Cryostasis Performance Mod

[Xiaopang]

Originally Posted by shaq

How does that water cannon work anyway? If they are already frozen it must be hot water that comes out and melts them. Maybe that is boiling water that makes the sound when you have the water cannon in your hand. lol So it wouldn't freeze the ground unfortunately.

yeah it must be hot water and it's a very powerful weapon. i constantly switched to it once i got used to the low range. i also thought it would shoot cold water and found that rather odd, considering that all the enemies crave the cold, but then someone actually wrote it was hot... that makes sense, since you can also see steam rise up when it's being used. also, since it's sooo cold in there, the water would cool down and freeze quickly you know the outcome of that famous experiment where you put equal amounts of boiling water and ice together? what will happen?

Originally Posted by shaq

I beat the game before the patch came out and it was missing a lot of the effects that were in the benchmark last year. There weren't any blue sparks and a lot less water was in the game. I believe only on the walls and none dripping from the ceiling and none from any of the pipes. Also the locker doors weren't movable and none of the extra cans and barrels. I don't think you could even knock the barrels and shovels off of the wall. So it is much better now than before.

wow, how limited. great patch then!

Originally Posted by shaq

One of us needs to see if we can add more enemies at least to add more tension to the game. It should be definitely possible to decrease the players health to make it harder and maybe less damage per shot.

i think the player's health is fine. meddling with that might also throw the game off balance in sections that are designed that you barely make it through alive. for example the outside areas, where your health can drop to zero quickly. i also think that the power of the shots are fine. after all it takes 3 bullets to even a simple servant down. just upping the numbers of enemies should be enough to keep the game interesting. the more important question is, whether or not the enemies could deal with the cramped space if suddenly like 5 or more would gang up on the player. they might get stuck

Originally Posted by shaq

Did you get CM10? I downloaded all 10+GB of it the last two days. lol There is a beta3 patch on top of the 9GB base file.

oh no. somehow i never had the urge to mess with it. i'm not much of a mod fan unless it comes to the cinematic mod.

Originally Posted by shaq

I don't see why you need 64-bit Windows though as I only see it use up to 450MB so far. I already preordered it for $50 so I just use the RC. I got it since I only have XP and Windows 7 has DX10 and 11 so I had to get it. And $50 is crazy cheap for an OS.

yeah, that is really cheap. may be even the cheapest windows there ever was (and most likely will be). as for 64bit, ram consumption has little to do with that. the memory allocation limitation is limited to single applications or services. windows itself uses dozens, with explorer being the biggest. yet, it rarely gets over 200MB, so there is enough headroom for that. 64 bit operating systems have other strengths, e.g. you can utilize the full power of your 64bit cpu, meaning that windows can access additional hardware supported features, instead of emulating those through software, or not being able to utilize them at all. using a 32bit OS on a 64bit cpu forces it into 32bit mode and making it deactive its 64bit enhancements. it's like driving a car. using 32bit would equal driving in town. you'd disable the 4th and 5th gear, because you can't drive that fast anyway (in this case technology limits your speed and not the law lol). 64bit would be driving on a highway which would allow you to use your full potential and full speed. other important features are practically getting rid of the limitation of memory paging, because each page can now be up to 18TB in size, while in XP those were limited to 4MB. if you load a game like cryostasis in xp and it eats 1gb of ram, then that gb will be split to 250 pages and handling those is much slower than accessing only 1 big page with all the data in it. but enough for that...microsoft released a many thousand pages thick document that lists all of vistas new features, of which many include performance enhancements for 64bit architecture. no way to give an even slightly comprehensive list here... only consider this: always update, because newer software can usually make the best use of newer hardware

Originally Posted by shaq

There is an RC of Batman? Where? Where? It's still a month away, but Wolfenstein will be out next week. I have to get that one. And don't get me started on next year. About 20-30 really good games are scheduled to come out. lol It will be almost as good as 2004 was for gaming.

just kidding i once saw a video of wolfenstein a year ago and it looked only merely better than return to castle wolfenstein. i hope that was just an early beta and the game gives me a good reason for having a high-end gfx-card

Originally Posted by shaq

I actually like the water though. Have you tried it at 20,000 through the whole game? I am halfway through and I am liking it. There may be a hard limit to the overall number of particle effects and it could be determined by the engine itself. Did you try lowering everything else before you upped the water value? It might make a difference.

oh yes, as i said earlier, i beat the game unmodified first. but i also remember using lower shader settings through half the game. btw, i uploaded another pic with half the particle count (check the post above). the pic looks like there wouldn't be much of a difference, but it looked a lot worse animated. you could clearly see those thin sparks, that are only present when you deactivate advanced physics.

there is a way to modify values in ram. i guess this would be the only way to reliably check for a cap. having to re-start the game after changing the values is just too tedious. the alternative would be to use a level cheat to directly jump into a water-heavy level.

[shaq]

okay. It looks like the bullets, sparks and icicles can be lowered to 200 or so but the water needs to be at 20,000. It really is hard to notice the difference between high default particles and at 200. If you showed them side by side you may notice but in game it was very hard to tell. There are still a bunch of them. And when you have a heavy scene with bullets, water and sparks happening it should give higher frame rates. You can go to the console and switch levels "map bios***" to test the settings and use "giveall" to get all the weapons. It doesn't take long that way.

And for adding enemies it would be better to add an extra one or two. That way some could go for cover and the rest chase after you. It depends on how the scripts are written. You might be able to change them per level or even per room. I wonder if there is a console command for spawning enemies?

I was referring to Cinematic Mod 10 above. I'm not sure if you understood. It is 10GB download and uncompressed it is 17.5GB! I had to move a couple of games out of Steam for it. You have to leave everything in the same directory for Steam to work unfortunately. I don't want to keep buying larger hard drives for Steam. lol If you buy from D2D, GamersGate, EBGames etc. you can install wherever you want.

[Xiaopang]

thanks for the console commands! i'm gonna try that right away! your idea for the enemy spawning is nice. i checked out the level scripts and found two commands that look useful: AddCharacter and AddThisCharacter. They might be used for spawning. i'll try that out. I doubt there is a console command for spawning, because that would require you to specify the level and the spawning location. that and much more information is being loaded through the level script. too complex for a console command if you ask me. would also not be helpful at all. after all, the game doesn't throw enemies dynamically at the player, but always uses the same enemies in the same locations, so there's little point in a command to make them re-spawn. quicksave would be all you need to test the spawning

Originally Posted by shaq

I was referring to Cinematic Mod 10 above. I'm not sure if you understood. It is 10GB download and uncompressed it is 17.5GB!

silly me...i misinterpreted that as an abbreviation for gary's mod...
as for the size, wow! the last time i used it was cinematic mod 4 and that was may be 2 years ago....6 versions in that time...incredible, but i wonder why the installation is so big? did the author crank up the resolution again?

i had cinematic mod 4 for both hl2 and episode 1 combined into a single directory to cancel out dupes and compressed both games with the mod down to 3GB...i had planned to wait until episode 2 is released to add it into that package and burn it on dvd...i guess i can start over now lol

sounds like steam limits you quite a lot. i only used it once, so i don't have a point of reference, but good to know!
I had problems using mods with steam. may be it's me, but i only got cinematic mod to work after using the non-steam version of hl2, so i'm not that much of a steam fan at all.


Update: Alright I checked out your sparks values. 200 doesn't look that much different from the original value. It seems this is not the number of sparks, but rather the lifetime of them. I thought the amount of sparks was just the same, but they didn't bounce around that long. Anyway, 200 looks more realistic to me and i like it. I also set it to 100 for a try and that would be even more realistic, because many sparks didn't even reach the ground. However, 200 looks nicer.

I also experimented with the fluidbulletshells (10) and fluidicicles (100) and i couldn't point out the difference to the original values with either weapon. I thought the fluidicicles defined the amount of water particles that would be generated for the water gun. When I swing the gun back and forth in a rapid fashion I can see the stream break up into smaller water batches. I thought raising the value might keep it more consistent in those cases, but that didn't work. If you look on the ground while using the water gun, you can see the particles flowing away, so may be this also defines just the lifetime of this effect. I hadn't checked that out though. This might also explain why raising the water particle count of 20.000 doesn't result in more particles. the values for these effects seem to be stored in other scripts. of course, lowering the value would kill off many particles early on before you would even get to see them and thats why it looked like that value would influence the particle count directly. Anyway...I still don't know what the fluidbulletshells variable does. I thought it might have an impact on the watergun's bullet, or the shells that the other guns throw out during shooting, but I couldn't see a difference to the original value. Any idea?

Also, could you try something? Whenever I deactivate anisotropic filtering before starting a game, I don't get to see the prologue. Does that happen to you too? Which kind of version of the game are you playing, US or European?

Btw, using the give watergun cheat also gives you all weapons + the watergun, which you don't get with give all
Funny stuff: use the give watergun cheat during mental echoes, especially in the first level. It's kind of fun to watergun your huskies while they drag your sled. You can't kill them though. Also cool: in those outdoor mental echoes and in the very beginning of the first level before you open the hatch into the ship, all your weapons have a snow and ice encrusted texture. I can't remember having seen that while playing the game for the first time. Kind of makes it look like a deterioration effect from Far Cry 2. Another interesting thing that happened while using the water gun in a mental echo was that my arms and the gun from the mental echo were transported to the real world and floated in the air. The game resets your weapon slots after each mental echo (at least in the first level), so I was surprised to move after the end of an echo and not seeing my hands move with me. It also looks funny in the echo where you work your way up to the ship. When you have a weapon ready during the standup animation, you get to see 3 hands: two that push you up and one that holds the weapon

[shaq]

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

thanks for the console commands! i'm gonna try that right away! your idea for the enemy spawning is nice. i checked out the level scripts and found two commands that look useful: AddCharacter and AddThisCharacter. They might be used for spawning. i'll try that out. I doubt there is a console command for spawning, because that would require you to specify the level and the spawning location. that and much more information is being loaded through the level script. too complex for a console command if you ask me. would also not be helpful at all. after all, the game doesn't throw enemies dynamically at the player, but always uses the same enemies in the same locations, so there's little point in a command to make them re-spawn. quicksave would be all you need to test the spawning

I was wondering if you could spawn in the console just to test it out. It would spawn them in the same room when you typed the command. Hopefully one of those commands will work for adding enemies. Are they specified per room on the level scripts? I haven't counted but there might be 30-40 rooms per level including echoes. lol It would take an afternoon to modify the whole game.

Maybe you could make a water grenade weapon while you're at it? lol That's my idea for a new weapon. Maybe a water balloon would work better? lol

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

silly me...i misinterpreted that as an abbreviation for gary's mod...as for the size, wow! the last time i used it was cinematic mod 4 and that was may be 2 years ago....6 versions in that time...incredible, but i wonder why the installation is so big? did the author crank up the resolution again?

i had cinematic mod 4 for both hl2 and episode 1 combined into a single directory to cancel out dupes and compressed both games with the mod down to 3GB...i had planned to wait until episode 2 is released to add it into that package and burn it on dvd...i guess i can start over now lol

sounds like steam limits you quite a lot. i only used it once, so i don't have a point of reference, but good to know!
I had problems using mods with steam. may be it's me, but i only got cinematic mod to work after using the non-steam version of hl2, so i'm not that much of a steam fan at all.

I think with 5 on up it required a 64 bit OS. I just downloaded Win 7 RC x64 so I could try it out. I think you can still get it until next week. It might take you that long to get 10 though. lol There aren't many places to dl it yet. I got it off a torrent and it took over a day to get it. Almost all the textures are high-res and it includes mods for all three now (HL2 and EP1 and EP2). Wait you mean you were waiting for episode 3 right? When that comes out it will be up to 12-13 and will be about 22GB. lol

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

Update: Alright I checked out your sparks values. 200 doesn't look that much different from the original value. It seems this is not the number of sparks, but rather the lifetime of them. I thought the amount of sparks was just the same, but they didn't bounce around that long. Anyway, 200 looks more realistic to me and i like it. I also set it to 100 for a try and that would be even more realistic, because many sparks didn't even reach the ground. However, 200 looks nicer.

I also experimented with the fluidbulletshells (10) and fluidicicles (100) and i couldn't point out the difference to the original values with either weapon. I thought the fluidicicles defined the amount of water particles that would be generated for the water gun. When I swing the gun back and forth in a rapid fashion I can see the stream break up into smaller water batches. I thought raising the value might keep it more consistent in those cases, but that didn't work. If you look on the ground while using the water gun, you can see the particles flowing away, so may be this also defines just the lifetime of this effect. I hadn't checked that out though. This might also explain why raising the water particle count of 20.000 doesn't result in more particles. the values for these effects seem to be stored in other scripts. of course, lowering the value would kill off many particles early on before you would even get to see them and thats why it looked like that value would influence the particle count directly. Anyway...I still don't know what the fluidbulletshells variable does. I thought it might have an impact on the watergun's bullet, or the shells that the other guns throw out during shooting, but I couldn't see a difference to the original value. Any idea?

I believe the number in the init.cfg is the total number at one time. So as new sparks/bullets/icicles/water appear the old ones have to disappear to keep it under the maximum value. That would explain why they don't spread along the floor. Have you tried raising any of the sparks to 20000? That could be interesting. lol There must be a way to determine the maximum values for each setting somewhere. It might even be in the nvidia drivers for all I know. I assumed the bullets value was for the spent bullet casing physx. If so it would only affect the ppsh, but it might be for the water cannon too. If both look the same with reduced values then it can be lowered to 200 or less. Try a really low value and shoot the ppsh and see if there are less casings. I don't think I even noticed if the casings stay on the floor after shooting.

Originally Posted by Xiaopang

Also, could you try something? Whenever I deactivate anisotropic filtering before starting a game, I don't get to see the prologue. Does that happen to you too? Which kind of version of the game are you playing, US or European?

Btw, using the give watergun cheat also gives you all weapons + the watergun, which you don't get with give all
Funny stuff: use the give watergun cheat during mental echoes, especially in the first level. It's kind of fun to watergun your huskies while they drag your sled. You can't kill them though. Also cool: in those outdoor mental echoes and in the very beginning of the first level before you open the hatch into the ship, all your weapons have a snow and ice encrusted texture. I can't remember having seen that while playing the game for the first time. Kind of makes it look like a deterioration effect from Far Cry 2. Another interesting thing that happened while using the water gun in a mental echo was that my arms and the gun from the mental echo were transported to the real world and floated in the air. The game resets your weapon slots after each mental echo (at least in the first level), so I was surprised to move after the end of an echo and not seeing my hands move with me. It also looks funny in the echo where you work your way up to the ship. When you have a weapon ready during the standup animation, you get to see 3 hands: two that push you up and one that holds the weapon

You mean the movie when you start a new game? I leave AF off and when I start a new game the movie starts and then I hit esc to skip it. lol At least I do that while I am testing the new numbers. I have US version but they should all be the same. In yours do you have Chronos spinning around on the main menu? lol just kidding Yeah I noticed about the giveall.

With spawning new enemies I don't know how that would affect the pacing of the game. Is there a way for enemies to open doors? Just imagine you just shot two baddies and you take a breath and relax and then BOOM! the door opens just as you were getting ready to walk out. lol I'm pretty sure that is possible. Or even open up the door behind you as you are leaving. It would make the game much better and more intense. Right now it is kind of like Doom 3 where only a couple of enemies are on the screen at one time. Or like on the movie screen when the boss pops out, maybe they could just appear in front or behind you.