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Implement quality levels for actors & corresponding setting.
AuditedrP25210

Description

Implement quality levels for actors & corresponding setting.

An actor file, as referenced by the VisualActor, can now define different actors for different "quality level" setting.
In this initial version, the quality is handled directly by the object manager.

Actor format impact:

  • '<qualitylevels>' may be used as the root node, containing actor nodes as children.
    • such actor nodes can refer to a file, or to an inline actor, or simply be inlined.
    • such actor nodes may have a 'quality' attribute, specifying the maximum quality level of this actor. By default, 255 (the maximum) is implied.
  • The actor format remains valid, but 'groups', 'variants', 'material', 'castshadow' and 'float' can be given a [minquality, maxquality[ range via XML attributes. Outside of this range, the XML node is ignored (making it possible to define, in a single actor file, several quality levels).

Quality is a 0-255 value, with:

  • Range 0-99 intended for lower level-of-detail actors (billboards, etc.)
  • Range 100-200 the 'normal' range for models. 100 is "low", 150 "medium", and 200 "high".
  • Range 201-255 used for higher quality actors that might be used for e.g. cinematics.

The range is wide to make it easier to add intermediate levels in the future and it seemed easier given that an integer value of some kind was required anyways.

Engine impacts:

  • A new CActorDef class is introduced, wrapping an art/actors XML file and its different quality levels. ObjectBase remains the definition of a given 'actor', now at a given quality level.
  • CActorDef imposes a maximal # of quality level for a particular actor definition (5 currently).
  • CUnit is made to refer to an Actor Definition explicitly, not a particular ObjectBase.
  • As a minor optimisation, variation keys are calculated on pointer-to-sets-of-selections, instead of raw sets-of-selections, as this reduces copying.
  • some refactoring, including better const-correctness and hotloading support via std::shared_ptr.

Differential Revision: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3787

Event Timeline

Stan added a subscriber: Stan.Apr 8 2021, 10:46 AM
Stan added inline comments.
/ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/gui/options/options.json
162

So we still have the L10n issue?

wraitii added inline comments.Apr 8 2021, 10:48 AM
/ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/gui/options/options.json
162

So we still have the L10n issue?

Yes, that needs to be fixed in messages.json by specifying a context

vladislavbelov raised a concern with this commit.Apr 9 2021, 8:14 AM
vladislavbelov added a subscriber: vladislavbelov.

actor.rnc shouldn’t be deleted.

/ps/trunk/source/graphics/ObjectBase.cpp
34

Braces on new lines.

906

Magic numbers should be avoided.

918

Magic numbers should be avoided.

/ps/trunk/source/graphics/ObjectManager.cpp
181

Clamp.

/ps/trunk/source/ps/ConfigDB.cpp
503

&& for unique_ptr doesn’t make much sense.

/ps/trunk/source/ps/ConfigDB.h
207

Wrong naming by CC.

This commit now has outstanding concerns.Apr 9 2021, 8:14 AM

actor.rnc shouldn’t be deleted.

I kinda wondered if someone would complain.
I can revert that particular change, but I would actually prefer to delete all .rnc files. IMO they are useless.

Stan raised a concern with this commit.Apr 15 2021, 11:47 AM
Stan added inline comments.
/ps/trunk/source/graphics/ObjectBase.cpp
768

This breaks actors hotloading.

Stan added a comment.Apr 15 2021, 11:52 AM

I can reproduce by taking art/actors/units/athenians/infantry_archer_b.xml and removing props one by one and saving the file each time I remove a prop.

Stan accepted this commit.

All concerns have been addressed.

All concerns with this commit have now been addressed.May 10 2021, 3:27 PM
Stan raised a concern with this commit.Jul 30 2021, 9:01 AM

This commit breaks the Run variation for some reason. (The actors don't have the same "seed" when in Run and Walk anymore after this)

This commit now has outstanding concerns.Jul 30 2021, 9:01 AM
In rP25210#53404, @Stan wrote:

This commit breaks the Run variation for some reason. (The actors don't have the same "seed" when in Run and Walk anymore after this)

Is there a replay or something somewhere with a little more detail? Does it happen systematically with all units?

wraitii added inline comments.Jul 31 2021, 10:31 AM
/ps/trunk/source/graphics/Unit.cpp
49–64

Here's what I missed for the https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/41264-alpha-25-pre-releaserelease-candidate-build-testing/page/14/?tab=comments#comment-444288 bug:
This actually sets ActorSelections (which I thought was unused in this diff) to a complete definition of selection for actually random groups. Which gets carried over to any other animation (aka entity selection). Thus the random groups remain the same because they're not actually picked at random, which is good.

What I need to do is get a first, no-entity-selection list of variants that I want for this CUnit from the actor, then reuse those all the time. Potentially, they'd get overwritten by the entity selections that have higher priority.

Stan accepted this commit.Aug 14 2021, 2:37 PM
All concerns with this commit have now been addressed.Aug 14 2021, 2:37 PM