AVWW Beta 0.565 "Better Texture Sorting And Other Tricks " Released!

[x4000]

Original: http://arcengames.blogspot.com/2012/01/avww-beta-0565-better-texture-sorting.html

This one is more or less a maintenance patch based on issues reported in this mantis issue.  It should be a help to performance in general, though, even for folks not affected by the core reported issue.

More to come soon.  Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.  If you don't have 0.500 or later, you can download that here.

[KDR_11k]

Wait, additive blending as a performance problem? I know alpha is a performance killer but I've never heard of anyone running into trouble with additive (in fact additive is often used to avoid the problems that alpha brings).

[x4000]

Additive itself is no problem -- that is misleading. The problems it causes are twofold:

1. In order to change back and forth between modes, using the same image, often leads to texture swaps.

2. In order to effectively use additive blending against light backgrounds it is neccessary to first draw a darker base. That doubles the amount of particles being drawn for most particle effects.

[KDR_11k]

Spring RTS uses a blending mode of source one, dest one minus alpha. That lets you draw a darker base in the same pass by using the particle's alpha texture.

[orzelek]

Heh the joy of blending modes

How large are particle textures ?
It seems like atlasing would help to reduce number of texture swaps - unless you are already doing it or it's very difficult to do.

[keith.lamothe]

It seems like atlasing would help to reduce number of texture swaps - unless you are already doing it or it's very difficult to do.

If by atlasing you mean having multiple frames in the same texture, yes, that's being done.  Some particle effects still need multiple textures since the largest single texture we can use (without breaking it on old video cards) is 1024x1024.

[KDR_11k]

Really? Even my ancient Radeon 8500 (the r200, I think their numbers have overflowed so much that they've hit 8500 again) could handle 2048x2048 and AFAIK that's the atlas size used by Spring RTS. How old of a system are you planning to support?

[keith.lamothe]

How old of a system are you planning to support?

I think the oldest platform is the General Electric D-12.


 

[BobTheJanitor]

I think the oldest platform is the General Electric D-12.

Darn! Time to retire this old one I suppose.

[Souls-Stream]

Okay, I got some time finally this weekend to try this version and also the previous one ! Too much overtime don't try it guys, it makes Monday morning really awful when you spend your Saturday working all day long from 6am :/

Anyway, since 0.560, the game has improved so much ! Thanks to the tiers, I feel like the game is way more fluid ! I dont spend my time chasing monster spawners anymore which feels really great ! And I'm not running after xp anymore either which is a great relief. Both change makes the player able to focus on other objectives better like killing lieutenant and gathering stones and gems this truly makes the game more enjoyable.
I didn't understand yet what the old xp jar are used for ? I picked so many already and I don't see any change yet... But from what I understand it's used for spells ?

I love the new boat system (well first time I saw it actually and I don't know if it was there before but I might be wrong) but I especially love the fact that you cannot "walk on water" anymore.
I saw a lot of problems disappeared but I encountered a couple crash of the game, don't know if it's my computer or the game itself though... But it seems pretty stable.

The guiding stone is outdated with the information it has so I was a bit lost, but I'm sure it will be fixed later, must be because you change so many things all the time that it's hard to keep up with updating the tips.

The interiors of houses still feel a bit repetitive and sometimes too big for the representation of the outside building graphic and building in general are too labyrinthic , I don't mind dugeons, it's pretty normal and that's how they should feel but houses ? I feel like poeple would get lost in those kind of building.
I think it feels frustrating mainly because the map system is not really clear. Maybe a new dungeon map system would help, normal map is great but the dugeons map should be more clear with colors about what was visited and what wasn't without to have to hover the mouse over each areas to find out info about them. Just like the map in the upper corner does. Right now I hate visiting houses or any kind of building for those reasons:
1.everyhing look too much the same in houses and too labyrinth like
2.the dungeon map is not clear enough
Which really are my only complaints about the game system but I guess those things were already posted by someone in mantis or will be fixed any time towards now and the final release so I'm not going to create any new post.

The rest of the game improved WAY lot and the more it evolves the more I'm happy I invested into the game. This game is totally amazing and awesome ! Thank you so much for all the improvements made and all the good ideas you implement from the players or from your idea of the game.

[tigersfan]

What specific improvments would you want to see in the dungeon map? You mentioned not knowing what was visited, but it already tells you that. Towards the bottom of each room, there is a black line in the rooms you have not visited. Once you visit a room, the line on the map disappears. What else would you like to see to improve it?

[KDR_11k]

I think the tree map layout confuses people, we aren't used to seeing maps drawn like that. The sizes of the rooms on the map have nothing to do with their actual shape and whether you go up or down in a house is rather difficult to decipher.

[x4000]

I also think there's not much other way that we can draw those in a procedural fashion.

[BobTheJanitor]

I've put some time into the new version after playing only rarely for a month or so. And I'm a bit confused. Part of that may be from still using a world that I started with the very first public beta release, but I'm trying to keep it forever, if possible.

For some reason I can't use the launch rock spell, even though it's in my inventory. It claims I haven't learned it on this continent yet. I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing that. All the other spells that I had crafted before per-continent spells were added still function fine. The crafting interface seems to only give me the option to craft rank 2 of the spell... but I don't have the materials for that.

Also, I've got a tile showing a rescue mission on it. So I went there and ran all the way to the end of the land, where I ran into a few mini bosses. And let me mention in passing that fighting 3 rhino bosses and one crippled dragon boss, while also being shot constantly by a bunch of flying lightning and air things is incredibly difficult. My kingdom for a floating platform! I think I lost 4 health buffs doing that. Yikes. Anyway, after doing that, I found that I had not completed the mission. I'm not sure what those bosses were for now, probably a resource or something? (which I have to say, I'm not really that clear on what those do now either) So the mission is still there, but I'm not sure how to do it. Might it be hidden underground? The mission text refers to a monster tower, but I didn't find anything tower-like anywhere.

This world may be pretty confused anyway, since it was generated before a lot of the changes and  I've already beaten one overlord here. But another one is still around somewhere. As I understand it, they're supposed to run one to a continent now, so somewhere there should be an edge with water all around it beyond which I'll find other continents.

Another thing I'm noticing is that the number and variety of spells is getting to be such that a lot of constant swapping is required to be able to use them all, even with a 5 button mouse. Has any thought gone into a more robust quick switching system? Currently every swap requires pausing, opening the inventory, and dragging icons around. Maybe a quick-swap radial menu of some type that pauses the game as soon as you open it and closes as soon as you select spells? Actually that topic is probably too huge to jump into at the end of a post so I'll leave it for now unless and until there's some point in discussing UI changes like that.

[x4000]

For some reason I can't use the launch rock spell, even though it's in my inventory. It claims I haven't learned it on this continent yet. I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing that. All the other spells that I had crafted before per-continent spells were added still function fine. The crafting interface seems to only give me the option to craft rank 2 of the spell... but I don't have the materials for that.

This may be a bug in your world, not sure.  If you could post it, that would be great.

Also, I've got a tile showing a rescue mission on it. So I went there and ran all the way to the end of the land, where I ran into a few mini bosses. And let me mention in passing that fighting 3 rhino bosses and one crippled dragon boss, while also being shot constantly by a bunch of flying lightning and air things is incredibly difficult. My kingdom for a floating platform! I think I lost 4 health buffs doing that. Yikes. Anyway, after doing that, I found that I had not completed the mission. I'm not sure what those bosses were for now, probably a resource or something? (which I have to say, I'm not really that clear on what those do now either) So the mission is still there, but I'm not sure how to do it. Might it be hidden underground? The mission text refers to a monster tower, but I didn't find anything tower-like anywhere.

Another thing I'm noticing is that the number and variety of spells is getting to be such that a lot of constant swapping is required to be able to use them all, even with a 5 button mouse. Has any thought gone into a more robust quick switching system? Currently every swap requires pausing, opening the inventory, and dragging icons around. Maybe a quick-swap radial menu of some type that pauses the game as soon as you open it and closes as soon as you select spells? Actually that topic is probably too huge to jump into at the end of a post so I'll leave it for now unless and until there's some point in discussing UI changes like that.

You can use I think the R key (or maybe it was moved to F1 to move between entire bars.  However, there's not really that many spells of any sort that you'd actively need in battle at once.  The idea is that you size up a room before you actively fight in it, and switch around some stuff before you lose the just-in-chunk invincibility or by pausing if you have to.  You can only have one tier of a given spell in your inventory at once, since all older tiers are immediately upgraded when you learn a newer tier, which keeps there from being an explosion of spells to quite the degree you're probably imagining.