A sort of request, questions... and a hello. ^_^

[Holy_Diver]

I don't suggest waiting on an "SDK" though if I was spending a lot of time working with the Som editors I'd probably be in a position to help with that.

If you tell us what version of Windows you have. Eg. XP Home Edition. I could better advise you.

We have not had a huge influx of people wanting to work with Som, and more often than not they seem to be more likely to have XP computers than to not.


Todd's advise about disabling hardware acceleration is probably only helpful with Windows XP or earlier editions of Windows (unless he can say for a fact he's hard success with Vista/7)


The main problem I see with running the editors under Vista is they're just incredibly slow/stop prone, which I don't think has anything to do with graphics.

I would start working on the editors at this point, but I haven't seen a high level of commitment from people interested in Som, so I kind of expect the work to be a bust or just ignored. For most people finding an old PC and installing XP just to make their game is not a huge barrier to entry.

If your Windows install is not "Home Edition" you can probably use the "XP Mode" or download Virtual PC. I don't know if Home Edition just doesn't work with Virtual PC, or if you just need to pay for a Virtual PC license separately... so buying a Virtual PC license might be yet another way to go. I would not expect it to cost very much. Also there is the "anytime upgrade" option. With "XP Mode" you don't need an additional Windows license. If you gotta however I'm sure there are plenty of original Windows XP bittorrents floating around which should install just fine on a virtual machine.


PS: I did not realize Todd's VMWare download has licensing issues. I think if you uninstall everything that was on there it can be made a lot smaller.

[dragoonblade]

In regards to my windows version, it's windows 7 home premium. The computer itself uses a AMD Phenom 9650 quad core processor 2.30 GHz and the graphics card is a ATI Radeon 4350 which came already put in the PC. I don't quite know so much about computers (my college course on it was rather out of date to say the least, making us work with PCs still running DOS. O_O; ) so I'm afraid I don't quite know about if it's onboard or anything.

Also, there's another thing I've noticed which I don't know if you guys have. When I'm actually playing SoM (like testing my maps), the game seems slow as a crawl while the dark slayer model is being displayed as part of the map. Once I pick it up, the game speed returns to normal. Is this a issue with the actual model or some unknown bug?

[Holy_Diver]

It's kind of hard to advise you because all of the Anytime Upgrade estimates I see for Home -> Professional start around 80$ and my guess is Microsoft never changes those figure, though you might try to do it just to see what it wants to bill you for the service.

Also all of the Microsoft Virtual PC links now redirect obliviously to the XP Mode website. So it seems like that is either temporary Microsoft weirdness (always redirecting / deleting pages) or MS is dropping Virtual PC from its product lineup. I can't find anywhere to buy a Virtual PC license.

You might try looking for cracked VMWare bittorrents. I'm sure there is a "free" solution to this dilemma anyway. My guess is Virtual PC won't run on a Home Edition Vista/7 computer for one reason or another. There may be other virtual machine solutions (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/499260/whats-the-best-free-virtual-machine-system)

The Dark Slayer things sounds really weird. You might try doing some tests just to narrow down what is going on... .like change the graphic for that item to see if that is a factor. I had a cursed sword once which was literally cursed in terms of its effect on the map. I could not find any way to work around it as I recall. My guess (in that case) is some random combination of stuff in a map etc can cause Som to enter a state of all around general bugginess.


EDITED: Maybe try this (http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) GPL VM and let us know how it works out for you. This might be the best candidate for a Som VM based SDK anyway.

[dragoonblade]

I've just tested the item... it seems that it occurs only for the dark slayer model as far as I can tell, and only while it's being displayed on the map as a item to pick up. I may need to run a few more tests on that, but basically I've just set it in a outdoor map, just a tiny area of grass that's surrounded by steep grass slopes, about 8x8 cells of map (which is tiny) to test it out. It's really confusing me as I don't understand why it's happening. I guess I am going to have to tinker around a bit but since so far no other model's doing it to me, I will have to keep exploring it.

Of note, the moonlight sword, and the excellector model looks fine so far.

[Holy_Diver]

If it's normal for your computer to slow down, it might be something about the DS model no one has ever noticed before (because they were on a beefy enough computer to compensate)

When I start reverse engineering the MDO format I'll definitely think to do some work with the Dark Slayer model so if there is anything weird in it, hopefully it will be uncovered.

Some useful information would be, does the game seem to slow down when you equip the DS and are swinging it and also when looking at it in the equip menus (ie. when it appears on screen)

If it does that, then it's surely something about the graphic. If not it's probably more related to the map logic. Another thing we need to know is, when it's on the map. If you wander off away from it so it's for sure far enough away to not be visible (turning your back on it just to be sure) are things still slow? Or is there some distance from it where things pick back up to normal?

[dragoonblade]

It's not normal for my computer to slow down as I move perfectly around normally. Checking it on the equip screen slows the game a tiny amount but no way as much as when it's on the map. When I swing the DS, there is no slowdown at all. I've tried making my map much bigger and walking away from it, and it persists until I pick the sword up or get WELL out of range of the sword (we're talking probably 20 panels away).

[dmpdesign]

Quick question, how many light sources do you have turned on in that map?  Try going down to just the main ambient lightsource active, optimize and test the map and see if that helps any.

[Holy_Diver]

If you could somehow upload your project that is having trouble that would make it easier for us to see if it's repeatable / what might be going on with the DS model if anything.

EDITED: Probably you could just zip your project folder and attach it to a post.

[dragoonblade]

I'm sory for the long absence, I had a quick stint in hospital for my arm because of a complication... to get back on subject quick, i tried fixing the number of lights and that seemed to help the situation a bit, not a full solution but it helped. i'll try to get a copy of the project uploaded asap because I'm still on medication and its kinda hard to concentrate at the mo.

[Holy_Diver]

You can have basically an unlimited number of lights (there probably is a limit around 128 per map tops) but it might slow things down if you check the box that says "affect objects".

Som only uses at most 3 or 4 (can't recall) object lights at a time, which really isn't much at all for hardware these days. The bigger problem is if you designate all your lights to affect objects it's kind of a crap shoot in terms of which lights will actually be used to light objects, and most likely they won't be the ones you want.

I'm working on an extension that will increase the number of object lights to at least 12, and more if people want it.

Anyway, non-object lights are baked into the map when you build it in the editor. The more lights the slower the build will be, but it won't affect performance in game.

You can speed up the build if you uncheck the "calculate lights" box. Your map won't have lights, but you probably don't need them for testing stuff while working on the map.

Now there could potentially be a lighting based bug you discovered. If you can repeat it, it's really important that you share the project with us so we can have a look at it (especially so I can fix it if possible)

NOTE: The three map lights also apply to objects. So you can have a total of about 6 or 7 "point" light inputs for the objects/npcs/etc (the standard limit at the time was 8, but these days drivers report support for an infinite number of such lights -- ie. the largest possible 32bit number)