POLL: Tesseract vs. Cube 2

[stroEkris]

In my opinion, I think Red Eclipse should use Tesseract. It will be a major improvement for the game (in terms of graphics AND map editing.)

But here is the thing:
If we move to Tesseract, the player who have old hardware won't able to play the game at acceptable frame rate (30+ fps).
But if we won't do it, map editing will still be a pain in the butt because of calculating the lights.

All this problem could be eliminated if you could remove the dynamic shadows and use lightmaps, at your whim.

I still say: BRING IT ON BABEH!

UPDATE:
I'll be more than glad to help you with porting RE to Tesseract. Not code-wise (I don't know programming, unfortunatley), but in terms of porting the maps and optimizing the lighting in the maps, with THAT, I'll help you.


- GooshGoosh

[greaserpirate]

All this problem could be eliminated if you could remove the dynamic shadows and use lightmaps, at your whim.

Unfortunately that's not possible..

..but would it be possible to turn other client-side features down, like for example turning off shaders? That would be an easy way to have people with old hardware be able to play, and I hope it works when I try it

[Jamestonjes]

would it be possible for lights in indoor maps to only be active when you can see the area they affect? (as optional noneed to do lighting for non visible areas) [Possibly using triggers on lights (special client side only) to disable the other rooms and activate the current one]

edit one: why were there so many people on last night? Im not complaining.

[TristamK]

I get some test yesterday.

[Ulukai]

All this problem could be eliminated if you could remove the dynamic shadows and use lightmaps, at your whim.

Unfortunately that's not possible..

..but would it be possible to turn other client-side features down, like for example turning off shaders? That would be an easy way to have people with old hardware be able to play, and I hope it works when I try it

That's actually what I wanted to say with tweaking Tess for better performance, but I didn't express myself well, sorry for that

[Evropi]

I get some test yesterday.

That's a pretty negligible reduction in framerate for the amount of stuff going on on-screen, looking at the side-by-side comparison. Also keep in mind that Metalheart uses a very outdated version of Tesseract. I imagine it's a bit better now.

[unixfreak]

I voted for "i dont care".

The reason for that, as of now my current computer runs the cube2 games decently on mid graphics settings, i usually play with shaders turned off, otherwise i hit less than 30fps in most cases. It's just about capable of playing games from several years ago. RE is a brilliant game in it's current state, so if it didn't move to tesseract i personally wouldn't mind.

I've seen videos of tesseract, and the engine looks epic, especially the real time lighting. It would be cool to see RE using that.

I did attempt to get tesseract running on my desktop a few months back, although i had to leave my computer for around 10 minutes until the "newmap" loaded, and then when i came back i was getting around 0.5 frames per second. But i guess, that's my fault for buying a computer with an integrated graphics card lol.

I'm about due for upgrading my computer either way, so i honestly don't mind. As long as it's not too much of a hardware requirement.

What nvidia cards would be "minimum" requirements to play smoothly in tesseract? I'm a bit of a cheapo.

[qreeves]

I'm told around a GT 8600, I have other reports of it running on less with some tweaking. I will probably look at playing with other "reductions" so it is somewhat playable on more mediocre hardware (as I still have some myself on my home network).

[BioHazardX]

Why don't use Octaforge instead of Tesseract? http://www.octaforge.org/
It's still in beta version, ok, but it offers more features, included Tesseract.

[Calinou]

Why don't use Octaforge instead of Tesseract? http://www.octaforge.org/
It's still in beta version, ok, but it offers more features, included Tesseract.

That would require a whole recode of the game logic.

[greaserpirate]

I'm told around a GT 8600, I have other reports of it running on less with some tweaking. I will probably look at playing with other "reductions" so it is somewhat playable on more mediocre hardware (as I still have some myself on my home network).

Just wondering, since I'm not that much of a tech-savvy person: can you use an Nvidia card with an AMD processor? And is there anywhere you would recommend getting parts from for cheap?

I got Tesseract up and running (from the SVN download on the site). The framerate was initally around 17 fps, and the options menu didn't work. I asked some people on the IRC channel about commands to turn down quality, and from the information I gathered I found that turning off antialiasing helps a tiny bit (/msaa 0, smaa 0, fxaa 0, possibly /tqaa 0 but tqaa is cheap), turning off ambient occlusion with /ao 0 helps a bit, and /gscale 25 helps the framerate tremendously but makes the resolution look as bad as the original Doom. Even after all that, when I added bots, my framerate went back down under 20.

To be fair, those are some good-looking pixels.

The good news is that 1) I got Tesseract up and running without any errors, and 2) the lighting is amazing, even better than I expected . I also didn't notice any problems when I added a whole ton of lights, either- though this might not be the same for everyone.

So even if I won't be able to play it (yet), I will be able and very eager to start converting maps into Tesseract.

[Fallen]

Red Eclipse: Duke Nukem 3D comes back!

Tbh it looks great in that pixelized way!
Do I need to really download Sauer to test it, or is it able to use RE's content?

[qreeves]

Tesseract is standalone now, isn't it?

[Fallen]

Currently, to use Tesseract you must have a copy of the "packages" directory
from a recent checkout of Sauerbraten SVN. To get a copy of Sauerbraten SVN,
please see the following page: http://sourceforge.net/p/sauerbraten/code

^I think not... or maybe I've missunderstood something...

[Sniper-Goth]

Tesseract is standalone now, isn't it?

It is from what i've read.
Their website is tesseract.gg

[Ulukai]

You sure can use an Nvidia card with an AMD CPU, that doesnt make a difference at all. Problems start when you want an AMD CPU and plug in 2 Nvidia cards in a SLI setup because the motherboard needs to support it and those motherboards are auite rare these days.

I keep hearing that Amazon has low prices, dunno if they sell hardware though...
EDIT: I just checked and of course they sell GFX cards too...

[Dratz-_C]

So far I get an average of 10 frames a second on the small Tesseract test map. I'll be looking Greaserpirate's optimization commands and will post back. To give you an idea on a small map in Red Eclipse I get an average of 18 frames a second with all graphics option as high as they will go. With almost all graphics options on off or low I average 40 frames a second. All of this is at 1080p.
Cheers

[Julius]

So far I get an average of 10 frames a second on the small Tesseract test map. I'll be looking Greaserpirate's optimization commands and will post back. To give you an idea on a small map in Red Eclipse I get an average of 18 frames a second with all graphics option as high as they will go. With almost all graphics options on off or low I average 40 frames a second. All of this is at 1080p.
Cheers

Weren't you complaining it wouldn't run on your PC at all... and then you run it at 1080p???

[Calinou]

Tesseract is standalone now, isn't it?

It is, it uses its own GUI and map format, but Red Eclipse could use a slightly older Tesseract version that worked with Sauerbraten maps and used the old GUI system.

[Dratz-_C]

So far I get an average of 10 frames a second on the small Tesseract test map. I'll be looking Greaserpirate's optimization commands and will post back. To give you an idea on a small map in Red Eclipse I get an average of 18 frames a second with all graphics option as high as they will go. With almost all graphics options on off or low I average 40 frames a second. All of this is at 1080p.
Cheers

Hi Julius,
I have always respected you as a moderator and remember your recent leadership regarding modeling. I thank you for your attention. It took me a while to compile Tesseract and, due to deprecated instructions, Sauerbraten. Indeed I am pleasantly surprised so far that I can crawl with Tesseract. Realistically, might 10 frames a second on a tiny map with no other clients be, when not exactly, at least compatible with "I won't be able to run it at all"? Hopefully I will find some optimizations to improve the situation. Additionally, due to your lack of understanding about the character of my GPU (GeForce 9400GS), I can understand the mistake that this is a fillrate-limited scenario. I also believe to take the point of categorizing a prompt qualified vote for switching to Tesseract as a simple complaint is to miss the main idea of my communication. I do however enjoy being the benefactor of your optimism for people in my situation. When my practice with Tesseract again yields information that I think might help the project, I will post again.
Cheers

[Ulukai]

I decided to try out Tess myself as well (on Arch Linux) so I compiled the necessary SDL2 packages and both sauer svn and Tess svn. Whether I symlink the packages folder in the Tess dir, the game launches and I can load a map but I cant go into the options menu and the HUD isnt visible. Dame for the weapons. I can see several error in the console from where I launched the game about models that cant be found... What am I missing or doing wrong here?

Thanks for helping

[greaserpirate]

I decided to try out Tess myself as well (on Arch Linux) so I compiled the necessary SDL2 packages and both sauer svn and Tess svn. Whether I symlink the packages folder in the Tess dir, the game launches and I can load a map but I cant go into the options menu and the HUD isnt visible. Dame for the weapons. I can see several error in the console from where I launched the game about models that cant be found... What am I missing or doing wrong here?

Thanks for helping

Options menu does nothing at the moment (the code and the button are there for future refernce) and the hudguns and sounds haven't been loaded yet.. as for the other stuff that might be newer than me, but I know it's all very Under Construction there.

[Ulukai]

So it really is standalone then I guess and the link to the packages dir is obsolete I guess. Thanks for your help Greaserpirate.

EDIT: I loaded the map Complex and I'm quite stunned with how it looks as a whole. Very nice effects when you move around and I just can't wait to get my hands on it, once it has this tasty RE sauce all over it The editor of RE works kind of different than the Sauer editor by now and we have this luxury GUI to do some of the editing functions which I really love. It's only when firing up Sauer and trying to do the things you do every day in RE that you see how much RE has evolved in so little time.

EDIT2: If you look at all the mapmodels in the map Complex, they really bring the map to life. We could use more useful models in RE too... It gives more detail and a nice variation to blocky geometry.

[stroEkris]

EDIT2: If you look at all the mapmodels in the map Complex, they really bring the map to life. We could use more useful models in RE too... It gives more detail and a nice variation to blocky geometry.

I agree, with Tesseract, Red Eclipse should use more mapmodels for complex shapes which hard to make via the editor. The fact that in Tesseract mapmodels receive shadows from everything is amazing.

[Julius]

Hi Julius,
I have always respected you as a moderator and remember your recent leadership regarding modeling. I thank you for your attention. It took me a while to compile Tesseract and, due to deprecated instructions, Sauerbraten. Indeed I am pleasantly surprised so far that I can crawl with Tesseract. Realistically, might 10 frames a second on a tiny map with no other clients be, when not exactly, at least compatible with "I won't be able to run it at all"? Hopefully I will find some optimizations to improve the situation. Additionally, due to your lack of understanding about the character of my GPU (GeForce 9400GS), I can understand the mistake that this is a fillrate-limited scenario. I also believe to take the point of categorizing a prompt qualified vote for switching to Tesseract as a simple complaint is to miss the main idea of my communication. I do however enjoy being the benefactor of your optimism for people in my situation. When my practice with Tesseract again yields information that I think might help the project, I will post again.
Cheers

do I sense some passive-agressive sarcasm here? An I can hardly believe that a "simple" game like RE (with the efficient octree system) should be transform limited, but ok, you probably tested that already. Would be definitly interesting to test out where the bottleneck is then, because it sounds quite strange.
P.S.: Regarding the modeling... errg, I am really bad at keeping my promises, right? I ran into some unexpected problems with the hand rig and then kinda lost motivation to try and fix it