Draco - Saturday, 24 July 2010
Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2010 8:35 pm
Name: Draco Astreus
Position: Everything except what tatu & Nem do
Occupation: Artist, Writer, Mytholographer
Age: 22
Listening to: Johann Sebastian Bach Radio
An update from me on this. I have been off of TresCom and mostly off of messenger (and even stopped my exercises and other activities) for the past few weeks in an attempt to run JPDS into the ground and get my part in it finished. It's taken far more time than I anticipated. It is finally coming to the very final steps on my part as I recombine the sublevels into JPDS1... I almost got done with that but now the level has started becoming unstable after a certain point of mass-imports, even while the max object count is yet 20 thousand away or so. It's a pretty serious issue. The version of JPDS1 pre-split got over 50 thousand without this issue. I have a few theories in mind. One is that there might be an unknown limitation in the size or number of new meshes in the GRF. Nem's TL1, which nearly got to the Tres limit of 65+ thousand, did not have this issue when I reimported its contents into a blank level for him. I suspect that was because I was able to do the whole thing by selecting clone-series at a time and importing those alone. He was also using a lot fewer unique meshes in his level, mooost of the objects by far were clones. The way the sub-levels work, besides the basement which is fully constructed first, I import base objects (anything in the play area which uses submodels or magnets), and then "Mult" TPM files which are huge selections of objects all at once. It's rather a lot for GeomAdd to handle, but it was working fine until now. I also wonder if it is simply a matter of GeomAdd error. While importing the last fully successful sublevel, I found that importing the exact same objects in the same order would crash the game in the way I had been doing, and would work fine if I imported very small groups at a time.
Anyway it's gotten to the point where I can't even import a single pteranodon without a crash - which sometimes happens after walking around for a few moments. Just more blah. I tried backing up a few sublevels and doing things in a different order, but it just came back to this. The next thing I'm going to try is importing the "base" files from all the sublevels FIRST, now that I have them all, and then the "mult" files from each. It would, though, be better if I reexported all the "mult" files anew, so they are in smaller groups. GeomAdd seems to do things more "correctly" that way. The work required for this level keeps growing but I will stick with it. You should all be warned, though, that in order for JPDS1 to be releasable as a stable enough level, I may have to include a lot fewer dinosaurs than hoped for. JPDS is exploration- and puzzle-based enough that this should not keep it from being fun.
Oh and my mom is now back from the hospital and doing well. The couple weeks she was absent gave an important opportunity for many things, including this.. And just to reiterate, my work on the level will be done as soon as I finish the puzzles in the recombined level. The dinosaur design and much of the gun placement, and TPA stocking, will be up to the rest of the team. I don't know how long that will take, but probably not long.
Position: Everything except what tatu & Nem do
Occupation: Artist, Writer, Mytholographer
Age: 22
Listening to: Johann Sebastian Bach Radio
An update from me on this. I have been off of TresCom and mostly off of messenger (and even stopped my exercises and other activities) for the past few weeks in an attempt to run JPDS into the ground and get my part in it finished. It's taken far more time than I anticipated. It is finally coming to the very final steps on my part as I recombine the sublevels into JPDS1... I almost got done with that but now the level has started becoming unstable after a certain point of mass-imports, even while the max object count is yet 20 thousand away or so. It's a pretty serious issue. The version of JPDS1 pre-split got over 50 thousand without this issue. I have a few theories in mind. One is that there might be an unknown limitation in the size or number of new meshes in the GRF. Nem's TL1, which nearly got to the Tres limit of 65+ thousand, did not have this issue when I reimported its contents into a blank level for him. I suspect that was because I was able to do the whole thing by selecting clone-series at a time and importing those alone. He was also using a lot fewer unique meshes in his level, mooost of the objects by far were clones. The way the sub-levels work, besides the basement which is fully constructed first, I import base objects (anything in the play area which uses submodels or magnets), and then "Mult" TPM files which are huge selections of objects all at once. It's rather a lot for GeomAdd to handle, but it was working fine until now. I also wonder if it is simply a matter of GeomAdd error. While importing the last fully successful sublevel, I found that importing the exact same objects in the same order would crash the game in the way I had been doing, and would work fine if I imported very small groups at a time.
Anyway it's gotten to the point where I can't even import a single pteranodon without a crash - which sometimes happens after walking around for a few moments. Just more blah. I tried backing up a few sublevels and doing things in a different order, but it just came back to this. The next thing I'm going to try is importing the "base" files from all the sublevels FIRST, now that I have them all, and then the "mult" files from each. It would, though, be better if I reexported all the "mult" files anew, so they are in smaller groups. GeomAdd seems to do things more "correctly" that way. The work required for this level keeps growing but I will stick with it. You should all be warned, though, that in order for JPDS1 to be releasable as a stable enough level, I may have to include a lot fewer dinosaurs than hoped for. JPDS is exploration- and puzzle-based enough that this should not keep it from being fun.
Oh and my mom is now back from the hospital and doing well. The couple weeks she was absent gave an important opportunity for many things, including this.. And just to reiterate, my work on the level will be done as soon as I finish the puzzles in the recombined level. The dinosaur design and much of the gun placement, and TPA stocking, will be up to the rest of the team. I don't know how long that will take, but probably not long.