[Wolfenstein: Blade of Agony] v3.1 released (p204)

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Graf Zahl
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Graf Zahl »

I mostly concur with what Rachael said. The first impression is the most important one and it can be devastating.

Let's take one example: By default some image degrading postprocessing filters are active. No, they do not make the game look 'realistic' or 'cool', they make it look broken. The average user will have no clue why the visuals are so noisy. Worse, they have a huge impact on performance, e.g. on my Geforce 1060 using C3M3_A right after surfacing the game runs at 39 FPS with those effects on - with 49 fps with them off. And this is with a modern high end card and a fast CPU. Go a few generations back (i.e. what the average is for GZDoom's user base) and the frame rate will utterly tank on these effects.

There's a very good reason why GZDoom ships with lightmaps set to OFF, i.e. we know that many of our users cannot handle the feature. This is virtually the same here, the entire game is tuned to high end hardware, not giving the user any clue whatsoever how to make it run better. You absolutely cannot take a high end graphics card for granted, especially if these effects have such an easily detectable performance impact on high end hardware this spells Doom for more average GPUs, because the effect is 100% GPU overhead. A Geforce 1060 is 4x faster than a Geforce 550Ti, for example, and 8x faster than a current Intel integrated chipset.

A little math: The default postprocessing effects have a 2-3 ms impact on my system. Multiply that with 3 for a Geforce 550Ti and with 6 for a modern Intel GPU, (not 4 and 8 to account for inevitable overhead) and you suddenly get time values that make the effect game breaking. Have it on by default and people will start complaining left and right.
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Enjay »

On an entirely different tack, the pictures do look very impressive and are hugely evocative of the Nuremberg Rallies of the 1930s (which, of course, is the intention). But that got me wondering: Nazi symbolism and regalia (as I understand it) are banned in Germany unless they are being used for an appropriate education purpose (correct?). The Wolfenstein themed maps and enemies in Doom2 were removed for the German market. So, I'm just wondering, could there be any potential legal consequences for a Doom modder living and creating maps like this in Germany?
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by wildweasel »

Unpleasantness has been split. Have a good day.
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Rachael »

Enjay wrote:On an entirely different tack, the pictures do look very impressive and are hugely evocative of the Nuremberg Rallies of the 1930s (which, of course, is the intention). But that got me wondering: Nazi symbolism and regalia (as I understand it) are banned in Germany unless they are being used for an appropriate education purpose (correct?). The Wolfenstein themed maps and enemies in Doom2 were removed for the German market. So, I'm just wondering, could there be any potential legal consequences for a Doom modder living and creating maps like this in Germany?
As far as I know that only affects work sold commercially, but I am not a lawyer and I am certainly not familiar with German law. I would find it very strange that Germany would outright ban every hint of Nazi symbolism no matter what. I might be wrong, there.

To add to that, in this game, you're killing Nazis, not playing "on their side", so to speak. But I recognize that German law might not see that distinction.

Still though - it would be incredibly disappointing if indeed this mod was illegal in Germany.
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by wildweasel »

This seems to not be the case anymore: https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-45142651
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Enjay »

Interesting. I didn't know that had happened. Thanks.
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Rachael »

Same here. It's actually a relief to know that this mod is not illegal in Germany. :) I admit I was worried about that for a long time but I didn't ever see the need to bring the issue up - Tormentor was always happy enough working on it despite that, and that was good enough for me.
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by doomjedi »

Good to know, thanks :)
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Ozymandias81 »

Kinsie wrote:CUTSCEN1's big intro in the stadium runs at 37fps on a computer that hits Rage 2's Recommended specs, which while not as bad as previously-witnessed performance issues is still Something Of A Problem. A bit of jiggling and poking revealed that the cause was the scrolling floor used to make the parade "walk" - presumably the engine doesn't like the idea of carting around thousands of actors with full collision enabled. I'm not entirely sure what a better solution would be off the top of my head, though - NOBLOCKMAP projectiles? I'm sure there's a problem with that that doesn't immediately come to mind, though.
Thank you Kinsie, your suggestion made me gain 5fps more, and today I have done a commit which has improved greatly the map of 10/15fps overall. More than this I doubt I could achieve. Will look to that blur issue too.
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Tormentor667 »

Rachael wrote:You know what can't be deactivated? 2-sided linedefs.
Yes, that's a good point but even in this department, we made improvements - for example the big performance killer C3M3 got splitted into 2 maps which improved the fps a lot even on weaker systems.
Rachael wrote:You should know as well as anyone that there comes a point where you have to cut things you're particularly attached to but don't really add anything to the final presentation. And yes, it hurts a lot, but everyone does it to make their creation better.
Can you be more precise with "things that don't add anything to the final presentation"?
Rachael wrote:Why don't you try buying a low-end system for €150 and developing the mod on that? Actually - don't do that - because I know for a fact that it will be absolutely unbearable for you.
This is by far the worst argument that I have ever heard. Why should I do that? Give me one reasonable point. You still miss our intentions. We do not mod for giving people the opportunity to play a free game on their €150 computers because they can't afford something modern. I am not Mother Theresa. If people want to play modern games from the gaming industry, the simply need so called minimum specs. Blade of Agony Chapter 3 will most propably released in 2019. Why should we care about computers from 2005 when we developers are working with modern systems to realize our visions?

I have absolutely no FPS drops. Yes, I have a modern system from 2019 with good system specs, but it's not a gaming pc that is totally overpowered. In fact, I spent about €800 3 months ago and I don't consider this a huge amount of money for a complete system including a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

That said, I simply repeat myself once more: It's a hobby for us, we are doing it mainly because it makes fun. And we are happy if other people can enjoy the mod as well but at no single moment we have the priority to make it accessable to everyone just to make sure as many people as possible can play the game. If they want to and their 2005'r-system can't handle it, they can reduce details, change options or simply buy a new computer - it's up to them, but that shouldn't restrict us. We are already doing more than planned to improve it.

One thing I have in mind though which might help and make it easy to adjust options quickly
What about some kind of option in the main menu like a "preset"? One option that instantly changes all the necessary options instantly - for example "Low Detail" makes all options to the minimum, "Middle Detail" makes a good medium amount of detail and "High Detail" sets everything to the settings we developers want them to be. Is something like this possible in GZDoom? Maybe something Graf Zahl might be able to help with.
Enjay wrote:On an entirely different tack, the pictures do look very impressive and are hugely evocative of the Nuremberg Rallies of the 1930s (which, of course, is the intention). But that got me wondering: Nazi symbolism and regalia (as I understand it) are banned in Germany unless they are being used for an appropriate education purpose (correct?). The Wolfenstein themed maps and enemies in Doom2 were removed for the German market. So, I'm just wondering, could there be any potential legal consequences for a Doom modder living and creating maps like this in Germany?
Well, wildweasel already made a good point indeed and I am glad that things changed in the meantime. But when I started with BoA, laws have been different actually :D Well, let's say I simply didn't care but yes, things could have gone wrong ;)
Ozymandias81 wrote:Thank you Kinsie, your suggestion made me gain 5fps more, and today I have done a commit which has improved greatly the map of 10/15fps overall. More than this I doubt I could achieve. Will look to that blur issue too.
As you see, we take feedback serious and we try to incorporate ideas and improvements as good as we can - as long as it works with our vision :)
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Rachael »

Tormentor667 wrote: One thing I have in mind though which might help and make it easy to adjust options quickly
What about some kind of option in the main menu like a "preset"? One option that instantly changes all the necessary options instantly - for example "Low Detail" makes all options to the minimum, "Middle Detail" makes a good medium amount of detail and "High Detail" sets everything to the settings we developers want them to be. Is something like this possible in GZDoom? Maybe something Graf Zahl might be able to help with.
While using KEYCONF for the most part is still discouraged, it is the best way to put in console aliases. Unlike normal aliases, these aliases disappear as soon as the game is exited and will not affect a user's configuration.

So a keyconf.txt file would look like this:

Code: Select all

alias boa_options_low "set ThisCVar lowvalue; set ThatCVar lowvalue; set etc etc"
alias boa_options_high "set ThisCVar highvalue; set ThatCVar highvalue; set etc etc"
Then in your menudef.txt just call the aliases by name:

Code: Select all

OptionMenu "BOAOptions" 
{
	Title "Blade of Agony Options"
	SafeCommand "Set Defaults (Low)","boa_options_low"
	SafeCommand "Set Defaults (High)","boa_options_high"
	// blah, blah, etc, etc...
}
Using SafeCommand puts up a prompt to verify that the user actually wants to do this.
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Ozymandias81 »

Tbh this is something I am planning since a couple of weeks ago in my mind, and this confirms my plans. Thanks for these suggestions too. :)
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Rachael »

You're welcome.
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Ghost Prototype »

I always thought that ridiculously large amounts of sidedefs didn't have too much of an impact on performance unless they were being rendered all at once. Might actually need to split my map into two.
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Re: [Blade of Agony] Road to Wolfenstein Devblog Part 07 | p

Post by Tormentor667 »

Rachael wrote:You're welcome.
Thanks for these infos. Ozymandias is already implementing that functions and I think it will be of good use to everyone who isn't common with all the settings that can be changed. You see - it's definitely not that we do not care :)
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