[1.4+ question]

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Kazander
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[1.4+ question]

Post by Kazander »

Is some part of the future programming of MT going to allow it to take advantage of multiple CPU cores, and GPU resources?

I'm not a programmer, but I do know that MT turns into a real pig when you have too much FOW, VBL and light sources, and a lot of this seems to be because it bottlenecks itself by using only a single CPU core. It seems this could be alleviated by programming it to take advantage of the GPU and multiple CPU cores.

It's frustrating that you can't really take advantage of the tools MT has built in, because of the performance issues those same tools cause.

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aliasmask
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Re: [1.4+ question]

Post by aliasmask »

I'm not familiar with that level of programming, but I think a big part of it is what is allowed by java. I heard rumblings of perhaps using video card hardware acceleration in another thread.

Not to chase you away from MT, but I hear MOTE has done a lot of optimization and it's faster in many areas. I still haven't switched to MOTE myself yet because MT does the job for me and my group, but I plan to try it out sometime. Right now I'm playing with the iso features of MT.

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Kazander
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Re: [1.4+ question]

Post by Kazander »

I've tried out Mote with the same campaign, and noticed no significant difference.

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aliasmask
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Re: [1.4+ question]

Post by aliasmask »

Kazander wrote:I've tried out Mote with the same campaign, and noticed no significant difference.
Thanks, good to know.

Tyshalle
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Re: [1.4+ question]

Post by Tyshalle »

Not sure how long you've been using MapTool, Kazander, but I too have had these same issues you've pointed out, but eventually learned how to work around them. The biggest issue I've had in my campaigns is when I go overboard with VBL. I tend to make massive maps, and if I try to meticulously add VBL to every line I get terrible slowdown, and sometimes even java crashes.

The three biggest things I've learned to do to fix this, is first, make smaller maps. It's a lot better to split a single map up into smaller chunks if you're going to run a lot of complicated VBL/FOW/light sources.

Second, keep your VBL lines simple. "Good enough" is sorta the key to keeping MapTool running smooth. And as much as it kills a perfectionist like me, sometimes it's better to sacrifice VBL lines that perfectly go over every surface in order to keep the experience smooth. One of my biggest tactics is I'll draw a box around the map, and use a single line to block off corners, which lets people see through walls, but not in any useful way to them. It's not quite as pretty, but it gets the job done.

Third, and this has nothing to do with VBL or FOW or whatever, but if you draw your maps, use as few angles as possible. Stick to squares, and use the line tool as infrequently as possible. In fact, never use the freehand tool except on the smallest of maps. Avoid transparencies if you can.

That 3rd point, in my experience, is most important on larger maps. Using the above advice I was able to create a 2-mile long city map on a 10-pixel per FOOT scale that models both indoors and outdoors of over a thousand buildings. There's a small amount of lag when zooming out, but it's entirely functional.

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Jagged
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Re: [1.4+ question]

Post by Jagged »

Drawing a box round you map to limit vision is one of the best things you can do to improve performance. :)

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celestian
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Re: [1.4+ question]

Post by celestian »

Tyshalle wrote: Second, keep your VBL lines simple. "Good enough" is sorta the key to keeping MapTool running smooth. And as much as it kills a perfectionist like me, sometimes it's better to sacrifice VBL lines that perfectly go over every surface in order to keep the experience smooth. One of my biggest tactics is I'll draw a box around the map, and use a single line to block off corners, which lets people see through walls, but not in any useful way to them. It's not quite as pretty, but it gets the job done.
Have you tried to dropping a solid VBL block on the whole map and cutting out the rooms? That's how I've been doing it. I've got some pretty large maps and I've not have any "lag" associated with the size (yet).

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Kazander
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Re: [1.4+ question]

Post by Kazander »

celestian wrote:Have you tried to dropping a solid VBL block on the whole map and cutting out the rooms? That's how I've been doing it. I've got some pretty large maps and I've not have any "lag" associated with the size (yet).
That is exactly what I do.

My current map is probably more than 'pretty large'. It's just plain large. I hate breaking maps up because then you have a constant exercise of switching maps as players wander around. This is particularly difficult with underground-cavern map types, since paths tend to meander and areas don't tend to lend themselves well to being broken up 'nicely'.

Given the computing power a typical computer has these days, these kind of performance limitations seem like they should be a thing of the past. Far past, even. That's why I was asking about multi-core and GPU enhancements. I feel that fixing significant performance issues (where it can be done) should be a pretty high priority compared to feature enhancements. Have any of the developers commented on these kinds of changes anywhere? I haven't been able to find it if they have.

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JamzTheMan
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Re: [1.4+ question]

Post by JamzTheMan »

Technically, MT does take advantage of multiple cores, in the fact that there are some multi-threaded processes. Of course, not everything is multi-threaded, as it can be a pain to code as to make sure you don't step on toes and things are not done out of order.

We could possibly improve performance in the lighting routine, as it runs in a single thread and is looped pretty hard (ran for each token vs light source). And of course, redoing the whole routine would help but FoW/VBL is layered so badly in MT, you end up touching class after class after class.

Given that, I just upgraded my PC to a Skylake I7 4/core (8 threads) from a q6600 intel chip and MT is performing WAAAYY faster now :)

I'm still waiting on the code-refactor to see how my latest code changes affect the base but I have been tinkering with the FoW code and also have enhancements to the lighting routine. We'll see if I can get anything in for the next release.
-Jamz
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