Author Topic: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder  (Read 937 times)

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Offline Epona

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Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« on: October 04, 2011, 06:59:51 AM »
Hey guys,
I recently contacted Xigmatek (famous youtube modder of crysis) and asked him his thoughts on MWLL.
He said that the mod is really cool, and that he would like to help create some weapon and explosion effects (that is what he does best!)
Check out some of his stuff here http://www.youtube.com/user/Xigmatek
And I'm not sure how much of a help he could be, but I tried.

Offline shadowkiller

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2011, 01:45:57 PM »
Sorry but im not impressed. Those particles LOOK good however they are VERY performance intensive. Stock crysis ones already make the game slow to a crawl and those would make it unplayable. I made 95% of the particles in mwll (all the weapon effects, mech effects and some map effects) and have had to simplify them as much as possible just to make things run at a decent speed. Zigmatek just jacked up the sprite count, lifetime and size on alot of the crysis effects without much thought to performance. Mwll particles have MUCH longer view distances (about 8x crysis ones) and their are MANY more on the screen at one time then in crysis. Im already pushing the limit of what the particle system can do, its one of the main reasons mwlls performance isnt great. Adding effects like these would doom the game to less then 10 fps on even the beefiest computers. Its easy to make a decent looking effect with tons of sprites, i would be much more impressed if he could get those kinda of effects with as few sprites per effect as possible. Each explosion in his video probably has upwards of 2000-5000 sprites per effect, try achieving that look with a max of about 500 per effect. Even that is pushing it depending on how many are being spawned at once. The nuke has about 1000-1500 max and im sure everyone has seen the 10-20fps hit you take when one goes off. Try that with 5x the sprite count per effect and have several going off at the same time. Things add up VERY quickly.


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Online Urishima }12thVR{

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2011, 01:51:08 PM »
It would probably instagib every Computer playing the game at the time...
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Offline Askis

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2011, 02:22:58 PM »
If he can create performance crippling particle effects he might also be able to do good-looking ones that are performance friendly ;)

I don't think it'd hurt to let him do an effect or two and see if they're alright for MWLL use, unless of course additional particle effects devs aren't necessary atm.

Offline shadowkiller

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2011, 02:35:33 PM »
Im all for someone new coming in to take my place as particle guru, it just requires more creative thinking in order to get good looking effects with much less sprites. ;) Its also much more then just sprite count, things like lifetime, sprite size, effect scale, draw distances, overdraw, alpha blending etc all come into play. Our effects are larger then crysis ones with less sprites. That means you have to increase the size of each sprite in order to fill the same space and avoid holes/gaps in the effect. You cant make them too big or the sprite textures look really low res. It also cover more screen space, the more screen space it covers the more alpha blending the engine has to do and ce2 is HORRIBLE with layering alpha channels. Particles dont occlude anything, that means the things behind it are still being drawn and the engine has to layer all those alpha channels over top of whats being drawn. The more of the screen the particles fill the more objects are having alphas blended over top of them. Thats why things like smoke are so brutal on performance, especially if your standing right inside it. It has to blend all of the smoke sprite alphas together and then render that on top of everything else behind it.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2011, 02:54:31 PM by shadowkiller »


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Offline Epona

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2011, 09:04:56 PM »
Thank you for sharing shadowkiller, by the way I think you've done an amazing job with the effects! It's honestly my favorite part of the game ;)

Offline Knightcrawler

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2011, 09:48:20 PM »
You never know. He may be up to the challenge of efficiency.

Offline Ralux

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #7 on: October 07, 2011, 02:36:49 AM »
Just stumbled across his channel from a different source... Actually I forgot where I came from, probably some Crysis 1 on consoles released news post..

Was totally stunned by some of his effects... And they did not look that bad performance wise, look at his older videos where he only uses a single gtx285 to render all those explosions on very high - still no hit in fps.

Nothing against you, shadowkiller, you've done some seriously great work as well. Team up with this guy and MWLL will become truly outstanding gfx wise...

Offline ELH_Vivicector

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #8 on: October 07, 2011, 06:34:17 AM »
AFAIK, there is a command to lower the speed of cryengine rendering. You can set a limit of 1 FPS for the engine and then use video editor to speed things up and get non-laggy video. So, good performance in the video means nothing.

Offline shadowkiller

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #9 on: October 07, 2011, 12:25:03 PM »
Dont get me wrong, the guy can make some great looking effects. The problem is that mwll is much more intensive then crysis and even stock crysis effects perform TERRIBLY with mwll and these are even more intensive then that. I wish we could get away with effects like this, but the fact is that its just not going to happen no matter how much you want it to. If hes willing to do work on the mod im all for it, especially considering i have been pretty much inactive for some time now. Im sure he would probably be able to make some pretty decent looking effects but they will still be extremely stripped down and simplified compared to his other ones in order to maintain a decent performance level. You wont be seeing any effects like the ones in his videos in mwll so there is no point in getting your hopes up. You also have to keep in mind that its not just the effects being rendered. There are thousands of other things going on that have to be rendered and the effects have to be simple enough that it wont hurt performance when they are spawned. There is a big difference between effects being rendered ingame with other things going on and a big flat map with almost nothing on it and that 1 effect being played. It is IMPOSSIBLE to determine the performance impact of an effect from a video alone. Like vivicector mentioned its possible to render out each frame into a smooth video even if its going at 1 frame every hour. Thats how all those 10,000 physics barrel videos are possible. Those 1 min videos take hours to render, only after its done and compiled into a video is it smooth. I admit there are some effects in mwll that dont look so great and could use some work but its still not gonna be like your hoping for.


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Offline Ralux

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #10 on: October 07, 2011, 01:50:20 PM »
Ok, I didn't know about that fps limit thingy.

But if he's able to do such effects he should also be able to do much less.... 'complex' effects as well, no? Sure they won't look like THAT but still not bad probably. Man, 4 years after Crysis 1 we still need new rigs for this game... :D
Hope NV and AMD release the 28nm gfx soon, that should be a huge jump.

Offline sleepysheep

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #11 on: October 07, 2011, 09:21:30 PM »
Ok, I didn't know about that fps limit thingy.

But if he's able to do such effects he should also be able to do much less.... 'complex' effects as well, no? Sure they won't look like THAT but still not bad probably. Man, 4 years after Crysis 1 we still need new rigs for this game... :D
Hope NV and AMD release the 28nm gfx soon, that should be a huge jump.

It's not just Graphic cards but CPU that are trailing behind for MWLL. And you don't need new 28nm GC to play MWLL with awsome effects, just SLI/crossfire, with the best of the best. Oh and made sure you robbed a bank before hand.
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Offline Ralux

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #12 on: October 07, 2011, 10:27:56 PM »
I won't go for SLI/Xfire, way too many disadvantages. I put my bets on the next midrange class cards, should be a bit faster than current high end and much more affordable...

Offline sleepysheep

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #13 on: October 08, 2011, 02:33:54 PM »
I won't go for SLI/Xfire, way too many disadvantages. I put my bets on the next midrange class cards, should be a bit faster than current high end and much more affordable...

I dont get microstutters, so only the heat is a disadvantage tbh. Oh and the price. I would prefere one card/gpu instead of two but thats not going to happen for a very long time. The gtx580 is the first card to match the power of a 5970. Just shows it takes a while for tech to catch up, but there is no chance a new mid range card is going to beat a top end card at the moment, might get close though else nvidia and ati wouldnt sell anything else!!!!
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Offline Ralux

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Re: Xigmatek: Famous Crysis Modder
« Reply #14 on: October 08, 2011, 05:41:52 PM »
The chance is very high actually. Midrange cards are those around $200 for me.

Just look at what the shrink from 55nm to 40nm (-37,5% structure size) did. A midrange hd5850 clearly beat the high end nv card at that time: the gtx285 - and that one had quite the edge over a hd4890 of ATIs last gen.

40nm to 28nm means an even bigger decrease in structure size: -42,8%. Time to double the cores again - I'll bet on at least 50% increase in performance for midrange cards.

Oh and micro stutters in some games and the price of the cards aren't the only disadvantages. You also have to buy a more expensive PSU, MB and pay a higher power bill. Oh and the noise, ugh (unless you invest in an even more expensive water cooling system...) - I'll stay with single cards. Twice the performance means like 5 times the price if you don't like a turbine right under your desk...