[3374p9] Missing blood effects (Particle spray, trails and decals) with max graphic and gore settings.

[Denshadego]

Reproduction Steps

Using just the preview patch to update a previous installation, I found out I was missing most vanilla blood effects, and only realized that was the case after seeing a video of the game being played and comparing it to my patched game and an unpatched (3369) backup. Mind you, all graphic effects are maxxed out, gore settings too, and the ini reflect this.

Considering that there may have been an error in my handling of the update, I downloaded the full OldUnreal installer and tried the default game with no extra additions. The results are the same.

Expected Behavior

• Blood particle spray and particle trails following the players after being hit.

• Blood decals on walls or ground against a player being hit or fragged.

• Blood decals on floor or walls left by gib chunks.

Here's a video of all of those working correctly on my backup 3369 installation (Don't mind the audio, I was watching a youtuber playing the update in the background to compare):
https://streamable.com/if9b3q

In case those links expire before this issue being read, this is a youtube video that shows how it should look:
https://youtu.be/xlfPka7Yc7Q?si=giZER9E_gC6N9Xu2&t=44

Actual Behavior

• The only blood particles shown are those that appear on impact, no blood sprays or trails of particles following the players after being hit.

• No blood decals on walls or ground against a player being hit or fragged.

• No blood decals on floor or walls left by gib chunks.

• Not even "hsss" sounds heard by some of those effects on vanilla game.

The only blood decal that sometime appears is a bloodsplat under the player/enemy after being gibbed, but all previously mentioned effects are still missing. Decals from weapon explosions and full player shadows work fine.

Here's a video of the problem after updating a previous installation with the OldUnreal patch. The results are the same for me with the Full Installation:
https://streamable.com/x0bohv

My system is Windows 10, 16gbram, AMD RX550. This might be important, as most people seem to not have this issue. The vanillla 3369 game shows all effects as they should on my system though.

Platform

Windows

CPU Type

Intel/AMD

GPU Manufacturer

AMD

UT2004 Version

3374p9

UT2004 Install Path

C:\UnrealTournament2004

UT2004 Installer

OldUnreal Full Game Installer

UT2004 Installer (Other)

No response

Additional Information

Weirdly enough, gore effects from Ballistic Weapons mod's Bloody Hell Mutator, seem to work fine in the preview update. Seems to be an issue with the vanilla system only.

[Denshadego]

Just realized that bullet hole decals from Minigun, Assault and Sniper Rifles don't show in the preview for me either. Decals from explosive weapons like the rockets and Flak alt, plus those from the Link Gun work fine. All weapon decals show up normally on the 3369 installation with the same settings.

[SpelzR2]

I can't confirm this issue on my end on Linux & Windows. I also have every graphic setting on max and didn't notice any issues regarding this. I've also changed the graphics renderer (DX9, OpenGL, AntiDrv), everything seems normal.

[Denshadego]

I know it's weird, other people have said how strange it is because they can't replicate it either.
To triple check, downloaded the full installer again and here's the first launch test (after setting the game in windowed mode and lower resolution for smaller video size), don't mind the bad quality and low framerate, it's the encoding at 30fps for video compression.

Stock OldUnreal test:
https://convertandedit.com/share/direct/c1d4d9d2-877e-45a3-9245-53a6de9b76e2.mp4

As you can see, I also realized minigun smoke and robot sparks are also missing.
The log doesn't seem to show much, but I'll attach it.
UT2004.log

To show it does work on the same computer in the original 3369 game, here's a new recording of it:
https://convertandedit.com/share/direct/163d0130-f005-4653-add0-f53c2c7d10c6.mp4

When I updated to Preview9, I had not played for a while, so for a bit I forgot how it was supposed to look like until I payed close attention to a youtube video of someone playing the game. Maybe somebody else's game looks the same, but they don't remember or just don't know the difference yet. Otherwise, I have no idea what's going on, could be something really dumb.

[SpelzR2]

I've installed the game via the OldUnreal installer (only on Linux this time) and checked again. Everything is fine to me... HOWEVER...

I had a suspicion so I've reset the UT2004.ini file, raised every graphic setting to max and... the decals and other stuff doesn't work as you've said. So I can confirm this on an installation with a new config file.

I can offer you a solution and maybe the patch team can adjust this one in a future update: I'm playing at 60fps and limited the framerate to 60fps in the game as well (to be accurate I limit at 58fps). Now comes the problem with the new patch and its default configuration: the MinDesiredFrameRate in the UT2004.ini is set to 85fps. In my case it means the game reduces details to reach this mentioned fps threshold and doesn't render things like decals, blood etc.. Since I've limited the game to 58fps the game will never reach 85fps and so doesn't render these mentioned things.

If you playing below 85fps you have to open the UT2004.ini and reduce MinDesiredFrameRate to something like 30 or even 0 (since your PC should have any problems with this game). I didn't encounter this problem at first since I'm always checking the config file before my first run and had lowered this value to something reasonable (for me) since the default value didn't make any sense (to me in my case).

In the last official patch 3369 the default value for MinDesiredFrameRate was set at 35. So nobody had any rendering issues. Maybe the team should leave it at this value.

[NeonKnightOA]

I've installed the game via the OldUnreal installer (only on Linux this time) and checked again. Everything is fine to me... HOWEVER...

I had a suspicion so I've reset the UT2004.ini file, raised every graphic setting to max and... the decals and other stuff doesn't work as you've said. So I can confirm this on an installation with a new config file.

I can offer you a solution and maybe the patch team can adjust this one in a future update: I'm playing at 60fps and limited the framerate to 60fps in the game as well (to be accurate I limit at 58fps). Now comes the problem with the new patch and its default configuration: the MinDesiredFrameRate in the UT2004.ini is set to 85fps. In my case it means the game reduces details to reach this mentioned fps threshold and doesn't render things like decals, blood etc.. Since I've limited the game to 58fps the game will never reach 85fps and so doesn't render these mentioned things.

If you playing below 85fps you have to open the UT2004.ini and reduce MinDesiredFrameRate to something like 30 or even 0 (since your PC should have any problems with this game). I didn't encounter this problem at first since I'm always checking the config file before my first run and had lowered this value to something reasonable (for me) since the default value didn't make any sense (to me in my case).

In the last official patch 3369 the default value for MinDesiredFrameRate was set at 35. So nobody had any rendering issues. Maybe the team should leave it at this value.

Well, the FPS caps can now be configured via menu, maybe the other way around should be present as an option as well.

[Denshadego]

I've installed the game via the OldUnreal installer (only on Linux this time) and checked again. Everything is fine to me... HOWEVER...

I had a suspicion so I've reset the UT2004.ini file, raised every graphic setting to max and... the decals and other stuff doesn't work as you've said. So I can confirm this on an installation with a new config file.

I can offer you a solution and maybe the patch team can adjust this one in a future update: I'm playing at 60fps and limited the framerate to 60fps in the game as well (to be accurate I limit at 58fps). Now comes the problem with the new patch and its default configuration: the MinDesiredFrameRate in the UT2004.ini is set to 85fps. In my case it means the game reduces details to reach this mentioned fps threshold and doesn't render things like decals, blood etc.. Since I've limited the game to 58fps the game will never reach 85fps and so doesn't render these mentioned things.

If you playing below 85fps you have to open the UT2004.ini and reduce MinDesiredFrameRate to something like 30 or even 0 (since your PC should have any problems with this game). I didn't encounter this problem at first since I'm always checking the config file before my first run and had lowered this value to something reasonable (for me) since the default value didn't make any sense (to me in my case).

In the last official patch 3369 the default value for MinDesiredFrameRate was set at 35. So nobody had any rendering issues. Maybe the team should leave it at this value.

That was absolutely it!! I did set it to 0 to test, and it works great, thank you!

I play a lot of obscure, and retro games, so I use RivaTuner to force all games to 60 fps, works better that doing it on Adrenaline, but that meant I was never going to see those effects in a default installation. Plus, I didn't even know how that setting worked. When installing the game in my old PCs, I always thought it should be high, haha.

I also think the default of 35 would cover most cases, and if it somehow becomes a menu option, a tooltip should be clear on what it does, so people don't mess with it. They'll see a low number and instinctively raise it.

The issue is solved on my end, but I don't know if it should remain open for future consideration, so I'll leave it to the devs. Thank you all!

[StrikerTheHedgefox]

Why in god's name was MinDesiredFrameRate's default set so high? Should be 30/35 at the highest.

[ukpiglet]

What are you running the game on? A carrot?

[StrikerTheHedgefox]

What are you running the game on? A carrot?

Don't be a dick. You're completely missing the point. For example, if you had VSync on a 60hz monitor (which is extremely common), or capped your FPS to 60 (or anything lower than 85, as per the default), the effects get dropped because the game is trying to hit a minimum it can never reach.

[ukpiglet]

Don't be a dick.

Oh poppet, did you think the nasty man was making fun of your computer so you called him a willy? Bless!

Seriously though, it didn't cross my mind that anyone would be trying to play a fast-moving FPS game at 60Hz, when entry level monitors are 100->144Hz. The last time I saw a 60Hz screen was on a decade old laptop.

What this setting does is put a line in the sand to spot when your machine is struggling to reach a minimum threshold framerate, and when that happens it will reduce the level of detail in a number of areas to try and free up enough processing power to get a few more frames a second.

So - with an entry-level setup 85fps is not an unreasonable point to assume a machine is struggling.

However from what you've said there is a group of machines that's not the case. If you have a really old or cheap office PC /or a low-end budget laptop the limitation is the screen refresh rate. The rest of the hardware may well be able to support 60fps without issue.

The problem here is one of discrimination between "struggling to reach framerate" and "very low framerate monitor". There are probably better ways to do this than by using MinDesiredFrameRate. Interesting.

[StrikerTheHedgefox]

60hz displays are still extremely common, if not THE most common type. I run a 280hz monitor and a modern rig that can literally run four instances of this game at a time at well over 400fps with any caps/vsync off, so don't assume I'm upset due to any "rig inadequacy", It's because that response read to me like you were saying "anyone not running at least 85hz is obviously running a carrot/toaster/etc, fuck em". That said, almost everyone I know is still using a 60hz display (some 1080p60, some 4k60), and feels no need to replace them. It's not unreasonable to ask the default for MinDesiredFrameRate to be at or below that baseline.

[Denshadego]

What are you running the game on? A carrot?

It should run on carrot nowadays, it's a 2004 game, people are running it on Raspberri Pis.

The setting being discussed was 35 originally anyway, that should cover all bases, "carrots" and "gamer" setups alike. Yes, now the game can be run multiple times what it ran when it launched, but I don't think anybody is playing this game wrong by playing it at 60hz/fps, the game accounted for it.

Personally, my monitor is 144hz, but I have it connected to multiple screens, one of them a big 60hz TV. I cap it at that freq, so I don't have refresh issues moving apps between them, like Retroarch and such. After lowering MinDesiredFrameRate to 0, the game runs fine to me, better than it did in 2004, for sure. I don't see what's the conflict in restoring it to it's original value, it's not going to make the game run worse.

[ukpiglet]

Yeah. I agree. I was just looking at the code looking at strategies for differentiating between "low frequency monitor" and "system struggling". I just don't think it's worth the effort.

As an aside, there is a new ultra-high detail mode setting that you can use that overrides any MinDesiredFrameRate setting. That could be used on these systems too.