Volumes Of Fun
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MLE Tech Demo :)
http://www.volumesoffun.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=154
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Author:  Shanee [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 9:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: MLE Tech Demo :)

I have uploaded a new demo with the fixed blending. Note that there is still some problem with the blending when blending with 3 textures there is *sometimes* blackness. I am still unsure why and it also only happens sometimes, weird!

Anyhow, I also disabled HDR because some people had problems with it.

I added a new functionality, pressing F3 will switch between the volume editor and the old height map editor. This is a temp solution just for tech demo, later (when I integrate physics probably) the editors will be completely combined.

Here is the link for the demo:
http://www.twilightempires.com/downloads/MLE.rar

Author:  David Williams [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 2:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MLE Tech Demo :)

Great! I have nothing left to teach you :)

I also gave your demo a go and it worked nicely. I did see the occasional artifact on the boundary between two different materials but I'm sure you'll fix that in time. And if you do manage to improve the way the technique then let us know - I'm sure a lot of people will be interested.

Author:  Shanee [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 2:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MLE Tech Demo :)

Was it between two materials or three materials blending? Never had that between just 2 materials, what kind of artifacts? :)

And thank you btw :)

Author:  David Williams [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 3:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MLE Tech Demo :)

Actually I don't remember - it might have been three materials.

Author:  Shanee [ Sun Apr 10, 2011 2:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MLE Tech Demo :)

New editor is coming along nicely :)

Image

Image

Author:  David Williams [ Sun Apr 10, 2011 6:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MLE Tech Demo :)

Great stuff as always!

Author:  Shanee [ Sun Apr 10, 2011 7:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MLE Tech Demo :)

Edit 2: I re-uploaded the demo with DoF disabled and most graphics fixed, please try and tell me how it goes and what else might be broken :)

Edit: I removed the demo from the site, I found a problem that causes many cards to fail work with it, I lcoated where the problem is and working to fix it.

New demo:

http://www.twilightempires.com/downloads/MLE.rar

8 - new world.
9 - save world.
10 - load saved world.

A, W, S, D, SPACE, X - movements.

1 - switch to voxel editor.
2 - switch to object editor

O - drop a boulder :P

Hope the demo will actually work properly on other PCs, some parts are not optimized properly yet :)

P.S. would really love to know if it does work properly for people or if it doesn't so please comment :)

Author:  David Williams [ Mon Apr 11, 2011 8:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MLE Tech Demo :)

Well it does run for me, though with some problems. The mouse controls appear to keep freezing (though it might be because I keep pressing the wrong modifier keys) and the application froze after a minute or so.

Author:  Shanee [ Tue Apr 12, 2011 3:28 am ]
Post subject:  Re: MLE Tech Demo :)

David Williams wrote:
Well it does run for me, though with some problems. The mouse controls appear to keep freezing (though it might be because I keep pressing the wrong modifier keys) and the application froze after a minute or so.


What do you mean by the mouse buttons keep freezing?

Can you say what happened just before the freeze?

Also, when did you download the zip? I had to upload several times due to getting feedback and bugfixing. (Still have two major one to fix, one is the Depth of Field, another is a crash bug that can happen , related to updating the physics mesh.

Author:  Shanee [ Tue Apr 12, 2011 7:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: MLE Tech Demo :)

Ok, I believe that I fixed a major crash bug.

Uploading a new zip. Those who already have the zip can just update the exe which is downloadable from here:
http://www.twilightempires.com/download ... roject.exe

I also capped refresh rate at 40 as some people said their GPU was getting a bit hot (it was capped at 60 before). Update rate is not capped at 40. I wonder what else could be done about this.

My conclusion (related to PolyVox) is that I need to find a way to reduce the terrain's triangles count. The mesh decimilator gave me problems with the triplanar texturing though so I am wondering what else might be an option. It is also way too slow for real time (but could be multi threaded and switched to later on). Also LoD would be very very useful to render larger terrain areas and keep FPS high. So far PolyVox is having the highest triangle counts and GPU attention even when I add hundreds of other objects.

PolyVox related bug?
Sometimes when editing quite a bit, a large terrain chunk suddenly disappears. Initially I thought it was due to the new paging system, but after increasing the size even more (more than it needs) and seeing it still happens I do not think so.

Another reason for me to doubt my first guess is because at one time, after it (the chunk) disappeared (or disappeared except for a small hill I made), I tried to edit the same spot again and it came back with the additional new hill I added. Thing is - I did not add functions for streaming in/out voxel data, so polyvox couldn't have retrieved it using the callbacks.

I am not exactly sure what else it could be, either something with my code (which pretty much just calls the meshExtractor and copies the data) or with the meshExtractor.

I managed to replicate the bug and add upload screenshots:

Here I edited each chunk once/twice to try to get one to disappear, here it is:
Image

After editing around the area a small number of times again, the data returned (again, I did not implement the paging callbacks, so it should have been empty except for new data)
Image

Another reason I do not believe it been "paged out" is because the PolyVox's own intersection code worked, even when nothing was visible except for a hill or two that cause it to disappear. Also, sometimes I been making a few hills on-top what should have been flat surface (invisible) and it interescted fine, added the hills but still did not return (only a few edits after).

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