FAZ Beta R4 Known Issues

[Solarflux]

I dont know if it's just me, but this is the deal: yesterday when I was playing in the BETA I had to press the voicecommand button (`) twice in order to see the VC's (where it normally only takes 1 push). Just thought you guys would like to know, since it might be a bug of some sort.

Cheerio!

[General_Freak]

The red text message '{name} has secured {tech}' appears twice when you bring in two identical items. I wonder if points are given twice too.

[parcival]

QUOTE (Dogbones @ Sep 17 2007, 04:34 AM) Both R3 and R4 support the high res textures you can download and stick in the textures subfolder of the artwork folder but AEMs installer (AFAIK) does not contain any of these higher textures.

R4 does support 32-bit color depth (you don't have to switch into 16 bit mode) and KGJV changed a few of the other graphics calls. It does look much sharper, I agree.

As to what specifically was changed to make things sharper, I am not sure. Some functions that were being handled by the CPU are now being handled by the graphics card, could be a precision/depth issue.

Since the first test I did with R4 I get long pauses when using high resolution textures and 32bit at the same time (especially when switching to F3 or launching). No problem with 16bit mode. No problem if I downscale textures to low values (256 or 512).

Is there a conversion taking place (16bit->32bit textures) thus the long delays? Do we need new 32bit high resolution textures?

[Dogbones]

I've not noticed any performance differences. Are you using 32bit high-res textures? Those would have had to have been gotten directly from mad (I think). Or are you using your own? Actually I have been using the ones mad made, they don't look right in 16bit mode but look great in 32bit mode.

This is sort of outside the 'scope' of the R4 release. While it supports 32bit desktop with the CURRENT artwork, new 32bit textures have not been tested much.

Dog

[Adaven]

Parci, are you talking about a long pause the first time you launch from base (or hit f3) and another pause (but shorter) when you fly or look at a different sector after that? That's from all the texture's being loaded into your (video?) memory. You'll get the biggest pause when you first try to view a sector, and smaller pauses the first couple of different sectors you look at (usually from new tech rock or environments in different sectors). After a while these pauses should go away once you have everything loaded up.

So if you are starting the game with everything turned up and getting slammed with pauses and after that lowering the settings, you should be seeing an improvement, but not necessarily because you changed your settings. For comparison, make sure you are in 16-bit mode or using a lower resolution size before you launch from base. And since the textures stay loaded for a while after you close allegiance down, try your low-settings run first at least once. If you keep getting significant pauses throughout the game with one setting and not the other, something is indeed going wrong.

Like Dog said, there aren't any 32-bit textures out there except for some Mad compiled ( but I don't think they are public yet). They are just the standard textures with padding to make them up to 32-bit. If you are using the same textures from R3 they "should" work just the same.

I did make some 24-bit environment textures to give folks something to test in R4. They aren't 32-bit because the extra 8-bits would only be padding and just take up more space, but I'd hope they'd work the same. 24-bit_environments_2048.zip

edit: I've been using these environments and a smattering of the 16-bit high res stuff with no real change except for an increase in those initial loading times I mentioned due to the increased file size.

[parcival]

Yes, this is what I am getting Adaven. I use 16bit ones. Every time a new texture is loaded I get these long pauses (F3 1st view might take up to 10sec for my laptop and about 5-8sec for my better desktop PC at 2048 and 32bit). It doesn't happen though if I launch with the -16b switch. This is strange since the same data are loaded and should be the same amount transfered to the video card (conversion, if needed, should be done there). Maybe is the conversion in the video card that takes so long (ATI for both machines XPRESS 200M and 9700pro; nVidia better optimization?). Maybe the conversion is done beforehand and its a transfer bottleneck thing (not likely though IMO).

[Clay_Pigeon]

I thought this was on the fix list for R4, but I had the "carrier won't go through aleph" bug pop up yesterday.

-T

[Kap]

Im sure someone posted about this but I can't find the topic.

The issue is with the high-res textures. If I have them set up at max (2056 I think), Alleg starts lagging a lot, it sometimes takes like 10 secs to load a sector view in f3. But when I change to the minimum texture size (256 I think) the game runs normally.

I play R3 with the textures at max but in R4 I have to set them to low.

[Adaven]

QUOTE (Kap @ Oct 19 2007, 10:02 AM) Im sure someone posted about this but I can't find the topic.

.... um, was it this one? (check a couple posts up)

I didn't have the chance to try r4 out this week to check this out to see if the pauses are worse for me in R4 than in R3.

One thing I would like to experiment with though: IIRC, the max sized texture most vid cards can handle is 2048x2048. I wonder if an equal amount of total texture memory, but divided into smaller chunks on a wider range of models might perform better. The initial sector load on f3 might still be a bit rough, but maybe the periodic new textures loaded won't be nearly as bad without a single texture clogging the card up.

[Kap]

Hmm, I don't think so. I believe it was an @RT (Terra?) but my memory isn't clear.

Edit: Nvm, it was parcival (some posts above this). I hadn't read your response to him so I didn't quite connect them and tought your post was about a different issue.