[Duion]

Yes, the lightmaps thing will be very difficult to realize, maybe a little easier if you have purelight, but not sure if it is worth that cost.
I would import the models into blender, add a second UV map and use lightmap unwrap, blender has already an automatic function for that, it will unwrap the model for use with lightmaps.
Then I would place lights where lights should be and then bake lightmaps, but then you would face the problem, that torque needs that lightmap in each material slot as lightmap, this system only works well if you use one atlas map for the whole model, otherwise it will be a pain.
So overall it may not be worth the effort.

I tried lightmap baking the ambient occlusion into my buildingsite map, but then found that the Torque lighting with SSAO gives a decent result.

First I would try to replace the many blank surfaces with actual textures, it may give the greatest visual improvement, you have many plain white or red surfaces, they are pretty aggressive to the eye.

[PaulWeston]

Thanks for the details, good to know!

Point taken about the lack of color variety - in a way that is by design, that's kind of how the original show was, that's a look we are kind of going for. But I agree there is room to improve.

[PaulWeston]

FYI - I just posted a new version (same download URL, same filename, just newer RAR file)...

Includes some fixes:
- Put a Readme file in root game folder with more info
- Editable default bind file in scripts/client/afx
- Removed controls tab from Options menu
- F1 popup Help updated to include all relevant control info
- New title / splash screens
- Fixed some bugs with controls (ESC key was not always working to quit)

Thanks for the continued interest - please feel free to download the latest build and keep testing. Any feedback is good feedback.

Cheers

[Duion]

Yes, works better now, now the biggest issue remains the performance and a lot of clipping issues, where you can go through walls, ceilings, etc.
The polycount and drawcalls is not that bad in many places, but the performance is still extremely low, so the reason must be somewhere else.

[PaulWeston]

Good to hear it is working better now...

I find Torque in general to just be a bit slow, hard to pinpoint exactly where the problem could be. Any suggestions are welcome as always

Maybe it's something to do with AFX - I know it does some constant raycasting for the mouse-clickable stuff, maybe that is hitting the performance. Not sure what I would do if that's the case, we really like AFX and use it for several things - the mouse clicking, various particle effects, the transporter beam, etc.

Also wondering if AFX is causing my compatibility mode issue in 64-bit. Maybe there are still a few things to do in the engine code to make it play nicely in 64-bit. I know a lot of work was done on pointers in the rest of the engine, maybe the AFX code needs some attention in that way too?

[PaulWeston]

OMG awesome, the Compatibility Mode issue is now solved!!!!!

In the end, after fussing forever with both engine code and scripts off and on for months, it turned out to be something so simple...

Do not try to load too many custom client scripts within the ClientInit() function!!!

I had about a dozen custom client scripts being loaded at the bottom of that function, if I commented them out the Compatibility Mode error disappeared... So, I just moved those script loads to the MainMenu::OnWake function, so they happen a few seconds later rather than during initial startup.

Somehow, this frees up whatever memory conflict was happening, and the game loads fine without needing the Compatibility Mode.

This error was only occurring in 64-Bit builds, 32-Bit were fine. What an odd one... Must be I have some strange memory corruption or leak somewhere that didn't like all that code being loaded at startup.

Anyhow, I'm just glad that's fixed, was real annoying to say the least!

Have updated the download with that and a couple of other fixes, it's running pretty nice and tight now, feel free to try again and let me know how things work.

Has anybody actually tried to progress all the way through the missions? I had my kids test it and they all worked, but am curious what any true fans out there might think

Cheers
P

[PaulWeston]

New build up tonight, fixed a bunch of bugs from yesterday's build - some files had been missed, sorry about that.

[PaulWeston]

Happy Valentine's Day!

New build posted this morning, includes Co-Op Campaign mode, lots of fun to hook up with friends and do missions together

Cheers
P

[Duion]

You must have good bandwidth to upload a 1.5 gig version every day.

Another idea I had regarding performance was that you could convert the texture formats to .dds and/or convert the textures to atlas texture maps, this would reduce loading times and memory usage.
But I don't know if this will significantly improve the performance, since something else is using up the resources much worse. There is also a lot of console spam error warnings etc.

[PaulWeston]

Unlimited bandwidth here, yes, nice and quick

I know the console is full of spam, I tried to reduce it a bit and then realized I just don't care lol. The game works fine so I let it go.

Am aware that there are performance issues, but don't know what else to do... Going to just leave it as is I think, let's just play and have fun!

Cheers
P