Lot of improvements and new stuff soon
Today, for the first time in months, I downloaded the client CVS and compiled it, in order to test the new object format, which has a few improvements over the old one, such as the materials ordered to minimize texture changes, and redundant faces removed.
Daniel finished the new format, fixed a few problems with the converter, and added the support for it in the map editor, which means that now we can finally switch to a more efficient format.
In conjunction with the compressed maps, objects and textures, the client loads faster and it is slightly faster.
We had a test today, with a pre pre release candidate, and it seems that there weren't any problems with the latest changes.
The only thing I don't like about compressing everything is that the download file size is much bigger than before. The reason for this is that with the objects uncompressed, the installer compresses all together. If they are compressed individually, the file sizes increases. One way to mitigate this problem is having the objects uncompressed, then after the game is installed the installer can run a script (a bat, maybe) to compress them and delete the uncompressed versions.
On the server side, I am almost finished with the light maps and the different visibility based on the light (nearby lights, time of day, etc.). It should be ready for testing by the end of this week.
Daniel finished the new format, fixed a few problems with the converter, and added the support for it in the map editor, which means that now we can finally switch to a more efficient format.
In conjunction with the compressed maps, objects and textures, the client loads faster and it is slightly faster.
We had a test today, with a pre pre release candidate, and it seems that there weren't any problems with the latest changes.
The only thing I don't like about compressing everything is that the download file size is much bigger than before. The reason for this is that with the objects uncompressed, the installer compresses all together. If they are compressed individually, the file sizes increases. One way to mitigate this problem is having the objects uncompressed, then after the game is installed the installer can run a script (a bat, maybe) to compress them and delete the uncompressed versions.
On the server side, I am almost finished with the light maps and the different visibility based on the light (nearby lights, time of day, etc.). It should be ready for testing by the end of this week.
posted by Radu at 2:28 AM
5 Comments:
I'd like to help with testing of the lightmaps if my computer lets me (might not have enough ram)! I haven't helped test before so it would be good to do it for a change.
About the filesize: The official Linux/BSD client comes with a lot of unnecessary files (e.g. Windows libraries, Windows executables). Although I never used the Windows Client I doubt that some of them, such as elconfig.exe (dates back to 2003), are even up-to-date anymore.
I'd really appreciate if these unnecessary files could be left out, in order to save download bandwith and keep the EL installation clean.
The Linux/FreeBSD client does not pose a big bandwidth problem for us, and it is hosted on external mirrors anyway.
I doubt anyone can complain about 200Kb more in the download due to the windows files.
Regarding testing the lightmaps, it will take a while to have them.
It's not "complaining", it just struck me as odd. Not including those absolutely unnecessary files wouldn't mean an awful lot of work. Besides that I really don't understand, why a 4 year old out-dated executable is still part of the CVS.
Which out of date file is still part of the CVS?
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