This Freaking Game!!!

Aaaarrrggghhhh!!!! !

Why the HELL is it so hard to get models into this game properly?!!!

Even non-moddable games like Freelancer, with their reverse engineered hex edited model converters, seem to accept models easier. While this game with "built-in moddability" pukes out garbage from models with nothing wrong with them. And if you try to touch one single point on a model that does work, either to fix something or improve it, the damn thing self destructs.

This issue has bothered me greatly for a long time now, and my frustration level has been building. But it finally came to head last night, when I tried to make a small improvement to the X-Wing. Now the wings don't show up anymore, again. And believe me, I spent hours going over the model to make sure every little god-damned thing was perfect polygon-wise. And I probably know more about the wierd quirks of the model converter than anyone around here. And before you say anything; yes, the improvement was so huge and looked so good it was worth trying to get it in. But the point is I shouldn't have to worry about thing like that. I shouldn't have to say, "Thank god, it's in the game and working. I'd better not touch it ever again."

And now the latest version of the Star Destroyer look like this:



I'm just so damn tired of having to spend hours looking at each polygon of a model trying to find "problems" that wouldn't be problems in any another game-engine.

I can't wait to see which model stops working next.

I guess I'm just mad because I feel PS blew its own horn so loudly about how moddable this game was supposed to be. And then offered no real official support for that. If it weren't for people like Stephen, giving of themselves personally to help us, I don't where this mod community would be. If a company tells me how great some particular feature of it's product is, I expect a little real support. Maybe that's selfish, but I'm mad right now. If PS had never announced easy moddability as a feature, I'm sure I'd be thrilled to have anything work in the game, like with my other game modding.

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Well, after hours of deleting polygons, testing and rebuilding them I finally found the problems with the X-Wing and Star Destroyer models. The X-Wing had 1 single polygon that, although not a new polygon, was somehow affected by changes to the other side of the model. And flux would no longer accept the existence of this polygon on this mesh. Although the poly itself can't be the real problem, because I've deleted it and manually constructed a new one several times. It seems that flux just doesn't want any poly in this location on the mesh. So I've moved the poly (which would leave a visible hole if I left it out) into a different mesh file where it's happily accepted by its neighbors, and reassembled the parts in the avatar scene file.

The Star Destroyer problem is even more interesting. I found one single, one-vertex poly that was buried inside the mesh and not even attached to anything that was causing the whole mesh to collapse in on itself. Simply removing this invisible poly made everything just peachy again.

And now the good news that I wanted to announce before all this grief: I've painstakingly optimized the Star Destroyer mesh and managed to drop the polycount by a few hundred. By carefully optimizing polys by hand I've managed to keep all the detail needed for such a huge ship while bringing the polycount down closer to one of the smaller ships. This means that the Star Destroyer model no longer constitutes a performance hit, at all. At least until it gets textured. But I'm already planning ways to texture it so as to minimize the performance hit of the large textures.

The other news is that I've also optimized the X-Wing model and fixed up the mesh around the engines a little. It's a minor alteration, but I think it adds soo much to the look of the ship. I've also accurized the textures. You can the new stuff in the main 3D forum.

I hope everyone will excuse my last post, but I was just so frustrated and angry and I really needed to vent out loud. But obviously I wouldn't want to disuade anyone else from modeling, so I kept it in the private forum. I can see you guys read it so, thanks for just quietly letting me vent.

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The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos (on hold during SW MP mod)
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Been there. Done that.

As I mentioned about a year ago... the converter gets a little flakey at times.

I wouldn't say that it was a matter of the converter not doing what it was supposed to, per se. Because, generally, I get very consistent results. I think it's more a matter of the converter not being programmed completely to deal with every conceivable contingency. Let's face it, this is after all, a tool that they just whipped out as fast as they could to get the game completed. An in-house development tool are notorious for their inability to cope with every situation. You just have to know what this particular tool's quirks are, what it will and won't work with. Things like polys with holes or cutouts. These will cause the converter to spit out a jumbled mess, but if you cut these polys correctly, the converter will never skip a beat on them. I guess single-vertex polys need to be added to the list of no-no's. Normally I would have deleted them all anyway, I don't know how this one got past me.

The X-Wing problem is more complicated. It's not just a random malfunction of the converter. I test ran the model over a dozen times with various polys deleted and re-added, with very consistent results. That was how I was able to find and isolate that one particular polygon in the mesh. I tested it with the poly, without the poly, with a new hand built poly replacing it, without, and with a new one replacing that. The results were always the same; the mesh works fine without a poly there, self-destructs with one. Even if it doesn't share any points with the rest of the mesh. The problem is obviously that there's something about the mesh that's causing the converter to have problems with those particular vertex arrays; one of the contingencies not programmed for. But in the real world of game development, the solution is to just find a way around it and get it done, not spend endless hours trying to figure out what the problem is and how to correct it. As long as it looks right it doesn't have to be right. For me, as a personal achievement (the model), it has to be right. Plus, I'm trying to document what all these issues are so that no one else will have to deal with them, or say, "Dammit, there's nothing wrong with this mesh, why won't it work?" So I can't just say, "Oh, it's quirky. If you're lucky it'll work, if not; oh well, it's quirky." If someone else had documented all the things I've had to discover on my own it could have saved me weeks of work, and hours of angry frustration at not knowing what the problems were. If only I could have read somewhere that flux won't properly display concave shaped polygons or polygons with holes in them, I could have saved all those wasted hours trying to get the old original X-Wing wing sections to show up in the game. The answer was simply four tiny little crescent shaped polygons. If I had known what to look for I could've just fixed it, and I wouldn't have had to tear the entire wing section apart poly by poly and rebuild a new one only to find out that I didn't have to, just like now. If only I knew the reason for the X-Wings current problem, I wouldn't feel nearly as frustrated. In fact, I felt a great sense of relief and satisfaction when I finally figured out that there was a reason that the Star Destroyer wasn't working, and that it wasn't just simply the converter being flaky. It's a labor of love. And my love is figuring out how stuff works. It's the mechanic in me.

The bottom line is; the converter doesn't just randomly spit out problem models. There's a reason for each and every problem encountered. Some reasons we know, and can work with (or around). And some reasons we don't know, yet. But I will know, in time.

mailto:second_chance@cox.net
The Ultimate Guide To Modding: I-War 2 - Edge Of Chaos (on hold during SW MP mod)
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