Moving to the Svencoop engine

franky200

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Thothie

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Wait... When/how did Svencoop get its own engine?

Clearly I've been outta the loop too long - gotta look into this when I get home.
 

Rocket117

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Thothie i'm sad. I (breifly) mentioned this in a post long ago when i asked about xash3d.

EDIT: Further investigation shows a really great increase in STABLE fps which is something that i have always struggled with this game for some strange reason. While i can manage to get very high fps no problem with any other modern game. What interests me the most is that even when playing normal half-life, 200 fps doesn't feel the same and as orgasmic as it does in the new sven coop engine. Small maps with little to no scripts seem to work well as thornlands is launchable. The_wall has crashed me but i haven't put any further testing
 

Rocket117

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Sorry for the double reply but i wasn't really sure where to put this but i did exactly what i said, further testing and the results were really good and hopeful.
#1 the mod is free, meaning theoretically, msc is also 100% free as well.
#2 it is apparent that the mod significantly increases performance across all maps, including the (start) of the_wall.
#3 every map appears to be launch-able, but what that proves isn't much.
It only seems like the logical step is to use this engine, as there hasn't been any issue in theoretical game-play. However I haven't tested much else other than basic combat and launching these entity heavy maps. Anyone with a high level lan character may wish to uncover more secrets, or lack-there-of about this engine and what it may bring to the table. (Possibly a new engine switch???? :])
 

TheOysterHippopotami

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Anyone with a high level lan character may wish to uncover more secrets, or lack-there-of about this engine and what it may bring to the table. (Possibly a new engine switch???? :])
Thothie can provide you with a high level lan character, or he or I can provide you with a somewhat dated FN archive.
 

MS:C community

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How exactly did you load MS:C in the Sven Co-op 5.0 engine? I copied my \msc\ folder to my \Sven Co-op\ folder (and restarted Steam) but it's not showing up in my games list.

Edit: svencoop.exe shortcut --> -game msc. Of course :p

Edit #2: Now in hunderswamp_north with a test char. It's funny how they changed the default item drop sound; when I drop a potion, it sounds as if I'm dropping an assault rifle or something.

Edit #3: The awesome inventory scrolling that Thothie and MIB coded up works here as well! Nice.

Edit #4: hunderswamp_north didn't crash (and I beat the entire map) and I just changed to shender_east. Still no crashes. Another interesting thing: the Sven Co-op 5.0 engine seems to have gotten rid of the hall-of-mirrors effect you usually observe when looking at a brush face that isn't rendered. Instead, you just see total blackness. Much easier on the eyes, really. I'm going to try to beat a series of entity heavy maps in a row, without restarting the mod. Would be really awesome if that actually works.
 

Truewarrior

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Do you guys want more players testing this engine?
 

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So I played the following maps:

hunderswamp_north
shender_east
daragoth (rushed to a certain transition)
nashalrath
---- serious lag, mod restart ----
nashalrath
sorc_villa (friendly)
lodagond-1
lodagond-2
lodagond-3
lodagond-4
the_wall
the_wall2
lowlands
highlands_msc
lostcastle_msc
skycastle (access denied)
helena
old_helena (my server even survived the extreme poison cloud & blizzard spam I was doing)
orc_for

No crashes at all! And, with one exception, I didn't have to restart the mod inbetween maps.

It runs incredibly smooth. I get constant 60 FPS but that's only because my monitor doesn't support higher than that (2160p resolution monitor hooked up to my videocard with a DisplayPort 1.2 cable).

There's barely any lag whatsoever, and when a group of monsters is supposed to spawn simultaneously, they pretty much spawn simultaneously. The half-a-second-or-so delay between spawning monsters (in 'normal' MS:C) is almost negligible here.

I've yet to find a map that crashes for no reason at all but this is incredibly promising.

Also, for those interested, here's the crazy stuff they did to the engine map limits:
http://www.svencoop.com/manual/changelo ... ode-engine
 

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Goldsource engine map bounds: +/-4,096 units
Source engine map bounds: +/-16,384 units
Sven Co-op 5.0 engine map bounds: +/-131,072 units

omfg
 

franky200

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Truewarrior said:
Do you guys want more players testing this engine?

It would be nice if we could get a group of people to test a nearly full server.

MS:C community said:
How exactly did you load MS:C in the Sven Co-op 5.0 engine? I copied my \msc\ folder to my \Sven Co-op\ folder (and restarted Steam) but it's not showing up in my games list.

Edit: svencoop.exe shortcut --> -game msc. Of course :p

Yeah, this makes it realllllllllly inconvenient to start the game.
 

Thothie

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MS:C community said:
Goldsource engine map bounds: +/-4,096 units
Source engine map bounds: +/-16,384 units
Sven Co-op 5.0 engine map bounds: +/-131,072 units
http://www.svencoop.com/manual/changelo ... ode-engine
Hammer 3.5 tends to clip everything out of bounds, so you'd have to map with something else to actually take advantage of that, I suspect.

For the rest of those limit fixes, there's the compiler to consider... Maybe they have a customized one ready. (Oh wait, they do.)

Svencoop has been plagued in the past by some of the same edict and other resource related crash issues we've had, so it seems they've done something about that... Wonder if they'll share their source with us. Hrmm...

MS:C community said:
Another interesting thing: the Sven Co-op 5.0 engine seems to have gotten rid of the hall-of-mirrors effect you usually observe when looking at a brush face that isn't rendered.
Might make this "clairvoyance" effect I've been using in lieu of a spectator mode more viable as something useful...

franky200 said:
Edit: svencoop.exe shortcut --> -game msc. Of course :p

Yeah, this makes it realllllllllly inconvenient to start the game.
I've not had the chance to look into this yet, since I'm kinda moving in with the semi-significant other atm... But it might be possible to integrate a full installer with the svencoop engine and fix that (as well as the media oddities), and thus be stand alone with a static engine, at last.

I'm not sure if Svencoop references the Half-Life1 media, or if it simply includes all it uses. If it's the latter, the distro could get friggen huge, if it's the former, it won't be truly stand-alone lest it can download it as required, somehow.

The RKS servers would have to be changed to take advantage of all that though.

PS. Also, if anyone sees Dr.Drew, tell him to respond to the message he read, before I have to do something nasty to him to get his attention.
 

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The Sven Co-op SDK contains a custom version of Hammer v3.4 that renders the entire grid! And it can even export MAP files with floating point coordinates, the changelog says!

Only downside is: modified v3.4... Valve gave them the source code of that, but not of v3.5. So that means no model rendering in-editor.

Edit: But hey, maybe vluzacn can work something out. From what I see, he's been pretty involved in the custom hammer.exe and custom SC VHLT/RipEnt build.
 

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The Sven Co-op mapper geniuses have merged groups of Half-Life maps into single Sven Co-op maps so as to minimize the number of load times.

Here's a screenshot of pretty much the entire chapter "Office Complex" of the Half-Life singleplayer campaign in a single map. Note also that the void is rendered as solid black, rather than the hall-of-mirrors effect.
 

Thothie

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MS:C community said:
The Sven Co-op SDK contains a custom version of Hammer v3.4 that renders the entire grid! And it can even export MAP files with floating point coordinates, the changelog says!

Only downside is: modified v3.4... Valve gave them the source code of that, but not of v3.5. So that means no model rendering in-editor.

Edit: But hey, maybe vluzacn can work something out. From what I see, he's been pretty involved in the custom hammer.exe and custom SC VHLT/RipEnt build.
I'd be guessing Valve lost the source code for 3.5 - sadly such things are not unusual.

The only point where I could see that becoming a real problem is when you are using a model for terrain and the like, and need the model as a guide tool (for example)... But, it'd be a simple matter to work that part of the map out in ye old Hammer, and stick it in Sven's Hammer, I suppose.

Gah... So want to play with this... But no teim. ><
 

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It seems I'm gonna have to update Sven Co-op to the latest version. I'm getting all excited again! :D
 

franky200

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ceriux said:
I think you can use jackhammer instead of hammer

It does not support the new map bounds though.
 

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Sledge is nice but I'm still sticking to ye good ol' Hammer v3.5 beta, enhanced by vluzacn's gridhack (increases the grid to +/-16,384 units) and vluzacn's floating point enabler, which allows Hammer to export MAP files with floating point coordinates (like the Sven Co-op Hammer can also do, allegedly).
 

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Sven Co-op is now infested by twelve year-old Russian kids (with microphones...), newbie players who don't even know what crouch-jump is and COD players who won't ever bother to revive other players.

In other words: It's hilarious to watch the mayhem that ensues during chapter "Surface Tension" and everything beyond. I recommend!
 

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I should have recorded my "welcome back" experience the other day. One of the maps was simply to go up to the top with some jumps then a long&slow lift ride inside a vertical glass tunnel and then jump back down to your death (traps or fall damage).

The map had no purpose from what i saw, other than blocking the lift tunnel and killing everyone in it that was trying to go up, server had 30-32 players constantly, the tunnels lift could only carry 9 players without getting messed up and people not dieing. Standing on top of players while using said lift would make the lift stop, the player would get stuck for a second and die while sending the lift down again, so in other words, it was quite the fun party in there with that many players trying to go up. Not to mention you could camp on top of the tunnel and try to block it from there too. :roll:
 

Rocket117

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Did some of these new updates to sven-coop break functionality with MS:C? Or is that just me?
 

Thothie

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The Svencoop MSC alpha is using is from March 2016, if they've done something to break it since then, it shouldn't affect our efforts - though if they've done something to improve it, we won't benefit from that either, so, shall experiment with their latest version toward release time, and keep the March 2016 one on archived backup, just in case.
 

franky200

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They removed HLTV support, which for some reason disconnects you whenever you fall from a certain height in MS:C or any other hl mod for that matter. I talked to the lead coder (Sniper) on Sven Co-op's discord server a while back and he said he'd like to fix the mods being broken at some point.
 
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