Project Reality Forums

While this is not entirely new news I have updated the effect and toned down a lot of it. As a result it is slightly more realistic, maybe not enough for the mod, but it is more realistic, and does look pretty nice.

Note: Filesizes are all around 7-10mb, so please be patient and do not assume that it is just not downloading.

Note 2: The blood effects are a little hard to see because of the compression, but there are a couple videos where you can see it nicely. Especially the ones where I get shot

Note 3: I love my new grenade effect too much to get rid of it. If PR takes up the mod they can get rid of it if they want. It's not particularly realistic in any way, but it kicks too much *** for me to get rid of.

Note 4: You can see that I forget to reload, a lot, you can guess that this is double the problem in PR with no ammo counter

Note 5: Forgot to to say Click on pictures to open link for video

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Now for the big question: How does it run?

On High Settings: If you are already running your game on high effect settings, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.

On Medium Settings: If you normally run the game on medium you may lose a couple frames, 10, at most. Nothing too bad. Should be still be very playable if you get playable framerates to begin with. Well I think thats pretty reasonable considering how awesome and atmospheric this is.

On Low: Heres a sinker. On low settings 75% of the effect does not show up. This means all the smoke that lasts for about 2-3 seconds will not show up. While this is normally not a big deal, there have been a couple situations where I could see having your settings on low would be an advantage. Not a significant one, but one nonetheless. I do not know how competetive the PR community is, but I know for example in CS people will lower everything to low, and then lower more things through console commands to get as many frames per second as possible.

Anywho, Comments, Suggestions, Flames?

[Edit] Blake makes a very good point that I would like to explain.

Smoke DOES affect framerate.
Whenever I look at a smoke or dustcloud my framerate takes an expresselevator to the basement. Especially in those first early internal releases of .01.

The default smoke effects such as smoke grenades and tank smokes are very dense. If you ever wander into the middile of one of those effects your framerate will plummet. I have a pretty good computer and get very good framerates on high, but as soon as one of those shows up it brings even my computer to its knees.

These effects are normally very thin, and do not have as heavy an effect as smoke grenades do. There are a couple situations I can think of where you can create smoke grenade quality dust fields, but that normally can only be done on purpose, and in a very tight space (such as a shed).

[UltraEdit]

I just remembered the "Especially in those first early internal releases of .01." As far as I know (correct me if I am wrong), one of the things tested in the early betas was where vehicles would smoke when damaged. This caused a lot of smoke to be thrown into your face, and it was dense (or at least likely to be considering its on a moving vehicle) enough to make your framerates plummet in the same ways that smoke grenades do.

Very impressive work! And on a more unrelated note. I noticed whenever you have the G36E (which isn't an E) you seem to be able to kill people very very easily with it. Yey for overpowered weapons only people with SF can used!

Mad Max wrote:Very impressive work! And on a more unrelated note. I noticed whenever you have the G36E (which isn't an E) you seem to be able to kill people very very easily with it. Yey for overpowered weapons only people with SF can used!

After playing with all the SF weapons, it is safe to say that they are all relatively powerful versions of the vanilla guns. For example the G36 replaces the M16. The G36 has less recoil than the M16, is just as accurate, and does more damage. The best overpowered gun in my opinion is the MP7. It is a tiny little SMG that is extremely accurate. When I say extremely accurate I mean this is as accurate, and in some cases, more accurate than the M16. It is the ultimate engineer class unlock.

If you normally run the game on medium you may lose a couple frames 10, at most. Nothing too bad.

I have tuned by system for around 30 fps (as much eye candy as it can handle).
If I loose 10 fps its bad... Unplayable kind of bad.

Well like I never said, I am curious as to how this will run on everyone elses computer. I was thinking maybe releasing a little version of this for online evaluation, see just how much of a performance hit it is on a wide variety of computers. Maybe I should release this as a mod on BF2files.com and ask other people how much the hit is overall. Or maybe put it into an optional (Can you even do that?) patch of PRMM and see how that works out. There is no real way of assessing the performance hit without much broader testing. I've only tested this on a friends computer. He plays predominately on medium settings, and he said there was a hit, but it was still very well playable.

Well just release a version then. I dont think the devs mind if its an addon to PRMM. Testing it in SP shouldnt be too much difference from MP in terms of performance loss since there is no real network activity once the effect is started (wouldnt hurt if you enabled 32 player SP on a map just to stress it).

Good news everybody.

After a long talk and editing session with Paladin-X, I figured out how to get the mod to be work around PRMM. This means that the mod will complement PRMM without replacing it, so there is no messy reinstallation of any kind. I have to clean the mod up for release, and will hopefully be on BF2-Files as a proof of concept sorta thing. I want to see if this is worth continuing work on. (Because at the moment the edited effects are purely infantry combat related, none of the vehicles have been touched.)

I like this

Yes, indeed.

Looks good

Its farking annoying. I don't get the visual with those videos, just audio. And I also can't download the videos and open them in a different media player.

But if ur gonna make muzzle flashes, they HAVE to be realistic. I kinda like it the way it is, but if there's a way to make them very transparant (for day maps), that would be great.

I think these muzzle flashes are really close to realistic, maybe just a little smaller flash, and less smoke out of the barrel on some weapons. but the maps lighting methods are not realistic. Being as most played map is karkand, ill use it as an example.

People cannot breath clay. As such, anyone anywhere near karkand would suffocate pretty soon... as the air is filled with it. The fog is waaaaay too much, so muzzle flashes are very bright compared to the dense fog.

Also, the entire level is 'lit' with this pseudo orange color, not realistic to any place I have ever been.

In a map like... oh gulf of oman, with pretty much no fog, and no wierd lighitng color to everything, muzzle flashes would stand out a lot less.

Basically, this problem has a lot to do with maps as well as the actual muzzle flash.

WARNING THIS POST IS SO DESCRIPTIVE IT COVERS THE TOPIC(S)

Rg wrote:Its farking annoying. I don't get the visual with those videos, just audio. And I also can't download the videos and open them in a different media player.

Do you have the Divx codecs installed? Sound but no video is usually the symptoms of no Divx.

http://www.divx.com/divx/?src=toptab_di ... /index.php

Armand61685 wrote:But if ur gonna make muzzle flashes, they HAVE to be realistic. I kinda like it the way it is, but if there's a way to make them very transparant (for day maps), that would be great.

Figisaacnewton wrote:I think these muzzle flashes are really close to realistic, maybe just a little smaller flash, and less smoke out of the barrel on some weapons. but the maps lighting methods are not realistic.

The videos I put up of the effects have since changed. Ever since implementing the mod to function off of PRMM I have made a whole bunch of little tweaks to the effect as a whole.

In terms of the flash, I adopted what PRMM had before I added the effects. Which means they completely eliminated the flash and so did I for consistency's sake. Right now the muzzle effect looks a lot like what it does in those videos except that they do not emit a flash.

Now I always hear complaints about the smoke being too much. Yes it is a little more than it should be, I am aware of that. However this is another one of those gameplay vs. realism debates. I love how after a fierce firefight you look around and at your squademates - they are covered in dust from hostile bullets hitting walls and the ground near you, the smoke that came from the entire squad firing their weapons - with the smoke starting to clear and your sitting there wondering, "How did I just survive that?"

PRMM is already extremely tense, it turns BF2 into a difficult, tense wargame similar to what I experienced with OFP. Sure tuning it down will be more realistic, but considering how quickly firefights start, and how quickly they end, it's nice to be able to see for at least a few seconds that it actually occurred.

Anyway that is the point of this whole "proof of concept" release. I want to get mass feedback from people who have actually played the mod. Frankly it is not the gameplay I am worried about, the biggest reason I am doing this is to see if other peoples computers can handle this. All infantry related effects are completed, and I want to know if this is worth continuing to replace the enormous amount of effects in Battlefield 2. Infantry effects alone was no small feat and it took me quite awhile to get to where I am now.

If the test turns out to be a success and everybody would like to put it in the mod then I will take feedback and adjust. If the vast majority says too much smoke, then I will lower it some. I think this is one of those "play before you decide" deals. I admit that looking at the videos does make it look over the top, but in the game it adds a great deal.

Figisaacnewton wrote:People cannot breath clay. As such, anyone anywhere near karkand would suffocate pretty soon... as the air is filled with it. The fog is waaaaay too much, so muzzle flashes are very bright compared to the dense fog.

Also, the entire level is 'lit' with this pseudo orange color, not realistic to any place I have ever been.

In a map like... oh gulf of oman, with pretty much no fog, and no wierd lighitng color to everything, muzzle flashes would stand out a lot less.

Basically, this problem has a lot to do with maps as well as the actual muzzle flash.

I am aware of this effect. Similar to shining a flashlight in a foggy dark room, then shining it outside in open clear air. There is no way that this could possibly be done dynamically, but there might be a way to do this. Back in the Battlefield 1942 days, you could build mods right into maps. Coral Sea introduced this with map specific immobile carriers. The problem though is that I am not sure if that feature survived the translation to Battlefield 2. There has been no indication whatsoever as to if this might still work. And judging by how Battlefield 2 completely restructured how the Battlefield engine read and used code it is likely that even if the feature survived, I would have no idea how to recreate it.

Last time I installed something for divx, I found spyware/adware on my system, so I'm going to stay away from that.
If you put up more videos in the future can you upload to a different site? Maybe one where you can download the videos or open them in a different media player?

Rg wrote:Last time I installed something for divx, I found spyware/adware on my system, so I'm going to stay away from that.
If you put up more videos in the future can you upload to a different site? Maybe one where you can download the videos or open them in a different media player?

Putfile is the only simple cheap video upload site I am aware of. I am open to suggestions because I also do not like being able to download the videos.

Theres probably a lot. All I know of is this one...http://rapidshare.de/

Also...
http://uploadhut.com/

http://www.filefront.com/

Thanks Rg I'll look into those.

I'm fairly confident that the mod is ready, but I need someone to help me do some last minute online testing to be sure. Also to make sure I did not miss something that would be in plain site to someone else.

If you want to help in last minute testing contact me through my Xfire name "why485" (without quotes).

A realistic muzzle flash will definitely make me wish to play this mod even more.

Keep up the good work, devs

Cerberus wrote:A realistic muzzle flash will definitely make me wish to play this mod even more.

Keep up the good work, devs

Best part is...

dabadabadadadabababaadaaa...I'm not a dev!