forums.ps2dev.org

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

Hello folks,

Well, I am still developping my 3D game for PSP and it is called C3D Burning Wheels.Here is a trailer if you want to learn more :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSGcxFab4rQ

I use the LTE 3D Game Engine patched for 3.XX and my models are in .x (Direct 3D) format, with JPG textures.They render perfectely on a .x viewer but it the LTE game engine does not render them properly.. The object is deformed and the texture is not applied well.Can you help me ? I use the same source code used to render the dwarf in the example "11.Shadows".

Thanks again for your help guys,
Oby.

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

UP ! You guys don't know how to use the LTE Game Engine ?
I really need help..

Pihas · Joined: 25 Oct 2008 Posts: 60 Location: Lithuania

It's an Irrlicht Engine (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/) port for PSP. All realeted information about it i think you will easealy find in their wiki, forums...

There is LTE Mod with better perfomance then simple LTE, checkout maybe it would be better choice: http://www.psp-hacks.com/forums/f141/release-lte-lite-mod-t240347/

sg57 · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 154

Hey Oby1chick

Not sure if you've figured your problem out on your own yet or not but if your DirectX model has any joints/animations, you need to set atleast 1 keyframe in your model to that of what it should look like and set the current frame to that frame in-code.

I had problems with dis-formed and stretched out character models when their animation frame was set before the first keyframe.

This also brings up the frame offset for your model, it was a bitch figuring out why my keyframe numbers weren't matching up to the frames in-game. Make sure your exporter allows you to set the frame offset OR you know the frame offset. Milkshape has a great DirectX 8.0 exporter for use with LTE on PSP. So when you're setting the frame number, you'd multiply the frame by that frame offset to truly get the keyframe (1 * FRAME_OFFSET if you only have 1 keyframe, I use an offset of 30, the milkshape exporter lets you choose).

also if you're doing actual animations, make sure to have a root joint at 0,0,0 otherwise the first joint you make will be your root joint and everything animates around it (yet another problem that was a bitch to figure out)

I'm an experienced LTE and Irrlicht user (check my latest PSP vid on youtube or QJ) and I'm quite amazed someone else is using it as well and this late into the scene at that. If you need any more help you can contact me here, email, youtube, msn or on irc.freenode.net at ##psp-programming

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

Thanks guys.
I am really glad you're helping me SG57, I saw your project named "The world" and it's pretty amazing, good luck !
This problem is weird because my car does not have any animation created.There is only one frame and the .x renders properly on any Direct3D viewer.The back of the car is disformed and diseppaers at some places. I will post pics tomorrow.

You seem very experienced and I would like to ask you a few other questions if it does not bother you, I consider myself as a C++ newbie xD.
- What format did you use for 3D objects in "The world" ?
- How can I set myself how the camera moves and which keys uses the player so the camera is attached to the back of car and both move the same way ?
- I am having problems with objects textured on only one face and becoming transparent if you see them by the other side, any idea about this ?
- I have some textures that render properly if you seem from the top but that look ugly and blur if you look at them from the side, can you help me ?

Please forgive me for my english, I am french lol.Answer when you want to and thanks one million for your help !
Oby.

anmabagima · Joined: 01 Oct 2009 Posts: 96

Hi,

I'm not very much familiar with Irrlicht or LTE. However, I could answer one of your questions: Each face will usualy beeing visible only from one side and get "transparent" from the other. This is called back face culling. I'm uncertain how to deactivate it with LTE but with the GU you could simply call sceGuDisable(GU_CULL_FACE); to make sure all faces are visible from either side, but be aware that this may have huge negavite impact on your performance.

Regarding your camera movement question, I guess you should set the camera to be a child of your car to link the movement together.

Best regards,
AnMaBaGiMa

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

Thanks for your help anmabagima !
So my problem is named back face culling.. I will see if there is any documentation about this in LTE or Irrlicht.About the camera, I was not looking for anything special, the coordinates or the camera just need to be the same as the car but y+20 as example and the camera needs to be looking at the back of the car during the whole race, that's it.

I have two models that don't render properly : The wheels, and the car itself.They are in .x format, and the textures are 256*256 JPGs.They render perfectely in any DirectX viewer..I can export my models in BSP, MS3D, OBJ, DirectX, 3Ds, BLitz3D and MD2, I just want to know which one is easy to use and render well.

I will test the OBJ format this afternoon.
I hope it will work better x) !

Edit

The format OBJ renders even worse !
I get a white, not textured and twisted object whereas it renders perfectely in any OBJ viewer ! Here are pictures :[/u]

Car (X or OBJ) in any viewer :

Car (OBJ) in game :

Car (X) in game :

Please help me ! I am going to try other formats :(,
Oby.

iceman755 · Joined: 21 Jul 2008 Posts: 34

To show back faces:

sg57 · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 154

Hey Oby

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

Once again, thanks a lot :) SG57 and iceman.
I've fixed my problem of blur objects using filtrers and disabling ETCF_CREATE_MIP_MAPS, this works great !
I will only try formats that I know how to render, because I don't want to waste my time testing other things.I think I will stick to DirectX for most of my objects but I am going to give a shot to OBJ, 3DS and MD2 for the car and the wheels.I don't have Milkshape myslef, I use Blender :).And EMF_BACK_FACE_CULLING works perfectely too, thanks !

I was able to rotate well the car in OBJ format and to apply a texture to it...But its still awfully twisted and disformed :/.I took a look at docs and it says the OBJ format is named "Maya Obj", does this make any difference ?

Your english is very well (At least better than mine) and I ought you a lot ^^ ! Oby.

Jim · Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 487 Location: Sydney

Loading the obj format relies heavily on converting floating point numbers as strings back in to floats. There are some pretty ropey atof/strtod implementations out there - perhaps that's the problem. I'd try dumping out the vertex and face data on the PSP once the model's loaded and comparing it with a dump from my PC code.
Jim
_________________
http://www.dbfinteractive.com

sg57 · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 154

I can't tell you why your OBJ is all twisted up, using the Milkshape exporter I haven't had a problem. I am using nice whole numbers though so I don't experience precision loss that Jim is talking about - what are the dimensions of your model Oby?

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

Thanks Jim and sg57 but I have finally fixed my problem :D !
All my objects render very well now, and textures too.
The dimensions of my models were not special, no vertice had coordinates higher than 3 or lower than -3.
I've gave up the OBJ format and everything is in DirectX format.I've changed of converter in fact.Here is a link :
http://development.mindfloaters.de/DirectX_Exporter_Mod.8.0.html
Blender directX converter was not 100% compatible with Irrlicht (So LTE) and someone has modded it so it works perfectly now !

I don't have any problems for the moment.. But I have a question for you SG57 :p. A few weeks ago, I could not render all my models and the skybox at the same time because the PSP froze and a log.txt appeared at the root of my memory stick.Inside, there was written :

sg57 · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 154

hmm what version of LTE are you using? the lite mod?

I ask because I know of a memory leak in PSPGL that siberianstar fixed in the later versions of LTE (and thus in LTE Lite Mod).

Well I am going to doubt that your skybox textures + a few model textures will fill the RAM since I have a lot and have no such problem yet...

How many polys is your car model? The PSP is a low-med poly console meaning no more than 30k polys on-screen at a time or you might experience some real lag. My map and terrain models have ~2,000-3,000 polys where my character is ~1000 and some objects are between 100 to 1,000.

Also, do not put PSP_HEAP_SIZE or any PSP_MODULE_INFO things in your code, LTE does that for you. This might be your problem.

So yea..
- Don't put PSP_HEAP_SIZE
- Make sure your textures have a max width of 512 and a max height of 512, I recommend 256x256 textures for skybox, 128x128 for ground textures, 64x64 for everything else
- Make sure your models are low-mid poly. So for your car, I'd go for 1k-2k polys, for your map, i'd go for 5k polys or so.

If the problem persists, show me some ccde because you might have a memory leak somewhere.

ttys oby

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

Yeah, I am using LTE lite mod because I want my homebrew to run on any firmware and not only on kernel 1.50 so I needed it. I've fixed this problem a few weeks ago, but I was just wondering if you also had a limit around 1MB or if you found a way to load more textures.

I figured that you can actually set the heap size yourself if you remove it from the audio lib of LTE, because it is declared here.I've set mine to PSP_HEAP_SIZE_MAX().The problem is solved, don't worry :).

But I've an other bug now lol...And I tried many things but I was not able to find a solution.Parts of my objects too close from the camera disppear and become transparent ! I thought this parameter could be disabled but there is nothing written about that in the documentation.The only command I could read was "setAutomaticCulling", but it does not make any difference if I set it to false on my objects or on my camera using :

sg57 · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 154

Hey Oby

I haven't run into a memory problem yet where I couldn't load any textures. I don't know just how much I am loading but its gotta be more then a megabyte I'd say..

As for your problem - things disappear when they get too close to the camera because they are being culled by the GPU due to two (?) or more of their vertices being outside the view frustrum.

This will happen whenever you view any triangle close up OR the triangle itself is relatively large. The trick to fixing this annoyance is to clip those large triangles into smaller ones. (subdivide each triangle into 3 smaller triangles and repeat if needed).

Now LTE will do this for you, but its software clipping therefore you should ONLY do it to meshes with large triangles - so in your case your Car model doesn't need it where your track/map/terrain/etc. will need it since it will have large faces.

Each material of a mesh has a clipping flag that is disabled by default. If set to true, software clipping will be performed.

iceman755 · Joined: 21 Jul 2008 Posts: 34

For rotating and moving always in the object's Z direction do something like this (after setting object's rotation):

this is just taking into account the Y rotation, if you want it for full rotation (all axises) substitute 2nd line with commented one:

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

I'm really sorry I haven't replied earlier guys, I have been busy lately.
So my two problems are named local axis for rotation and camera culling/clipping.. But they are not solved yet :(.

I figured I was not using LTE lite mod SG57 ! I will try to update my engine, it should not be too difficult. I don't really need it for now, I am able to load everything without memory error.

But I can't fix this culling problem easily.My track has only one material and one texture, which is UV-mapped of course.If I set EMF_CULLING boolean to true, there is no more culling, but it lags a lot because it disable culling for the whole track :(. If I let it to false, I see big holes on the floor.. I also tried to find a better position for the camera so it does not cull anything, but it needs to be veerrryyy high, too high in fact.Do you have other ways to do it in mind ? Like disable clipping only for faces which are close to the camera :/ ? Maybe, I can set the size of the bounding box that the camera node uses to perform clipping and render faces that are (almost) behind the camera ? Thanks again.

I was not able to implement this rotation code yet in my program, I understand what it does but I will try it soon.Thanks a lot iceman !
I am going to search more about culling on irrlicht in google,

Oby.

EDIT : I've found a command in Irrlicht which should solve my problem.. But maybe I'm wrong or I don't use it well.It is :

sg57 · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 154

Hey Oby,

I heard you stopped by IRC, sorry I was still in class ;\

I saw a screenshot of your problem - it is most definitely the triangles being culled so you need to enable software clipping on that specific material.

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

Thanks again for your help sg57, no problem about the fact I missed you on IRC, I will try to catch you later :).
My track is around 4000 polygons. A_Nub has helped me a lot on IRC and he told me I could try to subdivide the model to reduce the clipping effect, but it lags too much.
He also told me to try to put the camera further and then change the FOV, but it distorts the view..
The whole track is clipped man, so I need to disable it for the whole track model :/. It does not lag THAT MUCH, so I think I will deal with it, if there is no way to set yourself the limit before objects are clipped..

I also owe you a lot iceman.
Your way of dealing with objects rotations by using a matrix and vectors is really nice, thanks a lot man ^^.

I am going to try to continue developping of my project and I will ask you if I get accross some bugs =),

Oby.

sg57 · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 154

Oby1,

You don't need to clip 'everything'. A_Nub did say to subdivide but enabling software clipping does that for you most efficiently.

I think you should get your 3D track model down to the lowest you can then just clip the ground. This means you need to separate the ground from the rest of the track using a separate material and just set that material to be clipped:

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

Thanks sg57 :).
Well, I've enabled clipping only for the parts of my track where it was needed and my game runs at 30 FPS, but it's enough smooth and I may add motion blur so people don't see it to much.
But sometimes, the game FPS increase and goes at 60 FPS.
I've set up a realistic car movement and rotation but it needs to be the same with any FPS.

I've written my speed formula so the speed increases or decrease according to FPS. However, it doesn't work well. I get the FPS framecount using LTE's getFPS function and a lot of people said it was a bad way of computing FPS to use it so movements speed stay the same. Do I need to lock FPS at 30 f/s or is there an other way to compute FPS so it works better ?

Thanks again folks,
Oby.

Jim · Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 487 Location: Sydney

Use a timer to get the elapsed time of the previous frame. Use that elapsed time as the input time for the next frame (as it's likely to take a similar time to render).

Jim
_________________
http://www.dbfinteractive.com

sg57 · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 154

As Jim said Oby.

I developed a Game Class around LTE Lite Mod that I am using for The World. I am doing it something like this - please note I just hacked this out of my game engine class so it won't be very pretty...

MistPhoenix · Joined: 12 Jul 2009 Posts: 23

Sg57, Iceman and everyone else that is contributing here, you guys are the greatest! I love how you all are teaching us and providing examples of code with explanation is the fastest way of learning.

I am noticing an increase in dev'ing with LTE. There should really be some good tuts on use with various engine implementations, such as game demos and how to do certain things to speed up the speed and gameplay efficiency.

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

Thanks Jim and SG57 :) !
I have barely understood what do I need to do to compute this coefficient myself. But I can't get your sample compiled SG57..It keeps giving me errors, wherever I put the function and all the stuff. I've tried the following code :

Jim · Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 487 Location: Sydney

Looks like you're trying to call functions like setupPSP() at a global scope instead of inside main(). In any event it's just a syntax error. Hard to tell 'cos you snipped the code.

Jim
_________________
http://www.dbfinteractive.com

Oby1Chick · Joined: 13 Feb 2010 Posts: 24

I'm back from holidays :).
Thanks Jim, you were right, and that was a stupid mistake >.> !
Now it works well, I can compute FPS way more efficiently than with the command getFPS().. However, I still have a weird problem.

Most of the time, FPS stays around 30. But in the turns of the track, it goes up to 60. And when FPS moves from 30 to 60 because I'm beginning to turn, the car "shakes" and "stirs". I really think I had better lock FPS.. do you guys know how to do that ? In documentation, it says I need to use vsync, but I don't know how to do that.

By the way, I had two other questions.
- How am I going to make the other car AI ? Do I need to create a path that the PSP-controlled car will always follow or do I need to set up a lot of points that the car will go through ?
- How can I check if the car has reached the end of the track without cheating and going on the wrong way ?

Thanks again a lot guys :D !
Oby.