Posts by Florian

Quote from jor[D]1

short spines are a must for good performance. Also the lexicon makes me understand a short is better.

Short splines still does not affect the performance ingame. In theory they produce more polygons in the final mesh, so they decrease the performance ingame by 0.00001 FPS or something like that. I still don't know, where you got the connection between my statement and the performance? If there are some tutorials or lexicon articles, which may be misunderstandable, we will edit them.

The conclusion is: Using short splines will affect the stability of the Map Editor in a positive way. The integrity of a short spline is higher than the integrity of a long spline. If you use long splines and big polygons, you will likely get more errors in the terrain or they lead to a miscalculation of some properties as it was in the thread you got my text from. So there are benefits when using short splines and that why we always mention it. But there is no connection between short splines and the performance.

Greets

Quote from Holms96

I am making short splines in order to have good FPS in LOTUS.

Where did you get this hoax from? And which length do you use?

Quote from Bzmot332

One platform is an object, another one is a spline. Should I make an invisible polygon there so the game doesn't compensate the height to the ground, or is there any other setting I can use for that?

At the moment the passengers are always "attached" to the ground, but in the future it should be possible to set a specific height to the waiting passengers. The most common way would be, if the platform cuts the terrain. As far as I learned this will cause many errors in the terrain, so the most platforms are standard splines (or even objects). For now the method sziriusz12 mentioned should be fine, until the LOTUS passengers will stand on the exact height by themselves.

Greets

Hi,

Quote from Bzmot332

Is it some new checking stuff, also should I worry about it?

At first, you don't have to worry about that and this is not new.

There is already a faulty element in your map, so this message will always be displayed, when the tile is loaded. If you click on ok, the Map Editor will delete the faulty element. The faulty element is either a spline, a subgrade, a railtrack or a path. Afterwards you have to find out, which element was deleted, but do not put down the exact same element again. It is useful to split the new element into smaller length, which may help the Map Editor not getting a struggle on it again.

So basically the Map Editor prevents the map from being messed up by a faulty element.

Greets

Quote from Frank III

[MEDIA:https://youtu.be/wSYgnH07xe4]

Sorry, I completely missed this video, which has some interesting points in it.

First of all I want to point out, that investing into PC hardware is not the glory to solve all problems. It is more likely to fix some problems to get other problems somewhere else. So the second part of the puzzle are the options and I guess to optimize the graphics options has more impact on the performance than any Euro you spent.

Also this doesn't take LOTUS and its optimization out of the equation. But vice versa nobody with an average PC should play LOTUS with bunch of heavy stutters. You may have to reduce your graphics settings for a time. And last but not least there is no need to play on the maximum graphics settings. Beside that the presets are only presets and have to be adjusted for the best performance on your special system.

So let's jump into the video:

I partially skipped through the video while you were driving, but I've seen a quite stable FPS around 30 (which is quite ok regarding your settings), but there are tons of stutters when reloading. If you have a second monitor, you can put the Task manager on your second screen to watch the usage of your hard drive, LOTUS is installed on. If I'm right, there should be spikes in the diagram when a stutter occurs. To minimize them, let's go through your settings:

These 3 settings are a bit over the top. As we currently got mostly tram routes, a max visibility of 1000 m for buildings is enough imo, 500 m should be enough for trees. The settings for 3D trees can be set to the second lowest setting on the left.

The first slider defines, when the max resolution of the scenery is loaded and for now this setting gives me headaches some times. I would recommend to put this setting more to the left, to decrease the stutter. The terrain detail slider can be set always to the left on "low", because it is not needed yet, because the maps are mostly flat.

I hope this reduces the stuttering without having much impact on your graphics.

Greets

Quote from Florian

after selecting a possible type of sleepers on the right side

I guess you missed this part of my message. As the warning on your screen says, you have to select a flexible sleeper out of the objects listed on the right side. You have to question yourself, how should the Map Editor know, which kind of sleepers you want, if you don't tell him?

Quote from Balzska

Where can I put to make an orange line in the switch

Click on "Tie line" on the left side of the menu, then on New after selecting a possible type of sleepers on the right side.

Greets

Quote from Frank III

You run it with Wine?

Kinda like. Valve made an investment into Wine to get more and more games running on Linux. So the keyword is named Proton, which is based on Wine.

Quote from Frank III

It's interesting to port this to Linux, mainly to see how it behaves in a very lightweight system installation.

To be fair, I got the complete opposite of a lightweight Linux, but LOTUS runs very smooth on a Kubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Quote from Holms96

Julian Hey sorry for bothering you. How do i enable those sounds on maps? Do i have to remove rails and put new ones again??

Hi,

you can change the rail quality in the properties window of a rail segment either to Froggy smooth or Froggy rough. Afterwards the sound will play, when you drive on the rail with the froggy rail quality.

Greets

Hi,

we got some tutorials for the Map Editor in the lexicon: lexicon or in video tutorials: video tutorials for further information. Beside that, I'll try to keep the explanation short.

So the first thing you should know is, that the Map Editor has two height systems. On one hand you got the absolute height, e.g. for subgrades and rails, on the other hand you got the relative height, e.g. for splines and polygons. And last but not least you got the terrain, which is based on the real world terrain. But the data for the terrain is still in a quite bad resolution and has some calculation issues. This is the point where the rail shines in. The rail has an absolute height, because also in reality the rail never follows the terrain. It is more likely the other way round. So it is in LOTUS. At the moment the best practice is to lay the rail track, maybe edit the settings for this track and afterwards you lay down a subgrade by using the parallel function.

It may be helpful to try some stuff from the tutorials to get in touch with the Map Editor. It may seem quite complex in the beginning, I have to admit.

Greets

Hi,

there are some settings in the graphics option, which have an effect on this. But first I need to know something.

@Kinza DeAllura: Although you have a good PC, the FPS is slightly bad. So there might be some optimizations needed to get a better performance. Did you take a look at your graphics settings? Which preset do you use?

Extrasuperkev Did you also changed this setting?

Quote from Orioon

Is this an early access thing

Kinda like. The fences, hedges and so on have the least priority when loading. Unfortunately they are in the most cases near the vehicle when driving. There may be some enhancements in the future.

Greets

Hi, I hope the lexicon article increased the performance a bit. If not, then try some stuff:

- VSync off (I hate Vsync )

- For a personal interest: Does it change something when turning off normal maps?

- Load max resolution scenery to the far left

- Tick every reduced mesh checkbox

- Untick Live Aesthetics

As far as we tested, there should be a slightly better performance on Dusseldorf than on Munich.

And last but not least: The lags are based on loading or based on low FPS?

Greets

Hello,

there are several causes for this problem. First of all, please remember, if this splines was maybe placed on an other layer than 0. Otherwise a refresh with this button helps quite a lot, because sometimes the wireframe doesn't get deleted on the first refresh after the spline gets deleted.

If the problem persists, we need to dive deeper.

Greets

Line breaks are mostly made with "<br>".

Greets

Quote from TheMasterOfDisaster

Better able to multitask.

But only for video rendering.

Greets

Quote from Bzmot332

If you have a road for example which is a bit complex (two sidewalks on each side, a separated grassy part between the roads, I don't know), and the road is almost the same for kilometres long (except a few parts), then what do you do?

The two maps, I created, don't have such roads and for me it is annoying to change the program often, so I would prefer polygons. Sometimes I use sidewalk splines, but that's all.

Quote from Bzmot332

But building complex roads on slopes or hills is not that pleasant (with polygons)

Can you tell an example of such a problem?

Quote from Bzmot332

Maybe it's not the editor's fault, more like the lack of documentation, if almost everyone do it wrong.

The editor has some simple "rules" when using polygons. An example: If the Map Editor should merge the surface to one mesh, you can help the editor by placing your polygons "smart".

A thing I recommend to everybody, who is creating surface splines, are "cutting meshes". These are very helpful, but in fact not properly documented. The conclusion is, it is more likely to get holes in the terrain when using the content beside the base content from LOTUS.

Quote from TNH

1. Well, you are the developer, not me, so you should know. There are games out there which works way smoother even the are finished and more complex than LOTUS.

Quote from TNH

A good start could be that the game could store only parameters of splines, so you shouldn't refresh your map every single time, and it wouln't be stored in the tile files, which could drastically decrease the size of maps.

You can't change fundamentals of LOTUS. When you want to decrease the size of maps, you have to decrease the number of cuts in the terrain.

Quote from TNH

but just don't get upset because someone has another way of thinking and just don't see the point. We, as creators would like to have a nearly perfect program, but we want developers who listen, not mute voices who don't agree with them.

Well let's conclude this topic at all. Someone posted a screenshot with a road made of errors next to an huge amount of hours to create these errors. Then the discussion escalated quickly. I asked some questions and everybody was offended. In the end I'm tired of reading sentences like "Your source code is shit", "The program is buggy", "Give me 10 hours and I create a better LOTUS", "Other games work like a charm", "LOTUS is not complex, so why is the FPS low" and so on. And don't get me wrong, I'm just cynical, not upset. Maybe that is fallen flat when translating from German to English and from English to Hungarian.

Last thought: My point was to provide the solution, the Map Editor is optimized for. Not changing anyones mind.

Greets

Quote from TNH

Easier option than making an optimized game..

Please share your great ideas, where we can optimize the game. I'm curious.

Quote from Bzmot332

No, not all the roads look the same. But there are hundreds and hundreds meter of roads where it is (on one place, in one street for example). Also, please tell me how the road isn't the same on all the pictures I can see in the forum. In the official maps, in the DLC, in the thread you posted...etc. All of them use mostly ONE road texture as polygon. Putting one patch texture around a kilometer doesn't make the roads unique.

It is not the texture, it is the shape of the road. Is it that hard to understand?

Quote from Bzmot332

On the second question: what I meant is that a spline just simply shouldn't make that much more polygons on the map than the buggy polygon tool itself. Unless there are some pretty huge problems with the program. But sure, getting mad solves problems like the huge unoptimalization of terrain reservations (like you place a kilometre of track, and square-kilometres of DEM terrain is packaged to the map, taking up hundreds of MBs) or the into-terrain saved splines.

The polygon tool is buggy? Please tell me more. If you got issues, then tell us, otherwise they don't get fixed. Besides that there is no other point in this discussion anymore.

Greets

Quote from Bzmot332

No offense, but I'd really like to see you or anyone from the staff doing a mountain road using only polygons.

No need for that, there is a good example: Twinaue

Quote from Bzmot332

I have no clue why it had benefits if I used distinct road curb splines AND polygons instead of using only one single spline.

Does every road in Hungary looks like the same? No road bumps? No car parkings?

Quote from Bzmot332

If the code behind the map editor is not that garbage, then it shouldn't make a difference

Just because of this stupid sentence, I won't answer this question at all.

Quote from Bzmot332

(on the other hand the rail ties DO CAUSE a problem, since God knows why every spline is formed into the terrain in LOTUS, and that means using even a tie of 10-15 polygons can cause plus gigabytes of harddrive space on a bigger map, not speaking about the default ones which have way more polygons...)

Quote from Bzmot332

Also, what do you mean by debugging? In OMSI it was possible to open tile files with a single text editor, and look for errorous parts (like I don't know, kilometre long splines placed -200m deep...etc). But as I see all the tile files are coded, so can you tell us how is it possible to debug so?

It is not possible to debug any container. It was just a comparison.

Quote from Balzska

Quote from Florian

Especially the road splines, that overlap each other, are nonsense. Why would you do this?

I know it is terrible. So this will be good way? How ai will come in the splines/roads? How can we will set in Editor?

This is definitely a better way.

I'm in doubt, that the spline will help you in any case for placing ai paths.

Quote from TNH

Excuse me but I can't agree with it. I am also using my own road splines to make even shorter streets, because it's much easier to add abbrasion and markers later on.

And also, making a small elevation with polys are terrifying, while working with splines is a way easier method.

Of course I don't overlap them, but in smaller intersections I use the spline for the main road and then expand with polys.

I recently had an argument with someone, who proclaimed a scrappy solution as an easier way. The result of this conversation was, that we want the Map Editor used as intended. And the intention is to use a lot of polygons to create an unique looking scenery. If you found an other way to build maps, it is fine. But of course, it is our aim, that users learn the functions of the Map Editor as intended. You can compare this with source code. The scrappy one may work too, but at the time you want to debug it, your are screwed. I guess, I will do a specific tutorial video about the Map Editor soon. The things you mentioned, like abrasion and markers also as elevations, work like a charm when using polygons. But that might be to much to write in this case.

I guess this discussion gets cut from the map thread.

Greets