Live Patch Notes - Tuesday, March 7, 2006

[Cloe]

Thank you for the detailed pass on in this weeks patch notes.

Thats some crazy spiderman goblin chin morphing the saris are seeing.

Belly breathing?? LOL Om mane padme om!

[Helcat]

I've discovered, set your Character Texture LOD to High, and then reset the game. It should fix the 'low rez' issue. The models are NOT ruined, you just need to turn up your texture settings.

That's the first thing I tried. Relogging also did not help.

And even if increasing character model LOD does fix it for me
that means my character will still look ridiculous to anyone else
who doesn't increase their LOD. This is unacceptable.

[AA0]

I have seen some big improvements so far. One of the first things you need to do is delete your graphicsprefs file and reset everything, too much has just changed to not do that.
I was able to get things looking right again, with improved performance afterwards. I'm averaging 2-3 fps increase in most towns/plots, its not a lot but we don't have the proper models at those plots yet. In new trismus my fps has doubled (which has new models)

There is a major boosting to object loading. After ports I can immediately take off in moderately built areas without any problems, in heavy areas like aug its a bit of stuttering, but before it was unmovable until things really loaded.

Memory accumulation seems a bit improved, but hard to say. I was on all night without a crash with quite a few ports. I was still getting 9 fps at my plot at the end of the day, which usually ends up at 3-4 fps.

[Justa Mirage]

I did what AAO said and renamed the Client_prefs for Graphics under the Prefs folder and had the game recreate it...

The graphics fixed themselves, but Justa still looks like he went on a diet :)

The animated mouth is back, along with the "non alien breating" animation is gone

I can deal with a scrawny looking saris.... Justa needed to go on a diet anyways, lazy cat....

[Guaran]

I'll try renaming my graphics pref file, but for me i noticed huge gaping holes between my wings and my body. Going into Options, and unchecking "Enable Character Model Level of Detail" cleared it up. The holes are present in both the original ancient dragon models, the newer ancient models, adults. I didnt compare to a hatchling before I found the setting and changed it.

I noticed it was generally behaving faster, but seemed stuttery when it used to be smoother. Not sure if the frame rate smoothing is needed to get rid of that. but my own model, and walking monsters, appeared to play say 5 frames of animation, then play a frame a few points back in the animation and resume animations, playing 5 or 6 in the right order, then going out of order again. everything looked twitchy.

I'll report back tonight when i get home from work, and try making a fresh graphics.pref

[AA0]

I've found that most of the LOD sliders don't work well at all, I just disable them.

[Tzael]

renamed the Client_prefs for Graphics under the Prefs folder and had the game recreate it...

If someone's going to do a job, do it right or don't even bother. Go into the options in-game, and hit the 'restore defaults' button. No point only resetting some of the settings by renaming a file, there'smore than that to it. If someonewants to be thorough, delete the prefs folder entirely and recreatethe desired settings from scratch.

*shakes head*

[Death-knell]

I did just as Tzael suggested. Where the heck did this fog come from? Never really noticed it before cause it was usually in the distance. Now its right there in front of me, I move the slider and my performance goes down the can and the fog doesn't move back very far?!?!?!

[AA0]

Restore defaults restores EVERYTHING to default. This resets bindings, sound, everything... I wouldn't use it. I only want my graphics reset, so I delete the graphics prefs..

[PJ]

Shutting down is NOT instantaneous. It still takes forever for the game to finish all of it's "unpacking" before it completely shuts down.

I also have seen no performance improvements on my end.

I dont' think that's quite what they meant by the patch note. Previously if you logged out then immediately retried logging in there was a chance that the server hadn't registered your character as having disconnected yet, so you'd get a transport error about exceeding your maximum number of connections to the server.

[Aamer Khan]

All in all, this new patch has improved my basic fps and memory issues.
I too have a bit of hitching, but less than before.

A few suggestions I can make is, uncheck all LOD checkboxes, set number of viewable lowlevel characters to max, and set up a hotkey to switch fog, terrain, and loading distances manually for towns, and another for when your in the country side.

( hope I remember these right, since I'm at work )

On one key, using the text command macro option, type these lines...

/setpref fogstartdist 80
/setpref fogenddist 80
/setpref loaddist 80
/setpref unloaddist 80
/setpref terrainloaddist 80
/setpref terrainunloaddist 80

Save this one as "Town View"


On another key, type these lines...

/setpref fogstartdist 180
/setpref fogenddist 180
/setpref loaddist 180
/setpref unloaddist 180
/setpref terrainloaddist 180
/setpref terrainunloaddist 180

Save this one as "Country View"

Now you have an easy way to adjust for the extra lag in towns. I personally use these settings and they work for me, but you may like different settings.

Using the country view settings, and with all LOD boxes unchecked, view distance and fog distance sliders at about 5%, and Shadows OFF, I can still see from the top of the south ridge were we fight Daknor, down past the old woodshop site, and over to the new blight tower to the east. I get around 28-32 fps there and never less than 20 or so in a fight.

YMMV

[imported_Frith-Rae]

[/list]

Removed Maximum Placeholder Characters from options window because it doesn't do anything.

Intersting, since that is what the customer support was always checking on me when I was ctd/lag crash out of the game *chuckles*

Monsters will now occlude.

Can someoen translate that into non-programmer english?? What does that mean :)

Characters switch to low resolution models at > 30m and high resolution models at < 20m.

Perhaps this is why some of you are seeing wierd character models? Is this turn "off" able? In other words, do we have a choice as to wether we're FORCED to swtich from low to high res depending on our performance?? Can we decide we'd like to have the performance drop for the high res models???

LOD system now chooses beween the best quality model for close up and the lowest quality for distance, rather than really high for close up, and high for distant.

again - something the player can turn off and do themselves?? Or is this automatic for us and we have no choice in deciding?

[Drevar]

What I would like to see added is for the different options that are activated and set by the Graphic and Texture presets (Performance, Low, High, etc) to be reflected in the actual controls. If Insane Quality turns on ground clutter, then show that change in the Ground Clutter checkbox control. As it is, you don't have any indication of what each quality setting actually does because the individual controls don't change.Trying to tweak a Custom setting based on a Preset is nigh to impossible due to this.

The other issue is that when you change from a preset to Custom, the preferences remain at the level of the presets, but the controls remain unchanged. Take again for example changing to Insane Quality graphics. It turns on the ground clutter, but leaves the ground clutter control check box unchecked. If you switch back to Custom, the ground clutter remains on, and the check box remains unchecked. In order to actually turn of ground clutter, you have to check the box, hit apply, and then uncheck the box and apply again.

As for tweaking with this version of the client, I kept my old settings of highest texture and landscape texture quality, all LOD options off, ground clutter off, blob shadows, view distance at 50% and Fog at 100% (fog starts right where view ends, I hate fog). I did turn the Environment back on (sky, day cycle, blight and weather effects) but have yet to see how combat in the Blight with many spell effects going off performs.

With those settings I manage to get a negligable increase in performance; possibly .5 to 1.0 fps. (mid teens to low 20s in town, anywhere from30-low 60s in wilderness, depending on world objects in the area). I also, however, noticed an increase in TEXMEM by about 50%. Dalimond can now take up to 160+ megs whereas it used to only be 80-90. No major concern, though, since I have 256 MB on my video card. I will have to see what a difference New Trismus makes with the new occlusion models.

Drev

[imported_Rick]

We're pretty sure your character is showing up low poly because in the options window "Enable Character Geometry Level of Detail" is checked and "Highest Character LOD" is set to Medium or Low.

You can fix this by any of the following:
1) Setting "Graphic Detail" to "Good Performance" in the Options window. This automagically changes "Highest Character LOD" to "High". The change to "Highest Character LOD" will not be reflected in the Options window until you close and re-open the options window.
- OR -
2) Unchecking "Enable Character Geometry Level of Detail". This disables LOD model swapping.
- OR-
3) Changing "Highest Character LOD" to "High". This causes close up models to be the very highest poly.

Model LOD swapping works by using a higher poly version of a model when monsters or characters are close up, and swapping out that model for a lower poly version when monsters or characters are further away. Model LOD swapping is done to reduce the total number of polygons being rendered - which can result in improvements to frame rate.

Prior to the latest client update, the highest poly model was always used for close up characters and monsters. We added a new pref that allows you to specify the quality of model to use for close up monsters and characters. You can find this new pref in the options window under "Highest Character LOD". Setting it to Medium or Low will use lower poly models when close up, improving frame rate for some users. The lowest available poly model will always be used for monsters and characters when they are a distance away.

The system is triggered to switch to the best available model when the monster or character is closer than 20.0 meters and switches to the lowest available model when the monsteror character is further than 30 meters. The model switch is displayed when loading is complete, so it may occur at less than 20.0 meters.

In the options window, setting your Graphic Detail toMaximum Performance will use Medium quality models when close up. Setting your Graphic Detail to Good Performance to Insane Quality will use High quality models when close up.

We are releasing a hot fix so that your character is always rendered in high poly, but other characters will have their models scaled to the option specified.

There is a slider called"Character Model Level of Detail Quality" in the options window. This slider doesn't do anything and will be removed in the next full patch.

To disable the model swapping and always use high poly models, uncheck ""Enable Character Geometry Level of Detail"

I hope this clarifies the change and apologize for any confusion.

Rick

[imported_Annai]

Hello All,
I like Helcat and Justa have had my saris's appearance greatly changed. I can't decide if she looks more like a gazelle or just an anorexic cat. Either way, even after trying all the suggestions posted above, the appearance does not return to normal. As sad as it is, I kinda liked the way she looked and would like some more ideas on how to make it happen. With the new changes, I did not notice that much change in FPS and would (selfishly, I admit) like a return to the old way just to have my saris look normal [:'(]

Please help bring back my full figured cat
Annai

[imported_tjl]

lol all those ghastly thin saris make me laugh.
as did the "breathing" .gif hope you all get that fixed [Y]

performance seems up for me though. its obviously more noticable in the open spaces, but places with lots of objects/houses/players seems about the same.

all in all, i like the new tweaks and can't wait until this client is rock solid.

[Justa Mirage]

Try renaming your Client_Graphics.def (or what ever it is) in your Prefs directory to "backup" and make the game create a new one...

or..

Put in a name change request to be called Annai Rexic (Rex cats look like this)

[imported_Annai]

[:P]
That even made me laugh Justa... I did need that, will say however, it wouldn't have been funny if when I relogged again, things weren't back to normal. So... without further adu, Thank you to whomever, whatever, and however it all changed for bringing my saris back [:D]

[Helcat]

well, I tweaked my settings and got my character looking close to
"normal," however, others told me they still saw the lo-res model,
so not sure what to do about that...

[AA0]

unfortunately I'd guess the vast majority of players don't properly configure their graphics settings, I know people who have seen low poly and blurred images for 2 years until I got them to change settings.