Upcoming December 2007 release - RCs available!

Get help with installing and running the Cafu Engine here. This forum is also for general questions and discussion of all aspects regarding the Cafu Engine.
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Carsten
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Upcoming December 2007 release - RCs available!

Post by Carsten » 2007-11-07, 21:04

Hi all,

I'm happy to announce that the first release candidate (RC1) of the upcoming December 2007 release is now available at http://carsten.ca3de-community.de/Ca3DE-7.12-RC1a.zip (roughly 270 MB). :cheesy:
[EDIT: This RC is no longer available as it has been replaced by a more current release. See the last post in this thread and newer posts in general for the latest release.]

The release candidates will be updated until December 1st, and unless severe errors are found until then, the last release candidate will be turned into the final release on the same day, and be renamed to "December 2007 (7.12) release".

Please test, and let me know what you think!

Very important notes about the RC1:
  • This is a Release Candidate, not the final demo.
  • Minimum System Requirements: 1 GB main RAM (1,5 GB on Windows Vista), 256 MB video (GPU) RAM.
  • The TechDemo map is missing feature demonstrations. Only a simple double-slide-door, two lights and a few collision models have been added. To be fixed for RC2.
  • I'll post a list with new features since the last release during this week.
  • The above link will only work as long as the RC1 is current, which however is to be expected short-lived and to be updated/replaced soon. If you find the link not working, check for more recent RCs or the final release of the Ca3D-Engine demo.
Have fun! :up:
Last edited by Carsten on 2007-11-13, 17:25, edited 1 time in total.
Best regards,
Carsten
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Post by scott » 2007-11-08, 14:57

Great news, downloading now !! :)
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Post by scott » 2007-11-10, 13:07

Nice demo, thanks for putting in the no shadows option :) Just a small issue, the doors don't open smoothly. Its like moving with snap to grid on. I'm wondering if theres something up with my system because the projectiles also move in this manner, its like there is no smooth interpolation as they move (But that has been for as long as I can remember, with all versions of ca3de. I just assumed it was how the game was coded and you just hadn't worked on it because you were too busy with the engine)

My system is an AMD Athlon 2800xp 768 meg ram, geforce 6600gt 128 meg ram.

I run the tech demo with low settings and I can get a consistent 30 frames per second in the area with the moving doors. The projectile movement is consistent across all maps, even with 150 frames per second or more I can see it
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Post by Thrawn » 2007-11-10, 14:06

Same for me here, the stuttering is somehow annoying :cry:

Other question: Is there a frameblocker in Ca3DE. For some strang reason I can't get over 60 frames, no matter what I do with dynamic lights etc, I all the time only have 59.xx frames. :shock:
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Post by scott » 2007-11-11, 02:37

I've had to set v-synch to force off in the nvidia control panel. I can get up to 200 fps in the two levels that come with the tech demo.
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Post by Carsten » 2007-11-11, 11:57

Hi all! :cheesy:
scott wrote:[...] its like there is no smooth interpolation as they move (But that has been for as long as I can remember, with all versions of ca3de. I just assumed it was how the game was coded and you just hadn't worked on it because you were too busy with the engine)
Yes, that summarizes it pretty well. ;-)

The reason for the stuttering is that the server is running at only 20 FPS. That means that it updates its world state only every 1/20th second (you can even see how the FPS is affected every 1/20th second when you set showGraphs=true). After each update, the changes are sent to the client, which in turn just updates its local world representation accordingly. This happens even in single-player mode, which happens to establish a full networking game that is just limited to the local machine.

Therefore, all server-side controlled objects are affected by the "20 FPS stuttering".
For the local player, this is compensated for by prediction, which takes player input and processes it immediately while the input is also sent to the server. The details of the prediction technique are fairly complicated, but it makes sure that the players movement is responsive and free of lag at 99% of the time (in single player mode even at 100%).

For everything else that is controlled by the server, the only option is to "hide" the 20 FPS updates by interpolating and extrapolating the related data. Although that can cause tiny visual errors, it is usually neglectable and in fact the only option to augment the FPS to that of the client.
So, well, you're right: Even though that interpolation stuff is not inherently difficult, I've just never found the time to implement it. This is also because Ca3DE had so few movable objects in the past. As this is going to change rapidly now, I'll also address this problem soon.

This is also because you'll find the stuttering even worse when it affects also the player, which in turn happens whenever something occurs that the prediction cannot account for. For example, riding an elevator up causes the player to be pushed up by the server. The prediction knows nothing about this up movement, thus cannot compensate for it, and thus the first persons view is affected by the stuttering.
Similar though unrelated things happen when the player walks up a step of a staircase.

:arrow: I'll look into it soon.
Thrawn wrote:Other question: Is there a frameblocker in Ca3DE. For some strang reason I can't get over 60 frames, no matter what I do with dynamic lights etc, I all the time only have 59.xx frames.
May I guess that you also have a LCD/TFT screen (not a CRT)? ;-) This sounds like the classical symptom of v-sync being enabled: As Scott already mentioned, you have probably set "Vertical Synchronization (v-sync)" to "on" or "application controlled" in your driver settings. Just turning it off should solve the problem. As usual, the Wikipedia has more information in this regard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_synchronization
:up:
Best regards,
Carsten
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Post by Carsten » 2007-11-22, 13:28

Oh, I almost forgot, while there is not yet an updated RC, there have been several improvements recently:
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Carsten
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Post by scott » 2007-11-22, 16:47

great work Carsten :)
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Post by Carsten » 2007-12-03, 17:52

Hi all,

I would like to let you know about the latest progress and why I've not been uploading anything new since the last RC - which was, in fact, due to the progress:
  • The code is currently changing very quickly, both in CaWE with numerous improvements, as well as in the Ca3D-Engine core wrt. structural and design aspects. (E.g. in CaWE, the Edit Face Dialog can now also deal with Bezier patches. It has therefore been renamed into the more general "Edit Surface Properties", and it is a lot more consistent to use than before. Documentation is not yet ready though, I'll let you know soon. This went along with a .cmap file format update etc. We've also begun to introduce the Command pattern as the basis for map manipulation, which in turn is the basis for simultaneous multi-person map editing in the future...)
  • Despite the new Map Scripting support works very well, I've found that it's very cumbersome to script every single door in a level, especially if there are plenty. ;) That is, for plain doors and elevators with default behaviour, we need entities that just work, without the necessity to supply auxiliary scripts.
    Well, I'm going to look into it, even if that means delaying the official release even further.
  • There are two common issues that people keep complaining about: The "stuttering" of server-controlled entities, and the limited number of entities that can simultaneously enter the PVS of a client (a network issue). I'd love to address both problems before the final release, but it might become a compromise between quality of implementation and release schedule...
Well, so far the news! I'm working a lot to get everything fixed asap, but as each of these items requires careful addressing, I hope for your understanding that I delay the official release a bit further rather than presenting it half-finished.
Best regards,
Carsten
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Post by 1DeVeLiShDuDe » 2007-12-18, 04:20

Sounds great! DL'ing it now!

Never noticed the skip yet, cuz my average FPS are 15-20 - I wanted to see all the details so I didn't change any settings!
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Re: Upcoming December 2007 release - RCs available!

Post by Stephen » 2008-01-03, 15:27

I'm getting really bad frame rates no matter what settings I use - around the 20 fps mark...

This computer can handle Half-Life 2: Episode 1 at 50 - 60 fps.

Maybe I should try again after a restart.

Oh, and also, I was not able to launch the terminal - it's on the '~' / '`' key, isn't it?
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Re: Upcoming December 2007 release - RCs available!

Post by Carsten » 2008-01-03, 21:49

Hi Stephen,
Stephen wrote:I'm getting really bad frame rates no matter what settings I use - around the 20 fps mark...

This computer can handle Half-Life 2: Episode 1 at 50 - 60 fps.

Maybe I should try again after a restart.
Please have a look at this FAQ (I just revised / augmented the text a little).

If none of the items mentioned in this FAQ helps, then the difference in FPS is probably due to different shader programs, and nothing can (easily) be done about it.
Stephen wrote:Oh, and also, I was not able to launch the terminal - it's on the '~' / '`' key, isn't it?
Nope. It's F1 now. :cheesy:
It used to be ~ / ^ / `, but I changed that to F1 a while ago, because that is simply less ambiguous. ;-)
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Re: Upcoming December 2007 release - RCs available!

Post by Carsten » 2008-01-14, 16:43

Release update:

The 7.12 (December 2007) release schedule has been discontinued and is replaced by the 8.02 (February 2008) release, for which release candidates are now available.

Please see this thread for more details.

As the 7.12 release is obsolete now, I also close this thread. Please place all your posts at the new thread. :idea:
Best regards,
Carsten
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