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Beta Map KF-NorthernSolitude Beta

Skell

Grizzled Veteran
Mar 21, 2013
1,242
2
On the Internet.
After a lengthy development time starting in late November/early December, KF-NorthernSolitude is now ready for beta! This map is being developed to promote IJC's new weapon from Project Santa - Make sure to go check it out!

Map Name: KF-NorthernSolitude-B3
Beta Number: 3
Playable: Yes
Description of map:
You're to be dropped off at an abandoned CSIS base in Northern Canada. It seems like Horzine decided to move here after the crisis on the Moon and have begun work on a new weapon. The weapon they were working on seems to have been completed, but it looks like they were forced out of the base due to the ever-spreading invasion. Your squad's job, as per usual, is to wipe out all hostile targets and then extract. Welcome to Northern Solitude.

What testing is wanted:
Map speed. This map is roughly 300m (which makes it a little larger than MountainPass) across with no direct routes, making it almost painfully large (feels like 400m). I worked incredibly hard to ensure the map still feels like Hospital Horrors and other difficult maps. If you find an area that is slow, let me know.

Low frame rates are also something I care about. If you find that your computer is having more trouble than it would on Westlondon, let me know.


Size comparison:

KF-NorthernSolitude
Spoiler!

KF-MountainPass
Spoiler!


Map Download/Download Size:
Download - 83MB (the download is compressed to 16MB)

You can find an album with the full resolution of these images and others here.
AbyssRoom.png

LabRoom.png
MessHall.png

OOSHall.png

Sorry about the delayed release. I found some issues that would cripple a client's frame rate in certain situations so I had to bug test and fix to get most of it out. I'll see what I can do to get all of it out but as of right now about 80% of the issue has been remedied.
 
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My game crashes 100% of the time on this map, logfile here

I've only encountered one other map that crashed my client with similar error, KF-Winter_Assault, again it only happened to a few people, maybe something to do with clients graphics settings.

Update: It only crashes when using D3D9. I solo'd it and performance is unexpectedly smooth, near to what I get on WestLondon indeed.
 
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My game crashes 100% of the time on this map, logfile here

I've only encountered one other map that crashed my client with similar error, KF-Winter_Assault, again it only happened to a few people, maybe something to do with clients graphics settings.

Update: It only crashes when using D3D9. I solo'd it and performance is unexpectedly smooth, near to what I get on WestLondon indeed.
Very strange, how many people did this happen to?

Looking up the error you've listed only has people saying to update drivers and stuff, so I'd recommend that too, but reading the call stack and the assertion, odds are the map is just too full of unique meshes for your computer - which is a problem on my end, not yours, to be clear. At this point I need to figure out how much to cut.

If you're interested in assisting further, you can do the following to confirm my suspicion on the problem:

1. Install the program MSi Afterburner (you can uninstall it later)
2. Run it and look at the VRAM usage graph.
3. Run Killing Floor and open the map.
4. Look at the VRAM usage graph.

If you see that the graph has it at 100% before dropping, odds are you've run out of VRAM, meaning I need to reduce the total unique mesh count on the map. This is because, although the map is optimized thoroughly, the total number of unique meshes is too large for your computer to precache them all.

I've already begun work on removing unique assets and replacing them with others already on the map.
 
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Very strange, how many people did this happen to?

With this one, only me so far. I've also tried it in solo without any mutators and as long as I use D3D9 (which I believe is not the default setting) the crash occurs consistently.

So here's how it went:

6JjyoxW.png


1 - Manor
2 - NorthernSolitude
3 - NorthernSolitude (connected as server was about to mapvote, loading screen appeared and got disconnected)
4 - EvilSantasLair
5 - NorthernSolitude
6 - Same as 3 then reconnected immediatly on KF-Nightmare-in-the-skatepark
7 - NorthernSolitude

As for my hardware it is quite ordinary, an Intel 'core 2 quad' and an nvidia 9600 GT 512mb, 8gb of system ram, low-end asus board. In most extreme situations, framerate rarely goes below 30 in anything else but Steamland and TrillChills
 
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With this one, only me so far. I've also tried it in solo without any mutators and as long as I use D3D9 (which I believe is not the default setting) the crash occurs consistently.

So here's how it went:

6JjyoxW.png


1 - Manor
2 - NorthernSolitude
3 - NorthernSolitude (connected as server was about to mapvote, loading screen appeared and got disconnected)
4 - EvilSantasLair
5 - NorthernSolitude
6 - Same as 3 then reconnected immediatly on KF-Nightmare-in-the-skatepark
7 - NorthernSolitude

As for my hardware it is quite ordinary, an Intel 'core 2 quad' and an nvidia 9600 GT 512mb, 8gb of system ram, low-end asus board. In most extreme situations, framerate rarely goes below 30 in anything else but Steamland and TrillChills

I see, this does shed light on some issues since it appears you're not running out of VRAM. Do you have any changes to precaching or anything of the sort? I've seen guides that say they'll improve performance so I'm wondering if you've used any.

Northern Solitude:
Code:
Log: Static mesh batches: [COLOR=Lime]41,668,596[/COLOR] vertex bytes, [COLOR=Lime]5,614,956[/COLOR] index bytes
Log: Allocating 16384 byte dynamic index buffer.
Log: Allocating 79380 byte dynamic index buffer.
Log: Allocating 65536 byte dynamic vertex buffer.
Log: Allocating 140196 byte dynamic vertex buffer.
Log: Allocating 169680 byte dynamic vertex buffer.
Evil Santa's Lair:
Code:
Log: Static mesh batches: [COLOR=Lime]63,719,568[/COLOR] vertex bytes, [COLOR=Lime]9,135,372[/COLOR] index bytes
Log: Allocating 16384 byte dynamic index buffer.
Log: Allocating 23172 byte dynamic index buffer.
Log: Allocating 65536 byte dynamic vertex buffer.
Log: Allocating 110520 byte dynamic vertex buffer.
Log: Allocating 153252 byte dynamic vertex buffer.
Log: Allocating 24798 byte dynamic index buffer.
Log: Allocating 25368 byte dynamic index buffer.
Comparing the loads, it looks like the issue is not that Northern Solitude is too much, which is worrying. I'll see if I can figure out what's wrong.

Edit: To clarify why it seems like OpenGL is working and Direct 3D 9 isn't is probably because OpenGL doesn't assert things like Direct 3D 9 is (an assertion is when the code assesses a statement and, if that statement is false, the program stops). If the issue is what I think it is, OpenGL is seeing that something in vram is null and is just not rendering that object, continuing like nothing was wrong.

2nd Edit: I realized I haven't thanked you for the assistance in debugging - Thank you, I'll try my best to get this working.
 
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Do you have any changes to precaching or anything of the sort? I've seen guides that say they'll improve performance so I'm wondering if you've used any.

I refreshed my client's config when it first occured to make sure. Just switched from Direct 3D to Direct 3D 9.0

Edit: To clarify why it seems like OpenGL is working and Direct 3D 9 isn't is probably because OpenGL doesn't assert things like Direct 3D 9 is (an assertion is when the code assesses a statement and, if that statement is false, the program stops). If the issue is what I think it is, OpenGL is seeing that something in vram is null and is just not rendering that object, continuing like nothing was wrong.

Sorry if I haven't been clear about that but it's between what the game calls "Direct 3D" and "Direct 3D 9.0", I guess in this case, D3D11 and D3D9. It works beautifully with the default, it just happens to be one of the two map I've ever seen that won't work with kf's "legacy" direct3d.
 
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Sorry if I haven't been clear about that but it's between what the game calls "Direct 3D" and "Direct 3D 9.0", I guess in this case, D3D11 and D3D9. It works beautifully with the default, it just happens to be one of the two map I've ever seen that won't work with kf's "legacy" direct3d.
Yeah, apologies if you prefer that render type, but there's not very much I can do to help in that department without sacrificing a large part of the map. Thanks for the bug report but there's not much I can do. Glad you found a fix for it.
 
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B2 is now up. You can find it here.
The front post will be updated when this is posted.

Change Log:

  • Fixed all (?) window collision. I fixed up some assets that were being duplicated as well to lower the loaded assets.

  • Some improvements in emitters and the vents in the dark corridor area.

If you run a custom server and want to make it so that this map has achievements, I made some nice lil' icons that can be found here. They follow suit with the rest of the new KF achievement icons, so that's neat. :D Recommended names for them, if you can't think up of any:

Normal: Somewhat Chilly
Hard: Abrasively Arctic
Suicidal: Painfully Cryogenic
Hell on Earth: Absolute Zero
 
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Found one misleading trader whisp. I heard someone got lost once because of that and didn't screenshot it, so I ran around looking for it. Hoping this is the same one:

Spoiler!


Great job again, had lots of playthrough and it performs really well for what it is, not like WestLondon but certainly way better than Steamland.
 
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I forgot to use ZombiePathNodes there, my bad. I'll fix it in a bit.
Nevermind. Turns out zombiepathnodes don't actually stop players from using them, only KFMonster extensions. Killing Floor doesn't have any pathnodes (vanilla or whitelisted) that can be used by zeds but can't by players (lol?).

Changes:

I've removed the zed teleporter system that got them across the map, so the map might slow down slightly.

Some minor graphical changes were done as well.

Somehow the map has gone down 10MB (4MB compressed) in size. It seems to have been a thing I did right after B2 was released since I have no idea where those bytes went.

Download - Beta 3
first post updated
 
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Not unless your clients switched the renderer from the default setting, since then I've only had one guy with very very low-end hardware crashing consistently (I made sure he tried both renderers), I suspect the map is just too beautiful for his pc... he's spanish and doesn't speak english so I couldn't push the troubleshooting much further, ended up removing the map for him.

Otherwise we spent a ton of time on this map and it works great, I suggest you crank up the MaxZombiesOnce to 48 for this map, especially if you know about the good spot.
 
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Not unless your clients switched the renderer from the default setting, since then I've only had one guy with very very low-end hardware crashing consistently (I made sure he tried both renderers), I suspect the map is just too beautiful for his pc... he's spanish and doesn't speak english so I couldn't push the troubleshooting much further, ended up removing the map for him.

Otherwise we spent a ton of time on this map and it works great, I suggest you crank up the MaxZombiesOnce to 48 for this map, especially if you know about the good spot.
Our server is on 48. I never played it before but we will be playing it tonight. We made our server only have Xmas maps for the next to weeks hahaah. I'm making sure to turn my in game music off as the Christmas music will make my head explode.
 
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Well this map just crashes me over and over. I can't play it. I've never messed with any renderers but there have been a few maps I've had issues with that crash like this. I think it is an NVIDIA related issue, at least that has always been my assumption. Looks like we gotta remove it from the rotation. :(
There's not much I can do to help. I don't know what could really be causing the issue but this map isn't very intensive when in comparison to the core maps in this game. It might have to do with the wireframe materials used... but those are a standard part of Shader material properties so I doubt it.
 
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There's not much I can do to help. I don't know what could really be causing the issue but this map isn't very intensive when in comparison to the core maps in this game. It might have to do with the wireframe materials used... but those are a standard part of Shader material properties so I doubt it.
Yeah I don't know, I have had the same issues with many of Dextronaut's maps. Looked like a fun map though, hope to see a KF2 port if they roll out their Xmas stuff!
 
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I found a fix for the crashing. If you go to textures, myLevel, all the ones in the hologram groups need to be removed or replaced to stop the crashing. I right clicked each texture and clicked remove from level. Be warned all the holograms will turn to the soapy default texture. Sadly there aren't any good textures that can make them look like holograms, and also reskinning all of them is a ton of work.

Skell told me about a year ago that if I do fix it to keep it private or on my server. Hopefully my instructions help anyone who wants to play the map offline. If Skell changes his mind and gives me permission, I'll post my fixed version here.
 
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