Using the Terragen Frontend

From GPU

Developer and artist notes on terragen

Please read this and verify your project BEFORE YOU UPLOAD Running the terragen plugin is nice, but also risky. Especially, users have mentioned the following issues:

• Terragen uses extraordinairy amounts of memory (100Mb or more)

• Terragen keeps asking to locate file xyz

At the moment, if i encounter invalid projects, i move them to /develop/ area. So if you are missing your project, it is not deleted, just moved, so clients won't run it.

However, this is not a real solution so i would like to ask your attention to the following. There are two potentional approaches to solve this. First: we could make a development / sandbox area, where new projects are uploaded and can be tested, before they are run by all users. Pro: good idea, makes it more feasable to run gpu unattended Contra: takes some additional programming work where nanobit has no time for at the moment. Second: you verify your project extensively, and do a dry testrun on some second pc (or ask active users on the chat), to verify your project is ok. Only if you are sure your project runs safely on other boxes than your own, you press the 'run global' button. Pro: Reduced time from project creation to project rendering. Eliminating need for administration actions. Eliminating need for additional programming. Contra: far from fool proof. ALthough i -technically- favour method one, i just have no time at the moment to do it. In order to run the terragen stuff, and not scare new users or annoy existing users, i decided to use method two. Therefore, please verify your project against this action list before uploading. If artists follow those guidelines, we may safely support SO-pack and other plugin stuff, like overlays and morphing.

1. While designing your project, take note of any additional (overlay/tgw) file you use.

2. For your own convenience it is recommended you put all essential project files in one single directory.

3. Test run your script. render some of the frames. see if it does not take excessive time. see if you made no errors in your world.

4. Just before you upload the project, and after you saved your project from within terragen or any other terragen tool, use the TERRATWEAK application, see next point.

5. launch terratweak, and search for file names of your overlays etc. Remove the absolute path: c:\project\terragen\myproj1\somebitmap.bmp ==> somebitmap.bmp

6. Each time you save your world and want to upload, repeat step 5 (use terratweak). terragen will change the path back to absolute path on saving.

7. take note that only bitmaps (.bmp) are currently downloaded from the server by the client. any other files (except .ter and .tgs) can not be used in your project.

8. Make sure your settings are appropiate, especially memory usage. It is very recommended to set terragen buffer size to a value between 16 and 32Mb. You should consider 32 Mb as the real max. clients with few memory (yes, lot of people still have only 128Mb) will get really annoyed if terragen uses 100Mb. It will harm their system, and they probably will stop using terragen plugin or even stop using gpu.

9. After you upload, make sure your project runs on a second pc.

10. Announce your new project on the chat, so we all know who created it.

11. Only if you are very sure the project runs nicely, run it global.

12. Once your project is almost completed (generally around 95-99%), ask nanobit to remove bad frames and old lockfiles. nanobit has a tool to do that.

13. Once your project is 100% completed, ask nanobit to zip or rar the project files, so you will not need to download 4000 independant frames but just one big zip or rar.

Stable project

As of gpu version 0.9071, the phenomen 'stable projects' is introduced. Terragen artists may choose to run experimental projects. After they are validated by multiple users, these projects can gain 'stable' status. This means that such projects are allowed to run on all computers having the plugin enabled. This greatly increases chances of running gpu unattended. If you keep this in mind, we can continue supporting the terragen plugin. However, running GPU is more important than just one plugin. If we don't follow these guidelines, we may stop terragen support until system has been improved.

What does it all mean:

It does not mean you may not make errors, anyone makes errors. But we don't want users to think gpu is an evil application. Also, we want long uptimes. Some boxes run unattended 75-90% of the time, this must be as user friendly as possible. Also, i explicitely do not blame any of you for uploading projects that didn't work. First of all, it happened to me as well. Second, i like experimenting. Third: it is not that worse.

This document just tries to inform new terragen artists of the lessons we had in the past. Happy terragenning, nanobit