Neutrino Game Engine

[Rick]

Win 7 32 bit here. For about 2 mins I saw The Village.exe process at 50% cpu with the memory jumping around. Right now it's at 0 CPU and I see nothing. No window of the game has came up. I right clicked the process and did properties, then I saw the window come up but it was all white. Shortly after I got the "Program has stopped working" error.

 

 

I moved the exe from the downloads folder to my desktop.

[Pixel Perfect]

Thanks again for the feedback guys, there is definitely something wrong here. It doesn't run on my other two PCs either, just my development PC. Looking into why this should be right now.

 

The initial high memory/cpu usage is normal as it unpacks and decrypts the contents into memory, it does that on mine too, but a few seconds after the white window appears mine bursts into life instead of crashing! I tried the normal underlying files (unpacked) on my other PCs and that failed too in exactly the same way so I'm guessing its not the exe mechanism itself. Other projects of mine work on the other PCs, just not this one for some reason.

[Pixel Perfect]

New exe posted in same post above (as a zipped up file this time). It's working on all my PCs now! Was down to a hard coded path in the code I missed ... doh!

 

Have now added a loader splash screen with progress bar which will give some feedback once the splash screen loads.

[Mumbles]

"I hear that Leadwerks Engine 2 will be released in about 500 years." For some reason, she didn't jump for joy at that statement.

 

Side strafing seems faster than forward running, and sideways runnings is insanely fast. With an FPS of only 30, my AppSpeed was almost constantly between 1.95 and 2.08 which may have something to do with it if you can't reproduce this straight away.

 

 

It looks nice but I wasn't too happy to wait 4 minutes for it all to decrypt and unpack, then as soon as it tried to run, the Sophos on-access scanner quarantined it. It was declared as HIPS/ProcInj-001. Since it came from what I believe to be a trusted source, I simply authorised it and then after another 4 minute decrypt and unpack was on my way

[Pixel Perfect]

Thanks for the feedback Mumbles, I'll check the speed issues.

 

Sorry about the performance on the decrypt and unpack section. I used the highest compression ratio which more than halved the overall size of the download, it's a lot faster with no compression. It allows some pretty decent encryption and hence protection of the assets, unlike the Leadwerks password protected zip file mechanism that doesn't support the better AES encryption available in most ZIP apps these days (I seem to recollect winzip has had this for at least 8 years).

 

As for Sophos lifting it's eyebrows I guess any virus checker is going to raise an alert on this type of software, although funnily enough my own Kaspersky seemed quite happy with it!

 

[EDIT] Your quite right, the speeds definitely need adjusting, sideways running is insanely fast! Fortunately these are easily fixed. Thanks.

[Mumbles]

Sophos is very sensitive. There's no official ranking, but it's one that's used by universities and large companies. I'd guess that the only reason banks don't use it is because they mostly run Unix, and there for can't run it, and indeed don't need it.

 

 

As far as encryption and compression go, they weren't really a problem, and in fact something I would have like to add to my project although perhaps maybe a smaller block size for the encryption would be better. Unless there's a significant weakness in the algorithm (in which case key size won't matter), 128-bit AES keys are probably more than sufficient and anywhere up to 128 times faster to decrypt, and considering distrubited.net is expecting to take 200 years to brute force a 72-bit key, exhausting all possible combinations.

 

It looks like you're decrypting and decompressing into RAM, and then loading your media straight from the RAM. How you'd do that I have no idea, but I'd guess you're setting a mount point in RAM somewhere. On Linux it's much easier, you just have to create a mount point in your directory structure, and mount that to a temporary ramfs and then it can be treated just like any other directory.

[AggrorJorn]

Nice demo pixel.

 

My experience is almost the same as with mumbles. The loading takes about 5 minutes, but after that it plays really smooth.

 

I like the loading screen though. A very simple screen with a new nice small green loading bar. How do you track the loading process?

[Pixel Perfect]

Sophos is very sensitive. There's no official ranking, but it's one that's used by universities and large companies. I'd guess that the only reason banks don't use it is because they mostly run Unix, and there for can't run it, and indeed don't need it.

I'm very aware of Sophos. It's used extensively by NHS Trusts and has caused us a few problems with our database systems on occations in the past! It has an excellent reputation though.

 

As far as encryption and compression go, they weren't really a problem, and in fact something I would have like to add to my project although perhaps maybe a smaller block size for the encryption would be better. Unless there's a significant weakness in the algorithm (in which case key size won't matter), 128-bit AES keys are probably more than sufficient and anywhere up to 128 times faster to decrypt, and considering distrubited.net is expecting to take 200 years to brute force a 72-bit key, exhausting all possible combinations.

I agree, I'd be a lot happier if our pak files could use 128-bit AES keys. The current support for ZIP 2.0 encryption is too weak and in reality offers little protection at all.

 

It looks like you're decrypting and decompressing into RAM, and then loading your media straight from the RAM. How you'd do that I have no idea, but I'd guess you're setting a mount point in RAM somewhere. On Linux it's much easier, you just have to create a mount point in your directory structure, and mount that to a temporary ramfs and then it can be treated just like any other directory.

That's exactly what it's doing. It's not my own software though so, like yourself, I can only speculate on how they are doing this. I don't really have any experience of Linux, the closest experience I've had to unix based systems was working with IBM's AIX back in the days where we used to supply systems on IBM servers (at vast expense to all involved). Extremely stable operating systems, would run forever, but a command line interface and syntax that would baffle a rocket scientist initially. I guess it's like anything else, once you get used to it its ok I have particular recollections of occationally having to use vi to edit config files, which not being used to it was like 'one step forward, three steps back' lol. But in the hands of the experienced was a thing to marvel at.

[Pixel Perfect]

Nice demo pixel.

 

My experience is almost the same as with mumbles. The loading takes about 5 minutes, but after that it plays really smooth.

 

I like the loading screen though. A very simple screen with a new nice small green loading bar. How do you track the loading process?

Thanks.

 

With regard to the loading, it's a commercial packing package I bought just to try out as I was concerned about asset safety. It's good for demoes but not really an end delivery solution for a game. The splash screen and progress bar is a feature but is of course tracking their own unpacking of the exe contents into RAM. The actual load of the game starts as soon as the splash screen disappears but is somewhat faster as all assets are preloaded into memory at that point.

 

Its way faster if you use lower compression or none at all, but then of course it takes a lot longer to download. Swings and roundabouts. If you were to use it often then uncompressed would be the way to go.

[flachdrache]

- door flickers in open state if coming down the stairs

- some invisible objects i can step on (might be snd emitters or such)

- staying between the two controllers, looking at the boobs, dropped the fps to 3-6 fps (controller update)

- i was able to strafe into the small wooden cart, got pushed through the terrain and the app crashed with no info

- the game time does not advance for me here

 

... iam around 30 FPS because of my setup - might be the reason for most of the issues.

 

Looking good - i like the take/examine feature for the inventory ... even dropped the key (of course).

The sounds are nice but i guess the birds shadow does add the most real-life like feeling to the scene.

[Pixel Perfect]

Excellent, thanks again. More things to look at. I'm aware of the inside of the door issue when open, not at all sure what's causing that as it's fine on the outside but I'll take a closer look. I could really do with applying some proper collision meshes to objects as I suspect that would help with the issues of getting pushed through the terrain. Happens in a few areas. Yeah, the elapsed time is a throw back to some debugging I was doing and I forgot to re-enable it, I'll sort that.

 

I fixed two issues with the inventory system I found this morning before posting it again but that's working well now. It's pretty generic supporting any amount of internal slots and skins. Works out all the positioning from just the dimensions of the image and the specified size and quantity of slots and handles everything for you. Can be placed anywhere on screen and auto positions dependant on the resolution. It builds a layered set of data which is then used to render it each frame. You're the first to mention it which is interesting. It's by far the most complex thing operating in the demo.

 

I agree about the birds, the shadows and then the almost automated checking the sky response does give an air of reality. It's a simple thing but I put a lot of work into getting the bird flight functionality right.

 

I don't have path finding plugged in yet, but as soon as I do the animals can become free roaming (within limits) and respond to peoples appoach in a hopefully realistic way. I will be working on populating the village with interactive people first though, which has been the whole point of designing the scene in the first place.

[Mumbles]

I agree, I'd be a lot happier if our pak files could use 128-bit AES keys. The current support for ZIP 2.0 encryption is too weak and in reality offers little protection at all.

 

My reason for mentioning that was that I'd assumed you perhaps used the more common block size of 256-bit. I actually meant to write that, because otherwise, I say 128-bit is up to 128 times faster. 128 times faster than what?

 

I used to wonder why transferring to and from my computer remotely, away from home, only averaged about 80K a second. I used to believe it was just our Internet provider throttling traffic as they all tend to do until it was pointed out to me: Everything you do on SFTP and SSH is encrypted, by default, your key will be 2048-bit. You can do in plain unencrypted FTP if speed is the most important goal, but there will be no security - so no point even bothering with passwords. Encryption with block sizes that high is typically far more CPU intensive than it is I/O intensive, and mainstream workstation CPUs just can't process such large blocks as quickly as we'd like.

[Pixel Perfect]

My reason for mentioning that was that I'd assumed you perhaps used the more common block size of 256-bit. I actually meant to write that, because otherwise, I say 128-bit is up to 128 times faster. 128 times faster than what?

No worries, that was the assumption I'd made when reading it. I assume their high encryption setting is 256 with 128 as the medium but it doesn't actually state that on the interface. I did indeed use the highest setting on this which, as you rightly point out, has probably contributed to the speed issue. I'll experiment a bit more. This was the first occation I'd had a chance to use it.

 

 

[Edit] I stand corrected. It does state the encryption algoryhms and block size:

 

Low (Blowfish)

Medium (Twofish 256)

High (Rijndael 256)

 

Encryption with block sizes that high is typically far more CPU intensive than it is I/O intensive, and mainstream workstation CPUs just can't process such large blocks as quickly as we'd like.

That makes a lot of sence.

[shadmar]

Took a while to start yes :-) Packed using smartpacker?

Loved the atmosphere, birds and animals. Good job :-)

 

 

[Pixel Perfect]

Thanks shadmar, yes it's packed using smartpacker pro. I picked it up in the recent sale they had as I thought it might come in useful offering some reasonable asset protection, at least during this development stage. I am a little nervous still of using the inbuilt pak file mechanism with assets I've purchased as the security is quite low. It's an Achilles heal in the Leadwerks 2 system.

 

Although this has been essentially an exercise in preparing a suitable test level for AI development it's paid huge dividends already in as much that it's:

 

• Got me into Lua scripting of objects for the first time
  

• Allowed me to test and fix some bugs in my engine as it stands (thanks to all who replied pointing out issues) including a few issues I had with the display of the inventory system when displaying in different screen resolutions.
  

• Inspired me to extend the object picking and inventory system yesterday making it a lot more robust and adding the ability to drop items approximately 1 metre in front of you with ray casting to detect obstacles which may require a shorter distance. Objects like the key are now fully dynamic and emit sound when dropped adding to the realism. I can literally pickup the key, walk round with it and go back and place it back on the mantelpiece or just drop it and kick it accross the floor. Of course, having it open a door would be useful

 

I'm going to stop at this point and move on to character AI development with the first job being to extend my existing Leadwerks to EKI One exporter functionality to allow for dynamic game objects and character spawn waypoints to be flagged and exported.

 

A simple text support system is already in place for object descriptions and text display of items like books. I have character facial animation and speech developed and tested too but have yet to integrate it into the engine.

 

It's AI, and bringing static worlds alive, that really motivates me and I feel I'm finally starting to get somewhere. Still a long way to go though and lots more to learn.

[BES]

Sorry im late for the party, been busy .. didn't notice that you fixed it so it would play :-) ..

 

Figure I will post this anyway...

 

FPS is lower than expected for the screen size and my system specs..the fps also kept bouncing around a lot, but it ran pretty good ..except a few minor things already mentioned(had only 1 HD7870 running..AKA crossfire was disabled):

 

FRAPS FPS report:

 

2012-08-26 02:42:34 - Kingdom Of Soul
Frames: 36758 - Time: 400189ms - Avg: 91.852 - Min: 16 - Max: 247

 

The whole thing ... FPS, frame times and min/max average has been added to a zip folder ..attached..

Benchmarks.zip

[Pixel Perfect]

Thanks BES, do you know where the 16 fps occurred ?

[BES]

Thanks BES, do you know where the 16 fps occurred ?

 

Yeah that was up close the two people talking, it starts with them..but drops more and more until I looked directly at the lady and moved up very close..

[shadmar]

Set controller iterations to 1 and physics quality to linear usually helps on my controllers.

[Pixel Perfect]

Great feedback guys, I'll experiment with that. Many thanks!

[Pixel Perfect]

It seems I already have the controller sets to iterations = 1 and physics quality = 3 (linear) so I'm not sure what else I can do under these circumstances. I assume it's the continuous stream of collisions which causes this slow down with it firing constantly when sandwiched between other collision objects! I only get a minimum of 17 fps but that's a huge reduction in frame rate non the less.

 

Need to give this some thought, any further suggestions welcome.

 

 

 

 

[Rick]

Not sure if it's the same but I had a similar issue when I had a group of controllers chasing an object. When they would start to bunch together once they reached their goal the fps would just die.

 

Josh seemed to acknowledge the issue and said he thought he knew what it was but then he went silent.

 

http://www.leadwerks..._hl__controller

[ChrisV]

Just tried your demo out, Pixel.

I'm very pleased with the look of it all. Nice textures, models and feel. Although, some textures (like the grass texture), seems a bit too repetitive, and I think the lighting could be better. Plus, some textures don't seem to have bumpmapping on them, correct?

While walking in the level, I did notice a few things though. So, here they are :

- on some buildings, the light shines through the edges of the walls (got that same unwanted effect when importing maps into Leadwerks)

- same for the fireplace, light shines through sidewalls

- I can see through some doors while standing close to them (example: the first stable, when standing close to the door)

- the two doors after the man with the beard, seem to 'switch' textures. When the door is out of view, and you turn the camera back to see the door, it looks like the texture 'switches'. It also looks as if the door 'pops' into view.

- the plants near the pond, have collision on them, which is weird, cuz you can stand on them, which isn't very realistic. ;-)

 

Besides that, it's really looking great, man! Keep up the good work.

 

Cheers

[Pixel Perfect]

Thanks for the comments and link Rick, I'll make a point of reading through that. Indeed, if Josh has accepted it's an issue the solution might lie with him

 

Cheers for the feedback ChrisV, it's all helpful.

 

You're right on the collision on the plants, that's better removed and I'll do so. I always think it looks a bit odd being able to walk through larger plants/bushes but being able to stand on top of them looks even odder lol! I guess game environments are always about compromise.

 

Regarding the grass texture, I'd probably introduce other items to mask this somewhat in a finished scene like vegetation, leaves, and decals possibly. The problem with releasing scenes like this is the tendency for everyone to assume it's a finished article, which I had gone to lengths to explain it's not, but they are fair criticisms non the less.

 

The lighting issues with the edges of walls I've often experienced with 'off the shelf models'. I'm guessing it's some sort of geometry issue (I'm not a modeller). As a programmer I have to accept there are limits to what I can achieve on the modelling/artistic side. I have already agreed to team up with an artist/modeller who approached me after I posted the demo so I'm hoping I will have some much more talented help with these sorts of issues in the future.

 

The fire place was very noticeable and I was wondering if I could construct a simple double sided model to fit into the fire with the invisible material just to block the light (cast the shadow).

 

I'd also noticed the door popping when turning inside the house and assumed that was to do with occlusion, there is also a problem with the inside appearance of the door too when in the open position. I need to investigate this further. I'd not noticed any texture swapping but I'll take a look again.

 

Learning loads from this so thanks for all the comments, it's been a useful exercise putting this out there.

[Pixel Perfect]

Although I'm currently not working on any game development I thought I'd just post a recent video that features the fantasic level design of Falk Lochmann. We were exploring the idea of a STALKER type game idea and Falk provided the level you see in the video. All I did was add some of my path finding and patrol capability to emulate a patrol scenario with a couple of NPCs for this video. The footage is taken directly from my Game Editor. I will be using the level for enhancing and testing my FPS AI as soon as I'm able to find some time in the future.

 

Falk is a very talented artist and I hope to work with him in the future again