Hey everyone,

I decided to jump back on the bug fixing train. I stopped for quite sometime as my github got completely mucked up. So in the meantime I'll be posting my fixes directly to the forums here for anyone that would like access to a quick fix.

Change Logs:

Tbone_Asset_Fixer_7_15_2019 (31 Asset Fixes) | Download Link

Tbone_Asset_Fixer_6_25_2019 (58 Asset Fixes) | Download Link

Teabone was also kind enough to send me the zip so it will be in the next beta build too

Great to see this being done!

Great news,
Was wondering why the beasties wouldn't chase me thru the
passages in the walls.

Thx Teabone

Unird12b

City wall entrance has polygon set
and let's player pass but won't let ai go thru passage...
They just stand there.

Unird12b

If anyone else has noticed any issues with any of the stock entities do let me know. I'm going to be releasing another asset bug fix round for mid-July. Have already started on it and found quite a number of items that needed some corrections.

Hey TB ,
does that line...
simpleobstacle =?
have to be added to all those items that have passages and doorways
so that the beasties can chase after us thru them ?

Thx

UNIRD12B

awesome work Teabone.

@ Teabone
Useful as usual, ty for all.

Cool Mr T, these bugs tend to get overlooked.nice work

Dave

Almost always overlooked more like. As I said above, nice work for doing this. It was something I considered years ago, as I am always fixing objects on a per game basis (or was when I was using GG regularly). Simple fixes mainly, but a huge amount of simple fixes to be sure!

I have said for many years now that many of the TGC default and DLC objects have issues that not only make GG seem bugged, it also makes it appear to be a lot slower. Here's an example: The Lunar landing module in the sci-fi pack. It looks great, but is extremely high poly. I reduced them down to at least half their poly count in my New Beginnings WIP. Less than that when it came to LOD settings. I'm hardly a 3D graphics expert, but got quite good at it over a few months optimising every bit of media I was using for the game.

In the end my game could run at about 75 fps or more in general and dropped to about 40 in populated areas. Compared to about 10-30 beforehand. I did some draw call optimisation as well, but that can't be done with default media. The polys however could certainly be improved! Not many people would be prepared to go through every object in their game, convert to obj, optimise polys and LOD versions then save back to a .x file for GG.

Hey Dvader, my mind is a bit boggled how a few models were using incorrect collision shapes that would prevent enemies and the player from entirely moving around them. Quite an oversight there.

I did notice sometimes FPE files get reset back to original settings in some updates. This seems to occur more with barrels? I do recall them being metallic before but several times over going back to being wood.

One thing that is also important to note about these changes is that for PBR to work correctly the material indexes need to be correctly assigned and quite a number are of stock items are not. So I'm working on that right now.

I can only blame that on updates. Unless you make copies in another directory, all your changes get reset with any GG update. Hence the need to get them updated on TGC's side Lee accused me of being a great finder of weird issues many years ago, paraphrasing, but about right I sent him several examples of weird slowdown etc with some objects. They were updated at the time (or were supposed to be), Lee confirmed the issues with them, but I know of (slow down) several issues with the default trees in particular, that seem to be the same as ever I did report them here in the forums several times, but nothing was done about them.

Anyone who has used the full selection of default foliage items can attest to severe slowdown with some objects in particular (well anyone paying attention). Tree 2 for one lmao. I can't say how many times I have complained about it. Lee can fix em, he did with the bushes I sent him, but it seems he is not going to go through each and check them himself I've given up the ghost on that one. So I can rightly applaud you for updating the obvious flaws that exist The tree/foliage pack for certain has serious issues with some objects that are broken in the same way the bushes were (in the same pack).

Just try it. Fill your area with one type of tree at a time. Some trees will run fine. Others will cripple the frame rate. There's quite a few that are crazy hogs of FPS. I'm only guessing, but I reckon the old bush problem I had with an old project (dropped FPS by an insane amount) is the same with all those FPS hog trees that are included by default.
Here's the old project I was working on at the time. I got it running fairly well, but as most my projects, got bored
[video/v0CU6l82xw4[/video]
I'd make it a direct link but seem to be struggling
I soon noticed the hoggy bushes when making it though

Edit - I actually watched this back and remembered the crazy load times back then for testing. I was sure more tolerant than I am these days. The load time was down to media. Once removed, the loading went back to seconds rather than half an hour!

I actually have a folder i created for myself where i completely stripped clean the animations out of the .X models of the trees and made them into a folder called "Still Trees" as a way to avoid some performance issues. This helped tremendously. As some of the trees that look quite nice; are animated when i dont really need them to be. So I decided to do this to help with performance and also give some power back into the dev's side of things. I may pack these in with one of the updates.



Happens to me too all the time. I keep moving on to the next and new idea. Its a curse :/

Respected Teabone , could you lay out the archive with these trees in the near future?
I'm desperately trying to cope with animated trees, but it seems that at the moment it is better to use only motionless ones (without animations, because it plays incredibly fast).

Hi everyone, 31 fixes for today, keep in mind that you may lose these changes if you update GG in the meantime. I will be sending this one to Lee at some point; to hopefully be included in a future official update. May even be able to push another zip of fixes later in the month alongside this one.

2 items (entitybank\Barrels)
- Fixed incorrect thumbnails for Wicker Basket (Closed) and (Open) , BMP's swapped

1 item (entitybank\Cityscape)
- Fixed incorrect material index (metal warehouse set to metal)

24 items (entitybank\Classics\Gore)
- Fixed incorrect material index (flesh gore assets set to flesh)

2 items (entitybank\Furniture)
- Fixed incorrect material index (metal teacup and metal filing cabinet set to metal)

1 item (entitybank\Medieval)
- Fixed incorrect material index (stove plate set to metal)

1 item (entitybank\Scenery)
- propane tank set to explosive

Download link can be found in the original post in this thread.

Thank you.

Big thanks, Teabone !

Holding off on any fixes for the trees for the moment as it seems they are a current topic on the github. I wouldn't want to cause any conflicts.

I've sent Lee over (today) the August list of fixes. Hopefully those get added to one of the upcoming official builds. I plan to do some more on-going work in this area. As 100's of assets look like they could use some attention.

Hi Teabone,
I know you have looked at use of materialindex in the fpe's. I have been trying to use assets from the Classics folders and hundreds of them have no effect specified and are hugely bright when added to a map. Changing the fpe to use entity_basic.fx brings down the brightness, but then the models are shiny - because they have materialindex = 4 specified, and materialindex now affects specularity. Are these entities on your radar?
Are there any plans to undo the change that altered the purpose of materalindex?

Hi benjiboy,

The current fixes that I'm uploading are related to direct stock assets and not from the Expansion DLC Pack on Steam (classics). I've not gone back and touched those yet as there are many new updates to inject there. For instance there are new collision shapes that exist now (as of this year).

For the classics models they each need to be treated independently as their materials play a huge role now that we have PBR support. For example in the past material 4 would just mean the decal and sound effects would be of glass, this now means it will allow a visual glass effect and could explain the shine you are seeing. I believe even the entity_basic.fx has been updated to make all materials look the materials they are assigned.

0 = Grass / Dirt
1 = Stone
2 = Metal
3 = Wood
4 = Glass
5 = Liquid Splashy Wet
6 = Cloth / Flesh
7 = Hollow Drum Metal
8 = Small High Pitch Tin
9 = Small Low Pitch Tin
10 = Silly Material / Chicken
11 = Marble
12 = Cobble / Tile (interior echo)
13 = Gravel
14 = Soft Metal
15 = Old Stone
16 = Old Wood
17 = Shallow Water
18 = Underwater

It will take a while but for the classics, each FPE file will need to be updated uniquely independent from the next. For example if something is wooden then it should be assigned as wood and if something is metal it should be assigned as metal. The shine factor depends on this. While each item can have its only spectacular control its important that each asset have its proper material index now so that the proper sounds emit and decals from weapons and impacts. But also importantly so the visual effects reflect the material. Some scripts and effects work being done by the community and github contributors also rely on proper material indexes for say examples of bullet holes and etc.

This all wasn't a major issue in the very early days of GG. But now with so many updates to shaders and collision data, its certainly a required task. But for right now I personally am just focused on the immediate default stock items that come packaged with GG.

I was considering one day to start that task with the classics as it also requires creating normals and specular maps for the entities that actually do not even have any. But again, very large task and would be months of work as batching wouldnt be helpful in this case. I have did a few updates but never submitted them just been using them personally for some of my own projects.

One thing that we have to be careful on when updating any FPE files for stock or classics entities is that we make sure there is no conflicts. The amount of times I've had to fix up the same FPE files after each update over the years has been a bit exhausting. Cause sometimes someone will go in to make a fix, and it would revert other fixes within the same file and then old bugs and issues keep coming back. One of those certainly being in relationship to incorrect material index for the stock items. Metal barrels have turned wooden over and over again. So its very important to keep note of the proper material index and not just batch the whole process as some have done in the past which has overwritten important values in the FPE settings.