Multiple light problems
by Cary Howe · in Constructor · 04/10/2007 (12:57 am) · 28 replies
I absolutely loved Constructor until I got to lighting. Lighting is extremely buggy. When you try to drag a light once it's built it tends to lurch wildly and if you aren't extremely careful they'll wind up hundreds of units off the mark. Also they are impossible to adjust. I keep changing intensity but the results are debateable if any. When I hit relight it always darkens it. I've tried Dynamic, Mapped and shaded but nothing helps. I've set it everything from 50 to 5,000 for intensity with general no change. I think I'm going to have to restart the scene to adjust lighting because it was working somewhat at first. Just seems extremely unstable. Frustrating because it was looking cool before it flipped out. The lights are extremely clunky to set up and adjust at best but there seems to be some nasty bugs. Otherwise I'm having a blast with Constructor but lighting needs a lot of work. I can see the potential but I'm going to wait on the next release before I try to use it for a work related model. Too unstable to be useful.
#22
Okay that's bizarre using color to control light intensity. I just tried it and it works. Every software I've ever used tops out at 255 for each color channel. I just ran them up to 500 500 500 and it did brighten it considerably. Kind of clunky but it does work. I'm assuming the "Intensity" will be functional in a later upgrade. Glad I pointed it out because I never would have guessed color defaults would work beyond 255.
Modelling and texturing are really fun there's just those few things with lighting I've found so far.
04/10/2007 (5:26 pm)
Not to sound ignorant but I haven't a clue what everyone is talking about with "console Spam"? I thought maybe it was a typo. New term to me.Okay that's bizarre using color to control light intensity. I just tried it and it works. Every software I've ever used tops out at 255 for each color channel. I just ran them up to 500 500 500 and it did brighten it considerably. Kind of clunky but it does work. I'm assuming the "Intensity" will be functional in a later upgrade. Glad I pointed it out because I never would have guessed color defaults would work beyond 255.
Modelling and texturing are really fun there's just those few things with lighting I've found so far.
#23
The sluggish lighting shows up as soon as a light is loaded. Just glad I can use it on the 4800. Just feels like it should be better on the other machine. Like I say I use a ton of graphics software on the 3200 without this kind of trouble. Game Builder gets sluggish on that machine when I'm using a lot of animated sprites but that's understandable and there are some workarounds. With Constructor loading one light seems to bring it to it's knees.
For textures I was using a single 512X512 tileable image.
04/10/2007 (5:34 pm)
Just never heard of Console Spam before. It's definately not struggling or riding the hard drive. The light just moves erratically. It's a lot smoother on the 4800 it just pops a bit which I take it is a grid setting and not a performance issue.The sluggish lighting shows up as soon as a light is loaded. Just glad I can use it on the 4800. Just feels like it should be better on the other machine. Like I say I use a ton of graphics software on the 3200 without this kind of trouble. Game Builder gets sluggish on that machine when I'm using a lot of animated sprites but that's understandable and there are some workarounds. With Constructor loading one light seems to bring it to it's knees.
For textures I was using a single 512X512 tileable image.
#24
What I am asking you to look for is something like "!!! EntityPropertiesForm::processTick(): Diff entity time...". You should especially look to see if it is being repeated a lot.
Everything you see on your console is getting saved to a file called console.log in your Constructor folder. If you are really unsure what you are looking at/for you can email that file to me.
04/10/2007 (5:36 pm)
If you hit the "~" key (just to the left of the "1" key) it will bring down the console. You can see a lot of information there.What I am asking you to look for is something like "!!! EntityPropertiesForm::processTick(): Diff entity time...". You should especially look to see if it is being repeated a lot.
Everything you see on your console is getting saved to a file called console.log in your Constructor folder. If you are really unsure what you are looking at/for you can email that file to me.
#25
I just posted the log file on this web page.
http://newrealmpictures.com/constructor
Just click on the big text at the top that says "Log File".
04/10/2007 (5:49 pm)
Oh yeah there's an ocean of red in the Console. I actually didn't know there was a Console in Constructor and like I said I'ver heard of Console Spam. I just posted the log file on this web page.
http://newrealmpictures.com/constructor
Just click on the big text at the top that says "Log File".
#27
04/10/2007 (6:10 pm)
Nope. No difference. Just glad there are errors showing up in the log and there's a known bug related to this. Like I say at least it runs okay on my other machine.
#28
I posted a new cube test with a marble and wood texture.
http://newrealmpictures.com/constructor
04/10/2007 (6:51 pm)
Definately having more fun with Constructor since I have Lighting quasi figured out. Just playing with some tiling textures I have prebuilt. Should look even better with bump mapping and shader applied in TGEA. I was wondering if there's going to be support for things like bump mapping in Constructor? Definately be nice to be able to apply them even if they couldn't be viewed.I posted a new cube test with a marble and wood texture.
http://newrealmpictures.com/constructor
Associate Matt Fairfax
PopCap
In addition to that Dave had added code that would detect the problem and correct for it automatically. However, part of that "fix" included some console spam. I've seen the bug pop back up in a limited fashion from time to time (my computer seems a lot more prone to it than most).
It could be that your computer is particularily prone to it (because of your cpu or motherboard chipset or any number of things) and you are getting tons of things written out to your console.log which would definitely degrade performance.
Is your hard drive being constantly accessed whenever you have a light in the scene? That would be a good sign of this bug.
One other thing that could be causing a performance degradation is if you have imported a lot of large textures into your texture browser or if you are using particularily large textures on your brushes.