Snowstorm in the Old Forest

[madmonk]

Old forest problem, I get a snowstorm when I enter (the flecks are moving across the screen) only happens in the Old Forest

Snowstorm.png (214.61 KiB) Viewed 2194 times

[darkgod]

Not a bug it is meant to be there. But you were supposed to think it's rain .. gosh is the effect that bad ? :/

[madmonk]

It is running across my screen in diagonal stripes rather than in random patterns...

So if you adjust to be more random might work better!

[darkgod]

Hum but rain should all fall in the same direction no ?

[Dervis]

Actually I find the rain effect ok.
My only issue here is that the level is a bit dark, and carrying a light source doesn't help at all. I'd probably enjoy a bit more brightness even if it's raining.

[escargot]

I also understood the effect and the darkness wasn't that strong for me, but I also played through the OF in the night, so I didn't have any reflection or anything on my monitor.
What I did feel is that it (or something else?) slowed down the game awfully strong.
I tried tuning down the particle density to 0, but the performance didn't change a bit. It felt the same as when the game is saving and it takes really long for it to react to keystrokes.

Maybe the particle form differs a bit from rain, that's very often represented with lines falling down. I think a snowstorm might be more chaotic and random, as madmonk said.

[darkgod]

Hum weird, try to delete the "post_process" and "foreground" fields in game/modules/tom/data/zones/old-forest/zone.lua and see if it is faster (needs a new character)

[escargot]

Removing the fields took care of the rain effect, the level stays dark though.
Performance-wise it felt the same, but I think it has more to do with the high CPU usage while/after saving. Can't really say if the saving slow-down lasts every level longer or if it's something else.

By the way, I suppose it's well known that for now the game is really resource consuming. I often find myself dealing with fps drops more usually than with modern games.

[darkgod]

Yeah saving slows down, but it's either that or a modal popup that prvents playing at all while it saves, what's better ?

As for being slow, it really should not be unless you've got an old CPU or some bad drivers for your gfx card (or worse, no correct drivers at all)

[escargot]

I doubt it's my PC, I'm having no problems playing new games (Starcraft II, Left4Dead 2, STALKER, Mount&Blade, CoDMW2, Borderlands...) and the gfx drivers are up-to-date.
I'll give you the system specs:

OS: Windows XP SP3
CPU: AMD Athlon 7750 Dual-Core 2,71GHz
RAM: 3,25GB
GFX: ATI Radeon 4650 512MB
MB: ASUS M3A78

In regards of saving, yeh, I suppose it's better than a complete lockdown until it's done. But maybe adding a bar or a timer, so that you know when it stops, I feel it might be useful and friendly for new players that don't know striking a key multiple times because you see no reaction might get you killed.

And yeah, I was thinking about other moments where I had slow downs and, well, it's kinda obvious, but when there are many mobs on screen or multiple effects it sometimes gets slow. I dunno, I kinda accepted it at the beginning, considering it being a beta and all, but if you tell me it shouldn't then there might be something not running perfectly smoothly. Considering I can face 80 zombies running at me on L4D2 running fixed at 100fps, but in some cases 20 characters with a red square around them give my PC more trouble to process.
I don't know, I haven't found a pattern, else I would have mentioned early.

Am I the only one having this issues? Should we move this to another thread?

[Final Master]

I got significant slowdown on the trek back out of OF at about level 2/3 that didn't exist prior to beta13. It didn't carry over to any other section of the game so to me it's fine. I was also playing at night without lights on when I first entered the new OH and even though the effect is a bit weak it is surprisingly cool. I read about it's inclusion in the features list and kind of shrugged it off. If the direction of the rain were changed to random it might just start to look like 'snow' from analog tvs, which isn't good.