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New test PRE RC client

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READ THE WHOLE THREAD BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO DO THIS, OR BEFORE REPLYING. NOT DOING SO CAN GET YOU BANNED FROM THE FORUMS

 

In order to speed up the release of the new client (which is ready featurewise, but needs some more bug fixes and adjustments), I want everyone to test this client which is a pre pre release candidate.

 

In order to test it, you will need to download it from here:

http://www.eternal-lands.com/el_eyecandy_test.zip

 

Then copy all your EL stuff in a new directory, and unzip this zip archive in that directory, in such a way that you will overwrite the existing files (some DLLs). Do not unzip it inside a folder in your new directory.

If you do that and report a problem, you will be suspended from the forums for life. So if you are not familiar with unzipping archives, don't do it!

 

It is important to copy the EL stuff in a new directory, because otherwise you might have to reinstall the whole thing, in case you have problems.

 

If you notice problems or bugs, or very poor performance, let us know here. If you report poor performance, post your system specs. Also, to make sure, test with the original client as well, and compare the FPS from one client to another in the same location.

 

One other thing, keep in mind that the name of the test client is different, so don't run el.exe and complain that there is no difference!

 

P.S. Let me know if you have any problem with the bags using the new client!

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In the earlier thread, Cyrus said:

"ok when you rotate the camera to the southwest in votd the screen goes black but you still see like the elemental weps and names and hp bars and things but everything else is black"

 

This happened to me in a couple of places too:

- inside the iglo on iscarlith that takes you to iotf

- in Ida, approaching the PV exit

- I know there was a third place, but silly me forgot

 

BTW, I've been playing on the new client a good portion of the day too, mostly mixing and harvesting, also fighting some ferans, and no crashes or problems. I did repeatedly get the message that I have low frame rate detected (for example in c2 underworld). I have FPS turned off, so don't have specific numbers, but I can tell you that I got none of the special effects or shadows or anything like that turned on except the eye candy, and it still happens.

 

Can't wait for the engineering :)

 

lilbear

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Ok, well, let's see if there are any crashes. If not, that's pretty good, we can have a RC soon.

Minor and infreuqent graphical problems are acceptable, we can always fix them as we go, no need to postpone the update until every little bug is fixed.

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LilBear:

 

Re, C2 underworld: What is your framerate with eye candy on? What is your framerate without it on? Where in the underworld were you (so I can go to the same point)?

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No crashes for me yet on this one, but a major FPS drop in the PL manu school. Huge amounts of smoke in there. Without eye candy on I have 35 FPS (that's what I have it limited to) with it on, I have 6 FPS. Here is a screenie of how the smoke looks to me.

Click 'n stuff

 

I might try some cycs later. I was crashing on them before so if it happens again I'll edit this.

Edited by CelticLady

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I runned the newest version too, but unfortunately sometimes still crashing (when I enable the reflections always, when it is disabled, sometimes).

I using the highest perspective settings (maybe this is the problem?), and while the client crashed,

no bigger magic casted or summon efx seen (except restore spell while fighting),

the last map where i was when the client crashed it contains 4-5 fxes (smoke, fire, something particle) which is statically applied to the map.

The old client (with the old fxes) never crashed.

 

How can I get any usable information about the reason of crashing (maybe the windows crashlog not too informative)?

 

My computer is: P4 2.4Ghz (running at 2.88), 2.5G Ram, Ati Sapphire Radeon x1650Pro, running at 1280x1024x32.

Edited by csiga

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Huge amounts of smoke in there. Without eye candy on I have 35 FPS (that's what I have it limited to) with it on, I have 6 FPS. Here is a screenie of how the smoke looks to me.

Click 'n stuff

 

 

Looks like i'll have to remove the smoke from here when the map editor gets fixed...If you see any other places like this please let me know.

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Hmm, I got it just now, I love the effects, I seemed to noticed LOTS of lag in the portals room, I am getting 6fps, that is very horrible 0.o if you can possibly fix the lag, it would be useful.

 

Other than that, I can't see too much of a problem, I love the looks!

 

If I encounter more, I will come back :happy:

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Roja: Torches are a little bit wider now. I can make them even wider or wider + taller if you want.

 

CelticLady: The smoke effect really is using the minimum number of particles to look reasonable on LOD (level of detail) 1 (minimum) -- in that case, only about 30 or so per effect. I could make it look "less than reasonable" if the framerate gets that low, though. It just means that your video card is slow when dealing with transparency, for some reason. I don't want anyone to have to have a very low framerate in any circumstance. :)

 

Calla: Same thing -- slow transparency. I could possibly make LOD=1 have no column of light. I could also make it so that special effects stop showing a bit closer to the user than they currently are (when they're far away, they don't draw).

 

Too late to go any further with these tonight; more on all this tomorrow.

BTW, there seems to be one crash left. Brownie points to anyone who can get a stacktrace on it or a reliable way to reproduce it. :) I've never encountered it myself.

Edited by KarenRei

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Didn't get to cycs yet to test if I crash again on them, but did get a chance to check over some things that I had checked with the previous test version. For some reason any and all effects lower my FPS more with this test version then with the last one. Comparison results are as follows:

C2 portals room 9-17 FPS 9 was near the fountain with the 4 portals visible. (was 16-22. 16 near the fountain)

C1 portals room 7-18 FPS (was 14-17)

WSC fountain near Mira 12 FPS (was 14)

Mother Nature getting pissed at me 16 FPS (was about 29)

teleport to range spell 9-13 FPS (was ~29)

 

If I turn off Eye Candy my FPS goes back to 30-35 for all of the above effects. Also note, there is no visual effect for the restore spell with Eye Candy turned on.

 

Nothing has changed in my game settings and the only thing different on my pc is that I added a gig of RAM. My game settings are as follows:

Poorman on

FPS limited to 35

Eye Candy on

Max Eye Candy Framerate 25

Min Eye Candy Framerate 16

3D Alpha Blending on

Compiled Vertex Aray on

Vertex Buffer Objects on

Video Mode 1152x864x32

 

Running on:

Windows XP SP2 Media Center Edition

Intel Pentium 4 HT 3.0Ghz

Intel 915G (Integrated) 128mb

1.49GB DDR RAM

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Also note, there is no visual effect for the restore spell with Eye Candy turned on.

 

i helped karen with fixing and debugging for that, supposedly it's fixed in latest CVS (not sure if it's committed yet) :)

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Roja: Torches are a little bit wider now. I can make them even wider or wider + taller if you want.

 

CelticLady: The smoke effect really is using the minimum number of particles to look reasonable on LOD (level of detail) 1 (minimum) -- in that case, only about 30 or so per effect. I could make it look "less than reasonable" if the framerate gets that low, though. It just means that your video card is slow when dealing with transparency, for some reason. I don't want anyone to have to have a very low framerate in any circumstance. :)

 

Calla: Same thing -- slow transparency. I could possibly make LOD=1 have no column of light. I could also make it so that special effects stop showing a bit closer to the user than they currently are (when they're far away, they don't draw).

 

Too late to go any further with these tonight; more on all this tomorrow.

BTW, there seems to be one crash left. Brownie points to anyone who can get a stacktrace on it or a reliable way to reproduce it. :) I've never encountered it myself.

KAren: CelticLady's screen shot shows there is too much smoke coming from the fires. This is based on how it looks, not anything about particle count. Fires should not have plumes of smoke that can obstruct your view likw that. If you think about it, most wood & coal firesdon't have very much visible smoke near the ground,. That screen shot makes it look as if there is much more smoke effect then fire!

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I got a crash using this eyecandy RC. I was on South Redmoon fighting a feran. It was daytime (about 3:00 game clock). I saw nobody else onscreen and no active special effects. I'm pretty sure there was no rain or fog when the fight started but it seems to be rainy and foggy a real lot on that map. It's on the other comp so I can't cut and paste but here goes:

AppName: el_eyecandy.exe  AppVer: 1.3.3.0   ModName: cal3d.dll
ModVer: 0.0.0.0   Offset: 0006b39c

Exception Information
Code:  0xc0000005	 Flags: 0x00000000
Record: 0x000000  Address: 0x0000000003feb39c

 

This system was using Windows XP home on an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad. Display adapter in device manager says NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5200.

 

Config options enabled: fullscreen, shadows, render fog, show reflections, cloud shadows, particles 100%, special effects, eye candy, shadow mapping, 3d alpha blending, Comp Vertex Array, Vertex buffer objects, point particles, gamma=1.30.

 

- - - - -

I just got a second crash. This time it was on Emerald Valley. I had just killed a fox and had clicked on its death bag. It was about 4:03 on game clock. I saw nobody else onscreen and no special effects. No rain or fog was visible.

 

Error signature is same as above including the offset. Exception information is same as above including address.

 

Config options were unchanged from before.

Edited by Puntif

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it has crashed 2/4 times on me, the 1/4 time it basically froze, and the last time i tryed it it used up about half my cpu so el lagged, and as a note, there is no change in fps, the usual 61

 

windows x media center, about 2 years old so no problem with the ocmputer, it has 516 mb graphics card so graphics are good...

Edited by McLaren

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No crashes for me, but perforamce is poor. On normal client, no matter what i do, i always have 60 fps (+-1). Just like my screen refresh rate.

On eye candy client fps varies. On open space its still 60, but in more populated areas ( i checked pl and wsc storage) it drops to ~35 fps.

I also change perspective to 0.80 and rate camera. On normal client i still got 60 fps, on eye candy it dropped to ~30 fps.

 

My PC:

Athlon 64 X2 4200

GeForce 7900 GT 512M DDR3

1G RAM DDR2

WinXP Pro x64 Edition

Video mode: 1680x1050x32

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Too much at once here :)

 

Learner: I sized smoke effects by Roja's requirements. If there's a problem with the amount of smoke, it's a map problem, with the map choosing too many or the wrong kinds of smoke effects.

 

CelticLady: Now that is interesting. I'll check into that later today; hopefully I can verify it (not on this computer, but my upstairs comp might be able to)

 

Puntif: That's not a stacktrace. There's no useful information in there. A stacktrace will list filenames and line numbers. The other option for me to debug it, apart from a stacktrace, is reproducability. Do you have a way to reproduce it?

 

McLaren: Same, for your crashes. Re, performance: your CPU matters also.

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CelticLady: I just compared today's CVS with one from four days ago, from the exact same positions with the exact same options, sitting in the C2 portals room. I get the exact same performance either way. Theories as to why?

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Oh, and as to the importance of getting me either a stacktrace or a way to reproduce this: if we can't, here's what we're going to have to do to fix it.

 

A) Put in a bunch of debugging statements into the code that will write to EL's logs and make them grow to many megs, quickly, and keep growing the longer you're in the game.

:) Ent/Roja will make another release.

C) Whenever you get a crash, you'll post your monstrous logs

D) I'll analyze them, and figure out where to focus the next set of statements.

E) Repeat.

 

This will take probably half a dozen iterations to solve it this way. Needless to say, this would be very slow.

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Learner: that smoke you see is like that because with the old particles we placed smoke in addition to the fire. So now that smoke has to be deleted. Problem is I can't do that until the map editor is fixed(right now I cannot use the old particles in it, they don't show up, and if i try to place a new one it crashes)

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CelticLady: I just compared today's CVS with one from four days ago, from the exact same positions with the exact same options, sitting in the C2 portals room. I get the exact same performance either way. Theories as to why?

 

I have no clue why it might be different. As I stated, the only difference in my system is that I added a gig of RAM. Everything else on my system is running great (other than my Norton Internet Security but that's a whole other thing and not relevant). I am not a programer in any way shape or form and thus have no idea what may be causing this. Just trying to help test :)

 

Perhaps I'll try and download this version again and try it fresh to see if the problem persists. Other than that I don't know how to help isolate what the problem is. If there is something else I can do or some other information that a mostly computer illiterate person can give you then just let me know what I can do.

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Roja: Sorry about the editor; it's probably my fault. I had gotten started on adding in new eye candy, but with the bug reports from the upcoming release coming in, I don't get much time to work on it. I don't know if you use CVS, but you can check out an older version with -D. For example, cvs update -D "60 days ago".

 

CelticLady: Ok, so you changed some hardware. Yes, changing ram can slow you down if not done properly; for example, you could have gone from dual channel to single. Let's start with a preliminary test. Go to a place that tends to slow you down a lot. Sit down, watch your framerate for a while, and get a good average. Then log out, switch to the other client, log in, and do the same. Then go back to the first, and do the same once more. Let me know what you find.

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CelticLady: Ok, so you changed some hardware. Yes, changing ram can slow you down if not done properly; for example, you could have gone from dual channel to single. Let's start with a preliminary test. Go to a place that tends to slow you down a lot. Sit down, watch your framerate for a while, and get a good average. Then log out, switch to the other client, log in, and do the same. Then go back to the first, and do the same once more. Let me know what you find.

 

Hmm, I can't exactly do that. I copied the new test version over the old one so I'm just going by the numbers I had noted before compared to what they are now.

 

eck...you are absolutely correct. The 1gig strip I added was single channel and the 512mb I already had (still have installed) is dual. bleh....sooo is that my problem then?

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