Aliens: Colonial Marines TC - FINISHED

[ZDL_800]

Hello Enjay thanks for the reply.

I understand now, I thought it was some kind of decorate script? Sorry about that. This is such great news you found the parameters, so I believe everything is basically indexed and the rain is index number 51-55 and 126? I have never actually loaded a map in the editor before but sounds very interesting indeed.

Seeing as I have 0 knowledge on map editing I took the decorate script approach which did stop the rain, the rain sound is still active, but unfortunately it still lagged after 10mins? Maybe the rain like you said is despawning after 1tick but its still actually spawning which now must be some sort of memory leak or something to break GZDoom?

Even with the decorate script applied, when the game started to lag out, or what I see is a slow reduction of FPS, I typed in puke 500 into the console and everything was back to normal 60FPS, so its 100% the rain that's causing this issue, it has to be.

I did some serious research regarding a new rain script that's more optimized and found a gem, its basically from what I believe reading the PDF that the script spawns rain particles around the player instead of the whole map. Its called j5weatherFX, the link is here.

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=18993

The theory is to try and replace the spawn areas on each map with the new rain script, from reading the PDF it looks like you only need 2 spawners? Top left, lower right of the map? This is a quote from the PDF

''2.5 Your Level
You will need to put down WeatherSpot (thing #30000) items to bound the areas you want
weather in, one in the upper left corner and one in the lower right corner of the area. The
z-height of the upper left WeatherSpot will determine where the weather effects are spawned
from.
Keep in mind that the weather items will collide with map geometry and will not spawn in any
area with a ceiling lower than the z-height of the upper left spot, so you can cover an area with a
building that is lower than your outside sky without worrying about having random snow flakes
or rain drops spawning inside.''

So it looks like I would remove each spawn point for the rain on each map and allocate the new strings, looks extremely complicated but I believe its worth it to keep the atmosphere as close to the mod as possible, puke 500 removes all rain and all ambient sounds, it ruins the atmosphere would you agree?

Or may I ask do you have any idea on how we could optimize the rain script? Theres quite a few GZDoom Rain' Youtube videos out there and they seem to work without this issue so I'm still trying to figure out if we can optimize the code before removing it completely and starting with a new mod? What would you advise right now?

Thankyou very much for helping us, hope to speak soon.

[Enjay]

Johnny 5's Rain script is the best that I have come across (I haven't looked that hard, so there may be other, better ones). It still has the possibility of slowing things down (any system that can potentially spawn hundreds of actors has that possibility) but at least the j5 weather effects try to limit things in the way that you describe, and I have found that it works pretty well.

There really isn't much that can be done to optimise the rain script in ACM. It's not really the script that's the issue, but the sheer number of raindrops being spawned.

To put some perspective on it, look at this screenshot from GZDoom builder:



See all those grey squares that cover about 40-50% of the playable map space? Here's a bit of a close up:



Each one is a map spot where a rain drop can be spawned.

Here they are in 3D mode.



All those green dots? Map spots.

Basically, it is far more than the engine was ever meant to cope with and a very inefficient way of doing it.

J5's system only spawns weather effects near the player, so it would avoid 50% of the map having raindrops spawned in it every few tics.

[Enjay]

Seeing as I have 0 knowledge on map editing I took the decorate script approach which did stop the rain, the rain sound is still active, but unfortunately it still lagged after 10mins? Maybe the rain like you said is despawning after 1tick but its still actually spawning which now must be some sort of memory leak or something to break GZDoom?

Although I haven't really experienced the problem, if there is a memory leak, then it's a bit worrying because it could indicate a problem with GZDoom itself. However, I'm not really able to investigate that any further.

If you feel confident with describing what's going on, you could raise a bug report (remember to link to the mod to allow easy checking by the devs). Unfortunately, the mod itself is quite complicated and simple "containing only the problem stuff" examples are best. Putting together a simpler version would be relatively easy for an experienced mapper, but I have no way of knowing if I have recreated the problem, because I don't seem to be having the problem on my machine.

[edit]
If you want, you could try the attached file. It contains everything that it needs to run, so just load it into Doom2 - no need to load anything else. It's just a very simple map with the ACM Gotera actor being spawned many times over and over (much like it is in the mod).

I expect it to run slowly - that's not the point. The point is, does it get slower and slower? If no, then things are fine engine side. If it gets slower and slower, then it could indicate a memory leak like you suspect.

The spawn rate is pretty quick so if it runs too slowly for you to try even from the outset type "puke 2" at the console to get a spawn rate that is similar to the ACM mod (albeit in a much more regular grid). If you want to go back to the faster spawn rate, type "puke 1" at the console.

[ZDL_800]

Hello Enjay and thankyou for the reply.

This is absolutely outstanding! The schematic of the map is brilliant, you can tell a lot of effect has been put into this map, fantastic.

All those green spawners for the Map spots look insane, it looks like a Nuts Doom level mod, no wonder it lags out, must be a huge amount of CPU cycles rendering all these particles. Looks like we might need to somehow implement the j5weatherFX, there's just too many spawn points.

That's a good idea regarding the bug report, before I contact the GZDoom devs, I downloaded the testrain.pk3, thankyou for the map so we can debug the rain, much appreciated. I loaded the testrain.pk3 with Doom2 with ZDL and yes indeed its lags real bad but after leaving the game for 15 mins it did not break, but I would imagine if the testmap was the same size as the ACM map it would completely break.

If I input the puke 2 command I do see the rain reduced and it runs solid 60fps, tested for another 15 mins with no problems.

I believe the sheer size of the ACM map is spawning too much rain in all directions, unable to remove spawn spots when the player is out of view is what I believe is the main issue here.

Seeing as you don't see the FPS reduce ingame, may I ask if you could download our update and give it a quick test? Spent a huge amount of time implementing...

Motion Tracker with all custom Ai allocated
Brutal Xeno blood with smoke effects
Fixed the flashlight issue.
New Pulse Rifle
Fixed Ai clipping into walls, they attack from much further away.
New lighting
Tougher, faster Ai
Reduced player speed so you cannot outrun the Ai, they will chase you down
New HUD elements scaled correctly
Aliens OST

Thankyou very much for your time and hope to speak soon.

[Tormentor667]

You might consider checking this:
https://www.realm667.com/index.php/en/s ... -144-68253

[Enjay]

Here is the link to the mod, thankyou very much for your time and hope to speak soon.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lbb9f1ukx6ui5 ... 9.rar?dl=0

Downloading now, but I won't be able to test for a while.

[Graf Zahl]

Enjay you must have some mega PC because I even tried on a friends unit with a 5GHZ CPU and it did the same lag.

Those 5GHz won't do you much of a service if the graphics hardware isn't up to what the mod needs. So what's in there?

[Enjay]

Gave it a very quick go.

Dark Doom... ugh! I like to see where I'm going and only have dark areas be properly built-in map designed areas, not a universal attempt to adjust light levels for mood. A lot of people seem to like it, but it's just not for me. I'll definitely play without that loaded.

[edit]Forget this, I had loaded the files in the wrong order.

---

Also, it has some issues when you pick up the blue armour and the radar can overlap the HUD information when certain scale factors are used too.

[/edit]

I've only had a chance to fire it up and run around for a minute or two.

For what it's worth, my computer is pretty decent (very decent when I got it) but nothing particularly outstanding these days:
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Intel Core i7 6800K @ 3.40GHz (Cores 6, Threads 12)
16.0GB RAM
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. STRIX X99 GAMING (SOCKET 2011)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080

[ZDL_800]

Hello and thankyou for the replies.

Tormentor667 thanks for the link, but may I ask is this similar to j5's weather where the rain will only render in the players view? We cant just have rain particles spawning everywhere it will break the game I'm afraid.

Graf Zahl I haven't got a clue what GPU is in my friends unit? I'm sure its a new Nvidia but I don't know the model number, sorry. It plays games @144FPS.

Enjay don't you like the dark lightning? I think it gives a dread atmosphere. Also from the screenshot it looks like it didn't activate the custom HUD? That not the correct HUD I'm afraid.

The correct HUD looks much different and gives you the ability to scale the elements any way you wish, so the HUD wont clip into the motion scanner. I'll upload a picture here, had to reduce size but you can see what the HUD looks like at least.

Thankyou for helping us fix this great game, much appreciated.

[Enjay]

Enjay don't you like the dark lightning? I think it gives a dread atmosphere.

Nope, I've never liked DarkDoom. Far too dark for may tastes. I like to see the game I'm playing. IMO, ACM is well enough set up with a nice contrast between bright areas and some really dark areas but overall it feels darkish anyway. Having everything at Doom3 levels of darkness is just not my cup of tea. I just find it tedious having to peer into the darkness all of the time (and in maps this size, it's along time to look at a black screen): not scary, just annoying IMO. If it was real, it would be terrifying, but I'm just playing a game and darkness like that gets in the way IMO. Each to their own though.

Also from the screenshot it looks like it didn't activate the custom HUD? That not the correct HUD I'm afraid. The correct HUD looks much different and gives you the ability to scale the elements any way you wish, so the HUD wont clip into the motion scanner. I'll upload a picture here, had to reduce size but you can see what the HUD looks like at least.

It's OK, as I posted, it was just me loading the files in the wrong order. I've got it right now.


However, I did get some weirdness when I played this. Even with your version loaded, I started getting some slowdown in the outside areas. No idea why and it was not as severe as what you describe but by the time I got through playing the map, my framerate in the outside areas was dipping down to the low 40/high 30s. I played again and it didn't happen the second time.

Having now played it through a few times in the last few days, honestly I'd find the biggest improvement in this game would be if it was easier to figure out where to go and how to get there. All of the maps, but the first one in particular, really suffer from "what am I meant to do now", "how the hell do I get there", "what did that switch do", "where was that door again", "I have no bloody idea where the key is", "why are hardly any of the key doors properly marked", "oh look another dead end" and "why are there so many doors that do nothing" syndromes. Seriously, it's a massively annoying maze that even after a good few play-throughs it's still hard (i.e. frustrating) to work my way through. That was my impression of it the first time that I played and it hasn't got much better. Even online walkthroughs say much the same thing. IMO, it's the biggest single downside to the mod. It's a real shame because if that was addressed, it would be an utterly amazing mod IMO: one of the best ever Aliens mods ever. Unfortunately, it just about kills the mod for me.

And if I hear "access denied" one more time, I may commit unspeakable crimes!

[ZDL_800]

Hello Enjay thanks for the reply.

I haven't been able to play the game for more than 10mins so I don't know the layout but this sounds amazing! Lost in a maze in darkness sounds awesome, perfect for coop, this is one of the main reasons why we are attempting to fix the lag issues, if your PC did reduce to 30FPS it sounds about right on a good unit, any quadcores with a 2/3GB GPU completely breaks down to 1FPS.

The access denied voices are brilliant, the urge to know what's behind the door just makes the atmosphere more tense.

Also the dark mod has the flashlight fix included so you wont have any flashlight? The best aspect of the flashlight is actually seeing a coop players light beam, its amazing seeing all the flashlights shining everywhere, you need to play in coop to experience the darkness as it should be, its truly brilliant. Keeps the team together in close quarter situations, if you see everything, then players will just run off like a Doom coop. (Doom coop is fantastic but this is Aliens)

Without the dark mod its too bright, its in the middle of the night and the power is cut off, you only see emergency lights ingame, everything is offline, it would be pitch black there wouldn't it?

Also another good thing about the dark mod is we could allocate the rain render distance much closer to the player seeing as you cant see much anyway, its perfect to hide the view distance, I believe that's the answer to optimizing the mod as much as possible.

Rain pouring down, SHHHHHH the motion tracker, TICKTICK ticking over, waiting for the beep, then, BANG sounds the thunder! Cant see anything through the rain and the darkness, oh does that sound amazing or what!

Hopefully we can fix this, I'm sure of it now we have debugged the rain.

Thanks again.