Singularity FPS test version available
by Lee Latham · in Torque Game Engine · 05/06/2007 (1:04 am) · 6 replies
If you have a good gaming rig, please come and try the net/gameplay test version of Singularity FPS:
www.singularityfps.com/demo.php
www.singularityfps.com/demo.php
#2
May I ask what kind of framerates you were getting? I'd like to have a small database of performance/hardware.
BTW you will get at least 25% better framerate if you connect to a server instead of standalone--even if yer just wanted to screw around. In fact on my core duo machine it's more like 50-100%. In any case single player mode is quite expensive for this game, for whatever reason. It's quite extraordinary, really.
But no, I wasn't kidding.
Edit: I'm a bit surprised it was totally unplayable for you with those specs. I'd be very curious if you got different frame rates at different resolutions, ie. was it video card constrained on your machine. The game has a LOT of BIG textures, and that seems to be an issue with this game.
05/06/2007 (5:01 am)
Hi Tim!May I ask what kind of framerates you were getting? I'd like to have a small database of performance/hardware.
BTW you will get at least 25% better framerate if you connect to a server instead of standalone--even if yer just wanted to screw around. In fact on my core duo machine it's more like 50-100%. In any case single player mode is quite expensive for this game, for whatever reason. It's quite extraordinary, really.
But no, I wasn't kidding.
Edit: I'm a bit surprised it was totally unplayable for you with those specs. I'd be very curious if you got different frame rates at different resolutions, ie. was it video card constrained on your machine. The game has a LOT of BIG textures, and that seems to be an issue with this game.
#3
Had a play on the server, here's some friendly criticism:
- Level needs a better sense of scale. E.g. player is a small toy soldier, cars and planes are about right however I came across a few things that struck me as being too large (when compared to the size of a toy soldier). A cigarette lighter on the ground near/under the bed for example.
- The general physics felt Too floaty. Adjust player and vehicle settings accordingly.
- Hook up vehicle steering to the keyboard, mouse steering bites.
- Disable mip mapping on the race track or increase anisotropy to eliminate the blur factor.
- Disable the server time limit! Kind of sucks when you're walking around exploring and the server resets.
Frame rate wasn't so bad second time around. A fresh restart and adjustment of pref settings helped. Some areas were bad at around 10 fps however I would sit on between 20-35 in most areas.
Had fun exploring and looking at all the naked chicks! Be better with someone else in the server, I was alone apart from the mysterious ghost player.
05/06/2007 (7:16 am)
Hi,Had a play on the server, here's some friendly criticism:
- Level needs a better sense of scale. E.g. player is a small toy soldier, cars and planes are about right however I came across a few things that struck me as being too large (when compared to the size of a toy soldier). A cigarette lighter on the ground near/under the bed for example.
- The general physics felt Too floaty. Adjust player and vehicle settings accordingly.
- Hook up vehicle steering to the keyboard, mouse steering bites.
- Disable mip mapping on the race track or increase anisotropy to eliminate the blur factor.
- Disable the server time limit! Kind of sucks when you're walking around exploring and the server resets.
Frame rate wasn't so bad second time around. A fresh restart and adjustment of pref settings helped. Some areas were bad at around 10 fps however I would sit on between 20-35 in most areas.
Had fun exploring and looking at all the naked chicks! Be better with someone else in the server, I was alone apart from the mysterious ghost player.
#4
I tried it on my laptop and got horrible results (as expected). The frame rate was great whenever I kept my eyes on the floor. ;) Other than that, it was a slideshow with 30 second transition times.
Yes, the large textures are huge, but they are not the only bottleneck. Your meshes need lots of optimization as well. I went into wireframe mode (glenableoutline(1);) to see if you had LODs enabled on your objects. I didn't see any LODing, which will be important for you later on. Also several meshes had confusingly high polygon counts -- especially the police SUV.
Again, since this is an early alpha, optimization and performance issues are to be expected.
This looks like it has the makings of a very cool game.
Here are my specs . . .
2GHZ Pentium M
512 MB System RAM
GeForce Go Ultra with 256 MB RAM
p.s. I know it seems that some of us harp on copyright issues too much around here, but if you are distributing your alpha version to anyone, then you need to make sure you don't have any non-licensed images in the download. That includes the posters of the girls and the labels on the shaving cream can and any other intellectual property owned by someone besides you. As I understand it, placeholder art is generally fine as long as it stays on your machine. However, once it gets distributed to others (in any form), things can get a whole lot stickier.
05/06/2007 (7:31 am)
Lee,I tried it on my laptop and got horrible results (as expected). The frame rate was great whenever I kept my eyes on the floor. ;) Other than that, it was a slideshow with 30 second transition times.
Yes, the large textures are huge, but they are not the only bottleneck. Your meshes need lots of optimization as well. I went into wireframe mode (glenableoutline(1);) to see if you had LODs enabled on your objects. I didn't see any LODing, which will be important for you later on. Also several meshes had confusingly high polygon counts -- especially the police SUV.
Again, since this is an early alpha, optimization and performance issues are to be expected.
This looks like it has the makings of a very cool game.
Here are my specs . . .
2GHZ Pentium M
512 MB System RAM
GeForce Go Ultra with 256 MB RAM
p.s. I know it seems that some of us harp on copyright issues too much around here, but if you are distributing your alpha version to anyone, then you need to make sure you don't have any non-licensed images in the download. That includes the posters of the girls and the labels on the shaving cream can and any other intellectual property owned by someone besides you. As I understand it, placeholder art is generally fine as long as it stays on your machine. However, once it gets distributed to others (in any form), things can get a whole lot stickier.
#5
Thanks for taking the time to check it out! I really am hoping that we can get a decent multiplayer game going to really test out the gameplay. That's one reason I'm leaving one of my machines connected...in hopes I'll be near it when someone is on there (that was your ghost player, Tim).
@Tim: the scale of the soldier is intentionally tiny--I decided to ignore reality on that point for what I think will be good gameplay. Whether that's a good idea or not is for you and others to decide, hopefully when we can get a good game going. Mea culpa on the relative scales of other things, though. I kinda forgot to have a big rescaling session before releasing. Doh! It's on the List now, though.
-could you describe your "floaty" sensation in the physics?
-keyboard steering: will do. I didn't think anyone would want it! Doh! That will have to wait for the next release, though...like in a few days, hopefully, when we can get some decent playtesting done and I can do a round of rough fixes. The keyboard steering functions are a bit bodged at the moment.
-mipmapping on the track: So _that's _ how I can do that? That would be in the map2dif conversion, correct? That's been annoying me a long time, thanks--it's on the List.
-server time limit: good idea, done! I think....
-please come back some more if you have time!
@Aaron: Thanks for the encouraging words. Let me tell you something very strange I noticed. Yes, you are correct--no LOD's. What happens when I add LOD's to some of these models is that my framerate goes down. Memory usage goes up, which is to be expected, right? But FPS goes down. I tried it on several models, particularly the really high poly ones. I'm thinking that it's because I have SO many polys in my game, and it's a kind of corner condition or something in the engine. Profiler is enabled in the build--if you were to check it out you'd see the engine spending rather a lot of time rendering models.
Honestly, I have no problem throwing a faster cpu at a problem like this, but even I am a little offended by my own wastefulness, here.
FYI the only non-licensed things in the game currently are the aforementioned shaving cream can and the "zoso" logo on the skull on the monitor. Yeah, I let it go for this test version, but you're right--I'll take them out in the next release. The girls, btw, are actually legal! Shutterstock.com is a great site, and I managed to get all the images for about a hundred bucks. Most of the models are from Turbosquid.
I could never have done even this on my own without Turbosquid and Torque.
--
05/06/2007 (1:04 pm)
Hi guys, Thanks for taking the time to check it out! I really am hoping that we can get a decent multiplayer game going to really test out the gameplay. That's one reason I'm leaving one of my machines connected...in hopes I'll be near it when someone is on there (that was your ghost player, Tim).
@Tim: the scale of the soldier is intentionally tiny--I decided to ignore reality on that point for what I think will be good gameplay. Whether that's a good idea or not is for you and others to decide, hopefully when we can get a good game going. Mea culpa on the relative scales of other things, though. I kinda forgot to have a big rescaling session before releasing. Doh! It's on the List now, though.
-could you describe your "floaty" sensation in the physics?
-keyboard steering: will do. I didn't think anyone would want it! Doh! That will have to wait for the next release, though...like in a few days, hopefully, when we can get some decent playtesting done and I can do a round of rough fixes. The keyboard steering functions are a bit bodged at the moment.
-mipmapping on the track: So _that's _ how I can do that? That would be in the map2dif conversion, correct? That's been annoying me a long time, thanks--it's on the List.
-server time limit: good idea, done! I think....
-please come back some more if you have time!
@Aaron: Thanks for the encouraging words. Let me tell you something very strange I noticed. Yes, you are correct--no LOD's. What happens when I add LOD's to some of these models is that my framerate goes down. Memory usage goes up, which is to be expected, right? But FPS goes down. I tried it on several models, particularly the really high poly ones. I'm thinking that it's because I have SO many polys in my game, and it's a kind of corner condition or something in the engine. Profiler is enabled in the build--if you were to check it out you'd see the engine spending rather a lot of time rendering models.
Honestly, I have no problem throwing a faster cpu at a problem like this, but even I am a little offended by my own wastefulness, here.
FYI the only non-licensed things in the game currently are the aforementioned shaving cream can and the "zoso" logo on the skull on the monitor. Yeah, I let it go for this test version, but you're right--I'll take them out in the next release. The girls, btw, are actually legal! Shutterstock.com is a great site, and I managed to get all the images for about a hundred bucks. Most of the models are from Turbosquid.
I could never have done even this on my own without Turbosquid and Torque.
--
#6
I've probly had 20-30 people in there, but never more than one at a time! I think all would agree that the game would be more fun with other players. Plus, I really really need to test the net code!
So I hope you all can make it!
Best Regards,
Lee
05/07/2007 (10:25 pm)
Thanks to everyone who has taken a look. However, I am declaring a Singularity FPS party, my server, tomorrow night May 8 2007 at 9pm Central time. Bring your own booze.I've probly had 20-30 people in there, but never more than one at a time! I think all would agree that the game would be more fun with other players. Plus, I really really need to test the net code!
So I hope you all can make it!
Best Regards,
Lee
Torque Owner Tim Heldna
That's one big problem with Torque and games that involve detailed environments, almost everything is done on the CPU and there are no decent culling methods available.
I tried it single player and couldn't maintain anything that resembled a healthy framerate so I quit. The little that I saw looked good though and I love the concept/idea behind this game.
P4 3 GHz
1 GB RAM
NX6600GT 128 MB PCI-Express