'd previously overlooked or taken for granted.
I don't think Tom is involved enough to bother trying out this version. Unless you just can't wait, he'd probably be better off waiting until I have a public release ready. I thought I'd be able to crank this stuff out easily in a months time, but once I got started and the nitpicking began I've probably added at least 10 major features since then and might have 10 more before things are ready.
I added some code that pops up a message box when there is a file accessed which does not exist. It only fields the ANSI version of the file API which Som mostly uses (Ex uses Unicode) almost exclusively. I'd like to have it do this by default, but it will probably have to be an extension, because with Trismegistus there are like a few files missing when the game starts and maybe up to 10 on the first level. I don't know if any of them represent bugs in the game, but it's a good tool anyway for figuring out what files (by name) are missing from your project after you build it.
I also noticed, because the internationalization library also uses the ANSI API, the locale switching code was not working correctly. Turned out some assumptions (which are not documented) that I'd made had turned out to be wrong...
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2005/02/01/364707.aspx?PageIndex=2
I'd figured LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT was the default language (locale) chosen in the control panel, and LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT was the native locale of your copy of Windows... like English US for a copy of Windows purchased at a US retail outlet. But turns out anyway (see link) that wasn't even close. The names of course make no sense (thanks MS)
Anyway, I'm curious whether or not people are generally able to play this version without your computer coming to a crawl. I have a feeling for a while anyway the Ex versions might require fairly beefy gaming setups to play. We could also replace the non-Ex downloads with Ex enabled builds which should offer some basic usability stuff like a window etc, but incur no additional performance overhead. A tweaking guide will also probably be in order until I can work out some way to give people multiple quality levels. That will require at the minimum I suspect setting up a console window.
Of course I suspect 90% of the performance overhead just comes from every single triangle being sent to the graphics hardware every single frame... versus uploading them once. The transport of the data actually takes a lot longer than rendering it, much less preparing it, which Som does from scratch more or less every time it draws something. So anyway, once Ex is in a better position to correct this kind of behavior more and more more or less entirely, performance will become pretty much a non issue, short of deploying really spectacular effects.
UPDATE: I decided to make the missing file dialog opt out... do_missing_file_dialog_ok=yes in the Output section disables it. Hopefully that will lead to better games. The missing files will still be recorded in the console (when that's ready) if the message box is disabled. Will still handle important files like Project.dat individually asap.
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I just spent like (god who really knows) many hours trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with the volume levels with the sound fixes applied, and then I find this (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.directx_sdk.idirectsound8.idirectsound8.duplicatesoundbuffer%28VS.85%29.aspx) little chestnut (whilst basically trying to figure out if duplicate buffers can even have independent volume levels)
There is a known issue with volume levels of duplicated buffers. The duplicated buffer will play at full volume unless you change the volume to a different value than the original buffer's volume setting. If the volume stays the same (even if you explicitly set the same volume in the duplicated buffer with a IDirectSoundBuffer8::SetVolume call), the buffer will play at full volume regardless. To work around this problem, immediately set the volume of the duplicated buffer to something slightly different than what it was, even if you change it one millibel. The volume may then be immediately set back again to the original desired value.
Wtf right?! :ninja:
UPDATE: This "feature" probably also affects Som because it tends to use the same volume level for everything. It also fixes the bug around 0 volume level which I was getting before. To add more insult to injury though while choosing volume fudge factor you have to be careful not to go above 0 or below the silence level.
SetVolume(vol-100<DSBVOLUME_MIN?vol+100:vol-100); //geez
SetVolume(vol);
Brilliant :rolleyes:
UPDATE: I think all that's needed is to synchronize the volume of paused sounds with the new volume levels whenever the volume is changed in order to perfect everything in this dept. I am planning to setup a "sounds" key asap so individual sounds can be tweaked. I'd thought the volume level was too high for many of them, but I think mainly that was the DirectSound "feature" described above defaulting to maximum volume levels. So maybe the sounds key won't be super necessary just yet.
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FLIP... Need ... To try...
Looks effing nice! If that solved Todd's problem, then it'l probably solve mine. I'm gonna dl and tell u how it went soon.
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FLIP... Need ... To try...
Looks effing nice! If that solved Todd's problem, then it'l probably solve mine. I'm gonna dl and tell u how it went soon.
Don't try to download the original 60MB one... it hasn't been updated / won't be. I suppose the project.dat thing should be amended to the top post, but anyway that's all you need. Though the patch buried in here somewhere should also add a bit of value. Still not quite up there with what I've got so far on my end. But if you wanna check it out, by all means.
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It looks great, and the project.dat worked for me.
Still getting pieces vanishing at 1600x800 though, check screenshot.
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It looks great, and the project.dat worked for me.
Still getting pieces vanishing at 1600x800 though, check screenshot.
That's not a 4:3 aspect ratio (it's 2:1!!) so you must've edited the .ini file by hand, because there is an extension which should block that resolution from being available in the OPTIONS (unless you started with it via the ini file like I said)
I plan to allow widescreen in DoM and KF1 if possible though pieces disappearing will still happen because theirs nothing to prevent it other than the maps themselves.
Like I've said I plan to correct this largely in my next major effort... like probably in 6 months at the soonest. But (short of a remake) there will always be stuff that disappears pretty much at least until I can peg down every single event triggered object in Som's memory so to know its exact location / if it's hidden or not.
EDITED: BTW, if you cropped the screenshot just to be confusing, stuff will still disappear along the edges and sometimes because of map optimization crapness, however this is the first instance I've seen of a map tile disappearing in Trismegistus (provided that's in 4:3)
PS: Forgive me if I'm being ridiculously gullible :ninja:
PPS: Yes I just noticed you said "at" .... :rolleyes:
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Hahaha, no i wouldnt do that but its funny to think of doing it just for laughs. :biggrin:
Yeah sorry, i did scale it up. Look forward to your next major steps (will one of them include a specular display? :5innocent2:
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Yeah, specular can be done. But its not something you can just turn on most likely... unless you just want everything looking metalic-ish. If you prepare a .mdo file you think should have specular I will add it to my test project and see if it actually retains specular material properties. Just set the specular components to something distinctive. Otherwise you'll have to demonstrate a familiarity with Ex and the images.key file before I can justify going to the trouble. It shouldn't be too hard to setup.
Or even easier to start... prepare two .mdo files that should be identical except for their specular material properties, and upload those so I can run them thru a binary diff programe, like vbindiff (or you could do that yourself on your end)
If they are different then I will do with them as described above. If you wanna do multitexture specular (specmap) then you definitely need to figure out how the Ex key framework works / have a working knowledge of Ex.
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Only just noticed today (whilst screwing around with fonts) the protagonist is a lady / the girl in some of the intro pictures.
PS: I'd be really interested in hearing about Tom's process producing the pictures for Trismegistus. I've seen Som produce some pretty psychedelic stuff, but there's just almost no rhyme or reason to the colours going on there. Still they look very tasteful / inviting... even compared to Ex's graphical enhancements :cool:
PPS: It's difficult to imagine how lame Som would be without these games. It would definitely be more difficult justifying devoting the bulk of several years of my life to :hearton:
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Yesterday the D3D9 fonts began disappearing after playing for a little while. I was a bit disheartened / clueless what could be going on.
Anyway, this morning I kinda went thru the fonts related code to see what I could do. I'm still not sure what is going on, but adding some error handling code which basically rebuilds the fonts on failure, and partitioning the fonts so they don't share each others resources, seems to have hardened things. My guess is my graphics card is just chronically out of memory or something (until restart) though it may be there is a real resource error somewhere. Anyway, it's a good deal this prob was recognized/stabilized before too late.
My latest MXM graphics module may be showing signs of degradation (as its line is known to do) ... if it burns up like the last I'll probably just have to keep finding new ones until they're no longer available or something else gives :rolleyes:
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I stared at this probably for the best of the entire afternoon.
The lights with HDR look good as long as you have some constant attenuation. 1 is a good number because it means the light never gets brighter than its colour. If you don't have any, the light approaches infinity, and without the non-HDR clamp at 1.0 that quickly gets out of hand. The painful thing though is with the constant attenuation, the diffuse model light can actually become less to non existent the closer you get to the source (see screenshot) which is totally counter-intuitive!!
The reason it's possible is because the only factor modulating the light closer to the source is the angle of incidence (FYI: I may have just made that term up) ... but anyway, it turns out the reason the top flat surface on the lamp is not lit, while the lower one is, has to do with the angle of the vertices relative the light source (for a point light) ... since the lighting normals on the flat surfaces are pointing due up, the wider the angle the brighter the light. There must not be a vertex in the center of the top dish or it would be maximally lit, because it would be as wide as can be basically.
So if you pull the flame up higher it actually rectifies things somewhat, though that's probably not the best way to go. I'm hoping further examination will yield more natural results, but I'd like to get something in the can so I can be done with this business by next week-ish.
I'm actually considering adding a quick extension to make the player shorter just so they can't see the top of the pedestal. Now that I know the player is supposed to be a short girl, you really do seem too tall compared to everything else. Though I worry about being short making some things like the pedestal items rest on seem awkward. Though frankly if you're short you're short. And that might add a little atmosphere.
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You guys may've already figured this out, but in case you're curious, the eye level of the player turns out is 1.5m (4'11") ... let's be generous and say six inches from eyes to top of the head, and the default player rounds out at 5'5". Which is not bad I guess. Seems a little short even for a girl adventurer by contemporary western standards, but the player does seem short / maybe meant to be boyish even (most Japanese heroes are young men... *cough* boys) and everyone knows medieval humans are wee folk.
The player I think is eye level with most of the girl NPCs. Not bad for Dark Destiny I guess, because as I recall Necron seems (if my memory serves me) like he was a squat man. Still that makes shrinking the Trismegistus player character a little more questionable. She does seem to be shorter than the others in all the pictures, and is based on the faerie NPC though it's possible adjusted via the scale variables. The camera seems to tower over if not the king NPCs the statues of the same shape anyway.
PS: An interesting thing occurred to me. I've never liked first person games with disembodied weapons / arms ... even though that's the norm. I like to have as much of a body as possible. So I'd definitely like to make that possible for Som games. Still it presents a number of challenges. Trismegistus is interesting however... in that the PC presumably never changes equipment or swings a weapon, so really she's only required to walk around, and maybe look at NPCs the way NPCs look at the player while talking. I know enough to animate a .MDL file, so the simplest avatar support I can think of (and probably the right place to begin) is to just designate an NPC .mdl file to act as the player's avatar. Playing the walking animation in a crude way (about as crudely as Som's npcs) is pretty simple. So anyway, in probably not too long, probably the Ex 1.0 release for Trismegistus I'll want to take a stab at this for Trismegistus. The only real problem I can foresee is the model may be the scarecrow variety (it's really hard to tell in the pictures) in which case I'd have to take a little time out to up my .mdl game. But just playing back the soft animations is really not too big of a deal, and if I went to the trouble to setup my own rendering routine would probably not be a bad next step in the .mdl dept.
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Sorry, up way too late... just reporting what was done was the player's eye level is now same as the PC's NPC in the 01 map, which I have a feeling is not accessible in game. Then the param files were hex edited to make the lamps a smidgen taller. Then just to be conservative a bob_distance_multiplier extension was setup to invert the bob effect so the player can't see the tops of the lamps while bobbing!! I may be delirious, but the inverted bob seems more natural. And guarantees players can't see over things they shouldn't :goodnight:
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There is a good jerk when you first begin the game. I tried to see if there was something funny going on with the starting point. The y dimension (which I'm assuming is the prob) was nonzero, so I zeroed it, but that really didn't help. Unless Tom was trying to do like a teleportation effect (it really just looks like a bug) the prob seems to be there is a 0.1 thick sigil object on the ground the player starts on. I'm assuming Som's collision processing is getting stuck in it or something (maybe because you really need at least two frames before you can start calculating derivatives) ... so I set the Y offset of the .mpx file to 0.1 to account for the difference, but that was no good.
So I noticed anyway the player was getting shoved into the ground with positive numbers, so I tried negative ones, and oddly enough that made the player drop from the sky. Anyway thru trial and error I couldn't get a glitch free start. But I minimized it to a twitch with -0.6. If there is a sweet spot it's between -0.7 and -0.6, but I didn't really get any results trying in between stuff. It's clearly some kind of magic teleportation circle, but it might help to move the starting point so the player doesn't start on top of an object :rolleyes:
EDITED: I needed at least one map start frame to smooth out Ex's camera code, so I set things up to skip the first 3D frame after a map is opened. Since I got it down to a twitch, it might work to just add a setting to skip N frames so the twitch can just pass.