Battlefield 1942 Mods, Modding Tutorials & Forums

Hi.

There anyone who can model the tank "Panzer IV Ausf. H"l? It is one of the last remaining open construction sites which should be. This is a modeller looking for and hopefully found? If you can help, then get in touch with: http://battlegroup42.de/Forum-board-8.html

Best Regrats

The Battlegroup42 Team works on the RC 2 release which included the COOP Mode. But they have some trouble actually. Do you can help? Any advice?

status update on RC2

Hi guys
„smile“-Emoticon

Spend the past week with even more debugging, thanks to our team member "Q" who discovered some bugs while working on the official BattleGroup42 Wiki (he tests the maps one by one for that). Great work Q
„smile“-Emoticon

Those bugs have already been fixed, and i did some further checking on the Coop section of the maps. There were some leftover bugs which probably existed for years, but in a project this large it's simply impossible to cover everything at the same time.

I also have good and bad news for you: During my debugging, i managed to improve the overall performance in Coop play, but (and that's the bad news) there are still some unexplainable frame rate drops/lags in Coop sometimes. I have no idea where they come from, but here are some possibilities:

- The engine gets overloaded at times
(bots, effects, vehicles, calculations etc.)

- Windows 10 related problem
(haven't had the time yet to test it more on Windows 7)

- NO-CD patch related problem
(internal engine problems perhaps)

This performance drop is really annoying since the debugger doesn't show any kind of bug which could help solving the problem.

Since i can't do much more debugging for RC2 (it just takes a lot of time) i've decided to definitely close this build today and start compiling the client files.

Stay tuned for further info
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Sarge31FR

Again.. bfmods.com ate my reply..

Be aware that debugging is always super-duper-ultra tedious..
I once spent whole week doing tiny changes and testing with several files of thousand lines to solve a major problem in an important feature and only find out the problem was caused by a variable isn't assigned a value.. Which caused the major feature break down...

Step 1: find a reliable way of reproducing problem
Step 2: Apply elimination method..
e.g.
remove all static objects
remove all firearms
remove all cars
remove all airplanes
etc.
Only apply one category of changes at a time. Assuming problem due lies in there, then problems will eventually get pin-pointed..
Step 3: Solve problem! You are basically done, just find an alternative solution..

Observations in the past years I think that may be helpful:

1. Lots of fast moving objects causes increased CPU usage than lots of slow moving objects...
I do not know why, my guess is probably due to big numbers and non-constant time mathematical operations are involved...

2. Lots of effects tends to put HUGE stress on GPU which can cause GPU or crash... and cook egg?
I am not sure why, maybe is just the algorithm used by graphics engine can only perform well below certain number?
I am not sure how it will vary if I change settings of effect, since I did not understand effects very well back then, and I don't have time to do so since I am in University.. which is HARD!..

3. Unknown surges in total # of collision check...
Two known reasons are
- OVERSIZED collision triggering check box.. yeah! The weird big box in the model that encapsulate entire vehicle is the one. Game checks if other objects (other than the current object that is checking against) is within that box or not. Simply by doing simple coordinate comparison.
If yes, then it will begin more detailed collision checking (e.g. where does collision occur, what is the speed and damage, etc.), to improve performance.
Therefore more accurate the box is, the better the performance of the mod.
- due to objects clipping through each other while having collision surfaces intersecting each others (similar to reason 1)
Since two objects are always inside each others box that triggering collision check, then the game will always check for the collision between those two objects.


Note: Surges in # of collision check is VERY severe with homing missile or any other objects employing similar techniques( springs with big collision mesh)
Since spring has tendency to get pushed away then restore to its original orientation.
This means, if spring began oscillating due to collision thus causing even MORE collisions.. then good for you! You just discovered the correct way of making a mod unplayable...

The idea about spring I mentioned here can be found in this link: http://bfmods.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=1221
If I recall correctly, one DEV of BG42 mentioned they used similar techniques in BG42, too...
That could be a source of problem...

What have got this editor 42 in common to the question?:)

buschhans wrote:What have got this editor 42 in common to the question?:)

He's trying to figure out a way to fix the issue outlined in your first post. And I think he's right on most things, you should remove all the map's elements one by one until the cause of the slowdown/crash is found. That's how I proceed to solve issues I cannot understand and while long, this method always works.

As for you original question buschans (about finding a modeler), there are a few here that might help with modeling.