Quoted from my website's F.A.Q. :


 

QuoteWhen will the mod release? 




I made several release dates in the past, but due to setbacks or busy periods in my personal life I could not live up to them. I therefore decided to remove the release date and percent bar untill I get a solid planning and idea of when things can be completed and how long it will take.




That doesn't mean that progres will take another year or something. I'll still do my best together with my team to finish this project as soon as possible, but still with the aimed quality.

.com had it's great days, when there were about 60-100 members online each day.




But the dissapointment of Mafia II to many (not myself included) and their transfer to a diffrent host which made mafiascene look bare, and removed many functions plus many downtime moments, like now, it resulted in a large decrease of populairity. even if it will be back on line, I doubt it will ever become that populair it once was. MS.net took it's rightfull place and now offers the possibilities back to the old community we once had.


 




Still though, it remains my frontpage. One day I hope it will be back, just for the old times sake, but their downtime made me inevitebly go to this website and become a member here that I once were on MS.

Thanks!


 




Yesterday and this afternoon I made some renders of the sinking ship, other than the empty deck, I'm quite satisfied with the result:


 




http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m104/mrr_03/sink1.jpg[/img]




http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m104/mrr_03/sink2.jpg[/img]




http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m104/mrr_03/sink3.jpg[/img]




http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m104/mrr_03/GSC1-1.jpg[/img]




http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m104/mrr_03/GSC2e.jpg[/img]

Ok in the upcoming weeks I will post some new footage and content due to the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.


 




The first thing I made is a remake of the exterior animation video:




[video size=100 width=640 height=480]




<div></div>  




Compared to the old version, this one is rendered at 1680X1050 pixels instead of 320X240 pixels.




Also the light effects have been updated and effects like water have been added.




It took both my computers more than 20 hours to render this animation.


 




I hope you all like it!

I'm working on something nice.   <img src="/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/wink.png" alt="" data-emoticon="" srcset="/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/wink@2x.png 2x" width="20" height="20">

Thanks a lot MB! I appreciate it.




Though the mod itself is free, I'll add a dontations button some day. As I'm a man of my word I'll keep the mod itself free   <img src="/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/wink.png" alt="" data-emoticon="" srcset="/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/wink@2x.png 2x" width="20" height="20">


 




Time for some updates!


 




If you all remember the Reading and Writing room from an earlier video of mine, you would have noticed that it looked way too flat shaded. well I hope this turns out better:






















 




Lighting still needs to be altered aswell as the windows. The exterior model hasn't been adjusted to the interior yet.

Thanks a lot for the very kind words, it means a lot to me!


 




From day one this project started I promised that this project is completely free of charge. never will there be anything asked for it. That includes no gold versions, no special editions, full... etc.




Most likely only optional donations later on.

no problem, here it is:

QuoteDear Mr Bongaarts,


 




Thank you for your interest in our studio. However, we are not interested in participating in the project specified in the letter.




We wish you all the best in your future endeavors.


 




Yours Sincerely,


 




-Name-

Long time no updates here.


 




I thank you all for the kind comments!




Too bad I did not receive the SDK from 2K-czech. They responded to my letter a few weeks back.


 




anyhow, time for some updates!


 


 




First, here's a new logo of the mod I finished today.


 




http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m104/mrr_03/LogoMTM.jpg[/img]


 




It shows 2 main characters, the captain, obviously the Titanic herself with the white star line flag on the background.




In case you wonder, Titanic is rendered in C4D and edited in photoshop.


 




and here's some more progres on the model:




http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m104/mrr_03/GSC1.jpg[/img]




http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m104/mrr_03/GSC2.jpg[/img]




http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m104/mrr_03/GSC3.jpg[/img]




http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m104/mrr_03/GSC4.jpg[/img]


 




I finished A deck grand staircase. I had to rebuild it all over again because the model that Hudizzle made didn't fit inside my exterior model.




Ofcourse it's only the rooms that I need to rebuild. I'll use the smaller details from Hud's model.

When I'm working on the TM, I have all other mods disabled, it would make a mess.




The scenery I'm testing with is the ship's exterior.


 




The problem does not lie in the computer's performance I'm affraid.




From what ASM told me, Mafia uses a collission detection grid. onto this grid, the game calculates how many polygons must be collided for each section. If there are several polygons active, the game get's too busy with calculating and therby resulting into an FPS drop.




The grid size can be altered. I did play with the values, but no big changes happened.


 




I'll do try the game booster, It's always worth a shot, Thanks a lot Crazy for the link!




I appreciate the help from you all.


 


 


 



<hr class="bbcode_rule" />
EDIT
<hr class="bbcode_rule" />





I believe I owe someone a sigar!




It really worked, with GameBooster enabled I ran the game with about 4-7 frames better, and that makes a lot of diffrence!


 




The game went up from 15 FPS to 22 FPS at it's lowest. meaning that at other locations, it's above 22FPS




For me, that's playable!


 




Thanks a lot CrazyPreacher! I believe a small mention in the credits are in order   <img src="/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/wink.png" alt="" data-emoticon="" srcset="/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/wink@2x.png 2x" width="20" height="20">

Yesterday evening I was kindly assisted by ASM, I tested a few things that ASM suggested, but so far no great result. There's still a framedrop. There's a more technical story involved at what's causing this.




So my guess is that I'll have to stick with it. I'll try to do my best at keeping the FPS as playable as much as possible with still a decent ammount of NPCs.


 




Luckely the interior collissions exist out of simpler shapes so they shouldn't do much harm.


 




This is one of those setbacks that make me wish I had that SDK. I could optimize the scene to it's finest.




Perhaps I'll consider several loading screens for diffrent sections of the ship. This will also solve the issue with the sounds of the ocean and wind being heard inside of the ship.

Hmmm, I'm affraid my method is not working..


 




I split up the collission model into several parts, but still there's a huge FPS drop.




I'm now gonna ask ASM, maybe he knows a trick, he's my last resort I guess unless someone else knows how collissions work.

I found the problem!


 




it has to do with Titanic's collissions, apperantly the collission model is still too complicated for characters to calculate. so what I'll do is to seperate the collission model of the deck itself from the rest of the collissions.


 




What I did to find out was to add about 15 NPCs into the scene, all with cordinates 0,0,0.




now they were all walking on the drop collission below the Titanic, no change in FPS!


 




Then I moved them all onto the ship, and as soon as I ran the game, FPS decreased to ~10FPS




After I killed them all, FPS went normal. That explains why the draw distance/ level of detail had no effect to this.


 




Let's hope the best for this collission trick.


 




Thanks everyone for the great help once again!

nopes, no luck, still the framedrop.




even though there is a wait command, the animation seems to loop instantly no pauses between.

the same as with dead NPCs




it varies from where I'm standing. I'm still working on some optimizations.




the effect of objects fading out when far away is very CPU intensive, so if I make an empty model as the far distance model of an object, the object should just dissapear and not fade out when the player is walking away from it.


 




So the framerate is very random, it can be 60Frames, or 30