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Author Topic: Ninkeo Kart - Why so long? Nevermind, we're back  (Read 12369 times)

« Reply #75 on: February 12, 2013, 03:20:30 AM »
OK, running the game without backfaces on everything made it load a lot faster. And that was only on the 1st track.

Ninkeo Kart Classic is coming along quite nicely and should run on a lot more things than the new version. Think of Classic as the low end of Ninkeo Kart (the F1 menu doesn't pause and there's no mod support, as well as less tracks).

EDIT: For all who had trouble running v1.0, the classic game runs at a playable framerate on an old netbook (1.66ghz Atom N450 processor and 2GB Ram on Windows XP at 1280x720 resolution) on early tests.  :)
« Last Edit: February 12, 2013, 05:18:52 AM by Dr. Ninkeo »
« Reply #76 on: February 15, 2013, 06:14:59 PM »
I've done some more testing.

I played v1.0 on an extremely old Pentium 3 PC with a GeForce2 GTS/Pro 64MB and it ran at solid 60FPS on an old CRT monitor (1024x768). I've got a suggestion for those trying to play on an Intel video card.

FOR THOSE PLAYING ON ANY INTEL INTEGRATED CARD
Do not run the game with V-Sync on. This will cause the game to run extremely slow (at slideshow FPS).

If you are running Windows Vista or 7, right-click on the NinkeoKart.exe file and go to properties. Then go to the compatibility tab and click on Disable Themes. Then click OK. It should run better.
« Reply #77 on: February 18, 2013, 01:52:23 AM »
Me, oldnoob and CrazyCikTat have even more testing today.
Quote
First off, we tried on an Core 2 Duo E7400 @ 2.80GHz and a GeForce 8400GS (exact machine was an Acer Veriton S480 on an Acer v193w monitor) and the game ran at 12FPS on the first track, while it ran at about 30-57FPS on Nink's Raceway. These were both done racing with the Oldman Racer. Playing with the 2 other cars brought much better results, running at solid 60FPS at max settings on all tracks.

Then we tried on an older Pentium 4 HT 3.02GHz with a Radeon 9600. All of the tracks we tried with the Oldman Racer would run extremely slow at 2 frames per 15 seconds. Racing with the other 2 cars let the game run at 50FPS at max settings.

Lastly, we tried to play it on the old netbook mentioned in the last post. It's crap graphics chip (Intel GMA 3150) held back any hope of it running with the Oldman Racer. So we just tried playing with the other 2 cars and it surprisingly ran it at 25-60FPS. Although the 3 minute loading times didn't help, loading it into a RAM-DISK make it run at 40FPS.

The first track is actually optimised OK. It's the insane amount of polygons in the Oldman Racer that's killing everyone's FPS. I think it would be better if I remove that kart and replace it with my modified Safari Rida than exporting it from Blender. 

EDIT: Stuff it, I'm going to remove the Oldman Racer from NKII and replace it using the Pickup Master (Safari Rida modified) and the Go-Kart
« Last Edit: February 19, 2013, 02:09:11 AM by Dr. Ninkeo »
« Reply #78 on: February 22, 2013, 02:10:07 AM »
Quote from: The Ninkeo Kart Team
A patch is going out either tonight, the next day or the day after to fix the lagging issue with the Oldman Racer. It won't completely solve it (:saddowns:) but it should make it playable on older hardware.

So, we're open for some suggestions for the sequel! If you think of something for us to add to Ninkeo Kart II, say it! ;)

fourdee

« Reply #79 on: February 22, 2013, 07:23:56 AM »
So, we're open for some suggestions for the sequel! If you think of something for us to add to Ninkeo Kart II, say it! ;)

I just downloaded this from your site, i can see you have lots and lots of ideas for this game, so many tracks, options.
While this is a good thing, its sometimes more productive to work on 1 track and less options. This will enable you to create that "special" experience without increasing your workload by 8x.

heres some feedback:
Levels:
- Wow, lots of levels, must be 8+ tracks in the game
- For me, the level design had great ideas, but lacked that "in-depth" attention to detail.
- As above, i'd suggest focusing on 1 track, make it really something, make the track fit the gameplay design, then, add from that in the future. Trust me, you''ll get alot more out of making "something special" than sheer volume.

Menu:
- Lots and lots of options, this is a good thing, but, i can see your using multiple projects to run the menu system.
- If you looking into scripting, and, fancy a challenge, try using 1 project file and iObjectRefresh(). This will not only streamline the experience for the user, but, it will make your game design alot (a hell of alot) easier. This is a bit advanced, requires alot of learning/testing, so, its not for everyone.

Visuals:
- In terms of the vehicles, great variation, i can see what ideas you have and they come across well. As with the tracks, sometimes, if you want that extra "wow" factor, stick with working on 1 cart, again, making it special, expanding your skills of modeling before working on multiple items. Keep that workload down, simple, it will help.
- I'd like to see some options for graphics, disable shadows/mirror etc, but ideally on a script basis would be the best method (keep those objects down :))

Performance:
- No issues running at full clock speeds, but, i did notice major issues with poly count at slower clock settings.
- I've noticed you have lots of "skyscraper1" and various other objects as separate skinmeshes. Try modeling the track with those items included in the 1 mesh. This will allow you to monitor the "full" polygon count of the scene, and, improve performance in 3Drad (less objects).
- Rear view mirror, change the "draw distance" setting to around 200-500. No need to draw the whole scene again, should help performance.
- Driver skinmesh, 20k faces, thats alot of polys. I'd suggest removing this object for now, when your modeling skills/performance awareness comes into play, you'll know exactly how to implement it :)


As above, some great ideas, lots and lots of tracks/variation, but, sometimes this is more of a workload burden for the developer.
It might not work for everyone, but, I always found that keeping everything simple, make sure everything works (gameplay/performance) at peak level, before adding more content to the game.
Once you have a solid platform for your game, creating more models/cars/tracks, will be alot easier as your past experience on what works and what doesnt, will allow you to produce it better.

Try and experiment with the script object, start with small things like moving text on the screen, then, progress into deeper levels with iObjectRefresh etc etc. If you enjoy doing it, the possibilities are endless :)

Keep at it, and most importantly, keep doing what you enjoy, my advice is only from my experience, its not for everyone.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2013, 07:25:45 AM by Fourdee »
« Reply #80 on: February 22, 2013, 10:37:56 PM »
So, we're open for some suggestions for the sequel! If you think of something for us to add to Ninkeo Kart II, say it! ;)

I just downloaded this from your site, i can see you have lots and lots of ideas for this game, so many tracks, options.
While this is a good thing, its sometimes more productive to work on 1 track and less options. This will enable you to create that "special" experience without increasing your workload by 8x.

heres some feedback:
Levels:
- Wow, lots of levels, must be 8+ tracks in the game
- For me, the level design had great ideas, but lacked that "in-depth" attention to detail.
- As above, i'd suggest focusing on 1 track, make it really something, make the track fit the gameplay design, then, add from that in the future. Trust me, you''ll get alot more out of making "something special" than sheer volume.

Menu:
- Lots and lots of options, this is a good thing, but, i can see your using multiple projects to run the menu system.
- If you looking into scripting, and, fancy a challenge, try using 1 project file and iObjectRefresh(). This will not only streamline the experience for the user, but, it will make your game design alot (a hell of alot) easier. This is a bit advanced, requires alot of learning/testing, so, its not for everyone.

Visuals:
- In terms of the vehicles, great variation, i can see what ideas you have and they come across well. As with the tracks, sometimes, if you want that extra "wow" factor, stick with working on 1 cart, again, making it special, expanding your skills of modeling before working on multiple items. Keep that workload down, simple, it will help.
- I'd like to see some options for graphics, disable shadows/mirror etc, but ideally on a script basis would be the best method (keep those objects down :))

Performance:
- No issues running at full clock speeds, but, i did notice major issues with poly count at slower clock settings.
- I've noticed you have lots of "skyscraper1" and various other objects as separate skinmeshes. Try modeling the track with those items included in the 1 mesh. This will allow you to monitor the "full" polygon count of the scene, and, improve performance in 3Drad (less objects).
- Rear view mirror, change the "draw distance" setting to around 200-500. No need to draw the whole scene again, should help performance.
- Driver skinmesh, 20k faces, thats alot of polys. I'd suggest removing this object for now, when your modeling skills/performance awareness comes into play, you'll know exactly how to implement it :)


As above, some great ideas, lots and lots of tracks/variation, but, sometimes this is more of a workload burden for the developer.
It might not work for everyone, but, I always found that keeping everything simple, make sure everything works (gameplay/performance) at peak level, before adding more content to the game.
Once you have a solid platform for your game, creating more models/cars/tracks, will be alot easier as your past experience on what works and what doesnt, will allow you to produce it better.

Try and experiment with the script object, start with small things like moving text on the screen, then, progress into deeper levels with iObjectRefresh etc etc. If you enjoy doing it, the possibilities are endless :)

Keep at it, and most importantly, keep doing what you enjoy, my advice is only from my experience, its not for everyone.
Thanks for all of these suggestions! Some of these are really quite excellent and I'll discuss them with the team next time we meet. ;)
« Reply #81 on: February 24, 2013, 02:37:06 AM »
OK, we've met today and decided to implement:
-Full pause menu (video options, sound and controls)
-New karts with lower polygon counts
-Items (limit of 2 per track, 4 in total)
-New and returning tracks

This time, we're going to take small steps for each one. The pause menu at the moment feels much better built and much more pretty! :) (Thanks to oldnoob for polishing up his menu skills ;))
« Reply #82 on: March 02, 2013, 01:47:26 AM »
We've been working really hard today and we've discovered a severe problem. The cars and the weapons screw up when the game is paused. I've tried different pausing scripts and neither seem to make any difference.  :(

On a brighter side, we are doing an FPS for a project at school. It's a top secret project at the moment so I can't say anything  :-X
« Reply #83 on: March 02, 2013, 10:05:00 AM »
the obvious solution would be to not allow the player to pause the game...

Quote
we are doing an FPS for a project at school. It's a top secret project at the moment so I can't say anything
... yet you choose to say something anyway...


--Mike
« Reply #84 on: March 02, 2013, 04:41:58 PM »
the obvious solution would be to not allow the player to pause the game...

Quote
we are doing an FPS for a project at school. It's a top secret project at the moment so I can't say anything
... yet you choose to say something anyway...


--Mike
We ended up finding the bug that broke the weapons and cars when you paused, so now that issue's out of the way.
« Reply #85 on: March 02, 2013, 06:56:55 PM »
EXCELLENT!!!

--Mike
« Reply #86 on: March 06, 2013, 01:13:05 AM »
Worked hard again today, but now the problems just keep piling up.

The pause problem is still there, except it won't show up in the editor and the game keeps on crashing when we pause it in compiled mode. The wheel and car meshes lagged like all hell and the Bouncy Ball cannon more often than not ends up hitting and destroying the player's car. No matter what we do (we rebuilt it from scratch to no avail), it keeps playing up.

We decided to see if these issues are still present when we rebuild it in 7.19 (we are doing the FPS in this because of the camera getting stuck on walls in 7.22).
« Reply #87 on: March 08, 2013, 02:15:54 AM »
OK, we've rebuilt it all in 7.19 and...

SUCCESS!  ;D

The cars stopped being total bitches when you paused, the weapons work right and I made the game run better! Without doing anything except change the 3D Rad version! (Mind you all, I am running on an AMD FX 4100 at 3.6ghz)

« Reply #88 on: March 09, 2013, 06:33:59 AM »
careful about your language, there are litle kiddies here.
cool, just played the game, like it, but laggy as hell on my old pc. ill try my new laptop later.
« Reply #89 on: March 15, 2013, 02:53:17 AM »
careful about your language, there are litle kiddies here.
cool, just played the game, like it, but laggy as hell on my old pc. ill try my new laptop later.
Thanks for the feedback about the game!
I'll watch my language in the future (I'm a member on a forum which lots of people swear on).

In the news, I'm getting the main components of Ninkeo Kart II built and making the weapons work properly.
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