Topic: EXIT: 25th Anniversary Project (Read 43913 times)

Holey Moley · « **Reply #30 on:** March 18, 2021, 03:53:38 PM »

EDITED:

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip

Never say never, this patch does 3 things: 1) fixes an equip bug I introduced probably in the previous patch (fails to equip more than one slot) and 2) likely fixes sword magic input, which may possibly have been broken in SomEx.dll for a long time if not for the last decade

and 3) should significantly improve performance for the shadows under NPCs...

On (3) I noticed my supersampling frame rate dipping today when looking at the ground. Because there's a big shadow underneath your feet I reasoned that's the reason. I removed some "clip" operations from the shader that were completely unnecessary except the texture needed to be clamped. Part of me wonders why I would've left it that way, except later it occurred to me I might have speculated throwing out the pixels could avoid hypothetical work in blending them, and every pixel has a "clip" operation for colorkey so I might not have thought anything of it.

Now I wonder if "clip" can be so costly if it's just for that shadow's shader for some reason or if it could greatly increase frame rates to disable colorkey for textures that don't need it, except I don't like that because it will implicitly discourage artists from using colorkey to tell them it may seriously impact frame rate. (I will probably do it. Maybe it can get me more supersampling frame rate in Moratheia.)

EDITED: 2.5hrs later I had to reupload with some major fixes after testing Moratheia. For one its arm had 5 bones and a moving CP I hadn't anticipated, but also changing maps (in a real game) turned up a few different problems. And one major problem in a memory leak when unloading the map. (Which I probably wouldn't have found if not some new/untested equipment change code in there that broke.)

Holey Moley · « **Reply #31 on:** April 16, 2021, 02:24:08 PM »

One last 1.2.3.4 patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip

This patch addresses a few bugs I've since come across that don't really warrant mention. Some I probably have forgotten. (Edited: I remembered one important fix that's maybe what prompted me to upload a patch today. The first frame of the red damage flash was coming in at full color because of a change I made a little while ago. You wouldn't think it would matter since the first frame is nearly transparent, but I realized that's what was causing a bad feeling about the red flash that's been bugging me lately.)

I've added some sweeteners to update my itch.io KF2 demo, the main being using the action/menu buttons to confirm/cancel in menus. This is something I got some complaints about. I think it's good addition although I have to get used to it. Of course it's more intuitive. It only works if the buttons are assigned to the shoulder buttons because they're not used by menus. Since I expect people to use the shoulder buttons I think this is enough for now.

There's a quick fix for the arm covering up menus in the recent change I made to put 3D items in front of them. It's clearing the depth buffer when the arms are in front of menus... but now writing that I recall considering putting the menus in a depth-partition with KF2's 3D compass. The only drawback to that is less depth-buffer for the scene, but SOM games probably use very little of it, although I can remember it having problems with 16-bit depth buffers. The compass partition is very thin now, it might not be deep enough for a compass that really requires a depth buffer since it's effectively a 3D item.

I feel like my memory is getting worse trying to remember if there's anything else I should add to this post. It is possible now to set monsters up to attack from further than their damage radius (or less than) by using the second radius in EneEdit. I had to look at that for KF2's skeleton monster. I wrote about it yesterday in another topic/thread. I think it may be a bug that the wrong radius was used. Looking at how the skeleton works it seems like too much of an oversight and it's hard to explain why there would be an extra attack radius in the PRF files that matches the damage radius so closely in every instance.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #32 on:** April 17, 2021, 01:20:26 PM »

Language packs patches

Japanese: http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/text/日本語/最新.zip
English: http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/text/English/Neutral.zip

You can copy these into your TEXT folder or use the updater tool to manually redownload these packs. Note, this process isn't currently automated. (It's difficult to devise a system to automatically detect changes. Not a priority ATM.)

These add page #2 to EneEdit and NpcEdit. They might have other backlogged changes too, but this is why I recommend downloading them (or one of them.)

Edited: There are several animation IDs on EneEdit's page 2 which haven't been implemented at this time but I want to publish it anyway to not sit on it further. #2 and #22 should work because those would've always worked if anyone knew about them. I haven't gotten around to the flight/swim envelope and the cryptic buttons in the turn table do the following:

*Fourth button (where 3 would go) may not last, I've used it to replicate slimes in KF2. IOW move without turning.
*F1 is unknown.
*F2 draws a shadow. I recommend disabling this only for something like the Stoneface monster that hangs on the wall.
*F3 enables "Evade" in SOM_PRM (you can do this from its animation button too.)
*F4 enables "Defend" in SOM_PRM (you can do this from its animation button too.)

I just included the last 4 for completeness. I didn't want to make space for them.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #33 on:** April 19, 2021, 08:26:31 PM »

Important patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip

I had a weird time today. And a long day. This patch seems to improve the antialiasing/supersampling modes significantly and fix a new problem on the Continue screen that hides the highlight among other things. And it restores the ability to jump over/onto fences in the Moratheia demo.

Briefly I noticed that one of the power gauges was doing something impossible pixel stuff wise that led me to realize the 1px black border that hides some issues on the outside pixels should be doubled in the source image when supersampling. This actually made the picture less stable in the moving high contrast regions, so I ultimately went back to before which was scaling the image down 2 pixels. For some reason doing it right made it possible to see the pixels behaving in a synchronized way... but my journey didn't stop there. In the final moments (just now) I really began to wonder if I'd introduced a problem at some point (some time ago) because disabling supersampling looked a lot worse than I ever remembered it. Luckily one of the same gauges started to twitch in a way that shouldn't be happening. So I found some code I thought had no effect at one point and turned it back on. And after that the change to double that border also looked alright. So I'm just patching this at the end of the day. Hopefully the supersampling is even better than before now. It really seems very stable on those problem edges, more so than I've seen it...

But I also realized something a little demoralizing along the way. In this supersampling mode, what seems to work is to double the size of the do_aa window. In that case the novel insight to do subpixel sampling by way of rounding error doesn't actually apply, and really it's just sliding the image over by 1 pixel in both directions. That's not nearly as interesting and defeats much of the original wow factor of doing it on the scale of a single pixel. It's like coming full circle and ending up having not really gone anywhere. It wouldn't be so bad except I really have difficulty going back to the 1x mode. I feel like now I have to find some new way to rehabilitate it.

April 23 Strikeout: Actually, this isn't true. I had another hellish day scrutinizing the system yesterday and I finally worked out that at some point I'd (intentionally) switched it over to clamping to half-pixel distances instead of whole pixels. Honestly I don't know how it ever worked with whole pixels... it's just to squirmy from what I can see... so (1) I wrote some notes down to remind myself of this in the future, and (2) I guess in supersampling mode it's not really shifting over the image by 1 pixel units. It's shifting a half pixel to either side, snapped to a point shifted over a quarter pixel from either the middle of the pixel or the edge of the pixel. But now that I have this better understanding I may find time to try different configurations in supersampling mode to see if it can be better.

Edited: Something else bittersweet is the extra sharpness seems to be gone away. That's probably why it looks more stable.

Update: http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=324.msg3151#msg3151

Holey Moley · « **Reply #34 on:** April 21, 2021, 12:14:47 PM »

Important patch #2

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip

This patch disables the do_smooth effect in supersampling mode so that the game is as crisp it can possibly be. It's not quite as antialiased but I think being crisp and adequate more than makes up for that.

It also defaults to turning on superMode in the INI file. Since yesterday's patch the native resolution mode is more blurry than before, although it might be a good fit for 4k monitors depending on circumstances. I don't like making supersampling the default but I think it's the intended way to play going forward and this helps to ensure a good first impression, especially for people with systems that can handle it... whereas people with systems that can't are probably used to negotiating performance adjustments.

The supersampling mode always announces itself when the game starts. I don't believe I've added an extension to hide it. So this can be a fair hint I think.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #35 on:** April 23, 2021, 05:47:39 PM »

I give up!

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip

This patch does several things:

1) Fix problem with magic SFX getting lost on map change or game over.

2) Fix problem opening SOM format save files from Windows Explorer with a WIP project... as opposed to a standalone game... which was what I tested the feature with.

3) [Bugfix] section now defaults to turning on all fixes, so you need to use "no" to selectively disable fixes or classes of fixes. This just makes it easier to set up.

4) do_fix_colorkey is added to [Bugfix] so you can use the weird pseudo 16-bit colorkey range for old games. Note, I've never found any explanation for why Direct3D 7 interprets pure black as a range of black up to 7,7,7 ... that makes no sense. FWIW SOM sets this range to 0-0... not 0-7. The Moratheia demo needs this turned on... or rather off.

5) I've uploaded a new itemsicon.bmp file that the Inventory menu uses for its icons adjusted for the new 0-0 range. I should get around to working on the other ones eventually.

6) This build restores an imbalance for the texture AA effect in regular non-supersampling mode. I also uploaded a slightly improved version for this a day or two ago but it severely undercut the texture AA effect that smooths textures with holes in them used for things like grass as seen in the Moratheia demo.

P.S. I've also added a "Strikeout" correction to Reply #33.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #36 on:** May 03, 2021, 12:01:07 AM »

Impressive patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip

First this patch fixes a memory bug in the Ex.ini config file that could be critical (in the [Numbers] section) and corrects the position of the power gauges in the new supersampling mode without do_smooth.

Second for a solid week I've been hard at work on some major improvements to NPC movement. This is an area that's never been touched on before. There a are 3 things to see here:

1) Main thing, NPCs (monsters too) should navigate around 90 corners without any glitches and generally appear to do so in a natural way. This works because of upgrading NPCs to get some of the same benefits as the PC (player character) for smoothing their movements. It's a little complicated because NPCs have very different needs from the PC so there's two layers of smoothing to adjust the NPCs to be properly distanced from each other and obstacles since they're not a ghostly singularity like the PC is. If the PC had a body of speak of it would need some of the same considerations. Unfortunately this is not so cut and dry, so I've done the best I can and expect for this area to improve with more time and experience.

2) NPCs now fall with gravity. Although it's pretty similar to before. Since they don't animate to suggest they're falling/landing it can be a little stiff and is maybe a little slower than the original falling rate (I haven't checked) but the main difference is for a brief moment they accelerate, and they need this time to get further out from the platform they're falling off. Also their radius is reduced to 1/3rd for purposes of climbing and falling, so they don't hover out in midair so much.

3) Climbing is now smoothed out and kicks in at 1/3rd radius. For very large monsters climbing stairs may not be possible (it would look funny anyway) and the default climbing height is now cut in half to 0.25 meters, meaning that monsters are only really meant to climb proper stairs. It would not look good for them to climb higher than that without animations. Also this is fixed, as it's always been, but there's an npc_fence extension in the [Adjust] section that can customize it and incorporate scale as necessary.

Also, off the top of my head monsters are now unable to attack if the PC is vertically out of their range. For non-ranged attacks this is not an issue, since the attacks wouldn't land. For range attacks it might well break something. I've made this change quickly to prevent monsters from making attack noises when they're on a floor above or below (layers) the PC for my KF2 demo on itch.io.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #37 on:** May 04, 2021, 03:26:54 AM »

UPLOAD FAILURE NOTICE (PATCH)

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip (reuploaded)

Lately my satellite Internet has been overloaded (stretched thin) to the point I can't really use it in the daytime. This is the second time I've uploaded something and software and webpages tell me everything went swell only to later find out either the file didn't actually transfer or is just a part of the file on the host's side (the other time was GitHub, this time it's FileZilla... or my FTP host didn't provide the correct feedback to FileZilla one.)

Honestly if HTTP/FTP can't identify doomed uploads I don't know what the hell they're good for. What's going on with software these days beats me.

Anyway, I've luckily noticed it because I was just quietly uploading a minor, cosmetic fix for the EneEdit and NpcEdit tools (to insert animation frame metadata to the top of the list correctly). Normally I don't expect anyone to be installing SOM. Hopefully no one did yesterday, I did chat with someone earlier today who expressed an interest. Fingers crossed they were in no hurry.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #38 on:** May 10, 2021, 02:00:14 PM »

New Project patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip

I was given an idea to change the default button configuration when making an INI file for a new project because the original default was to use face buttons instead of shoulder buttons.

So I deleted the INI file to see what happened and this turned up a few nasty bugs which this patch fixes.

That's a bad first impression on making a New Project so I'm really glad to have realized this sooner than later, albeit too late.

I need to figure out something for default analog mode. It currently defaults to tank controls. I should probably just force this to 2.

EDITED: I had to reupload to account for the "paddfg6" & "pacCfg7" bug and added analogMode=2. Luckily I went back to encode the defaults as 0x02137645 or I wouldn't have found 6 and 7 not working. It would be cool if SOM games could share a default INI file somehow. I'll try to remember to build that into the Exselector program.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #39 on:** May 19, 2021, 02:17:49 PM »

Patch Patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.5.zip (shield demo)

I've had to patch this again concerning one of the "nasty bugs" from the last post. I accidentally made the left trigger to be treated like a regular button in the process because I changed the numeric "ID" for it and missed a place that assumed the old ID.

(I also normalized it when assigned to movement buttons, although I don't recommend doing that, it's technically possible to assign lateral/looking movements to the triggers in the Controls menu.)

Note, I missed this because I assign the menu button to the left trigger, but I suppose a left handed person might assign it to the action button. This patch isn't super critical but still has to be fixed.

Edited: I had to reupload to fix a problem with the keys leaking movements when overridden by [Button] in the INI. Also I've patched the 1.2.3.5 demo.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #40 on:** May 31, 2021, 07:31:48 AM »

DualShock4/DualSense Patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.5.zip (shield demo)

I may have messed up the PS4/PS5 controller detection code. I've written some thoughts here (https://swordofmoonlight.itch.io/k/devlog/258963/ps4-and-ps5-controllers-finally-detected) please let me know if you were able to use PS4/PS5 controllers before. If they weren't detected you'd be able to tell because they'd look straight down at the ground and fight you. Anyway this is giving me existential dread so I just want to quietly back away now

Holey Moley · « **Reply #41 on:** June 04, 2021, 02:03:28 PM »

Antialiasing enhancement

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.5.zip (shield demo)

This patch is an addition to the AA system. I started working on it yesterday and finished it late today. This year I've worked on AA stuff a lot. I realized this would help with the last effect I did but I didn't have the energy leftover then to delve into it.

Edited: Here's (https://swordofmoonlight.itch.io/k/devlog/260491/10-new-final-antialiasing-upgrade) an alternative write-up with an imaginary checkerboard thought experiment to help illustrate the concept.

It seems to help a lot. And in ways I didn't anticipate. How it works is it modifies every other frame's mipmap buffer that's used by PSVR and the contrast reduction system that helps with AA when things are in motion.

The mipmap buffer is like the opposite of supersampling. It's 4x smaller than the resolution. In it every pixel is the average of 2x2 pixels. So what happens when you see this mipmap (usually just a ghost of it) is it looks like all of a sudden the picture is degrading into a grid of 2x2 pixels. (I don't know how to describe this in English, but that's my best shot.)

So what this effect does is on every other frame (the previous and current frames are blended together to make a blur effect that also helps with AA) instead of making a regular mipmap it downsamples starting at the odd pixels instead of the even pixels. That also has a side effect of creating a different downsampling pattern that (when combined) tends to make text look more smooth and probably other stuff too. This also means the pixels on the window's edge have to be thrown away so it's back a to a 1px black border in supersampling mode. (I kind of like how it looks in screenshots anyway.)

So when the picture degrades into 2x2 pixels instead now one of the screens is shifted over by 1x1 pixels (Edited: not the image, but the 2x2 sampling pattern) so that creates an illusion that there's pixel data on every pixel and you don't see the pixelation pattern. Plus I've gone back to enabling the linear filter in supersampling mode (technically when do_smooth is off) because I realized it can help when sampling from the mipmap buffer. It degrades performance (slightly) on the main buffer which shouldn't benefit because the sample should be in the center of its pixels. (The mipmaps are part of the texture so they're tied to the same filtering mode, although I could try to separate them it's probably not worth the effort for now.)

I started working on this because what I'm trying to work on right now has been a bit frustrating and having spent time away I think I could see the supersampling with fresh eyes (I think my eyes adjust to video effects through daily exposure) and was still a little bit unsatisfied. I wasn't sure this would work but it seems to have been just the thing. It helps a bit more with contrast artifacts and I think it improves movement blurring a lot, which is what I intended it for, and it might reduce the perception of little smudges in the antialiasing pattern.

In Moratheia (2.1 demo) I can now move through the spiny trees without seeing any temporal artifacts, at least up close. In my KF2 demo AA artifacts are pretty well nonexistent and I can enjoy playing it with supersampling turned off again. It must look better for that to be the case. For a while I couldn't stand to look at it, at least not in movement. Edited: Also the text is now acceptable in the PSVR mode with supersampling turned off... although the picture is a bit more jittery. I've left it this way just because it's more presentable than smudged text is.

I thought the effect would be messier than it turned out. I thought it would need to draw the odd frame shifted over one pixel. I realized either last night or this morning that it would work just as well to do the shift in the downsample step. That makes it a lot less complicated. It's less intuitive but guarantees no unwanted/unnoticed complications.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #42 on:** July 05, 2021, 06:41:13 PM »

Patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.5.zip (shield demo)

I accidentally enabled the contrast reduction effect in SOM_PRM where it doesn't look so great when viewing moving models.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #43 on:** July 14, 2021, 02:46:00 AM »

Patch Patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.5.zip (shield demo)

As I feared the last patch cocked something up (8 days ago) as a result of working on adding a new alternative/upgrade to/from D3D9. I just had to look down to see that the underfoot shadow effect was bungled.

I'm sure I'd seen the monster's shadows working earlier that day. It was probably a last minute change.

Holey Moley · « **Reply #44 on:** July 19, 2021, 11:28:47 PM »

Patch Patch

http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.4.zip
http://csv.swordofmoonlight.net/SomEx.dll/1.2.3.5.zip (shield demo)

This time (last time) I (a typo) broke the "blt" function for pictures and the old style compass and gauge background

simple machines forum

News:

Sword of Moonlight|

Devs|

EXIT: 25th Anniversary Project

Author Topic: EXIT: 25th Anniversary Project (Read 43913 times)

Holey Moley

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simple machines forum

News:

Sword of Moonlight| Devs| EXIT: 25th Anniversary Project

Author Topic: EXIT: 25th Anniversary Project (Read 43913 times)

Sword of Moonlight|

Devs|

EXIT: 25th Anniversary Project