Wintermute Engine Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Mnemonic on July 08, 2007, 10:43:31 PM
-
Hello wintermuties,
after some struggle, I'm glad to present you with WME 1.8 beta. This is a betaversion, so be careful and expect bugs. Be sure to backup your project before installing the beta. See below for more details.
Any comments are welcome.
Enjoy ::slug
DOWNLOAD: WME 1.8 beta 4 Installer (17MB) (http://www.dead-code.org/download/download_beta.php)
WME 1.8 beta 4 (September 9, 2007) - list of changes
- Changes to animation handling for 3D characters:
- The StopAnim() method now accepts an optional transition time.
- There is a new actor3D.AnimStopTransitionTime
property for specifying the time it takes to transition back to default
pose once animation ends.
- Non-looping animations played using the PlayAnimChannel() method no
longer get stuck at final frame.
- New Game.GetFileChecksum() method for calculating a
checksum (CRC32) of a specified file (useful for copy protection schemes).
- String tables now accept space as a separator, not only tabs.
- WME Integrator now also supports UEStudio.
- The numpad + and - keys in SceneEdit now also work for adding waypoints,
not only region vertices.
- Changed the way method calls are terminated (see
this forum thread for a detailed description). Since this is a
potentially breaking change, it's possible to restore the previous behavior
using the "Compatibility" property in ProjectMan.
- FIX: WindowEdit can now load TGA images.
- FIX: WindowEdit now handles erroneous .window files gracefully.
- FIX: Fixed many hard-to-replicate crash bugs reported by users using the
new crash reporting feature. Keep the reports coming!
WME 1.8 beta 3 (July 29, 2007) - list of changes
- New WindowEdit tool for editing windows, inventory boxes and response
boxes.
- FIX: Occasional texture corruption on bitmap fonts (new in 1.8 beta 1).
WME 1.8 beta 2 (July 19, 2007) - list of changes
- New format for 2D actors definition file. It allows you to define any
number of named animation sets. The animation sets can be then switched at
runtime using the new actor.IdleAnimName,
actor.WalkAnimName, actor.TalkAnimName,
actor.TurnLeftAnimName and actor.TurnRightAnimName
properties. Additionally you can load new animation sets at runtime using
the actor.MergeAnims() method and unload them using the
actor.UnloadAnim() method. The actor.PlayAnim() method now
accepts either a script filename or an animation set name. Basically all
this is an effort to make 2D actors handling more flexible and more similar
to the 3D actors model.
- New scene methods and properties for querying lights and 3D nodes:
Scene.NumLights, Scene.GetLightName(),
Scene.IsLightEnabled(), Scene.IsNode3DEnabled().
- New method for storing the saved game thumbnail (i.e. you can now
specify the exact moment when to take the screenshot if you need to, instead
of letting the engine do it automatically) - Game.StoreSaveThumbnail().
Similarly, the Game.DeleteSaveThumbnail() can be used to
release the stored thumbnail.
- New 3D actor methods for checking if an animation is playing:
actor3D.IsAnimPlaying(), actor3D.IsAnimChannelPlaying().
- New 3D actor methods for specifying animation transition time for
various animation pairs: actor3D.SetAnimTransitionTime(),
actor3D.GetAnimTransitionTime().
- New 3D actor property for specifying which channel to use for talking
animations: actor3D.TalkAnimChannel.
- New global functions for working with the HSL color model (Hue,
Saturation, Luminance): MakeHSL(), GetHValue(),
GetSValue(), GetLValue() (requested for
easier changing of light intensity).
- New debugging options in ProjectMan. You can now specify that you
want to include the crash reporting library with the compiled games and that
you want the FPS display / debug mode to be enabled for the compiled games.
It's useful for building alpha/beta versions of the game.
- New "copy as is" file filter in ProjectMan, which specifies that certain
file types aren't included in game packages, but rather copied to the output
directory. Useful for TrueType fonts and AVI videos.
- ProjectMan now displays short help for all the project options.
- Windows Vista integration support. WME games can now be
integrated in Vista's Game Explorer. The changes are too numerous to be
listed here. Please see the "Windows Vista support" chapter in the
documentation for a detailed description.
- FIX: Scene.EnableLight() was broken (new in 1.8 beta 1).
- FIX: WME didn't display the missing DLL error when run from ProjectMan
(new in 1.8 beta 1).
- FIX: Crash on missing X models (new in 1.8 beta 1).
- FIX: Leaving the FOV field in SceneEdit didn't update the scene view
(new in 1.8 beta 1).
- FIX: Wrong icons for some WME files in Windows Explorer (new in 1.8 beta
1).
WME 1.8 beta 1 (July 8, 2007) - list of changes
- WME is now available in two versions, Direct3D 8 and Direct3D 9. You can select which version of the runtime should be used in project settings in ProjectMan. See the discussion below for more details.
- New option "Hardware T&L" in ProjectMan to enable hardware accelerated transform and lighting for 3D models. See the discussion below for more details.
- New property Game.MaxActiveLights which returns the maximum number of lights supported by video card.
- New property Game.HardwareTL to check whether the game is using hardware transform and lighting.
- Optimized rendering speed of tiled images, bitmap fonts and particles.
- New property Game.StartupScene and a corresponding setting in ProjectMan. The standard template now takes advantage of this property instead of hardcoding the filename of the scene.
- New Scene event SceneShutdown which is triggered just before the scene is about to be changed.
- New WME crash reporting library which can upload crash details to a database or send it by email. Please upload crash reports so that common crash causes can be analyzed and fixed.
- Direct keyboard movement for 3D characters now also works for scenes with 2D blocked regions.
- New "Require sound" option in ProjectMan. If enabled the game will not run without a sound card (can be used for games which heavily rely on sound design).
- New method Scene.GetLightColor() for querying the color of a 3D light.
- Manual changing of camera FOV in SceneEdit.
- FIX: Custom scene properties were not reset on scene transitions.
- FIX: Compiled game packages were sometimes referencing more files than how many they actually contained.
- FIX: The check-boxes in the settings dialog no longer disappear when pressing the Alt key in XP/Vista.
- FIX: When using multiple particle sprites the particle emitter was always choosing only one of them.
- FIX: The engine no longer issues absolute path warnings when working with personal saved games stored in "Documents and Settings" folder.
Q&A
Q: Should I install the beta version?
A: Well, there's no point in releasing beta versions if no one is testing them. But of course, if you aren't comfortable with using beta versions, then don't. In any case, please don't distribute games compiled with a beta version of WME runtime.
Q: Can I reinstall the previous version?
A: Yes, but if you enable some of the new options in ProjectMan, the previous version won't be able to load your game.
Q: Why Direct3D 9? What's the benefit?
A: Quite frankly, there's not much of a benefit at the moment. There should be some performance increase when using hardware T&L (see below). But mainly the Direct3D 9 version of the engine brings more possibilities for the future, such as the access to high-level shader language (HLSL), which was impossible with D3D8. Also, the "Games for Windows" guidelines require games to use D3D9.
Q: When I'm trying to run the Direct3D 9 version of the engine, it complains about a missing library D3DX9_34.DLL. Why's that?
A: You will need to update your DirectX runtime installation to the latest version. Use the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en). It will automatically recognize what needs to be updated and download only the necessary files.
Q: So if my game uses Direct3D 9, the users will need to update their DirectX too? That sucks!
A: Yes, unfortunately that's the way Microsoft updates DirectX lately. If you're distributing your game on CD, include the latest version of DirectX runtime installer (June 2007). If you're distributing your game online, direct the players to the DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3&displaylang=en).
Q: What's hardware T&L?
A: It stands for hardware transform and lighting. It moves some 3D calculations from CPU to video card, which improves performance. Most video cards made in the last 8 years support hardware T&L.
Q: Should I enable hardware T&L for my game?
A: It depends. There's no benefit for 2D games. For 2.5D games, however, hardware T&L can significantly improve performance, especially when using models with high polygon count.
Q: Sounds good. What's the catch?
A: When using hardware T&L, the maximum number of active lights in a scene is limited by the capabilities of a video card. Typically there can be up to 8 active lights in a scene (compared to unlimited lights when using software T&L). Depending on the design of your scenes, enabling hardware T&L can change their lighting. Even though WME tries to compensate the problem by automatically choosing the nearest lights for each 3D characters, the results may or may not look good. Therefore it's the developers responsibility to decide whether hardware T&L will work with their game or not.
For new games it's recommended to design scenes with the limited number of lights in mind.
Q: Will there be more beta versions?
A: Most likely, yes. There are more features scheduled for WME 1.8, but I wanted to release the current version for public testing.
-
Amazing! Congratulations. I'm off to test it NOW! :) ::beer ::beer ::beer
-
Yeaaaaaaah. Hardware T&L! We are going to test it.
Erm:
"...brings more possibilities for the future, such as the access to high-level shader language (HSLS)... "
Which actually means... Reflections? ::beer
-
Ok, some short feedback.
When activating the Direct3d 9 option, the game can't be started in debug mode. No idea how it would be in compiled mode, as creating a new build would last a little time.
Activating the HW T&L decreased the framerate about 30 frames.
Hope you find the information usefull.
Regards
Amo
-
What does "can't be started" mean? It displays some error, it crashes, it doesn't do anything? What's in the log?
-
It doesn't do anything and the logs aren't updated. Clicking on the icon results in nothing, not even the game settings window opens.
-
Are you sure your Direct3D 9 installation is updated to the latest version? (using the web installer linked above).
Also, everyone, I included a wrong version of the crash reporting library with beta 1, so I'm gonna re-upload the installer in a moment.
-
It is 9.0c, I check the web installer.
-
Yes, please check it. 9.0c is not enough. It must be 9.0c June 2007 (thanks again, Microsoft! ::))
-
It works fine now. Ok, I had to convert all texture maps to a power of 2, otherwise they weren't corrently mapped on the characters, but thats no problem, as it was planned for the refining phase, so it is done now.
The performance is awesome! Hope I can support you with some "numbers" how many fps we have more now.
regards
Amo
-
Cool. Some numbers would be indeed helpful :) Thanks.
-
Here we go.
First, the machine specs:
P4 3Ghz
2Gb RAM
GeForce 6600GT
Scene specs:
3 actors
29 scripts
about 12 000 Polys
Without HW T&L 70fps
With HW T&L 100fps
The rest of our scenes run with hardware acceleration on 160-170fps.
Regards
Martin
-
Thanks...
Real performance increase with D3d9+Htl
-
Athlon x2 3800
1GB ram
Gforce 7600GT
On a scene with 100 sprites,14 3d actor,120 scripts running and a total of 33000 polys(custom built scene for the test)
20 fps before
With d3d9 HarwareTL i get 30 fps
-
Thanks, leucome.
-
I just forgot to say the scene is in 1024X768 4X Antialiasing
-
Not tested (yet) but I just wanna say thank you for the ongoing development of WME. You do a great job!!! ::thumbup
-
Cool!!
Testing right now ;)
-
Hi there, after testing 1.8b1 it seems, that
Scene.EnableLight("somelightsource"); and Scene.DisableLight("somelightsource");
do not work anymore, maybe a bug?
Regards
Amo
-
Yes, these methods are broken in 1.8 beta 1. It's already fixed in my working version.
-
When do you think this fixed version will be public?
We could use that fix... erm. Yesterday. ;D , I mean that Scene.EnableLight thing...
-
No promises there. My working version is currently in a very unreleasable state...
-
No problem, just a little lose of atmosphere in the actual milestone build.
Take your time.
-
Ah next thing. The "ask user" option for hardware T&L seems to work only in debug mode. At least, the option in the settings dialog is not there and HW T&L is switched off. (Via wme.ini tested)
When compiling with "use when available" everything is nice.
-
Hmm, I'm not able to reproduce this...
-
Not? We tried it on XP Professional and Vista Ultimate
-
No. I compile the game with 3D settings enabled and T&L - ask user, I run the game without debug mode and the option is there. What are the exact steps to reproduce the problem?
-
Good question, just compiling. Sorry I can't compile yet, because several things are under construction, so we get some error messages. I write back, when a running version is ready to be compiled.
-
WME 1.8 beta 2 is out. See the first post of this thread for the list of changes and a download link.
-
Yippieyayeeee !!!
what an enormous update !!!
thanks for implementing the lightHSL options !!!! thet will become extremely helpful for me !
fantastic work !!
::rock O0 ::rock
stucki
-
Did some testing with some of my scenes: here are the resulting fps
Scenes 1280 * 960 pixels, one 3d Char about 3000 polys several layers and many particles ,playing in windowed mode on 1900 * 1200 screen
Scene - DX 8 - DX 9 T&L - DX 9 no T&L -
___________________________________
1 - 092 - 163 - 018
2 - 094 - 110 - 022
3 - 122 - 145 - 028
4 - 105 - 104 - 104
5 - 160 - 196 - 047
6 - 197 - 206 - 052
7 - 082 - 170 - 025
so every scene except one is running faster in dx9 with T&L and this one is equal to DX 8 !! Hurray !!! fantastic work you have done.
but why is DX9 without T&L so much slower than DX8 ?
stucki
-
Thanks for the report!
but why is DX9 without T&L so much slower than DX8 ?
You are using Vista, right? For whatever reason software T&L in DirectX 9 is extremely slow in Vista, much slower than DX9 in XP and slower than DX8 in Vista. It's strange, but it's true..
-
yes i am using vista ... the good things about this. I think everybody who runs vista will have a t&l capable videocard ....
but why is there this one scene running at an equal fps rate in every configuration ? . its the largest one in screen resolution about 2000 pixels wide, but if i am right its the only one without particles ... can this be the reason ?!?
stucki
-
I don't think the particles are to blame. That particular scene is probably hitting some other limit of your video card, such as the fillrate.
-
two problems maybe with the beta
i have a problem with the new scrolling behaviour for larger scenes.
in scene edit the geometry (3ds-file) is on the right place. in the engine its missplaced. the shadows appear at the wrong place.
that changes when i turn on use pre 1.7 scrolling . than everyting works fine ! what changes exactly between these two modes ?
the other one is when my menu [talk take etc] is activated. the mousecursor becomes a little weird. Looks like part of a green font.
the same for the mainmenu [ on hitting escape] when the menu [ talk take etc.] is activated. where the menugrafiks should be is some weird green font
here are two images for better understanding
(http://www.dreiddd.de/problem_1.jpg)
(http://www.dreiddd.de/problem_2.jpg)
-
than everyting works fine ! what changes exactly between these two modes ?
By default WME assumes the camera overviews the entire scene (i.e. the viewport width is the width of the scene). The pre-1.7 mode means the camera only overviews the visible area of the scene (i.e. the viewport width is the game resolution).
the other one is when my menu [talk take etc] is activated. the mousecursor becomes a little weird. Looks like part of a green font.
the same for the mainmenu [ on hitting escape] when the menu [ talk take etc.] is activated. where the menugrafiks should be is some weird green font
Yup, I know about it, already fixed it. Thanks.
-
super.
and have you fixed the misplaced geometry when not using pre 1.7 scrolling behavior, too?
-
No, I didn't do any changes to scene scrolling in 1.8. Are you saying 1.8 behaves differently than 1.7 did? Does your camera view the entire scene?
-
i do not know if this is to Version 1.8.
but if i do not check the pre 1.7 scrolling button the 3ds geometry is missplaced in the engine even in scene edit it displays at the right place.
i can see this because my shadows fold on the right geometry but in the wrong place.
but maybe this was in 1.7 too.
-
Let me repeat the question, is your camera set up to view the entire width of the scene?
-
sorry but i am not sure what you mean. set up to view the entire width where ?? In Wme or in 3dsmax
and where can i set this value ?
-
In max. If you enable view through the camera, do you see the entire scene or only part of it?
-
i see the entire scene.
the camera renderings are the backgrounds in my scene. i did not know that i can render more than i can see in the camera viewport ...
-
Would it be possible to make some one-scene demo for me to test? These things are quite hard to simulate for me..
-
yes i hope to get it done tomorrow ...
-
WME 1.8 beta 3 is out. The "only" major change is the shiny new WindowEdit tool for editing windows, inventory and response boxes. No more hand-editing of .window files, yay!
WindowEdit requires .NET framework 2.0.
And as always, suggestions are welcome.
(http://dead-code.org/wme_docs/img/WindowEdit1.png)
-
Wow! I´ve not tried it yet, but it sounds great! Thanks for your awesome work! ::thumbup
-
Wow! The new features are amazing!
Thanks for your hard work with this engine!
- Banky
-
The additions to this beta are awesome.
Can anyone verify if videos using an alpha mask still work in it? For the life of me I can't get the theora videos to use an image as an alpha mask. :o
-
I can confirm that it does work.
entity.
PlayTheora("path\video.ogg",
true,
"path\alpha.png");
-
I can confirm that it does work.
entity.
PlayTheora("path\video.ogg",
true,
"path\alpha.png");
Thanks. :)
-
And the alpha image needs to be a 32-bit color image with a real alpha channel, not 256 colors image with shades of gray (I suppose that crash report was yours).
-
oooooh nice! any chance we might get a copy of the window editing tool without installing 1.8 ? (we're still using 1.7.2)
-
oooooh nice! any chance we might get a copy of the window editing tool without installing 1.8 ? (we're still using 1.7.2)
http://master.math.upatras.gr/~odnorf/misc_files/WindowEdit.zip
Enjoy ;D
Don't extract this tool in the wme 1.7.2 dir since this will break debug console.
(All .net tools are using the same libraries).
EDIT: Keep in mind that it's NOT recommended to use WindowEdit with 1.7.x versions. Under some conditions WME 1.7 might not be able to read .window files generated by WME 1.8. So, always backup your window files.
-
thank you ;D
-
WME 1.8 beta 4 is out. See the first post of this thread for a list of changes and a download link.
This is mainly a maintenance/bugfix release, so if you're using a previous beta, please upgrade.
-
Wow, very cool, as I can see, you included our anim channel request. Nice work man.
::beer