Cry of Fear - Remixed

[still pumice]

Cry of Fear RTX Remix - Current Progress & Setup Guide (WIP)

Xash3D Version (Recommended)
Repo: https://github.com/michaelabilliot/CryofFear_RTX-REMIX

This version runs Cry of Fear through a modified Xash3D FWGS with RTX Remix. Everything is included, no Steam needed.

Installation:

1. Download the repo
2. Run launcher.bat

Current Issues:

• Mesh Splitting – Map floors/walls are split into many pieces due to the map files themselves. 3D models like trash bins, poles, etc. are also split into many smaller meshes causing draw call overhead and FPS drops — though the model issue is not as bad as the Steam version. The map splitting is the same.
• Aggressive Culling – Objects behind the camera are culled immediately causing flickering. Can be fixed with r_nocull 1 in console but it tanks performance
• Lightmap Flickering – Lightmaps can turn the map black and flicker

[fierce dagger]

twin

you in the discord server too right

[still pumice]

Which one?

The CoF one?

[fierce dagger]

the CoF one

you should post it there too if youre allowed

[fierce dagger]

@edgy prawn could you pin this

[fierce dagger]

would it be possible to delete the other thread since me and effeminate king figured it out and moved it here? @edgy prawn

[edgy prawn]

sure

tbh i'd rather lock that thread and archive it

[fierce dagger]

ok yeah sure

for tomororw testing

[still pumice]

I could start crackin' on that here in a minute. I'm laying down for a little bit but when I get up I'll get right on it and see if I can't figure out how to properly do it.

Like I was telling you in the DM's though I believe the FPS issue is sourced from all the models like the plants, the bikes, and stuff like that that have weird transparency in their textures that Remix is REALLY not liking.

Noclipping above the map enough to de-render entities like that had me sitting at 100FPS. So I'll start by ripping models and seeing if we can't replace the weird meshes for those kinds of objects first and seeing what performance looks like after that if I can figure it out.

[still pumice]

We'll have to ask about attempting to join the model meshes together but I can tell doing anything blender related is just gonna be a nightmare until we can figure out culling. I never did test any commands so I'm gonna get on that

[still pumice]

I may be dumb but this is seeming like it may be a two in one issue https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning

We may be able to mitigate the culling issue with Remix if we can just figure out how to get it to detect the view matrix but from what I understand of it https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/HLVIS

Cry of Fear seems to use a combination of that, and frustum culling. Anything behind the player is handled by frustum and the distant objects that aren't being rendered are due to how the map was compiled with HLVIS? I'm talking out my ass here but it seems right.

However considering we're already hi-jacking the renderer with QIndieGL we should take a look at the .ini file it provides. Honestly tweaking stuff in there might just fix the 10,000 different vertices/meshes issue. I took a little look at it at and saw some potentially hopeful stuff skimping through it but it's late and I have cleaning I need to do before bed so I'm gonna turn in for the night but tomorrow once my obligations are done I'll begin testing it, maybe even try asking around online and see if anybody in like a subreddit or something has any ideas/insight.

I also totally glossed over the fact that it's totally possible the fellas working on getting Remix working with other GoldSRC games may also totally already have a fix for this issue so that's also worth investigating. Either way I'm through for the night, good luck on your progress tomorrow and I'll hyu when I'm done with my stuffs.

[fierce dagger]

a totally normal lamp

5 layers deep

so stupid lol

[woeful mauve]

Hey.

However considering we're already hi-jacking the renderer with QIndieGL we should take a look at the .ini file it provides.
Set these both to 1, this adds a camera to idtech2 games, it may work with goldSrc too
[game.global]
enable_camera_detection = 0
camera_detection_mode = 0

[still pumice]

LIFE SAVER. @fierce dagger CHECK THIS OUT I F***ING TOLD YOU

that was a bit harsh my bad lmao

Testing it immediately!

[woeful mauve]

The problem with lots of small triangles, and huge FPS drop is something I've had with Quake2 and heretic2 (both idTch2), and I had to do chancges to the renderer to make them even playable

Cry of Fear seems to use a combination of that, and frustum culling.
maybe the game hav a cvar for nocull e.g. r_nocull? or just nocull, do you know?

[still pumice]

Toyatak was LITERALLY in the middle of trying to figure that out as we speak, I knew Qindie had something to do with it.

[still pumice]

Yup we figured that out as well!

r_novis is the command

[woeful mauve]

Now for Q2 and H2 I've used r_nocull and r_novis both to 1 to get something usable

But it tanked FPS to single digits

I can link the fixes I did for Quake2, but porting them to this game might mean having compilable source code

[still pumice]

Unfortunately this didn't resolve the frustum culling but I knew I was on the right track when mentioning looking through the .ini file

[still pumice]

That'd be helpful! If you could it'd be much appreciated!

[fierce dagger]

already tested it doesnt

detection mode 1 doesnt do it, detection mode 2 breaks the camera

[woeful mauve]

The main changes are in these two commits:
Fix static meshes (brushes)
https://github.com/whisperglen/Quake-2/commit/b9b4c099eb4b7e8b0b3a4428f31c97db3bb4d0bd
Fix entities (props)
https://github.com/whisperglen/Quake-2/commit/56294231c5acbdd911613f1c618da40efada3e51

Complete view (rather messy becasue there are also VisualStudio upgrades, fixes for warnings etc)
https://github.com/whisperglen/Quake-2/compare/master...whisperglen:Quake-2:main

Unfortunately I don't have time for these as I'm working on other stuff at the moment. I did try to compile that Xash_COF for yersterday, and it's too old for my VisualStudio 2022. I think one needs to install VS2019 (not newer) and convert that VS6 project to something newer and compile for VS GUI, and not that old MSBUild stuff.

[still pumice]

Yeah same conclusion 😔

[woeful mauve]

what is 'it' what doesn't it do?

[fierce dagger]

nothing like it doesnt do anything

[woeful mauve]

Go to Developer options, check cameras, and see if you have a camera there

[fierce dagger]

ok 1 second

[still pumice]

That's probably my issue. The version of VS I have is 2022 as well so I'll try installing 2019 and seeing if I can't figure that out.

[woeful mauve]

Here, this is a valid camera from Heretic2

This ^^ camera thing will not improve thing though

one sec

[still pumice]

Doesn't seem so, every co-ordinate remains at 0,0,0

[woeful mauve]

Hmm that's a bit of bad news. The fix would be done with access to the source code I guess.

Which would be my advice for the next steps get the source compiled. For Heretic2 which is my main mod atm, I've had to do many fixes to get it moddable.. and even so I'm not replacing characters yet, too unstable, only some barrels :broke: Static geometry is a bit of a mess for all idTech games so far, meaning everything is one big mesh across the map.

Here this is one single mesh:

[fierce dagger]

woah wtf lmao

[woeful mauve]

It's because of r_novis, and the BSP. The only way to get stable hashes was to batch all triangles together

I mean I stole the idea form idTech3, but well

I am trying to 'fix' it for RTCW, but it's been a long process..

[fierce dagger]

been trying to build the xash one

probably can by tomorrow there are SO many errors oh my god

[woeful mauve]

Yea I kinda fixed some, lemme get to my laptop, thewre are two magic configurations

These 2 fixed alot of errors in client_dll. Then I said fuckit I don't have time for this

Also you may want to do this if you get HSPRITE errors

[fierce dagger]

i managed to get cl_dll to build without shitting itself

one step at a time

https://tenor.com/view/well-done-jesse-yes-pinkman-yes-breaking-bad-gif-27528539

and it only threw up 100 something warnings not 500

[still pumice]

YO

SO CRY OF FEAR WORKS WITH THE "NEW" ENGINE!!!

That's why it was removed off of Github! They managed to get it running on FWGS after all so we can test that instead

We just need to compile a 32-bit version of FWGS

That would likely mitigate tons of the problems you guys are currently running into with trying to recompile the engine.

[fierce dagger]

i see this now as i got the xash3d-cof building

https://tenor.com/view/jesse-pinkman-jesse-pinkman-crying-jesse-pinkman-screaming-jesse-pinkman-andrea-jesse-crying-gif-25171987

[still pumice]

Hey, it still might give us valuable information. Not to mention it may still be a good idea to try and work with the Steam release if we can as like I mentioned to that individual it'll be better for user convenience instead of having to go out of their way to install FWGS and the separate older Cry of Fear installations.

But in the meantime I definitely think we shift focus towards FWGS

So it's not a waste of effort thankfully.

wait I'm tired and an idiot

😭😭😭

My brain is like 1000MPH rn I'm honestly shocked about finding out CoF works with FWGS now! So umm oopsies my bad I misspoke.

But who knows, maybe we find something out having the old engine available?? Copium moment 😭

me rn fr fr

na but I'm gonna lay down for a little bit and try and settle down after the hype I just went through, literally feels like two of my biggest dreams the last two years were fulfilled in less than a week span.

As soon as I'm done with the rest of what I gotta do today I'm getting hard at work on this

[fierce dagger]

dont get your hopes up high til we have actual stuff in our hands we can work with man

i got excited just like that when i first tried remix like 2 years ago and was crushed with sadness

[still pumice]

Just confirmation that Cry of Fear works with FWGS is huge information for us. While you're correct I shouldn't get my hopes up, we still have Remix properly HOOKING with Cry of Fear which is further than anybody could've ever gotten two years ago.

As long as we don't give up, and keep asking for support when needed I'm absolutely certain we can get this project fully underway.

[fierce dagger]

can you explain FWGS to me like im 5 like only thing i know about it is running half life

i dont know how to run CoF with that i can try to work on it while you do rest of your todays stuff

[still pumice]

FWGS is an enhanced recreation of the GoldSRC engine with much better stability and features built up entirely from scratch. You can think of it like GoldSRC but modernized and like 10x better. It's also open source so we'd have better access to screwing around with the code and mitigating issues like culling than we'd ever have working with the Steam release.

Also if you're up for it, join the FWGS Discord and search around. They used to get pretty annoyed about people asking about playing Cry of Fear on FWGS, but now that it works you might be able to ask them how to set it up. Just gotta make sure we get the 32-bit version specifically.

Honestly installing Cry of Fear on Xash is literally no different from how you'd install Cry of Fear on regular Half-Life btw.

Like if you can install regular Half-Life mods then you already know what to do.

[fierce dagger]

yeah i havnt installed any half life mods except trying to install cof 1.0

[still pumice]

Instead of selecting the Half-Life folder like the installation instructs you to, you'd select the FWGS folder.

The only notable thing you'd have to do is create a shortcut or a batch file with the launch parameters required for Cry of Fear which I have on hand.

Lemme copy and paste them rq

[fierce dagger]

so we get FWGS compile it then run CoF on that instead of hl
would i be able to edit FWGS to help with the culling or fix any other issues that CoF has?

[still pumice]

"-game CryOfFear -num_edicts 8192 -heapsize 1536000 -hw"

This is what you'd use to launch the game. If you use a shortcut you'd put it in the target line in the executable properties.

I think you have to add hl.exe in the beginning if you use a batch file, or whatever the executable for FWGS is titled.

And yes, in theory you'd be able to modify the FWGS code in order to help resolve our culling issue. It might even flat out solve the other issue we're having.

You see where I'm getting at? We can't modify the GoldSRC engine, but we CAN modify FWGS.

[fierce dagger]

how could we distribute this to people easily tho there is too many steps

[edgy prawn]

make a batch script that does all of the necessary install steps and commands, and instruct users on how to use it?

something like that

[glossy blaze]

If only Counter Strike Condition Zero Deleted Scenes was compatible with xash/FWGS (it isnt)

[fierce dagger]

yeah you gotta help me out cause im mad stupid rn to figure this out

[still pumice]

Kim has the right idea. We could also do something similar to how the old Xash repository was set up where we have all the files pre-installed and batch files for running the game pre-setup with the launch parameters then have users simply install Cry of Fear on the archive. I'm not familiar with making batch install scripts but that's probably extremely easy to learn.

[still pumice]

Where are ya stuck exactly?

[still pumice]

tragic 😔 Condition Zero with RT would go hard.

[fierce dagger]

the installation part rn im just using the precompiled xash download from the github

i use the CoF 1.0 installer i point it to xash folder right

[glossy blaze]

I did have it running on the vanilla gold source

There are a couple screenshots in the half life section

[still pumice]

lmao this was funny to come across immediately upon joining the FWGS Discord

[still pumice]

That's correct my friend!

[fierce dagger]

is this on the FWGS discord lol

[still pumice]

Да lmao

I'm finally on my PC so let's get started

[fierce dagger]

interesting

i think i got it working

[still pumice]

Alright! Bet

I'll go ahead and get caught up with you, I gotta download the rest of the installers as I only have 1.0 on my PC rn but it might take me a minute on my abysmal Wifi

[fierce dagger]

C:\Users(my name)\Desktop\COUGHCOUGH\xash3d.exe -game CryOfFear -num_edicts 8192 -heapsize 1536000 -hw

is this right

[still pumice]

Yup

-num_edicts may need to be changed but otherwise that should work

If it gives you a crash try changing -num_edicts to 4096. I set it to 8192 when I was testing the beta out and it helped it run more stable but I don't think it's necessary with FWGS. Wouldn't hurt to keep it if it doesn't cause issues tho

[fierce dagger]

hallelujah!

[still pumice]

LETS GOOOOOO

Now you just need to patch it up to 1.55

[fierce dagger]

hold on

something doesnt look right

[still pumice]

?

I mean it looks like there's an overabundance of NOISE holy shit

[fierce dagger]

hm

thats floating in the air

[still pumice]

LMAO good catch I didn't see that

[fierce dagger]

i sensed it bro

[still pumice]

That's funny, I wonder if it's a bi-product of modern resolutions?

[fierce dagger]

also the lights on the train are fucked

these the only 2 patches i need?

it says the 1.1, 1.3 etc lost so i just download 1.55 or do 1.2 then 1.55

[still pumice]

I'm like 99% sure you can skip straight from 1.0 to 1.55

[fierce dagger]

yeah that 1.55 is NOT downloading bro

reaches 1% then fails

[still pumice]

The 1.1/1.3 patches have been missing for awhile now

Even the mirror?

[fierce dagger]

the mirror leads to the github that got deleted lmao

[still pumice]

just saw that lmao

It's working for me

[fierce dagger]

the mirror?

[still pumice]

Na the regular download

[fierce dagger]

archaic fucking methods bro

let me try again 4th times the charm

yeah ill get on it tomorrow

[still pumice]

I can try sending it to you elsewhere maybe?

[fierce dagger]

please upload that shit to mediafire or mega

[still pumice]

On it

[fierce dagger]

with my speed i should be able to download that in 3 mins

not 21 hours wtf lmao

[still pumice]

That's tragic lmaooo

Ope it might not let me download it either. It's getting further but it keeps saying network error. Probably just my Wifi doing me dirty tho

[fierce dagger]

it cant be the wifi man mine doing the same

and we half the world apart the entire globes internet isnt fucked

[still pumice]

Yeah and using FDM keeps telling me it's just a web page and won't let me download it like that either. Tragic, might have to figure out how to get it elsewhere? I'll try asking the FWGS discord if it persists

[fierce dagger]

Saving to: 'patch.exe'

patch.exe 0%[ ] 446.04K 25.9KB/s eta 7h 6m

[fierce dagger]

i tried FDM first too lol

im using powershell rn to install it

[still pumice]

brilliant minds think alike

[still pumice]

wtf how do you do that???

Dude this is totally irrelevant to the project but I kinda wanna get it running on my phone just to flex it on the subreddit because so many people have tried and failed. It'd be funny to post a video of me playing it on my phone with my little backbone controller 😂

[fierce dagger]

yeah ok bro

[fierce dagger]

its a powershell command

wget "the link"

[fierce dagger]

i mean you gotta do that imagine how funny itll be to play it on there

[fierce dagger]

i think im gonna do this last part

[still pumice]

The best part is I could use commands to make the controls actually bearable, so honestly it might not even be a bad experience if it does run

[fierce dagger]

just ask people cause wtf dude 46 days

[still pumice]

Yeah, head to the half-life section and ask

[neon echo]

hey guys I see you helping each others to make it run but the start of the thread just tells me to past that file into the cof steam folder, im a bit lost

[still pumice]

Open up that .zip folder and drag and drop the contents directly in to your Cry of Fear folder.

The easiest way is opening Steam

Navigate to Cry of Fear in your library

Click the gear icon

Click manage

Click browse local files

Drag and drop everything from the .zip file directly in that folder

[neon echo]

yes yes I did it, i see everything being a bit too bright thought, with no different changes

i even chsnged thr launch options

[still pumice]

That's what we're still working on. In order to make things look proper you have to export a USD from the Remix menu and open it up in the toolkit in order to add proper lighting and do replacement textures. We're currently so early in this project I personally don't have any replacements available for you to test but Toyatak might be able to upload his.

Forewarning though, we're still sorting out the two major issues so it's honestly not even really worth doing anything with it right now until we can fix the culling and mesh problems.

[neon echo]

i will wait, then

[still pumice]

I'll be sure to let you know as soon as we can figure it out! Sorry to disappoint.

[neon echo]

im so happy we are here though, i was the one who opened the first cry of fear thread in this server, but nobody had knowledge so it stopped over there, so im so proud of all of you

[neon echo]

im not disappointed at all!

[still pumice]

Oh I didn't know it was you! Hell yeah, also based fellow Funger fan btw. I see you have excellent taste lmao

[neon echo]

Thank you! I still gotta finish termina, but i have spammed this thread with non-useful information enough

[still pumice]

You're totally fine! No worries at all, not like we haven't been bantering in here like some morons anyways lmao. Good luck on your Termina playthrough!

[fierce dagger]

alt + x and check if raytracing is on

[fierce dagger]

here man just for you excuse the 30 fps recording its 100 ish
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1473097106532204596/1474190748772597863/413ORo2.mp4?ex=6998f29f&is=6997a11f&hm=7b79db196b335bcc557fd9e3e899d725817f70e923d8f99e810276328ffa57ac&

[woeful mauve]

I took a look through the Xash3D code, and i think if I can update the opengl32 wrapper with VBO support, we may get rid of all those triangles.
EDIT: I thought the -nofbo param was related to these VBOs I'm talking about, but it's something else. Basically VBO's were an extension to opengl, and it was intended to allow games to push alot more triangles. QindieGL did not implement it yet, because all the idTech3 games it supports did not use it.

[neon echo]

Alt + X does nothing..

[fierce dagger]

then you didnt install rtx remix silly

[fierce dagger]

what triangles are you talking about

[neon echo]

I did move the files from the zip to the CoF folder

[woeful mauve]

Meshes being made-up of only 1-2 triangles

[fierce dagger]

you also need to download remix on its own

[fierce dagger]

i think me and @still pumice discovered yesterday its just how the maps are

[neon echo]

ah. Well. Of course

https://klipy.com/gifs/patrick-s-patrick-star

mb

[fierce dagger]

i had to adjust qindiegl a bit myself cause it wouldnt work https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1473097106532204596/1474144402829086740/TiFTxlD.png?ex=69997035&is=69981eb5&hm=d7e9591e163aa02daa75e8c4c508e876a3acba06731919b079777e238df3be9c&

[woeful mauve]

True. But my impression is that the VBO implementation does not emit a single DrawCall for each mesh. It combines more meshes into a single DrawCall. I'll have to test it tho' to be 100% sure

[woeful mauve]

Can you show me what the fix was? I would like to integrate it if the code is buggy

[fierce dagger]

here let me fork your fork and upload it so you can see

[fierce dagger]

https://github.com/michaelabilliot/QindieGL2412

[woeful mauve]

Thanks

Are you using those the implementation in d3d_matrix_detection.cpp?

[fierce dagger]

yea i compile the dll and the game runs fine

[neon echo]

i installed RTX remix, tried to reopen CoF and still no Alt + X...

[fierce dagger]

can you hop in vc and screenshare man cause i followed the tutorial to check if it works and it does

[neon echo]

yeah sure

[fierce dagger]

get a fresh install of cry of fear

[neon echo]

I did it I'll try again

I'll lyk if something changes

[fierce dagger]

twin

can you record how you installing it so i can see what the issue is

[fierce dagger]

no not that lol

i mean the rtx remix

[neon echo]

ohh LOL

I'll wait until it's done then I'll show you

but jic, RTX Remix is installed now

[fierce dagger]

bro

thats the toolkit you silly goober

#remix-beginners-guide this

[neon echo]

ik ik but the zip file is still installed

ik I gotta unzip and move the files to the game folder

[fierce dagger]

ok yeah you have to do that but you have the wrong remix

[neon echo]

I use this file here

[fierce dagger]

whats your native language man

ill translate it so you can understand better

[neon echo]

italian, why?

but i do understand

each thread has its own remix file that u gotta unzip and move to the game folder

[fierce dagger]

yes thats right

but you also need to get the right remix

[neon echo]

and thats what I did

[fierce dagger]

the one you have is the wrong one thats the toolkit one used to make the mods

[still pumice]

Hold on I'll link the release lmao

[neon echo]

you mean the base remix + the game remix to overwrite it

this is the base remix

[fierce dagger]

yes that

get that

do the video tutorial here

[neon echo]

and then I put the cry of fear remix on top of that

[still pumice]

https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/rtx-remix/releases/download/remix-1.3.6/remix-1.3.6-release.zip

[fierce dagger]

brother please help this man since i can not

[still pumice]

Yeah you just need to put the rtx.conf in the base Cry of Fear after you install what I just sent into the folder

[neon echo]

that's what I meant

[fierce dagger]

replace step 5 with "launch the bat file"

the bat file in the zip already cleans it up

[still pumice]

Lmk if it works, and again don't forget to delete the c_game_menu3d map from the maps folder

Gotcha

[neon echo]

yeah it checks for that file anyways

[still pumice]

Totally didn't realize you made a .bat file for it already lmao

[fierce dagger]

i think whatever i did on there might have fixed the models? cause theyre not 1 to 2 triangles per mesh anymore?

[still pumice]

Just for extra stability you might wanna consider either installing the 64-bit patch or Morphine. I'll link to Morphine but you can find the patch on ModDB.

When installing Morphine just double check that all the files are inside of the base game folder after you install that.

[still pumice]

NO WAY

HUGS

[still pumice]

HUGE

not hugs lmao

DUDE WE'RE SO INNNNNNNN

[fierce dagger]

wow cant even got a hug no more

[still pumice]

🫂

this is cute I didn't know this one existed

the remix community is wholesome wtf why is there a random trans hug emoji I love it 😭💖

[fierce dagger]

so fucking odd

[still pumice]

no u

[fierce dagger]

no not you

the game twin

[still pumice]

Oh

Oh god

i know lmao

um at least the UI works still? 😂

Not sure if it's something you did but I just realized the health/stamina meters are off center and it pisses me off 😭 they are split files so it might totally just be something Andreas fucked up

[fierce dagger]

here is how to reproduce this bug

[still pumice]

Nope not an Andreas oopsie (still tired don't know why I'd think it was that)

Probably FWGS bug?

[still pumice]

So it seems like the Sawer flash is causing it?

[fierce dagger]

teleporting back to another level after starting the game fucks up the lightmaps again

[still pumice]

Ah... fuck.

[fierce dagger]

its ok tho who tfs gonna open the console to go back to the start lmao

its fine going from level to level IN GAME

[still pumice]

Well if we gotta decompile the maps anyways that shouldn't be a major issue?

Gotcha, good shit.

Wouldn't texture replacements also completely solve that issue?

[fierce dagger]

how

[still pumice]

Well lightmaps are a texture are they not? So if we replace the textures in the toolkit I'd imagine they'd take precedent over the lightmaps as well

[fierce dagger]

give it a try man

[still pumice]

Ughhh im still in beddd 😭

Yeah I'll give it a shot gimme a moment

[fierce dagger]

you got this man im burnt out from trying for the past 2 days

i take a break today and maybe tomorrow on weekend

[still pumice]

I'd say you deserve it holy shit, you've been essentially the backbone behind this ngl 😭

I'll lyk if I come up on anything

Found this in relation to FWGS. It'll be the first thing I try and test.

The "r_lighting_extended" specifically.

[fierce dagger]

sv_cheats 1
r_fullbright 1
r_dynamic 0
r_nocull 1

[willow yacht]

Have yall tried copying HL1 remix’s approach?

I know the renderer is different but after all its a derivative from HL so it shouldn’t be a problem

[fierce dagger]

whats their approach

[willow yacht]

Idk lol

[woeful mauve]

From my understanding HL1 did not progress very much past getting it to boot with remix. I booted Steam HL1 the other day (-nofbo -nomsaa -novid were the magic params) and the FPS drops make it unplayable.

[willow yacht]

Bruh

That answers my question

[woeful mauve]

This is big then. I'll have to make time to test this myself.

[fierce dagger]

unsure tho i am on xash maybe its what they did thats fixing it

[woeful mauve]

Yea that's what I think too.

[fierce dagger]

@still pumice

twin

can you update the top one message we got with the new one

[fierce dagger]

Xash version cleaned the map up a tiny bit stable 40 ish FPS in this area

(without knife - steam) like 10 ish fps
(with knife - xash) like 50 ish fps

(without knife - steam) literally 4 fps or below
(with knife - xash) like 23 ish fps

[still pumice]

yawn

just woke up gang, what I gotta update?

[edgy prawn]

i thought this was oblivion for a sec

[fierce dagger]

dms

replace the top message we have here with the one i dmed u

[still pumice]

Saw it I'm on it

[fierce dagger]

also good morning twin

[still pumice]

Good morninng :3 time to get to BUSINESS

fukkk I can't update it with the new one because Discord is wack broo

[fierce dagger]

whatchu mean

[still pumice]

too many characters smh

[fierce dagger]

right no nitro

[still pumice]

😭

[fierce dagger]

fuck it bro

Cry of Fear RTX Remix - Current Progress & Setup Guide (WIP)

Xash3D Version (Recommended)
Repo: https://github.com/michaelabilliot/CryofFear_RTX-REMIX

This version runs Cry of Fear through a modified Xash3D FWGS with RTX Remix. Everything is included, no Steam needed.

Installation:

1. Download the repo
2. Run launcher.bat

Current Issues:

• Mesh Splitting – Map floors/walls are split into many pieces due to the map files themselves. 3D models like trash bins, poles, etc. are also split into many smaller meshes causing draw call overhead and FPS drops — though the model issue is not as bad as the Steam version. The map splitting is the same.
• Aggressive Culling – Objects behind the camera are culled immediately causing flickering. Can be fixed with r_nocull 1 in console but it tanks performance
• Lightmap Flickering – Lightmaps can turn the map black and flicker

just this
no need for steam

[still pumice]

bingo, done

[still pumice]

Gon' make some coffee rw

You ended up fixing the maps?

or map rather

If so you should teach me rq so I can get cracking on that

[fierce dagger]

i been tryin a lil

here and there

[still pumice]

Gotcha

[fierce dagger]

removing trees, lights etc

also getting rid of the stupid map issues

[still pumice]

Ah okay, yeah I'll crack open BSPGuy and start doing that for all the maps

[fierce dagger]

clone the github repo

then work off on that

so our works synced

[still pumice]

Alrighty, will do

[fierce dagger]

like these for example

the odd circle paths on the ground

or the backs of the stuff that just wont be visible at all like the under side of sidewalks

@still pumice you might know whats the name of the map for the ending with simons house

[still pumice]

c_village3

ending1-4 should put you inside his house with each respective ending as well

c_ending rather

[fierce dagger]

here pull again on the repo i took out light map generation entirely

even if the map files have it they wont be working

[still pumice]

Keep in mind tho loading into those maps via console doesn't render them properly. They'll have night skyboxes because the Asylum boss fight controls the trigger that sets it them to day

[still pumice]

Bet

[still pumice]

I can make debug versions that solve this issue most likely tho. I'll take a look and see what trigger causes them to become day and just stick them at the spawnpoint for this maps

[fierce dagger]

list of things to delete from maps
lights
light spots
any of those transparent things for lights like the beams or the circle texture
extra unneeded faces like backs of stuff we will never see (under the sidewalk for example lmao )
bushes hedges any transparent things

[still pumice]

Gotcha, almost done making my coffee and I'll be right on it

[fierce dagger]

if you need me to look into anything in xash3d or opengl errors lmk other then that i start my break

[still pumice]

Alright sounds good! Will do!

[still pumice]

Tryna make the download faster so I don't have to re-download EVERYTHING. I just need the opengl file and map folder, correct?

And the remix config obv

Just saw over in the CoD2 section someone asked if they plan on using modernizing the audio and I think we could do something similar. Or at least prepackage it with commands that remove the god awful sound doppler effect and such. Never really toyed with the sound commands but I know they exist.

Who knows, maybe we could reach out to Stig at the very least and see about maybe re-recording the games lines for us? He was very open to doing that stuff in the past, and I believe FWGS would allow us to use higher quality audio without compressing it as much. I'd want to pay him for that though so that'd be something I'd wanna ask when I personally could afford paying him for it.

[fierce dagger]

what are you talking about

can you repeat this in simpler english i dont get it

[still pumice]

mf what native language do YOU speak so I can translate it lmaoo

Anyways

[fierce dagger]

sometimes english

get the github desktop app you can download the repo using that

[still pumice]

The download is abysmally slow on my abysmal ass Wifi.

What files do I NEED. I already have the game installed on Xash. What are the NEW files I wouldn't have in my installation.

[fierce dagger]

whenever i update something or you update something it ONLY changes those files

you also need this to be able to update mine

[fierce dagger]

the xash im using is different twin im making changes on it

its like 300 mbs something keep your cry of fear install and download everything else

[still pumice]

blyaddddddddd

[still pumice]

What about the maps?

You haven't updated any maps in there?

also damn that's... common sense actually. I'm still waking up a bit so I didn't think to uh just uh... not download the whole ass Cry of Fear folder as well lmao

[fierce dagger]

the only changes ive done are to xash and opengl so you can just use the cry of fear download you already have

its worth it to download and set it up once man after that it wont be a problem

[still pumice]

I was just tryna get to work on the map bs ASAP but I'm just downloading EVERYTHING rn and waiting FDM is my savior

It's almost done anyways so I should be getting to work soon

[still pumice]

also wait... if you haven't done any changes to the maps then why do I have to download the release before I start working on the maps??? It literally makes no difference then. I'm starting that rn lmao

[fierce dagger]

you downloading the repo with fdm?

[still pumice]

yeh

[fierce dagger]

how are you gonna commit your changes to the repo?

[fierce dagger]

ohh you mean that

i thought u were asking how to get the whole thing

yeah no bro you can just download the maps folder dont need anything else

[still pumice]

So you have uploaded changes to the maps then?

Whole thing should be just over 3GB anyways and it's almost done

[fierce dagger]

r_nocull 1 (what we already have)

my version

comparison this is base game culling

[still pumice]

Holy shit what an improvement! I think it goes without saying we probably won't acheive performance like the base game culling with the type of culling we HAVE to do with Remix but that's an incredible difference already!

[fierce dagger]

once u clean the maps from all trees/transparent shit lets check the performance then

[still pumice]

Yup, the archive finished. I was poking around the maps for visible faces that shouldn't be and Andreas actually did a really solid job at making sure things faces the player would never see are invisible. You see them in the editor but they're tagged as invisible leafs that won't be shown in the actual game.

I'll still tag them as the black texture that's used for invisible faces anyways as I come across them just for safety tho, not sure if your culling work affects leaf rendering?

[fierce dagger]

just straight up delete it man

[still pumice]

alright alright sheesh

Na but uh why are all these in the maps folder?

[fierce dagger]

a durrr

what

am i stupid

i actually might be dumb as shit LMAO

no wonder the entire things like 6 gb

the entire games duplicated bro

fixed

[still pumice]

LMAO brotherrrrr

Also which maps did you do, just c_start 1/2?

[fierce dagger]

yeah but i just lost it rn by fixing the maps in github

its ok all i did was delete the trees, railings etc

[still pumice]

I have the maps you fixed, I'll include them when I upload the maps. I'll give them like a _debug suffix as to not override the originals

[fierce dagger]

you should rename the originals to _bak

so your new edited map is c_start.bsp
the originals are c_start_bak.bsp

[still pumice]

Okay I'll do that.

Having just a small maybe issue? I'm creating a notepad list of model names I should delete to help make going through each map and deleting them all at once faster. I'm having a slight issue with func_illusionary stuff tho. Not sure if it's just how they are but selecting one selects ALL of them so if there is a model that turns out to be a func_illusionary instead of a env_model I'm not gonna be entirely sure how to rid of it. Otherwise I'm getting through the apartments rn

The func_illusionary stuff is just signs like the exit/fire stuff on the roof, vents on the wall, and door frames. So nothing I'd wanna rid of anyways'

[still pumice]

Either I'm stupid or this fking annoying software lacks the basic feature to RENAME while Saving As.

Either way I've made a folder that contains the original files with the suffixes done, and I've completed a couple maps removing trees and such while compiling the list of mdl/sprite names to delete

[still pumice]

I'm conflicted on particles. You think I should remove them (Like the water drip particles in the apartments?) or just leave them? Otherwise I've compiled a solid list of the exact things to make deleting stuff go much quicker, almost through with the first 3 apartment maps, just double checking every room and such to find new entities that I should delete and make sure I didn't miss anything

[fierce dagger]

get rid of it doesnt remix have its own particle thing

[fierce dagger]

yeah i was tryna clean up the 3d menu to see if itd work the func_illusionarymust be for background asset or something cause the 1 func_illusionary was entire back

[still pumice]

It's for brushes with no collision, It's actually a nonissue AFAIK. The map I found the first one in that I got concerned about just conveniently combined all the stuff I mentioned but other maps do have several func_illusionary entities for separate things like background trees and such. Otherwise I've discovered every every entity type that should ALL just flatout be deleted like env_sprite and env_spark for example. Still need to compile my list with model names that should be deleted but I'm doing that as I go, I've already got the model names for trees/bushes and stuff like that so I can just easily copy and paste the name, search for them, and delete them in maps that contain them.

[fierce dagger]

are you doing it in sequence like from c-start to next area c_start2 etc

or just randomly in files

[still pumice]

I'm going in alphabetical order for sake of my sanity

Unrelated but did you know Andreas put a spawner here in the room with the first Drowned's that makes one spawn in front of the door you had just entered from? Just in case you go back she's right there, I've seen it on one of my playthroughs and it scared the shit outta me lmao

The purple box is the monster spawner. Absolutely DIABOLICAL thing to include that most people would never see lmao

[fierce dagger]

wait wtf

i remember getting scared by that

peak design

[still pumice]

real.

In terms of the func_walls you've been deleting like railings and such, I believe we should avoid doing such and retexture them instead if possible. In the future we could try replacing them with full fledged 3D models. The grates in the Sawer boss fight count as those, and obviously the railings while most are out of reach of the player serve as a wall. I mean we're just debugging rn but figured it's something I'd mention

[fierce dagger]

what about the purely decoration ones

cant we just delete this and in the toolkit just put the new railing mesh attached to the wall

[still pumice]

Those ones are 3D models, do they really need deleted? The ones I've seen are purely 2D textures and those are what Remix doesn't like.

Though you're probably right, we could just put a new railing mesh in the toolkit.

So I'm conflicted here. Delete the skybox, or no? It contains trees and such but I'm not sure how it'll effect things. Skyboxes aren't used in Remix anyways so it probably shouldn't be an issue but I just wanna be sure

Honestly wasn't really aware Cry of Fear used 3D skyboxes like in Source. Are 3D skyboxes normally even a thing in GoldSRC games??? I feel like they aren't.

[edgy prawn]

🤔 wonder if you guys could utilize some of CR's gmod fork of remix

it has a lot of changes made for source that might be useful here

https://github.com/sambow23/dxvk-remix-gmod/

[still pumice]

We could try asking, not sure what changes would need to be made to adapt for GoldSRC but that's a good idea

[still pumice]

@fierce dagger This would be worth looking into, the work put into Garry's Mod compatibility with Remix is incredible CR might be able to help us adapt some of these changes for GoldSRC if they're alright with it.

these cops man... in the Asylum corner?? Seriously??? No class whatsoever lmao

I believe we leave light_environment entities, those seem to control the day/night lighting post Asylum section.

[still pumice]

Btw have you been using the Entity Report menu to find and delete models? Or just doing it by hand?

[still pumice]

um... went to test the maps in FWGS and this shit is happening again. This is the version I got from Github so I literally have zero clue what's wrong.

wait i'm dumb hold on

me rn. figured it out lmao I should probably learn how to READ.

Gonna take a break my neck is killing me but I've gotten good progress. All maps alphabetically down to the bridge are done. I'm skipping over custom maps rn (obviously) but I've got this pretty streamlined so doing the rest of the maps should go quickly

[still pumice]

Heads up you can't "delete" textures on faces, but changing their texture to {invisible should block them from rendering

[still pumice]

Genuinely wtf was Andreas thinking when making these brushes dude. Most of the rooftops are assembled just like this.

na wtf is this brooo 😭

[glossy blaze]

Are you going to rework the levels to make it run better/more stable in remix?

[still pumice]

Yup, you can see in the text file some of the models that I've listed for deletion (Stuff that contains weird transparency that Remix doesn't like) on top of flat-out removing any light entities, particles, and info_textlights that AFIAK are similar to emissives? It's limited to like 1-2 of those per map so I'm assuming they're put on an atlas similar to lightmaps. I'm also attempting to remove any faces the player would never be able to see in normal gameplay.

The part I'm worried about is optimizing brushes, you can see the absolute absurd brush work we're dealing with in the video I sent. We lack the original .vmf files except for a handful of maps contained in the SDK and I'm honestly not certain how decompiling/recompiling from the .bsp's is gonna go yet. Would you happen to be familiar with doing so? I could try and enlist the help of NOUG4AT who has done exactly that for certain maps to port them to Source, that process AFAIK takes more work to port them to Source than it would be to simply recompile the maps again for use in GoldSRC. He was interested when I used Remix in the past to create screenshots on the maps he ported to Garry's Mod and wanted me to take some for him (Sadly I never did, though I'd like to reach out to him and tell him I could do it now) he may be interested in helping us with this if I reach out to him and ask.

I also plan on re-implementing certain features from the beta if possible, there's some interesting stuff that was cut that I think would be pretty cool if brought back. If you're familiar with Cry of Fear c_sewer3 contains the Mace boss fight where you have to gather a saw that had certain enemies jumping out of the lockers. It didn't function in the beta but if you move the maps to the full release the function for it works flawlessly, and it's a cool feature. Sadly I'd have to figure out how to reimplement the release version cutscene in that map because it suits the game better than the one used in beta.

That's a whole TL;DR moment lmao

[glossy blaze]

I am not familiar unfortunately. If i was id be working on that Counter Strike Campaign lol

[still pumice]

Fair enough lmao. I'd bet that brush work isn't done half as lazily there though considering it was done by actual professional teams and Valve. You could use the software I'm using (NewBSPGuy) to edit the maps without having to completely recompile them. If you're interested I'd check it out and see especially considering I believe nowadays Condition Zero would likely be supported by FWGS and you could probably use Toyatak's fix of QIndieGL to make it compatible with Remix, and considering it'd rely on the original Half-Life OpenGL renderer you'd most certainly run into less issues in that regard than we are experiencing with Cry of Fear.

[still pumice]

@fierce dagger I've gotta check Reddit cause I believe that's where he reached out to me originally but I did ask NOUG4AT if he'd be interested in helping us with the project as he has experience doing exactly what we're trying to do in terms of brush optimization and it'd probably be less work for him doing so than it would've been to port the maps to Source in the first place.

[glossy blaze]

where can i find that fork

FWGS aint booting with remix rn

[still pumice]

Found it. He's likelier to respond on here. He is Russian so I'm not sure how accessible Discord would be for him but it's worth a shot and I hope he responds

[still pumice]

Pinned post. Just snag the OpenGL file from that repo, you'd might wanna get the QIndieGL .ini file as well as I believe Toyatak made some modifications to that

[glossy blaze]

ok. and ooo boy

this isnt going to be fun to fix

[still pumice]

Lmao unfortunately not, but hey! Better engine access with FWGS than you'd have with GoldSRC itself!

[glossy blaze]

Yeah, ive messed with it before

but just on hl1

[still pumice]

The FWGS folks didn't really reciprocate with us when asking questions regarding Cry of Fear but maybe you'd have a good shot asking about Condition Zero considering it's an official Valve product. One of the lead devs of FWGS held kinda harsh opinions on Cry of Fear at least in the past so you'd probably have a better chance getting their help than we did lmao. People ARE probably more likely to be interested in Condition Zero than CoF over there anyways

[fierce dagger]

pinned message

just download it and run launcher.bat for cry of fear

you can probably delete it and swap it with cs

[still pumice]

holy shit he's ALIVE!!! hallo 🙂

[fierce dagger]

good morning

[still pumice]

Good morning! My head is THROBBING so I'm honestly debating on continuing work on the maps rn but I might just tough it through and get it done

[fierce dagger]

take a break twin

dont burn yourself out

[still pumice]

Like even typing messages is honestly agonizing let alone focusing on the maps.

[glossy blaze]

currently using the main branch

[still pumice]

It's not necessarily burn out. My head's just been killing me all day and I don't have anything to relieve it. Been tryna drink as much water as possible but I think it's just one of those days. I'll try taking a quick break tho and get on it. I definitely plan on staying up however long it takes to power through the rest of these maps tonight though.

[fierce dagger]

take some ice in a bag man and put it on top of your head

that always helps me

[still pumice]

Good call, I'll try that rq

I think it might be partially due to how much coffee I've had today 😭

[fierce dagger]

could you upload the maps youve made so far so i can take a look too

[fierce dagger]

oh yeah thats definetly it

[still pumice]

Yup! I'll make a separate folder on the repo containing the originals in the map folder and replace the ones in the regular maps folder

Still absolutely a newbie when it comes to editing repo's but if I "Add file" here or go down a folder it'd put them in the correct section right?

Figured it out, uploading them shortly

[fierce dagger]

this why you gotta get github desktop man

1 click and itll upload everything as is

[still pumice]

I actually do have Github desktop already I just forget it exists lmao

uhhh it is having a stroke rn

[fierce dagger]

wtf

[still pumice]

Cloning the repository rn so I can retry with the desktop app if it screws up this upload lmao

[fierce dagger]

why is there like 6 clones of _bak

[still pumice]

You told me give the originals that suffix, I'm including the originals just in case but I probably don't really need to do that lmao

The edits are already finished and they're fine

[fierce dagger]

i mean like 1 og back up

[still pumice]

Well I mean all we'd really have to do is yoink them from a fresh install anyways so yeah me doing this is kinda redundant and just adds bloat lmk I'll redo it

[fierce dagger]

its fine lmk when its uploaded so i can take a look

[still pumice]

Restarted it to stop it wigging out. It'll be finished shortly

[still pumice]

FFS

Gimme a sec and I'll do it through the desktop app

[glossy blaze]

Yo where can I find a list of commands for xash?

[still pumice]

Good question, you might be able to try the vanilla GoldSRC cmdlist command?

It appears cvarlist would work in FWGS like it would in Source

[glossy blaze]

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Command_line_options_(GoldSrc)

what is -nofbo?

rn im testing stuff in OF (cs crashes)

[fierce dagger]

should set ur screen resolution to the game resolution

[still pumice]

Oh, it might be a Cry of Fear specific thing then.

[glossy blaze]

what? i think i have to do that outside of the game via a shortcut

[still pumice]

So there's several types of rendering a game can use to adjust resolutions. I believe FBO is an archaic way of doing so when using unusual aspect ratios. Lemme dig through my history, I did some reading about it on like PCGamingWiki or something similar.

Also yes that's a launch paramter

[fierce dagger]

not related to you guys
Light colors
Orange: #FFD574

[still pumice]

Here You can read up on it, I believe FBO is equivalent to pixel perfect scaling as far as I've read? I may be wrong on that though.

Repo is about halfway through downloading, needs me a quick smoke break and some food so I'll check back up on it when I'm finished.

[glossy blaze]

https://txdv.github.io/cstrike-cvarlist/ found that list ive used before

[still pumice]

Nice that actually might be helpful for us as well. I also found out Cry of Fear utilizes the "detail" textures that were originally implemented in Condition Zero first interestingly enough. As far as I understand with that feature textures up to 1024x1024 in scale are able to be used in the game (not actually certain on that but textures can definitely go 512x512, though no textures are actually that size or bigger IIRC)

Also why did Andreas pick such absurd names for stuff lmao. The amount of vulgar names and slurs and such you can find STILL in the game files is honestly hilarious. You can tell how juvenile his humor was at the time.

[fierce dagger]

hog vagina

the swedish note incident

[still pumice]

Have you seen the monster names in code?

[fierce dagger]

what are they

[still pumice]

I'll dig some of the funny ones up rq gimme a sec

[fierce dagger]

ive been working on c_start as like a little demo to show off

trying to upscale faithfully

i really do hate this hair like texture the cracks get

[still pumice]

That looks really good actually. You're stealing the one thing I WOULD be good at though 😭 just kidding but I'd be down to tweak some of the textures in Substance Painter cause I got access to that.

[fierce dagger]

LITERALLY PLEASE

[still pumice]

Texture work is like the only thing in this whole project I'm confident I'd actually be good at. I've had a lot of practice over the years. I'm still an amateur by ALL means but I've gotten really good at hand making creating PBR assets imo.

[still pumice]

Also yeah the cracks look really damn good. Making displacement maps for the cracklines would be really fun

[fierce dagger]

would you be good at making textures for models too cause i can 3d model i cant do textures for shit tho

[still pumice]

My favorite part is gonna be the emissives. Doing Simons phone in particular is gonna be so fun. The screen and buttons being able to actually glow is gonna be so cool looking

[still pumice]

More or less, I have practiced with the Cry of Fear models and stuff ported to Garry's Mod. Sadly I got rid of them for space so I no longer have the textures I've made for them on hand but I have zero issue re-doing it all.

[fierce dagger]

there is like very little in the way for us to actually start doing better lighting and textures

we gotta fix the menu too i tried deleting everything except the menu from the 3d menu and its still at 4 fps nothing more

[still pumice]

Wouldn't we wanna at least try decompiling the maps and fixing brush work before that though? I have no issues with beginning the REAL project but I feel like optimization is TOP priority. If there's anything I CANNOT stand it's lazy and bullshit half-assed optimization.

[fierce dagger]

thats goldsrc issue

[still pumice]

I'll take a look at what I can do when I get to that map.

[fierce dagger]

the way maps are compiled

[still pumice]

So brushes being seperated like that is just a bi-product of how they were compiled? I feel like modern mapping tools would probably mitigate that though, no?

[fierce dagger]

Why is the map split into a million tiny pieces?

It is not bad map design; it is just how 1990s engine math works. The GoldSrc engine uses BSP (Binary Space Partitioning) and CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry).

During the map compiling process, the compiler automatically takes out a "knife" and slices a wall's face every single time:

1. Another brush (wall, floor, stair, window frame) touches it.
2. Another brush intersects it.
3. The engine needs to draw an invisible "BSP tree node" line for visibility optimization.

Those triangular cuts on the floor and the grid-like cuts on the walls are the engine making sure collision and rendering work correctly. You cannot merge them in the .bsp file because the engine's physics and visibility rely on those exact mathematical cuts.

[still pumice]

Ah... tragic.

Whelp in that case yeah, as long as models aren't split into a thousand different vertices I'd say we can begin. I'll still finish the map edits but I'll probably have to go back through them and redo them at some point to bring back particles and stuff that I've deleted for sake of performance that we wouldn't actually want deleted in the full release.

One thing I'm interested in is the env_fog entity. That SOUNDS like it'd be something that we would want gone, I gotta look into it tho

[still pumice]

literally as it sounds. Controls fog in the maps, we'd want to remove that and let Remix handle fog. Probably one of the major things killing performance but I'm for the 100th time talking out my ass about that.

[still pumice]

You have more experience in actual testing than I've had tho so as soon as I can upload the edited maps I do have currently on hand you should go through them and see what actual differences they've made in regards to performance and rendering.

Comitting the changes rn

It's done

HOW HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS??? Not sure what its purpose is but there's a hidden hallway behind the Sawrunner room. Maybe to stash him there before the cutscene?

[still pumice]

I was correct. Very interesting, I'm surprised I've never seen it but then again most of my experience with this map was the port of it to Garry's Mod where they simply cut this unessecary hallway out, and considering leaving bounds completely de-renders everything it makes sense I'd have never even know it was there. I'm gonna boot the game up and check it out rq actually

Oh and as for the monster names, the model names don't actually reflect what they're referred to in code but like one example is the Drowned being labeled "monster_crazybitch" and either the Babies or Children being called "monster_babycocksucker" (like Andreas wtf???) and other names along those lines

[still pumice]

Wow I'm confused, I tested it in the Steam release tho since noclipping is still disabled in FWGS but the hallway isn't there so that makes sense why I haven't seen it. It was something they probably changed in 1.6 or whatever.

[fierce dagger]

hi i was out for a smoke

let me see

[still pumice]

I'mma judge you rq. What brand you like?

[fierce dagger]

winstons

[still pumice]

Alright that's acceptable lmao, I'm a Marlboro kinda fella

[fierce dagger]

yeah i had that too

i like my smoke to be as flarlorless and bland as possible

FLAVOR

i cant type my fingers frozen

i take a peak at the maps

[still pumice]

The Marb Smooths are my ULTIMATE favorite as a menthol enthusiast but I usually smoke blacks.

Flavorless and bland is valid tho lmao, lately I've been using generic pipe tobacco since cig taxes in my state are ABUSRD.

Anyways back on topic lmk how it goes. Hopefully removing the fog and lights and stuff makes an actual difference.

[fierce dagger]

ok definetly better first impression

[still pumice]

How did you do the textures btw? I don't think it'll make much of a difference whether you used a capture or the original but I'm personally gonna start ripping them from the .wad file because they do appear compressed in game I believe

[fierce dagger]

this area in c_start2 used to dip to 40

keep in mind taking fps knocks it down by like 20 fps so for me its solid 70 from 40

[fierce dagger]

the remix capture one

[still pumice]

Hell yeah! That's acceptable.

[fierce dagger]

this spots still 40 but its probably due to cullnig

[still pumice]

This is one example of a direct rip. It definitely appears like it's higher fidelity from the .wad than it does in game. You wanna try booting up c_sewer3 , creating a capture, and comparing?

[fierce dagger]

since i cant do the pc what level is after this

the computer part do you know

[fierce dagger]

atleast not so udderly compressed

[still pumice]

shit you'd have to noclip through the padlock door but you can't do that in FWGS. I'm gonna boot the vanilla game rq and I'll lyk

[fierce dagger]

dude this shit would so peak with lighting and textures

[still pumice]

I KNOW!!! I can't wait man I've been waiting to finally be able to do this for so long I'm still shocked it's becoming a reality.

We're gonna literally be the first to do a (fingers crossed) SUCCESSFUL "remaster" that doesn't wind up getting cancelled

[fierce dagger]

woah man

its not a remaster

its a RTX REMIX mod for cry of fear

[still pumice]

that's why its in quotes lmao

[fierce dagger]

exactly we dont want to upset the creator we are just passionate fans

[still pumice]

andreas if you're seeing this, pls have mercy upon our project

[fierce dagger]

im gonna try to fix the fuck ton amount of surfaces via xash3d

since afaik this was done for the 1998 goldsrc era we in 2026 we do NOT need it to be knifed up

[still pumice]

That's what I'm saying it's a different engine entirely, although y'know I don't think there's any FWGS specific mapping tools so regardless compilation would still be done via GoldSRC standard. Although BSPGuy did have exporting options for Xash specifically so who knows.

Y'know you could probably try your hand at fixing the computer issue? I know you'd have literally ZERO idea how to fix it and we don't need to necessarily worry about it right now but in the near future we should try and have that bug resolved.

[fierce dagger]

i think it just wont let you type

[still pumice]

I found this funny, I could only imagine how obnoxious all the CLANG CLANG CLANG sounds from all the Fasters were lmao.

Apparently FWGS causes issues with spawning in the Suicide mode but hopefully any RNG related spawns in the regular campaign aren't an issue. The college specifically would be worth testing in regards to that.

[fierce dagger]

if you press é to open console it does type the console key in the computer

[still pumice]

Yeah I know, here's the bug report https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs/issues/1923

over a year that's been open and unfixed. yikes. They really do not give a flying f*ck about this game 😭 but I'm sure they know as little as we'd know in terms of fixing it

[still pumice]

Did you manage to get the capture for this texture from the sewer3 map btw???

Kinda wanna compare and see if they are compressed in engine or not.

I'm a goof btw I got the map order from a speedrun video

c_start
c_start2
c_start (again)
c_apartment1

And from there things get wacky due to how the speedrun is performed but I imagine it likely goes in numerical order until c_apartmentsick however c_apartmentsick3/4 are the re-entry later in the game.

c_basement
c_sewer1-3
c_city1/2

And onward, but that should give us a good layout to test the beginning of the game from

[hollow saddle]

good luck guys

[fierce dagger]

remember screenshots make it drop like 10-20 fps os this is around 60-70 now

slight issue with culling tho at certain very rare angles the entire wall may disappear idk what causes that

[still pumice]

YOU ABSOLUTE FKING LEGEND I WAS WONDERING WHAT YOU WERE DOING

[fierce dagger]

we still gonna have to fix the maps tho lmao

[still pumice]

As in deleting lights? That's lightwork.

[fierce dagger]

i cant merge these ones

but compared to before thats like 80% less work

[still pumice]

At this point I'd blame Cry of Fear being spaghetti code. You know that one area after the first slower where there's the lever for that gate? You ever seen the one specifc spot you can stand in and it just absolutely breaks the renderer? I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar or if that same glitch still has some effect despite your changes.

[fierce dagger]

twin thats not CoF fault its goldsrc

there are edge cases like this since im also merging by material

[still pumice]

I mean yes and no lmao. Just saying I've never seen Half-Life do ANY of the buggy renderer shit that Cry of Fear does on an average day

[fierce dagger]

the book shelf top and table top are identical material angle etc

[still pumice]

Honestly should be a nonissue in our case

At least that specific instance I don't see being a problem even when we get to doing replacement textures

[fierce dagger]

the table legs and the doors at the bottom of the shelf are fine tho so we could just literally delete it all and replace the meshes of those

[still pumice]

Gotcha, I figured they were models and not brushes.

[fierce dagger]

oof

[still pumice]

caramelldansen plays

[still pumice]

Remind me, that's for geometry hashes right?

[fierce dagger]

yes

[still pumice]

That's... That's pretty bad...

[fierce dagger]

its ok man whats 1 more fix

[still pumice]

I have complete faith in you 🙏

[fierce dagger]

how many maps you got left btw

[still pumice]

Admittedly I paused while we were figuring stuff out but I'm already at the city maps so not too many left and I've gotten the flow down so it should go a lot faster. I shall smoke rq and immediately get back on it.

Should I still be deleting models? Or just lights, fixing faces, and stuff like that?

[still pumice]

Also particles like env_sparks/env_particles. Should I start leaving those as well since we're at this phase?

[fierce dagger]

lets do models afterwards cause i literally dont know rn

[fierce dagger]

you should delete all particles man

[still pumice]

Alright I've already been doing such. In that case I'll leave models but I might remove them in the forest maps due to how dense the foliage is there. No doubts your FPS would be single digits.

I'll start powering through the rest of the maps rn

[fierce dagger]

wait

what do you mean by models like trees and bushes or trash cans etc

@still pumice

[still pumice]

Just trees and stuff with awkward transparency

[still pumice]

Still remove those?

I'm gonna assume yes and continue doing such

[fierce dagger]

remove trees, bushes anything transparent

dont remove trash cans, light poles etc

[still pumice]

Yup that's exactly what I've been doing, I'm currently onto the ending maps in terms of alphabetical order. Obviously skipping over any maps that aren't the original campaign maps.

[fierce dagger]

could we delete the co-op maps to save some extra space

i remember like a half assed memory of them being their own maps but in reverse

[still pumice]

That's exactly the case. Honestly not a bad idea, I didn't consider it but yeah multiplayer doesn't even function in FWGS and nobody is probably gonna be playing the RTX mod with multiplayer in mind anyways.

I'd say we can remove them for sake of removing bloat

At some point though we should tackle the custom campaigns but that's WAY down the line. I don't care about those like... at all. But it'd be nice to include once we're COMPLETELY done with the main campaign

People (including me) have been curious how this effect was done. Turns out it's just a cleverly animated model. Very interesting.

seeing stuff like this outside of the game is so jarring, absolutely WILD

[fierce dagger]

yo @still pumice

im working on the hashes and i realised this is always loaded

its the floor of this area

[still pumice]

AKA the area with the rendering bug I was talking about earlier. Interesting.

I might be able to take a look at it and see if I find anything interesting about it in BSPGuy

Took a quick break, scrolling through Boomerbook for a sec lmao because the endings specifically were so exhausting to go through. I still have ending4/5 to complete but the first 9 maps of endings1-3 are finished.

There were some areas WAY out of bounds with trees and stuff I didn't notice that I had to go back and fix, aside from the fact they're generally a carbon copy of each other so it was just repetitive.

Thankfully the last two endings will be different so it won't be as obnoxious to go through lmao, I'm DREADING the forest maps tho.

Gonna make a comment on the post in the subreddit rq tho telling people not to msg here unless they're actively contributing something aside from "Good luck" type messages just in case, it hasn't been an issue obviously but I'd like to try and curb it in case it does. I'd have zero issues personally if people directed comments like that towards my DM's instead of here.

[still pumice]

Here soon you wanna cook up another sample showcase video/screenshots I could post now that culling is almost completely fixed?

[fierce dagger]

nah dont do updates til we have something solid man

i hate showing my work to people when its not fully done

[still pumice]

Is culling and our mesh issue not something solid? That singlehandedly would've killed this project if you weren't able to solve those 😭

Am I misunderstanding? If we're able to begin on ACTUAL Remix work then I'd argue that's something worth making an actual update about.

[fierce dagger]

perfectionism man i need it to be perfect before we begin

its only a slight issue tho so dont worry

if it merges the walls lets say like the top left piece as the main one, once thats out of view all of it gets fucked

[still pumice]

Leaf related perhaps? Could try editing the map and delete leafs in BSPGuy and see if that stops it from being de-rendered.

[fierce dagger]

what im doin got nothing to do with maps themselves

im merging them in xash3d

[still pumice]

How the hell are you accomplishing that? Well that still further solidifies my belief that it's a leaf issue then but I'm reading up on it right now.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning This is what I'm looking at right now

[fierce dagger]

oops

[still pumice]

it's so fking peak 🥹

[fierce dagger]

you say that to the culling removing infront of the hallway and the support beam

[still pumice]

ah shit I didn't notice that bit

I saw the pitch black hallway and got excited

[fierce dagger]

you downloaded the entire repo using github desktop right

[still pumice]

yeh I see the problem now 😭

Yeah

[fierce dagger]

ok fetch origin then pull and test it out

[still pumice]

Gotcha

[fierce dagger]

i only edited c_start since you forgot couple of sprites and env_glow

[still pumice]

I didn't touch c_start or c_start2 since I thought you did it

Everything else I can guarantee those are completely gone. I left some particles in the apartment maps but deleted them in every map following

[fierce dagger]

in that case i think i gotta fix the bug and nothing else left afaik

you can make new hd textures and we can start replacing it

[still pumice]

Still gotta go through the maps with BSPGuy but I'll start that the MOMENT I'm finished because I'm EXCITED FOR THAT PART

We should cook up a custom icon btw. Not sure if you can replace .bat icons but I'll look at that in a sec

[fierce dagger]

i was literally about to say that

[still pumice]

culling is uh... just a little cooked

just a teensy bit... cooked.

Framerate on a 3080 without framegen is fucking awesome tho. That's probably not even full performance cause I have so much shit open rn, but it's good otherwise

We've got two viable options for changing the icon, I could see potential issues with turning it into an executable but I think I'd prefer that route if possible.

[fierce dagger]

did you r_cull_fov_scale 1.7

[still pumice]

I'mma be so fr with you gng, I didn't even know that command existed. I'll try it tho lmao

uh

am I dumb? What am I missing here??? lmao

[still pumice]

WAIT NVM

I AM DUMB

[fierce dagger]

did you get the latest from github bro

[still pumice]

Yes but I have like 5 folders for this shit I need to cleanup. That was the wrong install lmao

[fierce dagger]

oh brother

got me fucking worried

[still pumice]

Hate to break it to you, it's not telling me it's an unknown command now but it's also not doing anything or saying anything else.

[fierce dagger]

you sure man cause im using the same repo as you and its working

[still pumice]

getting the video compressed rn but bro

It's literally not working

Doesn't say unkown command, but it literally doesn't do anything else

Is my resolution possibly an issue??? Like I genuinely don't understand why this isn't working

[fierce dagger]

yeah but when you go into the game is the walls etc fucked up or not

[still pumice]

Yes they are lmao

Still the same exact issue dude

I have a 2560x1600 monitor. Do what that what you will. I see you're on a standard 16:9 1080P monitor. Mine is 1440P 16:10. Not sure if that's at all relevant

[fierce dagger]

can you show the history tab here man

[fierce dagger]

fetch origin 1 more time

[still pumice]

fetching origin actually did something this time lmao

lemme test again

[fierce dagger]

u missing that

if it doesnt work after that reinstall repo cause i literally couldnt tell you what the issue is

[still pumice]

Got it. It was complaining about cfg files or some dumb sh*t

[fierce dagger]

so is it fucked?

[still pumice]

testing rn

It works :3333

Still doesn't tell me anything when I put the command in but it DOES work now

[fierce dagger]

yeah its not supposed to

[still pumice]

Used Simons moms crib to test it

[fierce dagger]

how tf is your recording like 140 fps

what are you using to record

[still pumice]

The built in NVIDIA software??? Why aren't you using it? Ansel is goated dude

[fierce dagger]

i just press prnt scrn it does the job enough

[still pumice]

For videos ya goof

[fierce dagger]

real test is alt + x and check the hashes in debug view

i cant make them all be 1 wall but i think its ok enough since i batched it up as much as i can

[still pumice]

You literally have a NVIDIA gpu like brother use the built in recording software 😭

Alright lemme load it back up

[fierce dagger]

if its all good on your end too we can start making a little demo to showcase c_start

[still pumice]

This option right?

From what I'm seeing everything looks fine, one sec

[fierce dagger]

twin

[still pumice]

???

[fierce dagger]

when you click "enable debug view"

a little menu will open below it

it has the word hash in it pick that and look

[still pumice]

lmao I didn't see that pop up

Yeah it looks fine

Gimme a sec one more time

[fierce dagger]

the hand is fucked i know

if you look at c_start since u have knife on there the hand just goes craaazy

[fierce dagger]

ill fix the computer now tho so we can actually play

[still pumice]

It's got a little wibble wobble

[fierce dagger]

thats from the debug view its fine

as long as no colors changing

man your recording are fucking sharp

[still pumice]

fk yeah we're good then >:)))

[fierce dagger]

i gotta use nvidia too

[still pumice]

Ansel is goated I'm telling you brah. No matter what bitrate I use in OBS it still doesn't compare to how PERFECT all my NVIDIA recordings come out.

Like all my videos straight up look as if I'm not even looking at a video. It's literally confused me a couple times.

but uh also I'm recording in 1440P

[fierce dagger]

once ur done with the maps

you wanna start unpacking the textures so we can swap it out

[still pumice]

Yup, it'll take literally less than 5 seconds to export them

shit looks so horrifying dude I can't wait LMAO

[fierce dagger]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/471622906103988225/1475148574705844234/trex_2026.02.22_-_07.09.33.27.DVR.mp4?ex=699c6eab&is=699b1d2b&hm=aae94be05e4166efca004f66f852b2596b657caa630a27f8cd8b34d34b5bd248&

[neon echo]

oh so it's normal to not have hands with knife

[fierce dagger]

what

[still pumice]

No, you're either loading into a map that isn't c_start which doesn't give you weapons

Or you disabled the viewmodel. The knife works just fine, if anything you'd be running into the 3rd hand glitch when dual wielding that we need to solve.

[still pumice]

taught myself how to do water (kinda) :)))

still need to learn how to make it animated but where it stands? pretty good

could use a larger wave texture but for now? Better than water being a pure black texture lmao

attempting to figure out the skybox and scared the shit outta myself with... whatever is happening here

[fierce dagger]

im aware the hand looks like shit i started working on the knife in the middle of doing the gloves so its not done

[silent lake]

Looks clean great job

[still pumice]

real proud of these shots 😍

so damn good :))))))

[still pumice]

Forewarning, flashing lights.

@rare hamlet sorry to @ you but if you'd have a moment to take a look at this we'd appreciate it. Kim told us you recently implemented a fix for this kinda issue with Garry's Mod, of course we're working with FWGS so it's not exactly the same engine but would you have any insight on how we'd might be able to fix this issue?

Just for further elaboration any model that has animations tied to it (Viewmodels, enemies, and certain environment models) alongside anything else that moves like particles and such have unstable hashes due to CPU skinning. We've kinda hit a wall on this one, and like I described in general chat it's our biggest hurdle aside from figuring out how to get Remix to properly detect the viewmodel camera which should be a hopefully easier issue to resolve.

Toyatak the legend that he is managed to get the rest of the hashes stable, but these have been the tricky ones he's been stuck on for a couple days now. Aside from that we've essentially got Remix running almost flawless on GoldSRC/FWGS so getting Remix to work on other original Half-Life mods should be much more feasible assuming they aren't as reliant on shaders and use a custom renderer like Cry of Fear.

[still pumice]

Another example. Toyatak has been under the impression it's been ANYTHING that moves but this video proves that to be false (like I thought)

So it seems a MAJORITY of animated things (env_model, and env_particle being two examples) have this issue but func_door_rotating entities make an exception to the unstable hash issue.

[still pumice]

Some screenshots I was fond of. Almost through with lighting then it's back to wrapping up whatever textures haven't been finished in c_start - c_apartment1

(Toyatak came THROUGH on like 99% of these textures, absolutely INCREDIBLE work)

[rare hamlet]

does fwgs use dx9? iirc gold source(or maybe this fork) doesnt have any native hardware skinning (what would make the hashes stable), so it would need a custom implementation i believe

where is y'all's engine source located?

[still pumice]

FWGS sadly doesn't use DX9. Very similar to Half-Life in the sense it either uses software rendering or OpenGL support.

As for the source code for the engine that's available here

[rare hamlet]

Are you using a wrapper for GL?

[still pumice]

Yes, we're using QIndieGL.

[rare hamlet]

Not sure how far you can go with a wrapper, but for the long run it would be better to create a native d3d9 rendering backend, but that isnt easy by any means

Not sure if xash3d has rasied model limits but maybe do the mesh replacements in-engine?

[still pumice]

@fierce dagger has way more knowledge on the matter so maybe having a native DX9 renderer could be possible I just unfortunately wouldn't know how to go about it.

On the other hand Xash, specifically the FWGS fork does have much higher model limits so that's the route we were leaning towards worst comes to worst. It just unfortunately limits how we can go about doing stuff like the phone flashlight in game and such.

Thank you for your insight though, I appreciate it a ton!

[fierce dagger]

this is months of work for someone experienced with both GL and D3D9 i do NOT have that experience

[still pumice]

yeah I figured that'd be the case

[fierce dagger]

shit man if you got a couple thousand we hire someone for it

otherwise we cant do anything

[still pumice]

LMAO 😭 brother I ain't even got a hunned to my name I'm broke as a joke

So we're cookedddd. I am wondering though if we could cook up something in FWGS that follows the player, specifically in front of the phone when on and attach a proper light entity to that?

[rare hamlet]

Could do some kind of game mod? the mesh would need to have a stable mesh hash but that would work

hl2rtx does the same thing with its flashlight

[still pumice]

That's kinda what I was thinking, I believe y'all did the same thing for Garry's Mod for awhile as well right?

[rare hamlet]

yeah before we switched to an remix api-based solution

[fierce dagger]

what was that solution?

[rare hamlet]

We create remix lights from game code directly, I added lua bindings to the remix api via a binary module so we can script addons to use it

we've replaced all level and game lights with it

[fierce dagger]

dont worry guys still being worked on

[rare hamlet]

the 2nd image has diffusion upscaling artifacts?

[still pumice]

Yeah unfortunately, I'm hoping we do model replacements but that's temp until I can cook up an actual better texture for it in Substance Painter.

You can see it really bad on the top of the slide, but that's the fault of the normal map. I ended up fixing that but forgot to retake that shot for this lmao

[sand nacelle]

https://tenor.com/view/fridge-meme-fridge-happy-smiling-instagram-gif-7186562603442897946

This project could become the remake this game needs

[fierce dagger]

not a remake man its a RTX Remix mod for cry of fear

[still pumice]

Just let him have this lmao. Technically speaking it IS a graphical remaster. NVIDIA themselves use that terminology, by all means it's just a mod and not a true full remaster but there ain't no point in word policing the community on it.

But also remake/remaster are different definitions. This would fall under a remaster, not a remake.

[sand nacelle]

I'm referring to what this project could become, although it would be more of a remaster than anything else

[still pumice]

And that's absolutely the intention 😌

He's just been strict on how we've worded the nature of this project due to how fan projects for this game have been handled in the past without getting into detail. However this being a mod for the original game I'm personally leaning towards that not being necessary especially not to the degree of word policing other people on it. It'd be an entirely different story if we WERE doing an actual remake from the ground up in a different game engine, that's just simply not the case.

I've never personally heard of a developer getting upset that the community was using RTX Remix on their 10+ year old game to make a fan remaster mod. Either way the Steam release of this game has been left to deteriorate anyways, this game wouldn't be left in such a state if Andreas actually truly still cared about it as it's been entirely left up to modders in the community to even keep the game playabable in 2026. The game contains copyrighted music, and images of brands that the team absolutely not doubt did not pay a license to use. So if he does have an issue with the project I'm leaning towards "Not my problem" 🤷‍♀️