Hi,



Today we have released Beta 1.003 to all pledgers of the project.



The main improvement has been on performance improvements. The work on performance is still not complete and as such this version will show some visible issues;



- Object popping

- Objects in the distance disappear



Don't worry, we'll be sorting these issues next. For full details of why these issues exist you should read Lee's blog HERE



Please let us know what sort of performance you get from this build.



Thanks,



Rick

Using default settings and the default get to the river level, I don't see any real difference between the last beta and this one. Much the same for me using defaults. I get an immediate fps warning when the level fist loads with my fps at 11fps (lower than Beta 2) then accepting auto optimisation and everything set at off except the veg which it leaves on I then get 24fps - all just about the same as Beta 2.



I can improve this by using all the various sliders to remove detail but then that's little advantage to the visuals as we are swapping loss of quality for a few more fps - but can boost fps up to a max of around 28 fps - 32/34 fps fluctuating. By manually turning reflections to 1, veg and LOD and so on to as low detail and as little veg as possible I can perhaps keep and average of around 29/31 fps. Seems the veg is the biggest hog.



I can actually live with 31 fps if I could keep that in complex levels at least that's playable. I don't need a lot of the eye candy like bloom which I don't need at all. Some water reflection and a little more veg on screen would be good.



Little or no difference to Beta 2 at the same quality level. i.e keeping some reasonable veg cover level. At least the updated slider controls do now allow a little boost which does help albeit at the expense of visual quality. At the end of the day if its a necessary evil trade off as one can live without visuals but not without acceptable performance and fps then so be it but its not a trade off that is really needed to the extent that levels are visually underpopulated or under detailed at the quality of engine looked for here. As the saying went I got better fps by turning everything off is not the ideal situation but better than no option at all if games are to be performance playable.



In an empty level (and no veg) I can get better fps than Beta 2 with this version showing around 44fps but that's with all the sliders and everything turned down to fully optimised except shadows which I keep set at 1 so they actually work/display correctly (ish)



All in all this is an improvement in as much as it provides that optional trade off of loss of quality for an improved fps which is not an option at all for many but a necessity. Can't play games if the fps is too low.



Personally I would rather this than Beta 2 as at least it does provide users with that option. Ideally we need more of the performance improvements so we can maintain playable fps and get back some more detail or add more content to levels or both if possible.



There are some other improvements and or fixes I can see that have been done and thanks for those. Thankfully to date I have not really seen any stability issues and don't get any crashes or anything like that and hopefully that stability can be maintained. Its great to work with something that does not keep falling over shutting you down (quit) too often.



Please keep up the good work.

Concerning 'FPS re-loaded Beta' version 301113, dated Nov. 30th...



The downloaded file is 'corrupted'. I tried to download it 4 times already and on 2 different computers, and all the copies I downloaded of the 'compacted file' were corrupt and I got a 'Cannot open, file is corrupted' error message on all of them.

I can't see an improvement either, I'm afraid. Starts off at 2FPS to a max of about 12 after 'optimisation'.



I accept that my dual-core PC (4Gb, Nvid 9500, W7) may be a little underspec, but I haven't found a recommended spec to upgrade to, so I'm reluctant to upgrade without more knowledge.

well I get 3x more fps on my machine with nothing on the level, but it drops to below 5fps when I add very small amounts of grass and water. this didn't happen with the 1st release.. I would stay at 5fps no matter how much I put into the level, now though its very very different story. I also have a under par machine but seems to me it was better before the performance work releases tbh.

Bubba, I just downloaded it and it worked fine. Perhaps you need to update your unzip program?

I don't get any measurable improvement either.



Just tested the get-to-the-river map and I get the following:







The bizarre thing is that the "High Performance" option is now worse than the default Intel card!



Lee was talking about forcing FPSCR to use the high performance option on those machines which have the choice. Has that been implemented? If so that might explain the small difference I'm now getting whereas with beta2 the high performance option was noticeably better. Perhaps Lee has forced it to use the wrong option.



Hope to test other things later today.

My experiance with the new beta is:



Everything a bit slower. Don't know how much, there is happening nothing when pressing TAB. So... no Sliders, no FPS. The strangest thing is when pressing Ctrl. Then I see the level as wireframe. Nice but... wanted?

I get a rather stable 60FPS with get-to-the-river map. It sometimes drops below it but most of the time above it. I even tried putting vegetation to 100%, small decrease in FPS. Nothing major though.

TAB works fine, sliders work fine.

Frame rate stays around 50 or 60. so that is good. but it feels less smooth.



The terrain editor is also different. The beta 1.002 was smoother.

The disapearing effect seems to work also with the terrain editor.



And the reflections of a object in the water are not smooth anymore.



hope to test more later







specs.



Pentium I7 3820 3,6 ghz. 64 gb memory

video Gforce GTI 660 TI.

Windows 7 64 bit.

When I start the river map on default settings I get 25-35 FPS. Depending on where I go in the map I can get up to 60-80 FPS, but it varies drastically and rapidly. Jumping is still tied to the FPS directly (not timer-based?) so I jump much too quickly and lower at higher framerates and much higher as if in low gravity when at a low framerate.

I've just completed some tests on my laptop using all three betas with the beta3 version of get-to-the-river.



I've only compared two options: (1) default (i.e. the default for beta1 or the "No" option for betas 2 and 3); (2) reduced (i.e. vegetation 20% + no lightrays).



I didn't disable reflections or shadows because that would ruin the visuals completely and I didn't disable bloom because that would give an unfair comparison with the early betas.



The results are not encouraging. As far as I can tell I've used the High Performance vNidia GFX card option:







If I use the "Yes" startup option with beta3 I get 10 fps.



Something ain't right in my opinion.

things like postprocessing or full screen shaders will always drain the performance. even in high end game you would have adjust the settings at a low range. even if Lee go one more round with the performance the drain will still come about. because remember we have not even create a large level with reload that right there will be a challenge for the performance. even in fpsc and fpscx10 full screen shaders are just to much to handle. us as developers have to pick our battle and sacrifice some effects to gain more performance. I think Lee should go at it one more time then move on to something else. because all this testing and still not sure if any performance increase could handle with characters battles on screen at the same time. no matter how you rename or change the code this is still fpsc and it is for what it is. i upgrade form a 460 gtx to a 770 gtx ACX and SC with 2gb. even since beta 2 I got a much more stable performance increase. I am glad we can now turn off the bloom and I am willing to sacrifice any other effect as such for performance. also this beta is not the to be fully compare to beta because the bloom slider was broken but in the end it is still a improvement overall.

I found a way to make TAB work. Just use CTRL+TAB together. I don't know why but this is the only way I get the sliders. Perhaps because I don't have nVidea Graphic? I'm using two AMD Radeon HD 7970M as Crossfire. I have 32fps, constant.

That's true - but I still struggle to get more than 15 fps when such fancy stuff is turned off.

Please look at the image I attached. What's this?

I'd have to concur, I'm not seeing any real improvement from V1.2 at all I'm afraid unless I'm looking directly at the sky, when I'm getting 50-70fps. However, on a blank terrain with sliders on full I get 7-10fps, and with no veg, shadows and reflections on half it might rise to 15fps.



I'm only seeing about 15k of poly's rendered on a blank terrain, so the drain is clearly not there.



I can also confirm that everything now feels 'sluggish'



SC

Weird!



Have you got shadows turned off?

There were no shadows. I only changed skymap and vegetation a little bit (icy). Not more.

The hole strangeness is only in the new beta. In beta 1.002 I don't had all this issues.



(Sorry for my english not beeing really good. )

Has anyone noticed that if you Random thru different sky options several times in a test screen that some of them fail to display the sky as expected?



While using the editor I have noticed that the creation of water features is really chunky... lake or river edges are not clean and smooth and when in the test mode they do not relate to where they are placed in the editor.



I suspect Lee has increased the world grid size?



Place trees along the lake banks and in the test screen they are way out in the water.



In my test of get to the river with answer to prompt of "No:

Beta 1.002 fps = 7 to 8 looking at camp from start position.

Looking at sky = 28 fps from same position



With answer of "Yes"

camp = 15 fps - Sky = fps 87



Beta 1.003 Answer "No"

fps = 9 to 10

looking at sky = 32



With answer to prompt of "Yes"

camp = 13 fps - Sky = 176

I have to agree with others here - I'm not getting any real performance increase with this Beta version either. I'm getting between 9 and 12 fps for most of the 'get to the river' level and between 40 and 44 fps when looking up at the sky.



More worryingly, I can't seem to place the animated palm tree entity on my level - they are positioned correctly in the editor but when I test the map they are elongated and hovering in mid air! (see attached screengrab)



The other trees are fine. Does anyone else have this problem?



PC Specs:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

8Gb RAM

AMD Radeon HD 6670 1Gb



Slainte!



SW

This probably isn't the appropriate place, but I pledged over the weekend... Am I supposed to get access to the beta? And if so, where do I get it from?

@sleeping warrior I believe I watched a vid on here somewhere today by dvader showing the same thing so your not alone m8.

with my 770 gtx gets fps like this in the pic as you can see.

@michael x, what about when walking toward the buildings in the 'get to the river' map?

pic of the river map. but it do poorly with this map because it has of the level design and so on. but x10 had the problem when it came to bad level design. I not use this level as a good reference. fpsc has always been about how you design your level and if you give it too much to work on well you get this. with characters it does bad maybe something to do with the AI. I have taking out the characters of this map. which would be 30fps.

here is with characters. but if I was to turn off bloom and veg effect it will increase to 40 fps. as I have side before not all high end games depend on these effect all the time even unity engine has this issue when effects are push to the max.

here is a level design where reload can work with and you will still keep your 60 fps.but also as Lee said in his blog the one of the main improvements is to be able to turn off the bloom. to have bloom and light rays as to what fpsc did have at the same time you could only choose one of the them not both at the same time.even at this level of the beta Lee has give us enough tools to work with it. all I'm saying is it is not as bad as everyone is making it out to be and that if you have a low end or mid end graphic card. well then you are going to be limited one way or another. even the best high end game engine you would have to be careful on how much effects you put into it. but in fpscx10 you could get up to 650 fps uncap. but in reload you lose most of that because of the terrain and the size of the map. so reload has a lot more rendering to do then the other fpsc software. I believe Lee is on the right track with reload and it is stronger then the other two fpsc.

No improvement and now the map editor sucks. The poly count is to low and upon zoom out i cant see to edit terrain. You should leave the editor high poly and add a poly reduction button.

I tested today with some extra buildings.

If you run then it stops for a moment to render.

I even had put in a lot of grass and run trough the grass and everything stops and get chunky. i had to reboot my whole computer it hangs after that.



My specs are not bad.



I7 3820 3.8 ghz

64 gb memory

video nvidea gtx 660 TI( the latest drivers



Windows 7 64 bit

..and a freaking 3D view!

Had to turn off all graphic options to get 60 to 63 FPS.

AMD 9850 black quad core

GTX 260 driver ver: 331.82

Win 8.1 pro x64

4 gig ram



P.S. Where\'s my FPSC-R backer badge?

yeah with everything but shadow off I can get 69 to 80. I will not even install reload in my other computer with the 9800 gtx.lol

Hi .

tested with evrything turned down on a new map with no entity's looking up at the sky and was getting 313 fps. tested beta 1.002 the same way and got 178 fps .



win 7 64bit

i7 quad core mobile

nvidia gtx 560 mobile

8 gig of ram

Seems like everybody but me and Bubba are not able to open the compressed file.



Compressed (zipped) Folders Error

__________________________________

Windows cannot open the folder



The compressed (zipped) folder 'path and path name given' is invalid

_________________________________



It looks like I don't have to worry about this beta anyway.

Have you tried unzipping it with winrar? http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm

Using the get-to-the-river-map I got the following results direct at startup:



Version 1.003

16 fps at max settings

36 fps at default settings

Game take a slightly longer time to load.



Version 1.002

15 fps at max settings.

29 fps at default settings.



Hardware:

Intel i5-4570 3,2Ghz / 8GB ram / Nvidia GTX 760 OC 2GB / Win7 64-bit.

Flatlander and Bubba - what size do you have on the file you´ve downloaded?

According to Lee, on his blogg, this problem occurs when not the whole file has been downloaded.



My size of the file is: 218 759kb

It works fine.

Thanks for responding Steohl72. My first attempt I got 140MB and the second attempt was 147MB. So, I'll try downloading again later.



I have a GTX 660ti with 2GB dedicated memory. It's not doing as well as I thought it would with reloaded.

Much better with this beta I put everything on full graphics wise and at the start of the level I have 50-60 while the grass and bits rendered in. However after that I saw between 75-96 FPS even when I had to characters running around me in the camp section.



I used to get a max of 40 all the time.



I don't exactly have a low end card though.



Keep up the good work you will get there on the slower cards.

The release for Dec 20, 2013 is invalid again!

Downloaded, installed and works fine on my end, in fact I see a HUGE fps increase on this laptop with integrated graphics.



It's possible the server is being hammered you should wait till later tonight when it's quieter and try then

Uhu! Huge fps increase here!I was waiting for this,a nice Christmas gift.Thank you Lee!

Rather confusing to post about Beta4 on the Beta3 thread, don't you think?