The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

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law56ker
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The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

Post by law56ker »

Hello everyone, I am posting a topic about The Ascension Of Vigil, an amazing quake Mod by Tyne. I would post about it in the quake development forums, but that forum is so buried that no one ever responds. The last known release of this mod was hosted on Tyne's website that is no longer in existance. I was wondering and hoping someone had this last build.

Also, does anyone know what became of Tyne and his mod? I'd appreciate if someone could get in contact in Tyne and ask him about this. He might have a newer update, he didn't have a place to host ever since his website went down. This was a great mod for quake and the dreamcast and it would be a shame to see it lost.

This is the last known release of the game, but it's a broke link! Does anyone have this file?

http://renegadec.digitalfunk.org/TAoVBeta.rar [Approx. 33 Megabytes]
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Re: The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

Post by Tyne »

I'm here.
Never rub the Quake Forum off as dead again ;)

Latest TAoV is there.

[Edit]
P.S Best way to reach me is #qc channel on irc.anynet.org:6667. Under RennyC.
"I'm convinced RenegadeC is in fact not a human, but rather an experimental IRC/QuakeC bot who has the ability to randomly formulate mods and code them, programmed to have a distinct Canadian personality as well."
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Re: The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

Post by Basil »

So this one is working on Dreamcsat ?
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Re: The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

Post by Tyne »

Simple answer No

Long answer: A few beta levels may run and be fully playable but you'll find the main levels run out of ram and crash.
Problem is music is kept in the RAM itself, it's not streamed - a HUGE memory hog; DC has very limited amount
of memory where you're stuck doing this - make simple Quake mods. If you can get TAoV running on DC, consider
yourself freaking lucky by downsizing the hell out of everything and optimizing to the point you're butchering,
even having Codename: Envenom running was luck of the draw.

I believe the compilers for certain hardware suck too, even the Xbox 1 port crashes a lot in TAoV and it SHOULD be
able to run it (The Wii Quake Port crashes too). This is a mod that should be released on PC first to keep the gameplay
and level design intact, and released a basically butchered port on a console afterwards.

No idea what the hell is wrong with a basic formula of Quake + Port + Mod compatibility but a lot of them suffer from the same problem;
crashing, incompatibility, framerate problems. Not sure who's to blame for that, it's so random.

TAoV needs a 30+ framerate by the way.
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Re: The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

Post by Tyne »

I have to add, I still consider the Quake ports on DC the best Quake ports in terms of what I've seen pulled off.
Kurok doesn't count, engine modification by someone who spent the time to do it to suit his own mod itself on PSP,
but in terms of compatibility the DC engine so far to this day on a console is the best - but it's maxed out using
software rendering.

Wii or above should be the next homebrew targets focus in my opinion, especially since the source code is out
in hardware rendering mode. Maybe a full decent TAoV version on that?
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Re: The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

Post by Tyne »

By the way if you wish to run the latest beta version on DC go ahead, I'd like to hear the
results. Best thing you can do is tell me which map (.bsp) loaded and how it ran.
If you have a framerate counter let me know how high/low it was in certain scenes.

I'm interested to hear, seems the farther the background detail the lower the FPS..
Quake engine has always sucked at far off detail on low end CPUs.

If TAoV was ported on DC, I'd remove every background detail and keep
the foreground simplified as a 2D game and rearranging of relics, exploration
element would be minimized/removed into a straight-forward beat em up like
streets of rage.

Different playstyle, but I'd try to keep the combat the same regardless.
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Re: The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

Post by Anthony817 »

So it is basically a limitation of the hardware, or is the code not optimized enough?
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Re: The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

Post by Tyne »

A bit of both. More RAM in DC would be nice but there's work-arounds, but it's mostly because Quake isn't optimized on Dreamcast in the slightest aside from the Titanium Port - but even that's a poor port. :\
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Re: The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

Post by law56ker »

He Lives, thanks for returning.
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Re: The Ascension Of Vigil last release and Tyne

Post by mankrip »

Tyne wrote:seems the farther the background detail the lower the FPS..
Quake engine has always sucked at far off detail on low end CPUs.
Only on VISed maps. On non-VISed maps, the distance doesn't matter, but the engine will take the whole map into account when rendering. This is why Fightoon's background was so simple, to keep the framerate high while allowing for the camera to go anywhere.

Also, allowing the skybox to be rendered over the void removed the need for having any sky surfaces (and any sky textures) on the map, therefore reducing the RAM usage a bit and turning the empty space of non-VISed maps into an unlimited skybox.

However, even a fully optimized software-rendered engine wouldn't be able to run TAoV on the DC at a decent speed, and tricks such as those I've mentioned above requires too many sacrifices in the design of the game. Thus, TAoV on the DC needs a hardware-accelerated engine.

I'm curious as to how fast TAoV and other mods/TCs will run when I get Makaqu 1.5 done, since it should be quite faster than the previous versions, but I'm not expecting it to be anywhere near fast enough.

Slower-paced games such as Codename: Envenom should run quite well on it though.
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