BlitzGrass Ver 1.2 released

Version 1.2 released!
Added:
-Occlusion system
-game-space cell system added
-extra extra large map support
-better z-alpha sorting
-60% increase to overall speed
-tighter optimizations to the core
-prettier grass!
-growth effects
-fade-in-fade-out effects
-new clipping controls
-full control over alpha/masking
-full control of transparency levels
-added shade/tinting

This release is a near re-write of the entire system. Everything was improved and sped up. Looks better, runs better, behaves better and easier to configure! Enjoy

Check out the new demo here http://www.aliencodec.com/products/blitzgrass3d/BlitzGrass3D_Demo.zip

Be sure to try each of the modes listed as they all demostrate diffrent settings...

"Occullsion system"

Is that for witches and warlocks? :-)

There.... damn all the English teachers around this place... lol :)>>

I tried the demo. Without the trees, it runs 10fps faster, now 30fps. You really ought to allow the user to select the video mode, that could have a major effect on the speed.

Interestingly alpha versus masked textures makes no difference to the speed. I guess masked textures just aren't optimized in the way I thought they were, which would explain why the masked objects in the distance appear fuzzy rather than being noisy as a true masked texture would appear. That also means that there's no benefit to using masked textures ratheer than alpha.

You could still sort the polygons better though. Imagine you have the following polygons, both one sided, both facing downward:

-------
  /
 /

Note that they do not intersect. That is important.

All you need to do to draw these polygons right is to note that the bottom polygon is completely on the FRONT side of the plane of the top polygon.

In this case, you would draw the top polygon first, and then the bottom polygon. If the polygons do not interssect, there is no way for the top poylgon to ever draw in front of the bottom, because they are both one sided.

So you need to set up your mesh so that all polygons on the front side of any polygon are in the list after it.

Of course, things are not always that simple. It may be impossible to create a list that follows this rule, and some polygons may need to be split. You are, essentially, building a BSP tree,l and I know that is a problem often found with BSP trees. But because you're building grass, rather than a level, you can choose to discard some of the grass rather than clip it if it cannot be inserted into the list.

Turning off terrain morphing might improve speed.

Also, use flip false. By using Flip True, the system is displaying 30fps, when in fact I may be getting 55, because the refresh rate of the video mode is 60. Perhaps this is why I see no change in speed with masking, though I doubt it.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=33236

Comment please. ?

Just downloading the new demo, so that might actually answer my questions. if so I will post to let the other thread know.

Thats a bit better.

30 fps. But again thats still with NO AI, NO enemies no extra collision checks for other object types. there is so much missing from it and its still only 30 frames per second.

First of all dont get me wrong I love the visuals of it. it really does look awsome and I so want it to be what I need, but at the moment its not.

If I was wanting to create some amazing looking landscape's for a 2D image or still scene where frame rate as not a problem then this is the boy for the job.

But, to have it running full pelt, with monsters, AI , other online players , npc's, buildings , and all of the rest flung in, I dont think the frame rate would be able to keep up.

I hope you get this nailed though m8 cos it does look a really awsome bit of work. And I hope you dont take any offence from my comments cos there is none intended.

well yavin give me the fps code and the ai code and i will make a demo and you can see the framerate having blitzgrasss3d and blitztree3d

I cant its for a big project, so im not about to give it out. not to mention that Im not the main coder on the project so its not really me to ask.

I do know though that with a frame rate of only 30 frames per second on my computer, if we were to also then add in the NPC's and all the collisions for everything else then the rates will drop.

For me, for this project to be worth me buying I would need at least 100 frames per sec from the demo on my machine.

AMD XP 21 CPU
512 MEG DDR 400
GF5 9200 256 MEG Vram.
200+ GIG Hard Drive.
Kick Ass Soundcard.

After running the demo again I got a top FPS of 40 On one of the options, Still not high enough, id be expecting more.

Like I said though please dont take this the wrong way, If I wanted to bad mouth the project I would I actually love it. Its just not fast enough just now for me to buy, and YES I do want to buy it.

FPS = mid-70's

1G CPU
1G SDRAM
Ti4600 video

Big improvement I would say, thanks!

I get about 83 fps on my rig,

2.6 ghz
128 meg Radeon 9800
512 megs ram

for each of the standard options, I get:
1) 200 fps
2) 143 fps
3) 111 fps

It's running fine on my machine 70-100Fps depending on the settings. (P4-2.2GHz GeForce4-Ti4200)

There is a small 'bug': When you move backwards the grass clips out, instead of fading. Also I don't like the way the grass 'grows' out of the ground, regular fading would be better.

Sswift, I've tried several offsets to the verts during creation but never found that 'sweet spot'. The last results provided the less alpha displacement but I still continue to tinker with it.

Fredborg, the grow in effects are completely configurable. I was unable to add a alpha fade-in and-out for several reasons.. 1) i'm using vertex coloring... EntityFX grass,2 ignores all transparencies unless I use EntityFX grass,2+32 but that only works when setting the alpha in the vertex color command.. To do a proper fade i'd have to cycle each vertex applying a new vertcolor alpha value and for a grass system with so many quads - it proved to be way to slow.. If there's a better way to set transparencies on vert-lit surfaces then please let me know! P)

Yarvin, possible you having problems with something other than the grass system, the terrain the sky textures ... something... I don't see why you'd only be gettting 32fps on a system like you described. I tested this demo on several comps, the lowest being a celeron 666mhz and was getting 25 fps. Maybe i'll compile a plain jane demo with a plane and some grass so you can better evaluate.

Fps is between 80 and 110 here.
runs smooth as a babies bottom.
I would like to see a configurable viewingdistance for the camera and drawingdiatance for the trees as the pop-in of the landscape and trees make it a bit ugly atm

Lot better than my 0.5FPS on the last demo :P, steady 100FPS