ANM limits, is it possible to extend current limitation?

[Zaxtor]

I did a cheap simulation to see the limit.


and the limit is:
59secs - 1min length

Or slightly less than 9.5 MB size.

even if u split in 3 w/e, and total exceed size as above.. Crash!! when clip loads!!

So is it possible to next update of Eduke or a way to extend ,limitation to.

40-70 mb even greater?

[The Commander]

Why would you want 40-70MB or bigger ANM files? If your mod was going to be like 300MB+ just because of ANM files I would seriously hope youd make it an aditional download :insomnia:

[Zaxtor]

I was going to plan to make an ending of 6 mins

6 mins is around a bit less than 56 mb.

i did alternate ending of 59 sec to 1 min incase the limit.


So i ran a simulation (testing limit of ANM size) before building full original ending,

[The Commander]

56MB is still to big. Most mods today for duke a smaller than that!

[Zaxtor]

most modern games are big cause most modern HD give you 100 GB to 2/3 of a TB.


Total space of my mod will still be under 250mb unzipped. If the clip would be 50s mb


for a mod with 4.5 episodes

4 episode + arch levels

means total of 50 levels.

and like 33-35 tilearts.
lots of new sounds and stuff,

[The Commander]

I surgest making your ANM videos Optional and a side download to cut the size down, ALOT of people still use dial up you know.

[TerminX]

ALOT of people still use dial up you know.
Not in most civilized countries... the only real exceptions are people who live out in the middle of nowhere and have no other choice. Broadband seems to be cheaper than dialup service a lot of the time these days.

[The Commander]

Australia and New Zealand are both civilized countries and broadband is very expensive for me in NZ because one phone company owns the telephone lines... Its became such a political thing now and its slowly being worked out.

Not only that broadband is very slow because of old copper phone lines.

The only way I can afford broadband is through wireless which does has its limitations (data cap, ping ect)

Thats why I allways like to try find the smallest download of things which is why im hoping that Zaxtor will make it a seperate download for people like me and Willy Megee.

[Zaxtor]

Usually download has resumes, so if u download.

if you need to turn off pc and download isn't finish, you can resume tomorrow, example.

Most countries in Oceania "Australasia" (Australia and New zealand etc)

Are rich, 1st world countries..

[Zaxtor]

PS

grp file zip very well,

Let say a 70 MB file. it will be zipped to 30 mb.


So let say my mod total of 220mb unzipped.

If is zipped would maybe be around 93 to 95 mb.

[TerminX]

Australia and New Zealand are both civilized countries and broadband is very expensive for me in NZ because one phone company owns the telephone lines... Its became such a political thing now and its slowly being worked out.
Isn't Australia a bit of a special case in which there's some huge monopoly that causes artificially high prices for broadband?

[The Commander]

Well, Im not exactly sure on the exact case for Australia but I was reading in a magazine that its hard enough to get a decent ISP in Austalia. But yes I know for sure here in NZ that it is a monopoly of Telecom that makes it so hard to get a cheap decent connection. But the unbundling is slowly taking place to allow compation to get into the internet game.

[The_Shadow]

I'm in australia, and I can vouch for our broadband being pretty sh_ithouse.
It is however, marginally better than described.
I'm on a 10mb/s 'shared' connection through cable internet. (Shared between anyone else on the node) on a 12Gb Plan with 20Gb offpeak. It's costing around $90 aud. Moving to ADSL2+ (24mb/s Dedicated) whenever they bother rolling it out (Read: replacing the 50 year old sh_it phone cabling) in my area of frankston.
All our broadband services are unfortunately lacking in upload speeds tho, which is goddamned annoying when you're trying to seed out a perfectly legal freeware torrent....

I also use a 3G compatible wireless broadband (@6mb/s) service for my laptop due to the nature of my business, being an on-site computer technician.

I've heard the places to go for 'real' broadband are the US and Japan.

[Dopefish7590]

Hey! Our brodband in Canada has an average download speed of 750kbps. And we olny pay 15$ a month. I'd LOVE to see anyone in the US who can say that. :p

[Zaxtor]

Some province in Canada are extremely expensive to live but salary are wickedly high.

Some province are cheap to live but low business rate.

[Dopefish7590]

Wages are normally high also. ;)

With that info you can probably guess the province.

Anyway this is getting way too offtopic. This belongs here: http://forums.3drealms.com/vb/showthread.php?t=30530

[Hunter_rus]

The game loads a whole ANM into the cache.
The size limit depends on the cache size and the cache usage. The cache size can be less when a computer has little memory. The usage depends on many factors. If you're about the limit, it may crash any time. ANM files weren't supposed to be so huge.

[Zaxtor]

I have lots of ram and speed.


almost 1.6 GB DRRAM
and intel P4 1.80GHZ
with several dozens of free GB of space

[Mr. Pink]

Any discussion of mod filesizes is OT :doh:

Extending it would be great idea! No reason not to. We can then give it a try and deal with any issues that might arise.

[Zaxtor]

Extending it would be good.

In stead of 1 min ending, a few more mins ending ;D

[Hunter_rus]

I don't think that extending is a good idea because it would reduce efficiency of the cache. Streaming would be better than loading the whole file before playing.
Any discussion of mod filesizes is OT
Just out of curiosity, what does the OT stand for?

[Dopefish7590]

OT is Off Topic.

[Mr.Fibbles]

It could also stand for On Topic :p or Original Topic :p
but that OT. . . . :D

On modern computers, file size and cache are basically a non issue in regards to EDuke32 and Duke3D. Obviously, optimizations are nice, but so are features.
In regards to the ANM limit, it would be nice to have more room to work with for mods, but there are better file formats that would be preferable for this. Increasing the limit would be nice, but getting avi or mov or mpeg (or something else) to work would be the ideal thing at this point.

[Zaxtor]

I don't think that extending is a good idea because it would reduce efficiency of the cache. Streaming would be better than loading the whole file before playing.


What you mean by streaming would be better than loading the whole file?

[Mr. Pink]

I'm looking at the source right now. This is an exercise to prepare for much more extensive mods. I've been dealing with real-life so been away from this, and it is good to jump back in!

Zaxtor, do you know offhand how many frames are in your 9.5 Mb/1 min file?

[Hunter_rus]

What you mean by streaming would be better than loading the whole file?
For instance: when sound/video file is too big, it's preferable to use streaming instead of trying to load a whole DVD movie into memory.
There is no need to have loaded the whole file. Having loaded next few seconds is enough.

It's better because the size of ANM won't matter, no waste of cache, no delay before playing.

[Zaxtor]

slightly less than 720, around 715 for 59 sec
724 for 1 min

[Mr. Pink]

Cool and thanks. I was looking for a nice, even number like 1024 but oh well ;)

[TerminX]

Something cooler than dicking with the code for the anm files would be to hack in the RoQ format from 11th Hour/Quake 3/other id games. The whole decoder is in one file in the GPL Quake 3 source and there's reverse engineered code floating around out there that plays them as well.

[Zaxtor]

You mean there could be a code floating around that could stabalize long anms.?

btw

Long audio sound seems to be stable.
One of my level has a part of a real pinkfloyd song in a very long elevator trip that lasts like almost 3 mins before an alarm interrupt it (intruder alert).

[The Commander]

You mean there could be a code floating around that could stabalize long anms.?

btw

Long audio sound seems to be stable.
One of my level has a part of a real pinkfloyd song in a very long elevator trip that lasts like almost 3 mins before an alarm interrupt it (intruder alert).

:dalek: :dalek: :dalek:

Long elevator trips are not made for Duke, Even if listining to some music that some people maynot enjoy. You might find alot of people using cheats to skip that part.

[Zaxtor]

Elevator trip

is not a boring ol room.

You see a grill and nice view of the base.

[Jblade]

I trust Zax to make a simple elevator ride interesting :)

[Mr. Pink]

^ +1. Thanks TX; if this is an easy fix I'll do it just the same, then look into RoQ. I need a couple of easy/easier things to get me back into the code.

Long elevator trips are not made for Duke, Even if listining to some music that some people maynot enjoy.

Please stop generalizing :rolleyes::doh:

It would also help if you were more positive and encouraging with respect to people's requests and ideas. TIA

[Mr. Pink]

Obviously, optimizations are nice, but so are features.
+1 on this (was going to point this out, but you beat me to it). Features first, then optimize if people actually use them.

[Zaxtor]

Elevator that are boring is a small cubic room with>

No views but 6 sides, 4 walls also 1 ceiling 1 floor..
No windows.
No musics.


Fun elevators are the one with

A grill and a freaken nice view.
Music.
Etc

[The Commander]

It would also help if you were more positive and encouraging with respect to people's requests and ideas. TIA

Yes, you probley are right, Sorry Zaxtor im just trying to say that Im hoping this mod will be small enough for me to download and enjoy.

[Zaxtor]

Will be under 93-95 mb zipped (225s unzipped)

if unable to find way to make bigger ANM and i use alternate ending

maybe around

81-85 zipped (under 200mb unzip)


E4 alone takes almost same space as E3 and E2 combined.

cause most levels in E4 have 1600-2400+ sectors

new bosses/enemys
and insane load of new textures.

[The Commander]

If you do find a way to make them bigger ANM files make it a seperate download

[Zaxtor]

if it works i can seperate them

[Mr. Pink]

Working on the compilation environment right now. I've switched computers since I last had it up and running.

(EDIT: complete)

[Zaxtor]

More experiments I ran

ANM is totally innocent.

Sound isnt,

but wtf...


I did a 12 mb anm test (totally stable)
but if the sound is long or huge with anm, you know .. crashed!!!

Maybe spliting the sound into fragment and it plays other part rightafter the first part ends. Example code terminX posted before..



void endanimvol42(long fr)
{
switch (fr)
{
case 11:
sound(DUKE_UNDERWATER);
break;
case 20:
sound(VOL4ENDSND1);
break;
case 39:
sound(VOL4ENDSND2);
break;
case 50:
FX_StopAllSounds();
break;
}
}

Cases are like delays?

[Zaxtor]

This code goes in game.com outside actors like events etc right?

Let me guess fr=frames i put numbers that represent frames before sound change right?

void endanimvol42(long fr)
{
switch (fr)
{
case 11:
sound(DUKE_UNDERWATER);
break;
case 20:
sound(VOL4ENDSND1);
break;
case 39:
sound(VOL4ENDSND2);
break;
case 50:
FX_StopAllSounds();
break;
}
}

[TerminX]

That code does not go in CON files.

[Zaxtor]

I see.

Btw i found out the limit of an ANM is like slightly over 12.5 MB or late 800, almost 900 frames.
exceeding that cause instant crash when load.

[Mr. Pink]

Zaxtor, check your PM.

[Zaxtor]

I checked it last night and replied it i think.

[Mr. Pink]

Check again ;)

Terminx, I found the Q3 RoS module.

[Mr. Pink]

I'm hopping off the 3DR board for a little while. If anyone can tell me exactly what fr is (a time or frame counter, but in what units?) that would rock.

EDIT: looks like a simple frame count, with no factoring. Can anyone tell me offhand the number of frames/second? 18?