DRD Team

Okay, here is my problem:

I created a sector that uses several "Transfer_BrightnessLevel" specials to achieve one of these vertical light gradients to the sector. The difference here is (don't think about the HOMs too much, I was noclipping for a better pov) that a PolyObject is placed in the sector that uses the different light levels. The brightness is transferred correctly to the walls surroungind the poly but not to the poly itself

I don't think it's possible. Might be a good feature suggestion.

OFFTOPIC-Torm, can you give me some input on using the vertical gradient thingy? I always seem to get bugs (they don't work properly, blink) when using it and it seems like a real show-off spot for creativity. I did try various modes to stack them and the results were seldom good.

Paul wrote:OFFTOPIC-Torm, can you give me some input on using the vertical gradient thingy? I always seem to get bugs (they don't work properly, blink) when using it and it seems like a real show-off spot for creativity. I did try various modes to stack them and the results were seldom good.

Well, I found out: The more Brightness-Level-Detail you use (instead of just 3, use 12), the better it is looking and the less this blinking effect seems to occur. Just check E1M5 of KDiZD, the second room after the starting area, because this vertical gradient works fine there.

... and the more you use it the more the engine has to do. Remember the tower in TNT4!

Just out of curiosity, let's say we have a room of 50 sectors and add to all these sectors a light gradient of 16 different brightness levels, what does that mean for the performance and FPS?

It means that for each linedef there will be 16 times as many polygons. If the area is complex enough it can mean a significant loss of performance as with the tower. In that part the game had to render 5000 polygons for the walls which was 8 times more as the same scene with texture based gradients.

You can check the numbers yourself by entering 'stat rendertimes' and 'stat renderstats' at the console.

Okay, thx for the information, that helps a lot! Oh and by the way, what about the bug?

*EDIT*
Okay, for the rendertime (all) in this big room with all the vertical light gradients I get as an average value about 15ms instead of 12ms everywhere else... is that okay? Or do I have to check another value?

Yes, that's ok. The other values are there so you can see better where an eventual slowdown comes from.

These 3 ms are the time required to set up and render the gradients (if the rest is approximately the same level of detail.

In the tower area all the gradients cost approx. 6-10 ms on my system depending on the position I was at.

Okay, thx but what about the bug itself?

What about it? I haven't touched the code since Saturday. I haven't even looked into it yet.

Well, I just wanted to know if it is fixable or not?! It is just minor in this case but might be a bit more complicated and important in other cases, who knows?!