Engine demo

But it happened other people as well. I talked to them via MSN.

Nice demo. Will be great if we can download the
source code + level. Looking forward for another
outdoor level too.

Great demo! I'm very curious how the usability will turn out in an own project!

Lizenzrecht ist immer gültig, auch in Demos.

Und das F5-Problem haben wir ja schon besprochen und erkannt. Wenn die Auflösung geändert wird, muss auch der View des Schattens angepasst werden.

Falls man das nicht will, einfach F5 ausschalten.

nein natürlich nicht...

aber wenn du vielleicht ein ernstes gespräch suchst, damit du dir ein besseres bild über meinen geisteszustand machen kannst ruf doch einfach an. die tel.nr. gebe ich dir gerne per pm.

aber viel besser ist es wenn du dir keine sorgen um andere machst sondern bei dir erstmal anfängst. (gespräche mit dem eigenen spiegelbild wirken wunder glaube mir).

und nun höre auf mit solchen sinnlosen bemerkungen anderen gegenüber was deren geisteszustand angeht!

mpde

Das war keine Aussage, nur eine Frage.

da wir hier sowieso schon auf deutsch sind, ein paar gedanken zur demo.

die demo heißt "licht und schatten". also sehe ich wohlwollend über die steifen animationen, das blockige, detailarme, shaderlose level hinweg, ignoriere die schlechte framerate auf meine zweikern-gf76gt system und widme mich dem sinn der demo: licht und schatten.
eine derartige demo, in der nur eine einzige lichtquelle vorkommt, nämich die sonne, ist eigentlich peinlich. wenn dann die schatten auch noch sägezahnecken haben und die figurschatten konstant falsch berechnet werde, macht sie sich nur noch lächerlich. die figurenschatten mögen weich sein, sei werden aber sogar gweorfen, wenn die fur im schatten steht, es gibt keine echten schattenwurf auf figuren, und shader, was interessant gewesen wäre in bezug auf lichtanzahl pro modell und geschwindigkeit, fehlen komplett.
das volumenlicht greift auf einen alten fake von drew medina aus a5-zeiten zurück, der zwar gut aussieht, aber gar nichts mit der leistungsfähigkeit der engine zu tun hat.

fazit:
die demo erfüllt also weder ihren ausgewiesenen zweck, noch seht sie sonderlich gut aus, noch zeigt sie auf der performance-seite irgend etwas sehenswertes.

langweilig, nicht unbedingt hässlich, aber klar am ziel vorbei.

genau... auch meine meinung.

sehr sehr viel muss da verbessert werden!!!

mpde

Hi,

i am not sure about this demo since most of the things shown are levelgeometry. and to be honest, we know that levelgeometry can calculate nice shadowmaps. the models are a pain in the ass when its up to lightning. And as far as this goes in the new demo i have some serious troubles with it. First of all i hardly see any of them, the ones i see (soldier) are far from being good enough for todays standard. Common, soldiers turning pitch black and withing a gloomy black cloud if they step onto a dark pixel. then all of a sudden turn skybright within a millisecond?!

i dont know how others think about this, but if this should be the furture of gs, i dont see a light at the end of the graveyard.

as for the demo: hmpf. will describe it best i think. Its not made very well (bad textures, glitches and uvw errors), way to static (though this could be the shadowmapping problem). And as far as i am concerned i agree with broozer 100%.

Get rid of those pseudo volumetric flare effects (they hardly look good with up to date shader technology, but sprites are killing me to be honest). and if the level thats left still looks well lit and not boring, you might be one step further.

sorry for ranting or sounding mean, but i thought being honest will help more then just cheering and being happy about a more then needed new demo level.

but engine demo "beta" might be the reason for some things here.

my bottom line: i wouldnt buy the engine based on this demo.

cheers and have a nice one

I have to agree with broozar - this demo has lot of issues...

I now want to point out some more:
First I don't like to be tied to a set camera movement - exploring the scene by yourself should be an option. Then there is this effect which was called "halo effect" in this thread and which creates sort of an ugly motion blur on distance. But even worse - look at this:


1)
That's probably why there is no custom camera control as that blurring halo effect turns the soldiers into pixel mash on a mediocre distance...

2) & 3)
Well besides the already jaggy appearance of the shadows those two areas also are just ugly...

To sum it up this demo to my mind is disappointing in terms of artistic content and technical showcase (even the C-Lite Beer won't improve the situation )...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

Nice demo, but what makes it so special? Lot of bugs btw. Looks like it need a lot of work.

I like, is a small demo, I not have any problem
with the shadows, and first of all, I like to much
they start to make demos.

I whan and wait conitec continue in this way

Dont forget guys, its beta demo on a beta page but yeah, I like it, certainly shows the possibilities if one really digs into it
Perhaps when the feature matures, the demo will mature right along side it to?

Felixsg: Try F5 the resolution higher than 1024x768 it will mess up the shadows. At least on my Geforce8800 GTX.

Nems: Yes I think so. I didn't mean to say this demo is not special (I could not make something like this myself), but that it is not really finished and can't be used in a serious project in this state.

Here's another bug: when you're flying close to the 3 barrels, if you look away from them (but still keep their shadows in view) you'll see they the cast shadows will simply vanish. There's barrel shadows only when they're onscreen. This problem doesn't seem to affect the soldiers.

Still, I feel I should counter some of the heavy criticism on this demo. Yes, it doesn't blow you away and it does look very last gen. But it is ok and the looks are more than acceptable for a non-AAA indie game. Besides, although fairly slowly, it _does_ work perfectly on my ATI 9200 Mobile, which is more than can be said by most engine demos. I even get the stencil shadows, which just about all other engines can't seem to muster on my aging laptop.

I like the demo..It has an athmosphere. That can also be important to show some techniques and I like the "lite c beer" esteregg :]
The size of that demo is really small, but if you want to make for every aspekt of the engine a own demo it's ok.

but as mentioned before some things are missing.
The thing annoyed me most was the cam...too fast and jerky.
The second thing is the halo effect. It could be avoided by comparing the pixels of the depthmap.
The 3rd thing is: This demo should show what this engine is able to do. An easy enviroment mapping(maybe with normalmapping) on the floor would already do a great job.(look at hl2 how they did it...).
Maybe also a little (not too intense!) bloom shader.

Also if this shall be a shadowdemo. If there are some ugly blocks it just lowers the opinion of the player.

edit: played it again...I'm not sure, but is there a bloom if something is behind the rays of the windows?

cannot extract it

The demo is not THAT bad if you ask me.

I pretty much like the look of it, although some shadows are pixelated.
- and never underestimate the power of fakes

There still needs some work to be done like the jerky camera rotation when using the mouse, and the bugs when resolution switching.
Maybe some more lighting stuff can be added. I'm thinking of dynamic lights which could be used when firing weapons or maybe some dark passage where one of the soldiers controls a flashlight?

However, I don't think it really is that bad as people here pretend it to be.

hi...

new demo

http://server.conitec.net/down/demo_venice.rar

mpde

Thanks for the link.

I also found this at the beta page:

"fps_max now uses a CPU loop for small idle times, which reduces the 'stuttering motion' problem on levels with high frame rate."

Is this a very fast reaction to the jerky camera problem of the lighting demo?

If that is the case then I would like to thank for this fast reaction. This is great.
So making official demos is really a good decision to realize real problems on real projects and overcome their issues.
This is the right way. Thanks.

thoughts about the venice demo:

the water shader is hl2 quality, though it is not transparent which should be no problem in dx9, should it?
the overall fps is really bad, it jumps between 29 and 40 @ athlon 64 dula core, 2 gig ram and gf 7600 gt. for just blocks and one shader surface, it's awkward. if the level was crowded with detail, ok, but it looks like it's been vacuum cleaned just before the player arrives.
the overall lighting is sterile and highly unimpressive. i felt reminded on the tomb raider 2 venice level:



except for the water shader and the lowres textures, it doesn't differ much, esp. regarding the lighting.
the weather effect is a really nice idea.

Well I liked the 2nd demo much more than the first. Although it also has some issues:

I don't know why but I always have those 3 lines of grey minus signs on screen all the time. Then there is the water shader which is somewhat nice but the reflections really are jaggy. I'm not 100% sure but if I'm right this was already done better in Half-Life 2. I also seem to have a probem with those red poles:

Might be a driver issue or something like that though...

Well apart from that there are only some minor issues i.e. the scene is pretty boring (still no free flight mode) and the chimney smoke with its like 6 step animation also isn't looking all too good. You also might want to add like metal poles with a sphere on its top which have some environmental mapping or even real reflections to show off some more stuff than just the water reflections (because for just this you might better have constructed an inhouse pool with a more interesting scene and maybe some rubber ducks & stuff to throw into the pool to show physics too)...

Enjoy yor meal
Toast

So i saw the demos right now and i think the same as broozar, and i saw the lines, many small dots in the demo too. My GPU is a ATI X1900XTX with the latest driver.
The FPS is between 35-45 and when all shaders include, i think we have a slideshow. At the first moment not bad, but after the second look, not really timely.

Regards
Blitzblaster

Enjoyed it a lot Might make it my screen saver

Someone can upload this demo? I tried downloading it from Conitec website, but the file is damaged or corrupt.

unrar it with winrar or 7zip, that were the only tools that worked for me.

I liked the first demo more :]

The critism on this 2nd are:
Water-too low res mirror-view, not transparent
the 2 trees: they are ugly
houses: you see them in a distance of 2meters or even nerer. The textures should be more than 1 texel = 10cm...

i don´t find them that bad. some problems like the soldiers which don´t turn smoothly, the moiré effect on the roofs and the ugly trees with the strange alpha borders should be fixed though and they shouldn´t be wrs packed but open and free to use for everyone.

please don´t make zip files with winrar. they seem to be quite incompatible.

The second demo is also nice. The only bug I've encountered
is the grid lines on the water terrain and a blue line above
the buildings when switching to different resolution (F5).

Also, lamp light are not bright enough when the camera getting
close.

EDIT
----
Sorry for the grid lines problem, I think I've press F11 double.
It's fine now.

I noticed some alpha issues with the trees, pixelated water shader and unsharp textures.
I also wonder why the framerate is so low (for such a level I'd expect no noticeable framerate impact, meaning I'd have my full 75 fps in fullscreen mode).


Still, I think the demo is okay.

If i don't err the first demo was made from the resources of red winter?
http://www.wetain.com/de/portfolio/prototypen/red-winter

Since this is the Ask-Conitec thread I have got some questions regarding the demos:

• The rendering speed is a bit slow for the amount of details and texture resolution. Is it because they are made out of blocks? Are they made out of blocks?
  Will a similiar scene created from models render with faster speed?
  
• Will there be any detail informations about the demos? Technical description or even source files?
  
• Are those demos final? Or will they get any improvements (removing the F5 resolution issue, removing the horizontal lines, removing jerky camera, getting compatible zip archive)?
  

if you press f11 twice then you can see that the first demo uses blocks and the second demo one model for the whole world (i don´t think this is ideal scene management?). the model of the venice demo should be converted to ABT level geometry and show some shadow mapping. can the map compiler handle shadow mapping on non-block level geometry properly in the meantime?

so this explains the slow fps in the venice level then...

This thread is too long for me, so I'll just answer the last questions. Yes, the warehouse is made from blocks and models won't render faster, the demo source will become available, and the demos are final except for some small fixes.

just one suggestion, make the demo's open source - so the community can help to improve it here and there... right now they are acceptable, but far from perfect in my mind.

good to see that conitec cares about the user requests and has created some demos everyone here wanted to see.

nice job and hope to see more.

i like the second one more. texture resolution rework might help a lot but i love the water shader.

cheers

Is there any chance to publish the third demo
like Fluid physics and Auto LOD?

Why not including fluid physics into the second demo?
Would be very cool to see realistic waves created by the boat and the rain!

Dark_Samurai