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FPSC Classic Product Chat / Five cheers to the FPSC community

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Vlad
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Posted: 7th Dec 2005 13:39
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Hello all.

It is obvious for those that have been here for some time that this community has had it's ups and downs. After all the problems, discussions and fuss, the product of hard work is starting to show daily, and this makes me happy.

I've seen some very good things in the Showcase, some nice media here and there. I've seen people sharing ideas, media, screenshots. The quality slider is moving up and those who are responsible for that deserve public recognition.

To all those making good levels, providing with profit or not, packs for this community, to all those who are helping and overall sharing their knowledge, advice and more important, the joy of making games, I thank you.

Please, keep up the good work, that's the best answer that can be provided to many of the problems and low standards that happen here from time to time.

So five cheers to this community!

V

I'm pretty sure I know everything. Doubts are something rare in me and I am never wrong, as this signature can prove.
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uman
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Posted: 7th Dec 2005 16:50 Edited at: 7th Dec 2005 17:01
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Well I cant help but second that.

Unfortuneately the only downside is that the community shrinks - this is partly due to users not visiting or posting and in some instances users leaving the community - some for good.

This would include some of those who have been a credit to the community - they leave as quite a number have and continue to do so because FPSC does not live up to their reasonable expectations due to issues with it or poor feature count. I say this as they have been some reasonable persons. They just cant wait for improvements that may never be seen.

It would certainly help if the community were supported by helpful comment from a TGC presence occasionally at the forum to comment on users concerns - and difficulties and suggest what if anything can be done now or what may be done in the future to help address the users concerns and difficulties.

There is no interaction in community involvement or support by TGC to suggest they are even slightly interested in what goes on at the forum user end or whether they are interested in the difficulties they face - even though they may well be so - it does not come through to those on the ground.

Those that leave for ligitimate reasons over concerns with the engine have little to look forward to keep them here.

Thats is sad, for we need good people and the enhanced support, knowledge and content they can provide here at the forum so we can all benefit from a larger more informed forum user base. It wont happen if FPSC stays as it is no matter how good the forum is - the product wont hold the kind of people, producing content of the kind we want to see for long.

As I have said many times the program was not designed apparently by and large for the kind of user we see at the forum so unless anything changes to accommodate forum member needs for making better games with it then its obviously going to remain a very limited number of genuine gamemakers engine of choice.

For this forum to be a real credit to the users, the product, TGC and the games made with it shown here at the forum, then users need help from TGC - they cannot do it alone - at the end of the day what this forum is or becomes is down to TGC.

I just had to say it but no ones listening I know.



Six cheers to the community

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Vlad
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Posted: 7th Dec 2005 17:02
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I listen. Your thread in the showcase led me to open this thread.

Your concerns are legitimate. I stopped developing in FPSC and I only lurk the forums for the sense of community. People that are constructive have a lot to offer to this engine and yes, TGC should listen a bit more to us users.

I was about to give up on this community, then I saw your thread, SarusX's thread, the tropical pack, and things building up and I decided to write this.

This community is finally and agains what I expected showing quality. And I believe that is with quality that we can conquer over problems and get TGC attention.

What do we have to do? Keep activity, and keep asking for more. The truth is that the Feature Creep forum is a bit unreal, don't you agree?

Someone will listen.

V

I'm pretty sure I know everything. Doubts are something rare in me and I am never wrong, as this signature can prove.
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uman
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Posted: 7th Dec 2005 17:36 Edited at: 7th Dec 2005 18:22
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Thank you for continuing your support here at the forum.

I had decided to post my screen shots at the Forum when normally as you can appreciate I am sure I would not post such shots of unfinished work, but I decided to do so to try and show everyone that in my opinion FPSC has potential that is untapped needing hard work yes but with much of that and creative thinking on the part of users and more help with from TGC to make the engine better it could produce some really good games despite being a low cost indie engine.

Its not there yet and I dont see any indication that its going anywhere further yet, so users only have three choices, get on with it, wait or move on.

Many users are in a state of not knowing or being forced to make one of those choices simply through lack of information/communication being made available on the future of FPSC when there should not be a need for them to do so.

This is the only forum I have personally know where the developers of an engine take no part in participation or imparting information to users - thats a TGC perogative and I can understand that partly - but it does nothing at all to make users at this forum who are the hard core users of FPSC have faith in the engine as a production platform for the future of their game development and that reflects on potential users too. It does the very opposite and discourages a wider user base of real gamemakers. Needless to say a small community with nothing much to show for their endeavours in terms of completed works does not encourage others to join the ranks - its not rocket science is it.

Still thank you to all current forum members for their support of the community and keep up the good work - looks like we have to say it ourselves here, theres no one else to encourage us.

They listen but they do not hear.

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Harry Harrison
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Posted: 8th Dec 2005 22:01
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Quote: "Its not there yet and I dont see any indication that its going anywhere further yet, so users only have three choices, get on with it, wait or move on."


I couldnt agree with Uman anymore on this... i'm one of those users that has been "forced" to wait, as I have seen to many hours of hard work go into mostly unplayable levels. The problem for me is not knowing whats to come of FPSC.. should I continue making levels and hope that an update in the future will make everything alright? Or should I not waste my time anymore with an engine that might never see better days. Some more input from TGC would definately make such decisions easier.. so I think that Unam made a very important point there with his statement.

As for the community.. in the short time that I have been a member I have seen these forums go from good to bad and back to almost being good again.. so lets hope that the community continues making strides to make these forums good for both experienced and new users alike.

HH
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uman
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Posted: 8th Dec 2005 23:15 Edited at: 8th Dec 2005 23:16
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Harry Harrison,

Sadly I fear we have lost another valuable member this week though its not my position to name individuals and avoid doing so in threads in gerneral as you know.

I understand users here are all about making games and whats suitable for each individual at the end of the day is down to those individuals to decide.

The lure of gamemaking is a powerful one to those who like doing it and they naturally wish to see progress in their gamemaking efforts.

I have been using engines since well lets say I was younger, seen most, played with most (describes it best) put a great deal of effort into many and built a great deal with many.

At the moment I'm still here so there must be some goods things about FPSC and there are or I would not be here. Finding any engine that can provide all you want is not easy - it dont really exist if you are an individual or small team. They all fall short somehwere along the line. So its another choice of the lesser of two evils as the saying goes.

I'm not sure quite why your level are so bad as to be almost
Quote: "mostly unplayable levels"

but thats not very helpful quite obviously - I will help further if I can.

Back on topic anyway I would hope you continue here and support the improvements at the forum. Your support is badly needed.

God I feel like a PR guru for TGC. Someone help me out here.

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SarusX
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Posted: 8th Dec 2005 23:23
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Too true. It would be nice if we could see some mod action around here more, the admins almost never post.


Because no n00b is a good n00b.
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uman
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Posted: 8th Dec 2005 23:53 Edited at: 8th Dec 2005 23:54
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Currently behaviour at this forum does not seem to warrant undue Mod intervention for any reason - though I would welcome their appearance and participation more frequently.

Help and Information from TGC regarding FPSC however is another matter - People are asking for guidance and assistance "help" to put it another way - in the form of advice from people who can answer technical issues about development of games with the product.

I honestly cant answer their questions I dont know the answers not being the creator of the product I only know what other users know.

The answer anyway is nothing much can be done at all - you live with it until such time as its improved or not and its the or not that concerns some now and will be a concern to all users at some stage if they are serious about gamemaking.

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Les Horribres
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Posted: 9th Dec 2005 00:48
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Well, as long as the Mod Squad isn't here people complain about small things, and when they are here... people cry, and rebel.

FPSC is in need of updates, but that is not why people don't create. I personally think that it is because people feel that all the work they put into making the level is not conpensated by the "replys" that people give... come to think about it, people hardly ever reply...
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uman
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Posted: 9th Dec 2005 01:17
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Not quite sure what you mean by that but users have been are still creating with FPSC most definately. There are enough screen shots at the FPSC web site apart from whats seen here at these foriums to show that.

It surprises me how many there are all told considering the time its been released including EA and V1 its the birth of a new engine and takes some time to get going. More game screens than you will find at many indie engine sites, including DB and DB pro I suspect though in their instances I may be wrong as I dont really follow the forums there.
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uman
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Posted: 9th Dec 2005 02:48
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This is for Harry Harrison, in case it may help your fps issues.

I forgot to mention that I also make sure that Physics is switched off for every entity for which it has no purpose which in my case is almost everything. I dont have much use for it in most cases as I am not making a technical demo. You should disable physics absolutely by setting all refs to it to 0 or off in all entities properties where its not needed - dont leave this to the engine - make sure the settings are dead.

Also in the case of all entities remove any references to uneeded scripts and other dynamic type properties in their properties settings.

As FPSC gives all entities these properties by default whether needed or not you must remove them manually. It would be better if this were the other way around and you had to choose to add Physics to objects but thats not the case so you need do it manually.

All such scripts and settings have to be taken into account by the engine at run time and kept track of by the engine throughout which has to constantly check the status of all objects in the environment and udate every objects status in real time - quite obviously involving a lot of maths and you may have levels which call upon and use up much valuable time and calculation resources unecessarilly wasting fps on objects that dont need to add to the drain.

For example if you place an entity and dont want it to do something or you make it static then its relatively begnign - it does not need to do anything. A window glass entity for instance that is unbreakable does not need the destroy script - nor do most static entities that form part of the world geometry - remove them - remove anything unecessary from the engines influence if you can.

Make sure all scripts are minimal - you dont need a complex script for an entity? so make sure its scripts are simple wherever possible.

A static entity as world geometry spawns and exists it need have no further script at all, just those that do that - use the simplest scripts to create the object and nothing more.

Optimising everything and especially AI scripts in theory can save a lot of fps - this goes for any engine and game and cannot be stressed enough - its hard work I know but needed. Almost all games made will at some point benefit from severe optimisation as much unecessary stuff creeps in during development.

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Jordan Siddall
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Posted: 9th Dec 2005 09:53
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It would be good if more people helped others with scripting or anything for that matter..
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uman
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Posted: 9th Dec 2005 17:10
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Yes its a more helpful forum now as people learn more about the engine I guess.
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Harry Harrison
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Posted: 9th Dec 2005 18:27
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Quote: "I'm not sure quite why your level are so bad as to be almost
Quote: "mostly unplayable levels"
but thats not very helpful quite obviously - I will help further if I can.

Back on topic anyway I would hope you continue here and support the improvements at the forum. Your support is badly needed.

God I feel like a PR guru for TGC. Someone help me out here."



Thanks for the thoughts, Uman... much appreciated.

The reason why I say the levels are "mostly unplayable" is because I get bad performance with them on my rigs and I run fairly fast machines. How can I ever expect for anyone else to play them on slower machines when I can't get them to run nicely for myself. And the main reason for my purchase of FPSC was to make some games for children of some friends of mine who unfortunately can't really afford to buy games and are running pretty old computers(though, after having tried these levels on slower rigs has shown me that FPSC is not all that machine dependent as most games in general.. the perfromance drop was minimal so the main culprit would seem to be the engine itself).

Uman, please don't feel the need to "God I feel like a PR guru for TGC. Someone help me out here" for my sake.. you do quite enough typing as it is around here. Even if I havn't been playing around with FPSC lately due to these aforementioned issues, I continue to support it as I do think it is a great piece of software and eagerly await Riker 9 and whatever other "updates" that might come out in the future. I also very much enjoy seeing what others can create with FPSC and for FPSC and only wish I could give more to the community myself.


Quote: "You should disable physics absolutely by setting all refs to it to 0 or off in all entities properties where its not needed - dont leave this to the engine - make sure the settings are dead."


This is normally what I do to simplify things for some dynamic entities but wasn't aware that I should do the same for static entites as I thought once an entity is static that it does absolutely nothing and requires no thinking process from the engine.. but I will fire up FPSC when I get a chance and give this a try(thinking about the daunting task of doing this for hundreds of entities ).

I will also see what I can do about simplifying scripts where need be.

Once again.. Uman, thanks for the help and tips, you are an asset to this community.

HH
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uman
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Posted: 9th Dec 2005 19:13
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Quote: "as I thought once an entity is static that it does absolutely nothing and requires no thinking process from the engine."


In theory one might expect such an engine to be designed for that to be the case would you not, however do we know that is actually the case in this instance - who has any proof of wahts actually happening inside the engine when games are running? Who can comment except maybe TGC and they dont.

We know that FPSC does many things in reality one would not expect an engine to do like not culling polys out of camera view and return sensible poly counts - it should, but dont. The fps issues are a good example.

Which is partly your problem.

At the moment you are unlikely to be able to run a complex game level made with FPSC unless you have a high spec machine - I am sure that could be improved somewhat but by what amount who knows.

Unfortunately whatever you do to optimise short of removing as much content as is necessary - theres not much you can do to to improve things beyond a ceratin level to acceptability - obviously and a high spec machine is also very helpful.

I run quite fast machines and at least in indoor areas maintain 32 fps throughout currently - not sure why you should be so low but every machine is different and perhaps you may well have more content than me - currently I have few enemies in levels and they are a big drain as their are fps issues with them.

Those and things like dynamic lights in FPSC are obvious factors to consider.

Pity really as enemies are what FP Shooters are all about and dynamic lights are nice too.

Nice levels are great but so are a decent nubmer of enemies.

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