Teargas Effect Not Working

[Chael]

Trying to get the teargas effect working (in a seperate mod). It makes a big smoke cloud, the guy coughs, minimap icons disappear, and sprint gets disabled, but the blurry squishy effect is missing somehow. I've copied over the e_hgr_TearGasGrenade effect and the sounds, added the effect to the detonationComp of a weapon... what am I missing? Is my graphics card (geforce 9800GTX+) just immune to teargas? Thanks in advance.

[DEVILMAN]

Does the teargas work properly,in the mod,you borrowed it from ?

That will tell weather your graphics card is immune to teargas (shouldnt be though)

[Chael]

Well I'll have to give that a shot; I still have xpack on one of these computers... I was hoping someone would point me to some files I might have missed; I mean if the cloud effect shows up, and I haven't changed the effect files, shouldn't the blurry squishy thing happen?

[rhysm_08]

Perhaps an xpack shader?

[Chael]

I considered that, but I don't really know much about shaders. All the posts I could find about the blurry squishy thing didn't say anything about having to screw with the shaders... I guess I'll clear some HDD space and give xpack a go now.

EDIT: Okay, tried it on xpack and it still doesn't work! I guess I have to try some different drivers now... maybe someone out there knows something that would help?

Edited November 16, 2010 by Chael

[UberWazuSoldier]

Doesn't need the xpack shaders because it works for other mods.

But yes, in answer to your question, nVidia cards newer than a certain threshold ARE immune to the teargas (and some other post production effects too). It's unfortunate, but that's the way it is.

[Chael]

Thanks for that; I don't really wanna go messing with my drivers all day trying to get this to work... although I suppose that still may fix it. I know I had it working before, but I can't remember if it was on this computer or the one with a 7600GTS.

[UberWazuSoldier]

Hmm, yeah, you may have some luck with drivers.

My understanding of the reason for some nVidia cards having problems with certain post production effects in BF2 is that DICE put in a few nVidia-specific optimisations (which is why it's "the way it's meant to be played"), but at some point nVidia made changes to either the hardware or the drivers that made them no longer compatible with those optimisations.

In a lot of ways it is still better to have a nVidia card with BF2, a particularly noteworthy example is the way that shadows are handled by the cards. nVidia cards have additional routines which really streamline the way shadows are produced, and that means it fits a lot better in the shaders (and as such it looks better). For ATI/AMD cards, you get a really half-assed blocky shadow thing by DICE. I'm sure part of the reason it looks so blocky is that DICE got slipped a couple of dollars from nVidia, because it really isn't much work to turn it into bilinear filtering, which actually ends up looking a little nicer than the sharp nVidia shadows. Anyway, it's ironic that the very things DICE made to give nVidia cards the advantage has started backfiring.

[mschoeldgen[Xww2]]

Did you add all the proper bits in the code ?:

ObjectTemplate.gasCloudType TearGas
ObjectTemplate.gasCloudDamage 2
ObjectTemplate.blurryVisionTime 2
ObjectTemplate.blurryVisionHoldTime 0
ObjectTemplate.minGasCloudRadius 0
ObjectTemplate.maxGasCloudRadius 2
ObjectTemplate.gasCloudRadiusTime 1

Here i added it to one of the SpriteParticleSystems

Edited November 29, 2010 by mschoeldgen[Xww2]

[Chael]

Didn't you read my first post? I copied the effect files directly from xpack and didn't modify them. The soldier coughs, sprint becomes disabled, and the minimap icons disappear.

I still haven't tried different drivers, but if/when I do, I'll post the results here.

[mschoeldgen[Xww2]]

copied the effect files directly from xpack

No,you only mentioned copying from somewhere

[Chael]

Well 'e_hgr_TearGasGrenade' is the xpack effect. Obviously I have that code, otherwise I doubt sprint and minimap icons would get disabled.

[UberWazuSoldier]

Yeah it sounds like it's just the shader problem them. That's a pity, but there's a certain irony in that "the way it's meant to be played" seems not to apply in BF2.

[Chael]

Yep, but at least I know it's working. I only went with an nvidia card for two reasons: mparser60.exe only works with nvidia, and at the time, nvidia supported 3d shutter glasses. I guess that's the price I pay for using maya.

[UberWazuSoldier]

Annnnddd nVidia cards get nicer BF2 shadows, which is a bonus.

[mschoeldgen[Xww2]]

Teargas blur did work on my former 6600GTS ( which is now in overheating heaven ) but of course it might be a different story for the 9800. Some nVidia cards had the 'octagonal black spots' bug in debugger.

[Chael]

I have those black spots when I run the debugger... I just thought everyone had those Pretty sure teargas works on my 7600GS AGP (anyone got a 7950GT I can have?).

Edited December 22, 2010 by Chael

[mschoeldgen[Xww2]]

I have those black spots when I run the debugger... I just thought everyone had those

No,it only happens on NV cards. ( "The way its meant to be debugged" ) Neither my initial Radeon 9800 nor my current HD4650 ATI card suffer from it. After loosing 2 NV cards by overheating i went back to ATI for the time being

[UberWazuSoldier]

My old X300 had the black spots (even though it shouldn't have).

My understanding is that the teargas effect is only broken on nVidea cards from around the 8000 series onwards.

EDIT: Oh, and there's an additional nVidea-only problem with shaders; on night maps with NVGs, for the same cards as with the teargas problem (8000 onwards), bundledmeshes (and maybe other things too) apparently glow white when near a point light. It's because of that bug that PR doesn't have night maps anymore apparently.

Edited December 31, 2010 by UberWazuSoldier