Low-End Graphical Issues

[Neddie]

I've been exploring low-end Spring play in the hopes of being able to promote some games such as Kernel Panic for play on low-end machines with small numbers of players.

The biggest issue I've encountered with the Intel 945GM paired with an Atom N280 is icon corruption. Generally, icons fail to display fully, usually either showing up as boxes or the top half of the icon, only visible at certain view distances. If there is a solution to this I can look into settings and custom GUI for particular games on low-end machines.

[Peet]

That occurs when the icons are NPOT (non-power of two) in size, I do believe.

[Neddie]

They are all power of two in the games I tested with.

[Neddie]

The icons are fine on the minimap, by the way, they render fully.

[manolo_]

would be awesome if there would be some mods for specially for the netbooks

[zwzsg]

I've been exploring low-end Spring play in the hopes of being able to promote some games such as Kernel Panic for play on low-end machines with small numbers of players.

I'm interested in knowing what to optimize in KP to lower the machine entry level. I know profilers exist, but I don't know how to get, run, and understand them.

That occurs when the icons are NPOT (non-power of two) in size, I do believe.

Disturbingly, more than half of KP icons are NPOT.

Neddie, do you confirm that pointer, nuke, bit, socket, dos icons are displayed properly, and that only hole, kernel, assembler, byte, trojan, worm, window, mines, are shown corrupted?

[Peet]

I misunderstood the OP as saying buildpics, not icons, sorry.

[jK]

so neddie still didn't defined what he meant ...
(ppl w/o a screenshot things like this didn't happened!)

there are so many 'icons' in spring ... (radar icons, buildicons, far view icons (those auto-generated ones), ...)

[Neddie]

As far as I'm concerned, the only elements which can generally be called icons are map and minimap icons. There are other terms for other ingame elements which are more apt for those purposes.

Here is the icon problem, as encountered in S44. Kernel Panic was working but I reformatted and have not redownloaded as of yet.

screen001.jpg

(148.62 KiB) Downloaded 40 times

Well, I can kinda see part of the icons, though this is far beyond the minimal render level, and just barely far enough out to make these visible as they are.

screen002.jpg

(136.89 KiB) Downloaded 28 times

And this is further out... suddenly rendered flag circles and all icons disappear.

Observe the minimaps - all icons are displayed correctly, even if they are rather small.

I will reproduce my Kernel Panic experiences for you in a day or two, z.

[Neddie]

Kernel Panic now apparently has no graphical problems besides global slow-down. I need to test with everything clocked fully, however - currently I'm running in power-saving mode, which treats me to 12 FPS when seven AI are playing.

[jK]

Like I thought you were talking about something totally different ...

Your screenshots show FarView icons!

FarView icons always were semi-broken, just set your "Unit icon distance" less than your "Unit detail".

[Neddie]

My settings were already set in that manner. I will test with various combinations of those two settings, however.

[Neddie]

Reflectivity does not work correctly, it sometimes makes all units transparent, other times prevents them from rendering at all, and at other times makes black areas not intended as transparent so.

[zwzsg]

Kernel Panic now apparently has no graphical problems besides global slow-down.

Good to know. I wish someone could help me do some profiling to help know what to work on to reduce the slown down.

Reflectivity does not work correctly, it sometimes makes all units transparent, other times presents them from rendering at all, and at other times makes black areas not intended as transparent so.

If you are talking Kernel Panic s3o transparency, it's a known bug.

[Neddie]

If you have the tools and documentation, not requiring any coding, I can probably profile between tasks.

Interesting, I did not know that about s3o. Occurs in multiple games, however.

[Beherith]

view radius settings should have a really significant impact on your frame rate.
What do you have it currently set at?

[Argh]

What Behirith said is 100% right on. Make sure to set the viewradius low, if you're really trying to see what performance should look like. For really low-end machines, maybe a setting between 16 and 32.

[Neddie]

A setting between 16 and 32 is uglier than if you merely flattened the map and simulated terrain with modifiers. I'm currently running at 70, I'll lower that and see about load.

[Argh]

32 is all right. I can now run P.U.R.E. at 64 with a decent framerate, though, due to some changes I made in Spring's internal rendering settings specific to the game.

70 is massive overkill for a low-end system, though. 32 is the maximum I'd recommend, tbh. The maps are using vertex and fragment programs to shade, and they're adding a great deal of load per rendering pass.

[Neddie]

In the case of Kernel Panic, below 30 or so there appears to be little to no benefit to lowering the view radius. The FPS with a stationary camera does not rise, and it appears that the spikes when the camera scrolls are more severe. In addition, below 18, most maps are unrecognizable muddles of deceptive curves, unacceptable for play.

The icon problem persists in S44 and CA. Any thoughts?