Fixing the Nodes

Discussion in 'General Modification' started by Shiningted, Jan 22, 2006.

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  1. Allyx

    Allyx Master Crafter Global Moderator Supporter

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    @ Lord_spike, I was saying to Shiningted, and Agetian the other day...

    It's strange how the lag is virtually non-existant with the games original sector files and mobile object files, but when you add each of the other files the lag gets worse and worse.

    Since the sec files work fine, and would be a PITA to recreate and would probably still have the same effect on lag (more of a PITA with the mob files), removing the fancy stuff to reduce lag seems the next best solution, especially as we can add the lava as a static picture to the map itself, and add the steam particles to add realism.
     
  2. Shiningted

    Shiningted I want my goat back Administrator

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    Got it Allyx, back to testing.
    Yes and no. Certainly there is something in the lava, fiery animations that causes massive perfoirmance problems, as a stroll through the fire temple will tell us. On the other hand, the earth and water nodes have no bakground effects of that type at all, and still cause lag, so its not the root of the problem.
     
  3. Shiningted

    Shiningted I want my goat back Administrator

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    Allyx: had another go at the air node briefly. Again, got my first hint of a lock-up immediately after recruiting Taki: 'stuttered' a couple times, like it was thinking of locking up then never got there.

    This time, headed north into the ummm air element bird things, got some serious lockups there, up toward 30 seconds, a couple times.

    If u r out of ideas I am happy to redo all the mobs in there and we can try that next, but it will have to wait a few days (back at work and preparing for a job interview Thursady).
     
  4. Allyx

    Allyx Master Crafter Global Moderator Supporter

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    @Shiningted; try copying the global.lit file from the fire node map file in the new upload (a few posts ago) and pasting it into the air node file, overwite the old and see if that helps?
     
  5. Allyx

    Allyx Master Crafter Global Moderator Supporter

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    Ok, added the fire node's global.lit file to the other nodes to see if that will help reduce the lag in the other nodes.

    I am now out of idea's on how to reduce the lag. Here is my final node fix, if you still suffer lag in the nodes after adding this to your game, it may be a hardware - try adding more RAM (i'm using 512mb of ram and suffer little or no lag in each of the nodes).
     

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  6. krunch

    krunch moving on in life

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    Hey Allyx...do the files also go here [an install without Toffee]?

    C:\Program Files\Atari\Temple of Elemental Evil\modules\ToEE\maps

    I would like to try it on Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
     
  7. Allyx

    Allyx Master Crafter Global Moderator Supporter

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    Yeah, just copy the modules/Co8-4.0.0/maps folder and put it in your modules/ToEE folder. Please post back any info you can gather (though I doubt I can make any further improvements on the lag).
     
  8. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    At Allyx's urging I tried the nodes again with the latest fixes he provided 3 posts up. Knowing in advance what the results would be, I nonetheless trudged onward.

    Findings: frequent 30 second lockups, primarily (but not limited to) the area of the salamanders in the fire node.

    Ummm . . . could the salamanders be causing this?

    Consider me retired from nodes testing. We need more people to try this out though. If we could find a fix that worked 90% of the time, that would still be huge. And the fact of an 'almost but not quite' solution would somehow be cynically appropriate for this game and its engine, wouldn't it? :bored:
     
  9. Shiningted

    Shiningted I want my goat back Administrator

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    Hmmm... well our next step, I was going to redo the .mobs of the joinable NPCs (Taki for me and Jaer for someone else above somewhere caused issues). Thats still something I plan to do.
     
  10. krunch

    krunch moving on in life

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    The testing I did with Allyx's Node fixes reduced the total amount of time for the lockups with a reduction of time from about two minutes per lockup down to about 15 seconds per each lockup. The lockups took place with the same frequency and the lockups occured in the same places as before. This was tested using a new installation of ToEE and using a new party.
     
  11. Allyx

    Allyx Master Crafter Global Moderator Supporter

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    Thanks to all who have tried this out, the pathnode.pnd files and original mob and sec files are the only unedited files left to play with, I don't see the lag problem with sec and mob files alone, but i don't know how to rewrite the pathnode file...

    ...ted could you have a go at making new pathnodes? I think the remaining problem lies there rather than the mob files.
     
  12. Allyx

    Allyx Master Crafter Global Moderator Supporter

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    So 5 months after I started this project, I finaly ran out of other things to do, and made the pathnode files for the nodes, here they are...

    It didn't fix the lag though, I included .mob files with the hardcoded script references removed, that didn't help either.
     

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