Thief - The trail of the Arch-Heretic

[Graf Zahl]

And don't forget to build GL nodes for a re-release. Normal nodes are a total waste of space for any GZDoom release.

[Enjay]

Oh, I thought I had built GL nodes. I'm using ZDBSP with the parameters -x -z -w

[Graf Zahl]

Ok, then it's all right. You also should add -b -r to strip the map off the reject and blockmap. I just saw the blockmap data and assumed it contained a normal BSP.

[Syfo-Dyas]

So I expect I'll never be able to play this like I was never able to play through Aspects?

Or is there a way to play your great works?

[Jimmy]

That was awesome

I did find that some of the weapons' alignments were out of place. But that totally kicked ass all the same. lol

[Enjay]

So I expect I'll never be able to play this like I was never able to play through Aspects?

Or is there a way to play your great works?

Well, you could just download this one and play it. It's in the idgames archive. The link is on the first page.

That was awesome

I did find that some of the weapons' alignments were out of place. But that totally kicked ass all the same. lol

Thanks but I don't know what you mean by the weapon alignments. I didn't change or add any weapons. They are all just the Heretic originals. If they are mis-aligned somehow, that's how they are in your heretic.wad IWAD.

[Syfo-Dyas]

Somehow I miss ALL of those links.

Anhow I played a bit of it, still can't figure how to pass level 1, but I really enjoyed it, very interesting feel to it.

[Enjay]

still can't figure how to pass level 1, but I really enjoyed it, very interesting feel to it.

Given that NJHThief is a single level map, I'm not surprised you can't get past the first level. Glad you enjoyed it though.

I do have a bug fix version in the works, when I get a chance to work on it. It was originally just going to be a minor cosmetic touch-up fixing the things that have been mentioned here - like pickup messages, text alignment and so on. However, last night I went daft and added a new area to the map. Something that I did, however, meant the map now hits the frame rate even harder than it did before.

I have 4 courses open to me: remove the new stuff (I'm reluctant to do that), not replace the version in the archive but rather have a full and a "lite" version in there instead, try and incoprporate a user invoked script to kill some of the frame-rate reducing effects (If I can figure out where the biggest problems come from) or just say "screw it" and release the full version to replace the old one and then laugh like a maniac as people with slow computers try to run it.

Hmmm...

[wildweasel]

Personally, I'd go for the "full/lite" option. Given the feedback for Cold as Hell (more liek slow as hell am i rite), you wouldn't want to alienate half your audience by making the wad even slower.

[Graf Zahl]

I'd say find the bottleneck and remove it.

[Enjay]

It was, as I suspected, my heavy use of very pretty particle effects from Solarsnowfall. I've kept them in but managed to speed things up a little bit by deactivating the particle effects inside the building whilst you are outside and the out doors effects when you are inside.

If that still leaves the level too slow, I also extended the script that, in the original version, switched off the shiny floors to also toggle on and off the particle effects. So, puking script 666 now switches on and off shiny floors and particles throughout the map.

It's the best I can do without totally compromising what I want to do with the level. It does make a significant difference to the speed that the level plays, but it also means a lot of the charm of the level and showcasing of the effects gets lost on the slow config setting.

Prettiness:

[spoiler]



[/spoiler]

[Graf Zahl]

I noticed the speed hit of the particle effects on one Stonghold map myself. That's what you get for abusing the engine.

[Paul]

Personally, I'd go for the "full/lite" option. Given the feedback for Cold as Hell (more liek slow as hell am i rite), you wouldn't want to alienate half your audience by making the wad even slower.

Goddamn that's pure truth. I'd say to avoid particles not only in large space but whatsover, since all particles are treated as things so engine gets really slow to process/compute stuff for them. Your level Nj already runs slow for me

[Enjay]

Fortunately Graf added proper switchable decorations, and Solarsnowfall had set up a few of the effects as switchable, so I converted the rest and then it was a fairly easy job to allocate tids and switch the effects on and off as you move around the map and to provide the global toggling too.

It's a real shame to loose the effects but, ultimately (in this case), they are cosmetic and switching them off does increase the speed that the map plays at. That will be an issue on marginal machines. Most modern games allow you to enable/disable effects to get the best speed out of your machine so this seems a sensible route to me. Perhaps people could incorporate such a procedure for other maps/projects too if it was ever considered necessary. IIRC, LilWhiteMouse had quite a host of options in HQuest.

[Syfo-Dyas]

My computer is only 850 Mhz with a 133Mhz Front Side bus and it runs great for me!


By Amiga standards that's crap I know, but by PC standards that ain't bad at all. My Star Wars maps usually run like hell on my machine, but that's only when the hi-res textures or sky need to load it seems. After the load, everything goes back to full speed.