Just as I thought I wasn't going mad too :shifty: .

Here's a side by side of my screenshot and your screenshot. They don't look the same.

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/g...Comparison.jpg

I just downloaded the file again and overwrited the particles.dat in data/library and sees the same oil effects as I posted this morning. This time I double-checked! :yep:

It may have something to do with my video card or something? it's a ATI x1950 running in 1360 x 1024 2XAA and 16AF

Here is the oil leak I am seeing :
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/7...s2apla3.th.jpg

I don't understand what's not right... Sent you another PM. Hopefully we'll get this straight.

Okay you have to laugh of this.....

First I installed your fingers crossed mod and saw the same picture as I send to you in the previous PM, thinking "what the hell is happening here, am I getting mad?", then I checked that the file was indeed the 22.41 and it was!! :hmm:

.... Then I saw there was a copy I made called: "particles_old.dat" !! and was thinking "Can this realy be the reason, maybe I should try delete that file..."

And started SH4 with allmost my heart beating....

I am seeing the green smoke (thank god it works! :D ):

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/7...mokeqq4.th.jpg

Now here is a lesson for everyone modding with SH4:

Don't make a backup-copy in any silent hunter directory! :arrgh!:

Now if you can make the smoke back to black so I can see how it was suppose to look like?

I've fallen for the 'made a backup of a dat file in the same directory' thing before. The good news is, it's safe to say I'm not going mad. I'll do a black smoke version when I get home.

Green smoke...? :huh:
Am I missing something? Here's what it looks like on my rig with the file I d/led yesterday

http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/c...210649_171.jpg

Unfortunately, I'm still getting immense slowdowns, but I've managed to "cook up" a configuration that exterminates it. It does, however, involve getting rid of lots of explosion and fire effects, including the burning oil one. But hey, at least I've got oil slicks appearing as debris when the ship sinks. WernerSobe is to credit for that, I'm basically using his zones.cfg file as a template, and I'll do only minor adjustments to that (copy over the Crash Depths and cargo types from ROW SFX).
BTW, I also ran a test without NSM4 (it becomes a crazy witch-hunt when you're trying to find just what the hell is causing the slowdowns), and man...I could NEVER play the game without that mod! Kongo sank in a minute or two...yeah right!

Kriller wasn't sure if difference of screenshots was caused by his graphics card being different to mine, so I made the smoke green instead of black, to make it really obvious if the particles.dat file was being read by the game properly, or if it was a graphics card issue. You must have downloaded the second particles.dat file I sent to him, which does work properly, but Kriller2 was having issues with it, because of the backed up old_particles.dat file.

Ok then...I'm not going nuts either! Well, I am, but for other reasons :88)

Kriller2
 

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f1...4/OilSlick.jpg
This is OilSlick I am getting on Nvid 8800GTS 640mb looks like yours, from file you advised me to use ?Hope this helps:hmm:

Finaly!
 

Hi Nisgeis,

The effect you have created looks great! :up:

What do you think D.r Beast of the new effects?, btw. I will send the new Pacific Enviroments (with the effects) to both of you today, you can see some of it on this picture, been working on the sky and clouds ;)

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/1...ke21ji2.th.jpg

Kriller2

How is the optimizing of the zones.cfg going Dr. Beast?
It would be awesome if you can make two version of the special effects one for stock 1.4 - 1.5 and one for NSM4.

Are we forced to remove some of the special effects? - it works okay on my rig, but there are a slow-down when the ship explodes in a big bang, whuc you should remove it looks like it explodes 3 times! that's a little to much :hmm:

Glad to help, it can get frustrating when you get stuck with one problem. How does the frame rate compare to the original version?

With the original version and my version, I was getting slow downs with the ships on fire. FRAPS was reporting a fairly high frame rate of 55, but the game engine was stuttering slightly and producing much less than 55 - very strange. One the ship sinks and the oil fire has appeared, the game returns to normal.

Seems I'm not the only one with slowdown problems, then. But it's really bad on my rig. Under normal conditions I'm getting between 20-40 FPS (even in heavy fog). With zones.cfg from NSM4, I get a temporary slowdown when the torpedoes hit, but as soon as the kaboom is over frame rates return to slightly over 20 FPS and they drop to as low as 15-16 FPS when I zoom in really close and the ship is about to sink. With ROW SFX it's grinding to a halt from the time the first torpedo hits till the ship finally sinks: 7-9 FPS!
Problem is, I don't really know how the effects are supposed to work. I suspect that an explosion effect might lead to a fire effect, even if it's not defined in zones.cfg. :hmm:
BTW Nisgeis, I mentioned this to kriller2 as well: can you work on a better effect for shell explosions? I remember people complaining that they looked a bit dull, and I'm inclined to agree.

Me to! :o , there is a slowdown when the torpedo hits the ships for a sec or two :hmm:

I will try testing with the stock particels to see if it helps..

And yes the ROW sounds takes a few FPS, I think it's because of the s3dl.dat which controls so that you will hear more sound-effects around you, it's nice though.

It would be awesome if you can take a look at the shell-effects Nisgeis


EDIT: I just tried the stock particles and the slowdown is less noticeable, so it seems the engine loads the particles effects / textures when the torpedo hits, maybe we can do some more optimizing by editing the textures / effects ?

BTW Nisgeis the new particles works better than the previous :up: , I gained 1-2 FPS during the oil fire / leak.

Slippery fingers, kriller2? :D I don't think the work on sh.sdl impacts performance, really. I've tried various 3D sound settings, and running the game with realistic sound travel both on and off. I couldn't discern a performance boost or hit.

Here's some more info, regarding my rig:

Intel C2D E8200 2.66GHz (o/cing this baby btw, I'm close to the 3GHz barrier!) CPU
Asus P5K SE motherboard
WD 320GB SATA2 16MB cache 7200 RPM hard disk
Asus HD3650 PCI-E 256MB DDR3 graphics card

All drivers up to date, though I'm running the ATi display drivers without CCC (using ATi Tray Tools, and it doesn't like Catalyst Control Center).

Display driver settings:
4xAA (Adaptive AA set to Smoothest)
8xAF (Quality with tri-linear)
Catalyst AI off

Game settings:
Resolution: 1024x768
All graphics settings on and maxed out, except VSync (off) and Gamma (set to 53).