Die by the Sword - Xtended v1.6.0

[ArtemCh]

I noticed that the in-game gamma option, doesn't have an effect besides in the menus, not in-game. The game does seem quite dark with extended shading!

I during the game increment the gamma desktop a half times.

Also, what does Maximum NetPlay LAG and IPX LAG do? For best performance which should I choose? (On LAN)

If the connection is good, then we set the minimum

[Hazard]

First, congratulation on the new Extended patch! Awesome stuff.

Can you elaborate a bit on the FPS lock bypass? Like, what are the practical consequence of it in the way you have bypass it. Because you say to 'some extend'.

I just tried it, of course, and I do think it was smoother. However, the animations still seems a bit slow. But that might just be the game? Not the FPS? My FPS was at approximately 450 FPS, so above the 120 FPS 'perfect zone'.

Thanks!

The FPS lock is still in place, that's why i was a bit careful with the wording. Usually, to get rid of the FPS lock entirely, a render call should happen after every game tick (where the game logic happens). I tried that at first, but it was horribly slow and choppy and lead to severe gliches like collision detection not working correctly.
By default the game limits the FPS and processes as many game ticks as the CPU can handle between the render calls. On my machine the game processed more than 30000 game ticks per second, which seemed very unnecessary and inefficient, espiecially with a FPS cap below 20.
Yet, for some reason the game seems to need a good amount of game ticks between render calls to run correctly. My understanding of the game tick and render loop is still very lacking. Figuering it all out from the disassembly is quite laborious. That's why i went with a comprimise for now.
Xtended keeps track of how many game ticks have passed since the last render call and enforces rendering once more than 100 unrendered ticks have passed. That's not yet ideal, still wasting some performance and weaker PCs may not get a huge FPS increase from it. But definitely better than 20 FPS.

The animations still twitch a little at times, that's the game's animation system, though, and isn't related to the FPS. At high FPS the game may feel slightly slower because the at 20 FPS every frame brings a considerably large change, making it feel more "sudden". I guess it's a subjective thing, but you can never be entirely sure. There could always be a technical reason causing some slowdown.

I noticed that the in-game gamma option, doesn't have an effect besides in the menus, not in-game. The game does seem quite dark with extended shading!

Oh, a new entry for things i need to fix. Never noticed it. I'll try to fix it with the next release.

[apc]

I had to reinstall my game because of file error when launching multiplayer (I unpacked some ATD files..) so I played some non xtended for a bit and I thought the game ran much smoother (with bad and glitched graphics however) I could be imagining this but the game seems to perform better?

This latest patch is noticeably less choppy and smoother...similar to how I feel non xtended is. Thanks for making this FPS change. However I have to give the blood clouds the thumbs down, it could be good with some tweaking for sure but I'd rather play without the clouds as they are now. Thanks for your overall work for sure though.

[Hazard]

I had to reinstall my game because of file error when launching multiplayer (I unpacked some ATD files..) so I played some non xtended for a bit and I thought the game ran much smoother (with bad and glitched graphics however) I could be imagining this but the game seems to perform better?

This latest patch is noticeably less choppy and smoother...similar to how I feel non xtended is. Thanks for making this FPS change.

Good to hear that the frame limit removal works fine.

However I have to give the blood clouds the thumbs down, it could be good with some tweaking for sure but I'd rather play without the clouds as they are now.

I guess i'll add a toggle that enables and disables the particle textures to the next version then. For those who prefer the classic look of particles.

[Tony One Blairoby]

Hi world.
First wanted to thx you for your awesome work i just discovered, but ...


I have no shadows .

[samanthin]

Hi to all I am new here.. interested so much about this.

[apc]

Hello there new people

I noticed something else from original version - the camera position is further back.

To be honest I prefer the camera in the original being able to see more to the sides. Especially now that I'm not playing on a 17" screen

[unrealdark]

First of all thank you very mutch for this! dbts was an old favorite of mine when i was in my teens. I always hated the controls cause they were so differnt and it was hard for me to control the game. Still i loved the mood of the game and couldnt stop try to play. i actually made it pretty far in i think.

But then again i was a kid and when you dont have many games you tend to try alot until it works.
today i find these controls even harder than when i was younger.


So for the love of everything thats holy please make this work better with the xbox360 gamepad.
It works pretty well atm suprisingly but still it could use some tweaks.

I can move around. i can swing my sword with the A X B and Y. Buttons with doesnt work are left and right triggers (not to be confused with the side buttons witch work just fine) also the right analog stick doesnt work other than pressing it down.


I was suprised how easily i could configure this to work well as the game is pretty old now. What i would want to se is official support for the xbox360 pad. Or atleast tweak the game some to work better with newer gamepads.

[Hazard]

Welcome to the community, unrealdark!

I was suprised how easily i could configure this to work well as the game is pretty old now. What i would want to se is official support for the xbox360 pad. Or atleast tweak the game some to work better with newer gamepads.

Yes, i was hoping to find a way to improve xbox360 controller input at some time. With it's two analog sticks it could probably be the best and most intuitive control for the game. But i was thinking about using the right analog stick for sword control, because it would allow you to have incredibly fine-grained control.

I'm not yet sure how to achieve that yet, though. I haven't found the code segment where the controller interaction happens yet. But it's right on top of my personal feature wish-list and i'll keep looking for it.

The control scheme i had in mind:

left analog: move back and forth and rotate
left analog when pressed: move back and forth and strafe
right analog: move the sword arm
press right analog: extend sword arm
right trigger: block
right shoulder: pick up / use
left trigger: crouch / jump
left shoulder: sheath

[ArtemCh]

Hey Hazard. Thanks for staying with us. There are still suggestions for the new version:
Is it possible to make so that in the event that if I kill a character from his own team, I do not add to the health and victory point is added all rivals?

I think it will be fairer!

[unrealdark]

Welcome to the community, unrealdark!

I was suprised how easily i could configure this to work well as the game is pretty old now. What i would want to se is official support for the xbox360 pad. Or atleast tweak the game some to work better with newer gamepads.

Yes, i was hoping to find a way to improve xbox360 controller input at some time. With it's two analog sticks it could probably be the best and most intuitive control for the game. But i was thinking about using the right analog stick for sword control, because it would allow you to have incredibly fine-grained control.

I'm not yet sure how to achieve that yet, though. I haven't found the code segment where the controller interaction happens yet. But it's right on top of my personal feature wish-list and i'll keep looking for it.

The control scheme i had in mind:

left analog: move back and forth and rotate
left analog when pressed: move back and forth and strafe
right analog: move the sword arm
press right analog: extend sword arm
right trigger: block
right shoulder: pick up / use
left trigger: crouch / jump
left shoulder: sheath

Oh! that is great!!
I thought most of you old dbts gamers including you didnt care mutch for this feature.

I actually got all the way to the sacrifice chamber using a xbox pad. although its hard it still works so well comparing to the keyboard or mouse witch i used all those years ago.

Idk how to say this with the right words but im so nostalgic about this game and you made it possible to play again for me. Im very grateful, Thank you so mutch

How is the fps unlock feature comming along ? i first played the game when 1.5ish version was out and i cant seem to notice mutch improvment (although i havent compared that version to the latest). If i knew how to code and stuff i wouid help you out so mutch.. to bad i dont know shit =/.

Best Regards from sweden!


Edit: Almost forgot.. you should make this avaible on Moddb.

[Blastbeats]

Any chance of putting the battlefield creator back in? Was one of the very best tools you ever made mate.

[joerjoe]

Thank you so much for the link. I enjoyed playing the game.

______________________________

http://www.knife-planet.com/military-knives.html

[pjoxt]

Hi.

Great work on DbtS - Xtended, but I have a problem:
When I try to play the game, I can only play a certain amount of levels before the game crashes. It seems to crash sooner if I die or have to load the game.
http://i.imgur.com/hysSS9n.png
This is a problem because I'm trying to speedrun the game, but I can never play through the game from start to finish without it crashing at least once.
Doesn't matter if I'm recording / streaming the gameplay or not, it'll crash regardless. The only way I managed to make the game not crash is to not use xtended, but then I can't record gameplay at all.

[Hazard]

I fear that i won't be able to do anything about the crashes, sadly. Xtended hooks into more than 100 different parts of the game's memory and diverts it into different code to add features, it changes the machinecode of the game in countless parts to fix bugs or improve things and it hacks a whole new graphics engine into the game. That's all very messy and dirty stuff. I only ever have influence over a tiny part of the code. No control or even understanding of the greater context. Tracking down sporadically occurring crash bugs that happen not in my code but deep in the bowels of the game's original code (but may very well be caused by a modification at some completely different part of the game) is incredibly difficult. I may be able to improve stability at times, when i stumble upon some issues, but it will probably never be perfectly stable and crash free.
I'm very sorry that this makes it hard to speedrun the game, but you'll either have to live with save states in your speedrun to recover from crashes or use something like a glide wrapper instead of Xtended to provide recordable DirectX graphics and do without the other improvements Xtended provides. I hope that you can find a workaround that is suitable for you.