Allegiance Installer 3.01

raumvogel · Post by **raumvogel** » Thu May 22, 2014 8:36 pm

pkk wrote:QUOTE (pkk @ May 22 2014, 04:06 PM) Thanks to Masta I was able to create a high res package.

I will also include is as an option to the installer.

You will have to download 128 MB (7z container) and you need about 935 MB extra space on harddisk.

Would be nice if a few people can test this package (still uploading, link follows), before finally adding this to the installer.

I have an old second computer I can test on.If it runs on that, it will probably run on anything.

Post by **pkk** » Thu May 22, 2014 8:59 pm

Testing:
Extract the files into your artowork/textures folder:
https://ssl.webpack.de/www.german-borg. ... es.7zStart AllegianceVerify you're using Max Texture Size of 2048Connect to a server (PCore005) and try to launch a game

If you crash, let me know and read this:
http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index...st&p=677700

Mastametz · Post by **Mastametz** » Thu May 22, 2014 9:26 pm

The only thing I did not add to the high res package was the high res alephs which are available through the wiki.
Since I was already having crashing problems before I found those textures, I wasn't going to add anything until that was resolved.

raumvogel · Post by **raumvogel** » Thu May 22, 2014 11:37 pm

pkk wrote:QUOTE (pkk @ May 22 2014, 04:59 PM) Testing:
Extract the files into your artowork/textures folder:
https://ssl.webpack.de/www.german-borg. ... es.7zStart AllegianceVerify you're using Max Texture Size of 2048Connect to a server (PCore005) and try to launch a game

If you crash, let me know and read this:
http://www.freeallegiance.org/forums/index...st&p=677700

Neither my old or new computer can set the res that high. I guess I'm out.

factoid · Post by **factoid** » Thu May 22, 2014 11:40 pm

I was testing Metz's installer last night and couldn't get it to crash. I'm running a high end gaming laptop, so the memory thing seems likely.

TheAlaskan · Post by **TheAlaskan** » Fri May 23, 2014 12:31 am

I did a fresh install and then installed PKK's test pack.

I crash while hitting the launch on pcore005 when the map texture size is 2048.

I can successfully launch a game with 1024.

factoid · Post by **factoid** » Fri May 23, 2014 12:35 am

What video card do you have, how much memory does it have, and how much system ram do you have?

TheAlaskan · Post by **TheAlaskan** » Fri May 23, 2014 12:43 am

Intel® Core i3-3225 CPU @ 3.30GHz

System
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Model To be filled by O.E.M.
Total amount of system memory 8.00 GB RAM
System type 64-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 2

Graphics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Display adapter type Intel® HD Graphics 4000
Total available graphics memory 1760 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 1024 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 736 MB
Display adapter driver version 9.17.10.2932
Primary monitor resolution 1920x1080
DirectX version DirectX 10

factoid · Post by **factoid** » Fri May 23, 2014 1:48 am

I'm having difficulty downloading from your server PKK. I have a 7.5 MBit connection and I'm getting about 56 kBytes/s. It's no wonder this game takes so long to download. We should consider making it available via torrents or drop box or something. Or is this kind of low bandwidth situation uncommon?

factoid · Post by **factoid** » Fri May 23, 2014 2:50 am

That's a similar configuration to mine, with an added discreet GTX 660M 2GB card. But you should have plenty of video memory.

Ah, excellent! After changing the texture settings to 2048, turning texture packs on, upping game res to native res (1080p), it crashes joining a pcore5 game, never make it into the lobby. Much better than not being able to recreate the crash on my machine. I'm gonna see if I can get this to happen in offline mode or if I'll have to try and run my own server. But at any rate I hope to get this happening under a debugger.

Can't get it to crash in the training missions. The texture size only seems to really kick in after a quit and restart. If my max textures where at 2048 (from previous run) when I launch, then it always crashes. If I drop it to 1024, I can launch, and then if I up it to 2048 without quitting and relaunching from ACSS I'm also fine (Hard to tell if the resolution is actually 2048 or 1024).

Additional note, with texture packing on, sometimes at 1024 max I get wierd artifacts where the rocks and bases will flicker in and out.

The above was using my Intel HD4000 GPU.

When I switch to my Nvidia GTX660, I always crash at 2048 textures, and always crash at 1024 if texture packing is on. I can run with texture packing on at 512.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that texture packing is texture atlasing? Combining smaller textures into larger ones? At any rate, this is definitely a video memory issue, not an MDL file issue or bug. I'll see what I can do to pin down the exact cause, but my guess is just simply that there are too many high res textures at 2048 for 2GB cards and they just fail to allocate memory at some point, and alleg just doesn't take that kindly.

Also, changing your settings to your test condition and then exiting completely and restarting seems to be the key to reproducability. I'm guessing that the graphics settings for visual quality require a restart. We should probably put something to that effect in the client as well, so that people don't up their settings and then wonder why it still looks like @#(!.

Lastly, for the high quality environment textures, do we have the source images? Are they 32 bit? I'm pretty sure the mdl compiling process drops them to 16 bit, which makes the colour range much less and introduces the really ugly banding that you see on the nebulae. I might be able to fix the mdlc program to stop doing that. 32 bit cards weren't common in 2000 either.