Floor Texture corruption/flickerting
by Nicolas Quijano · in General Game Discussion · 12/14/2002 (3:27 pm) · 10 replies
Hi Chris, and the rest of the CR gang,
Okay, the "bug" I'm going to mention might be a driver problem, or somesuch, but it's really localized to certain levels/rooms : in some of them, the floor texture will get corrupted when my viewpoint reaches certain angles/distance from the floor, usually quite close, with a low angle above the floor.
The texture will look kinda inverted, and pixellated a lot, and then flickers between this state and the normal rendering of the texture. Moving the camera stops it, but it can start again during the same level.
So far, I've only encountered it in a few levels, that share the same two or three floor textures (I will try to get you a better list in the near future)
Apart from that, the game is excellent : I went to bed at 5 this morning, after playing a lot of CR and MB ;)
Feature suggestion : Being able to play own music while playing, ie have a choice of music, called "user" that would start the CD in your CDROM player, the letter of which could be precised in the config file...
Not that the music included is not excellent. No, it's just that there is only 4 tunes, and they are so short that it gets repititive pretty fast. :)
Question : I've tried changing the resolution to 800x600, both in window and fullscreen mode, and it worked for the most part, especially in fullscreen, except for some weird viewport behaviour at startup.
Is this why you don't suggest changing the resolution, or included a menu with that functionality ?
ie Any reason why I shouldn't play in 800x600, or even higher resolutions ?
In closing, thanks for the really, really cool game !!!
An excellent game, period. And when you factor in the cost, you probably get one of the best quality/price ratio ever !!! (same for Marble Blast, btw ;))
Haven't started building my own levels, but that should be at least as fun, if not more than the regular play...
Again, thanks for producing such a gem 8p
Nicolas
Okay, the "bug" I'm going to mention might be a driver problem, or somesuch, but it's really localized to certain levels/rooms : in some of them, the floor texture will get corrupted when my viewpoint reaches certain angles/distance from the floor, usually quite close, with a low angle above the floor.
The texture will look kinda inverted, and pixellated a lot, and then flickers between this state and the normal rendering of the texture. Moving the camera stops it, but it can start again during the same level.
So far, I've only encountered it in a few levels, that share the same two or three floor textures (I will try to get you a better list in the near future)
Apart from that, the game is excellent : I went to bed at 5 this morning, after playing a lot of CR and MB ;)
Feature suggestion : Being able to play own music while playing, ie have a choice of music, called "user" that would start the CD in your CDROM player, the letter of which could be precised in the config file...
Not that the music included is not excellent. No, it's just that there is only 4 tunes, and they are so short that it gets repititive pretty fast. :)
Question : I've tried changing the resolution to 800x600, both in window and fullscreen mode, and it worked for the most part, especially in fullscreen, except for some weird viewport behaviour at startup.
Is this why you don't suggest changing the resolution, or included a menu with that functionality ?
ie Any reason why I shouldn't play in 800x600, or even higher resolutions ?
In closing, thanks for the really, really cool game !!!
An excellent game, period. And when you factor in the cost, you probably get one of the best quality/price ratio ever !!! (same for Marble Blast, btw ;))
Haven't started building my own levels, but that should be at least as fun, if not more than the regular play...
Again, thanks for producing such a gem 8p
Nicolas
#2
12/14/2002 (7:15 pm)
I've been having this issue, too, and it doesn't look like Z-fighting. It actually looks like the texture is getting corrupted in memory. Here's a screenshot (Nicolas, is this what you're getting, too?)
#3
You guys consider this a bug? It looks like a feature :)
But seriously, I'll look into it. Can you guys look for some pattern. Maybe I'm overloading the vid memory. Does it only happen when there are lots of parts in the level? Or does it only happen when the camera view is wacky as Nicolas suggests?
Nicolas: As for the music feature you suggested, Currently CR supports adding your own .wav files to the music directory. However you'll still have to convert them to .wav format. Obviously this is not a good solution. However, theoretically you should be able to turn the music volume down to 0 (which actually mutes it) and play a CD in the background. No conversion would be necessary. I'll look into supporting CD music in the patch.
As for playing in 800x600, I was really lazy about this. I tried to minimized the UI for the newbie audience but you're now about the third person who's commented on wanting more control of the window. I'll definately add this to the patch list.
Thanks for your encouragement. I really appreciate it!
Chris
12/15/2002 (12:54 pm)
Cool,You guys consider this a bug? It looks like a feature :)
But seriously, I'll look into it. Can you guys look for some pattern. Maybe I'm overloading the vid memory. Does it only happen when there are lots of parts in the level? Or does it only happen when the camera view is wacky as Nicolas suggests?
Nicolas: As for the music feature you suggested, Currently CR supports adding your own .wav files to the music directory. However you'll still have to convert them to .wav format. Obviously this is not a good solution. However, theoretically you should be able to turn the music volume down to 0 (which actually mutes it) and play a CD in the background. No conversion would be necessary. I'll look into supporting CD music in the patch.
As for playing in 800x600, I was really lazy about this. I tried to minimized the UI for the newbie audience but you're now about the third person who's commented on wanting more control of the window. I'll definately add this to the patch list.
Thanks for your encouragement. I really appreciate it!
Chris
#4
Chris, this does have a tendency to happen when the camera is close to the floor, but sometimes happens in other conditions, like in James' pic : as you can see, the camera is not particularly low in that picture.
As I said, clicking the mouse, moving the camera or both usually get rid of it, for a while...
Culprit textures (I'm sure it has something to do with the textures, as it only happens with the same ones) are the following, for now : the one in James' shot, and the dark green grass looking floor texture.
Edit : I've now also seen it once on a wall texture, but that was while abusing the camera's placement possibilities. I'm also inclined to say that it gets worse with time, ie more frequently and more stuff affected (??) as two times, after leaving the game idle for a long period, the green "flipping" arrows on a boxing glove timer were replaced by a generic(?) gray widget, on one occasion, the gray icon animating with the green arrows in alternance. /End of Edit
Chris : about the .wav support. That's cool, even if I have to umcompress .mp3s for that, etc. What about adding direct ogg and mp3 (decoding is patent free, isn't it ?) to the exe ?? (noticed you used ogg to compress the music for distribution ;)) And yes, I had thought of the Audio CD playing in the back with music set to 0, but I was suggesting the feature for less "computer able" people, ie the casual gamers who want simple, obvious features :)
Note on different resolutions : as far as I can tell, I was wrong. Ie, the fullscreen defaults to 640x480 whatever your put in the .ini file, and the windowing support borks : for example, it will draw an 800x600 window, but only draw in the top-left 640x480 portion of it. Albeit, it would be nice to be able to play at higher res, since it would lessen some of the aliasing...
Minor feature : save the status of where you're at in the Tutorials, like in the game itself. That way, if you have to quit before finishing the tuts, you can start from where you were, instead of from the beginning. Agreed, it's a minor irk. 8p
Question about the determinism of the game :
I've noticed something twice so far, first in a level I don't remember, the second time in "Pop Goes The Weasel". Here is what I noticed : you can run the exact same setup twice and not get the same results, ie it fails the first time you run it, and then, the next time it works. In "Pop...Weasel", I was trying to use the pails to trigger the guns, and sometimes it would work, and sometimes not. Again, with exactly the same setup.
My question is to know if this is the intended behaviour, or in other words, it's non-deterministic (that must have been fun to find gameplay balance, and to debug !!! 8p). I think that's what you intended, but just in case, I'd thought I'd mention it ;)
Have a good one !!!
N.
12/15/2002 (1:11 pm)
Thanks James, that's exactly what I meant :)Chris, this does have a tendency to happen when the camera is close to the floor, but sometimes happens in other conditions, like in James' pic : as you can see, the camera is not particularly low in that picture.
As I said, clicking the mouse, moving the camera or both usually get rid of it, for a while...
Culprit textures (I'm sure it has something to do with the textures, as it only happens with the same ones) are the following, for now : the one in James' shot, and the dark green grass looking floor texture.
Edit : I've now also seen it once on a wall texture, but that was while abusing the camera's placement possibilities. I'm also inclined to say that it gets worse with time, ie more frequently and more stuff affected (??) as two times, after leaving the game idle for a long period, the green "flipping" arrows on a boxing glove timer were replaced by a generic(?) gray widget, on one occasion, the gray icon animating with the green arrows in alternance. /End of Edit
Chris : about the .wav support. That's cool, even if I have to umcompress .mp3s for that, etc. What about adding direct ogg and mp3 (decoding is patent free, isn't it ?) to the exe ?? (noticed you used ogg to compress the music for distribution ;)) And yes, I had thought of the Audio CD playing in the back with music set to 0, but I was suggesting the feature for less "computer able" people, ie the casual gamers who want simple, obvious features :)
Note on different resolutions : as far as I can tell, I was wrong. Ie, the fullscreen defaults to 640x480 whatever your put in the .ini file, and the windowing support borks : for example, it will draw an 800x600 window, but only draw in the top-left 640x480 portion of it. Albeit, it would be nice to be able to play at higher res, since it would lessen some of the aliasing...
Minor feature : save the status of where you're at in the Tutorials, like in the game itself. That way, if you have to quit before finishing the tuts, you can start from where you were, instead of from the beginning. Agreed, it's a minor irk. 8p
Question about the determinism of the game :
I've noticed something twice so far, first in a level I don't remember, the second time in "Pop Goes The Weasel". Here is what I noticed : you can run the exact same setup twice and not get the same results, ie it fails the first time you run it, and then, the next time it works. In "Pop...Weasel", I was trying to use the pails to trigger the guns, and sometimes it would work, and sometimes not. Again, with exactly the same setup.
My question is to know if this is the intended behaviour, or in other words, it's non-deterministic (that must have been fun to find gameplay balance, and to debug !!! 8p). I think that's what you intended, but just in case, I'd thought I'd mention it ;)
Have a good one !!!
N.
#5
As for the CD support, I absolutely agree. I need to look into a simple UI allowing players to select CD tracks. Originally I supported the Windows Media Audio, which gave me .wav, .wma, etc. but it caused a ton of compatibility issues. As a quick fix, I reduced the support to just .wav format. However ogg & mp3 decompressors are certainly not out of the question. That said they do use CPU cycles on slower machines. (I noticed it on the WMA support on my PIII 500.)
However, aren't you the fellow who'd like to see it on the Mac ;-) I'd like to convert to the torque and get that audio support for free and not have to spend any time on it.
As for resolution control, ignore the .ini. It's NOT supported in the game. I really was just being lazy here.
Jeff and I discussed the tutorials quite a bit. They're just too easy to consider as part of the game so we separated them. There really isn't any reason not to track a players progress through the tutorials. It does add the Sign-In step, which we were trying to avoid, but that's not too great a barrier to most players. I've added it to the patch list. Thanks!
Finally determinism! The game should be deterministic, however, that is a bit hard to tell in some cases. It is possible that I missed a case. I'll look at Pop Goes the Weasle for indeterminism. What I've noticed is that there are "apparent" indeterminisms, but when I track them down they turn out to be deterministic but something super small was changed (i.e. the configuration/time of the rope is not exactly the same).
I'll bet that is what you're seeing as well. As you might imagine, that is incredibly difficult to fix. The more realistic I made the physics the more subtle the bugs became. In the builder, you'll notice that sometimes rigid body objects stick. That is a very small rounding error bug, I've never been able to completely eliminate. I'm still working on fixing this bug.
Chris
12/15/2002 (1:42 pm)
I'll look into the texture you're describing. Humm?As for the CD support, I absolutely agree. I need to look into a simple UI allowing players to select CD tracks. Originally I supported the Windows Media Audio, which gave me .wav, .wma, etc. but it caused a ton of compatibility issues. As a quick fix, I reduced the support to just .wav format. However ogg & mp3 decompressors are certainly not out of the question. That said they do use CPU cycles on slower machines. (I noticed it on the WMA support on my PIII 500.)
However, aren't you the fellow who'd like to see it on the Mac ;-) I'd like to convert to the torque and get that audio support for free and not have to spend any time on it.
As for resolution control, ignore the .ini. It's NOT supported in the game. I really was just being lazy here.
Jeff and I discussed the tutorials quite a bit. They're just too easy to consider as part of the game so we separated them. There really isn't any reason not to track a players progress through the tutorials. It does add the Sign-In step, which we were trying to avoid, but that's not too great a barrier to most players. I've added it to the patch list. Thanks!
Finally determinism! The game should be deterministic, however, that is a bit hard to tell in some cases. It is possible that I missed a case. I'll look at Pop Goes the Weasle for indeterminism. What I've noticed is that there are "apparent" indeterminisms, but when I track them down they turn out to be deterministic but something super small was changed (i.e. the configuration/time of the rope is not exactly the same).
I'll bet that is what you're seeing as well. As you might imagine, that is incredibly difficult to fix. The more realistic I made the physics the more subtle the bugs became. In the builder, you'll notice that sometimes rigid body objects stick. That is a very small rounding error bug, I've never been able to completely eliminate. I'm still working on fixing this bug.
Chris
#6
The tutorials are excellent, and make for a good introduction to the game principles and mechanics. As I said, the tracking is a minor issue that I noticed, because I was interrupted both at IGC and when I got the game :)
12/15/2002 (5:54 pm)
Oh, and Chris, any estimate on when the help pages on the Web are going to be available ?The tutorials are excellent, and make for a good introduction to the game principles and mechanics. As I said, the tracking is a minor issue that I noticed, because I was interrupted both at IGC and when I got the game :)
#7
12/15/2002 (6:49 pm)
I'm working on the help pages now. It will probably be a few days. We really need to update our entire Monster Studios Website as well.
#8
Merry xmas, et al.
12/24/2002 (5:53 pm)
Texture flickering is still present in 1.1, but you probably know that :)Merry xmas, et al.
#9
Bruce Searl
01/10/2003 (10:21 pm)
Yes, I have this too, mentioned it in one of my first posts.... PNY GForce4 card... Bruce Searl
#10
Chris
01/11/2003 (9:01 am)
I still haven't had a chance to look into this one. We don't see it on any machines here. I'll shop around for a machine that exhitbit the bug and get back to you all.Chris
Torque Owner Desmond Fletcher
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