Bug Report Topic / Invasion Discussion

[Satin]

you may be right, I start with ev plasma. Dupe is still kinda spotty, still upon ghosting end up not being able to see, choose, or fire ev until suicide or real death. This happens perhaps 50% of the time on ghost. Other weapons dupe randomly, some allow the 2 weapons only per slot rule, others ignore it completely with no real way of knowing which will be affected. The Slow mo bug, is it possible on the switching from fast weapon to normal, the game picks the slowest possible penalty weapon speed and uses that?

[Azarael]

Speed calculation in BW is done in a way that's safe for normal play but may not be compatible with RPG.

[Calypto]

Slow movement of the player happens when the sprint key is pressed while holding a Speed weapon. If you stop sprinting, the movement speed resets to BW's default 80?% of normal walking speed. If a non-speed weapon is selected, you will move even slower because the movement speed was set while the weapon was held. You can try to set it to normal by sprinting with a normal weapon. Just some information about the bug.

[Satin]

I really wish that Inv kept your score, it's infuriating when you crash and then rejoin, your score is not kept, and your xp is lost. I lost 12k xp because I crashed. How often does the xp get saved to the server? Is it possible to retain the score for say 5 mins, so if you rejoin in that time, you pick up where you left off.
Modern 64 bit OS run out of virtual RAM, it's not anything the user can do, it's a limitation of the game itself, but it does affect a number of people. I can almost certainly expect to crash 3/4 through a long game, losing everything score wise, stat wise on the logging servers and xp wise, dependant on when the xp was last saved.

Can anything be done please?

[Calypto]

Yes, there is a setting. I'm out of town, however, and can't change it.

[Jester]

I was wondering today about the old Lucky enchante. Actually, the Lucky enchante is not so much use because of 2 nerfs:
a) No more spawn of infinite items (too much OP etc.. ? Can't remember exactly)
b) 200% damages to 80% damages (with EMWM) because the damage was too high (last nerf, few month ago)

My question is: can we have back the old Lucky enchante (not about the damage but about the spawn of item. Not necessary infinite but as before: can spawn X items on the ground for a safe spot) ?

Actually, the most enchante are Vorpal & Rage. Even Lucky is not so played now.. If we were able to have the old Lucky, maybe players'll use less Vorpal/Rage for much Lucky. Btw, it should help them much (and many of them die too easily, even if the monsters are easy imo) than actually.

[Aberiu]

Modern 64 bit OS run out of virtual RAM, it's not anything the user can do, it's a limitation of the game itself, but it does affect a number of people. I can almost certainly expect to crash 3/4 through a long game, losing everything score wise, stat wise on the logging servers and xp wise, dependant on when the xp was last saved.

I suggest an experiment. It will require some effort and time but might turn out to be useful.
You may try to backup all BW texture packages (serverside, I mean), reduce every weapon texture to at least 1024x1024 and run BW like this for a week or so.
In the end we might find out 2 things:
1) Does the size of the textures in BW really affect the gameplay that badly?
My bet is it does, especially the heaviest ones - I remember myself playing invasion with CX61 once, and in the middle of a fight a huge drop of performance happened (the game basically became a slideshow), and I noticed that the texture on the weapon disappeared completely and was replaced with an environment map.
2) Would anybody actually notice the difference?

[Calypto]

I was wondering today about the old Lucky enchante. Actually, the Lucky enchante is not so much use because of 2 nerfs:
a) No more spawn of infinite items (too much OP etc.. ? Can't remember exactly)
b) 200% damages to 80% damages (with EMWM) because the damage was too high (last nerf, few month ago)

My question is: can we have back the old Lucky enchante (not about the damage but about the spawn of item. Not necessary infinite but as before: can spawn X items on the ground for a safe spot) ?

The infinite pickups caused extreme lag to both the server, and clients' frame rates.

[Azarael]

Aberiu: Memory being exceeded is likely to be caused by so many monster assets being loaded rather than BW texture size.

The following BW weapons use 2048x2048:

Standard BW:

M46
A500
G5
RX22A
HVC-Mk9

Bonus Pack:
HMC-117 (x2)
EVPC
CX61
FG50
FSSG-50
CYLO UAW
CYLO Firestorm
LS-14
MARS-2
MARS-3
Shockwave LAW
LK-05 (effectively x2)
MK781 (honestly, this is crap and it need retexturing if anyone cares)
M2020
Conqueror

TOWP:
Akeron (x3)
CX85 (x2)
XOXO

Believe me, I've tried downscaling them, and all I get is an incredibly noticeable loss of quality. It affects all the textures I've tried. I don't know if I'm not downscaling properly (just using Photoshop + Unsharp Mask) but I notice a horrible difference, and this engine is already hamstrung when it comes to graphics. The third-person models look fine, but the closer viewpoint given by the first person view just makes the guns look like crap. It might be because we're not texturing correctly. If you're able to downscale any of these textures in such a fashion that they don't look like Unreal Engine 1 shit, I'd be interested to know how you're doing it.

[Aberiu]

Memory being exceeded is likely to be caused by so many monster assets being loaded rather than BW texture size.

It's likely to be caused by both, the question is, which of them consumes more. Most part of the monsters is really lowpoly and low quality.

I'm afraid I can't give you any advice on downscaling, however, there are various ways to prevent this situation.
You can make the upper part of the weapon which is usually facing the player higher resolution and polycount.
Take a look at this:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=94852
Note the amount of polygons on the scope compared to the muzzle and especially the handle.

Also, check out this:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101076
Scroll down to the UV layout and note how tightly it was packed.
There's a trick, you can make a badly optimized layout for easier painting and a super huge texture, paint it and after that make a second layout with everything broken into pieces and packed properly and rebake your textures.
If you manage to redo the CX61 UV layout someday this might help you reduce it's texture. Same goes for Akeron (it actually desperately needs new layout because 4x2048 is worse than 1x4096).

And as I already said, use symmetry more. I usually make a symmetrical layout for everything which is symmetrical and after that I decide which parts should be unique if I still have some more space (considering the texture size of course). There's nothing wrong with having some writings and logos inverted, not many people pay attention to such things anyway.