TEST Patch Y12 - East Asian Support

[Scawen]

WARNING : THIS IS A TEST

Hello Racers.

Here is a new compatible test patch Y12.

It contains Chinese, Japanese and Korean Translations.
There are also some fixes including a hot lapping fix affecting South City.
Please read the list of changes below.


Changes in TEST PATCH Y12 :

FIX : Texture issue and crash caused by a change in Y11


Changes in TEST PATCH Y11 :

Name of active Chinese input method is now shown (but not in Vista)
New game setup screen info message "X removed Y from the start grid"
FIX : Speedo and tacho numbers and text appeared above the needle
FIX : Low ASCII characters can no longer be read from text files
FIX : Previously missing fonts should now appear in the list
FIX : Repeating message "could not get input context"


Changes from Y to Y10 :

Double byte character support :

Included Chinese, Japanese and Korean translations
Selectable fonts for these languages in Game Options
Input Method Editor support including candidate lists
IME automatically switched on and off in text entry dialog
Input language is shown when editing text (white if IME active)

Interface :

Faster text drawing system improves frame rate
Separate text entry field for AI number plates
Welcome screen now has three columns of languages
Added flags beside names of translations in Game Options
Czech / Japanese / Simplified Chinese lesson translations
Network debug messages are no longer sent in InSim packets
Text input box is now drawn above user messages so easier to type
Line breaks in help text and lesson text now depend on actual width
FIX : Corrupted text in top left corner after changing language
FIX : Corrupted "finished" at top right after changing language

Multiplayer :

New command /ndebug=no/yes to switch off/on network debug
Dedicated host and network debug show connecting guest IP
FIX : Rapid /ai NAME command resulted in AI with same name
FIX : Rapid /ai command could exceed number of cars allowed
FIX : Joining a host with same name AI resulted in Join OOS
FIX : Skin name buffer overflow exploit

Fixes :

FIX : Replay could open reversed configuration in DEMO
FIX : Wall riding was possible on soft walls at South City
FIX : Could select invalid configuration and weather in cfg.txt
FIX : Admin could crash dedicated host by mistake with some commands


DOWNLOAD :

PATCH Y12 (Version Y must already be installed) :
www.liveforspeed.net/file_lfs.php?name=LFS_PATCH_Y_TO_Y12.exe (1.5 MB)

DEDICATED HOST (for hosting only) :
www.liveforspeed.net/file_lfs.php?name=LFS_S2_DEDI_Y12.zip


KNOWN ISSUES :

Russian and Slovenian flags appear to be radioactive
Dedicated host does not display double byte characters
Name of active Chinese input method is not shown in Vista
In game text can sometimes appear blurred (not reproducable)


Windows XP : East Asian Language Support / Font Installation

LFS does not support double byte characters with Windows 98 / ME. Windows XP and Vista should work well but you may need to install fonts.

If you have Windows XP and currently cannot see the East Asian translations, here's how to set up your computer so it works.
See the attachment - in Control Panel click on "Regional and Language Options" then under the "Languages" tab select "Install files for East Asian Languages".
Windows will probably ask you to get your XP CD and the fonts will be installed from it.

This is important even if you do not use Chinese, Japanese or Korean translations so you can see East Asian text and player names correctly when you are online.

[aroX123]

Nice:)

[ethan520]

Finally my relatives in china will understand :)

[HaobenXia]

Oh, I must say the Y12 comes as a total surprise.:thumb:
I'll testing it.

Edit:
Test reports
Yeah, I think the Y12 is GREAT VERSION. :thumbsup:I can choose all of truetype fonts in the game!:D Look at the picture.

Edit2:
There are two little bugs still have not been solved.
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=38844
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=39247

[eblise]

thank you for your good job,i will test
非常感谢:thumb:

[SpikeyMarcoD]

Oh, I must say the Y12 comes as a total surprise.:thumb:
I'll testing it.

Edit:
Test reports
Yeah, I think the Y12 is GREAT VERSION. :thumbsup:I can choose all of truetype fonts in the game!:D Look at the picture.

Edit2:
There are two little bugs still have not been solved.
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=38844
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=39247


This patch is only about those eastern character support, so of course those are not fixed yet. Maybe we need chinese support on the forums as well? :D

[shiny_red_cobra]

New game setup screen info message "X removed Y from the start grid"

LOL! Well, now that the user's name is displayed, it should cut down the number these incidents. Thanks!

[balee]

Will the default font really remain this 'stretched'?

[dawesdust_12]

I find it to be the opposite. I find it to be a bit squished compared to before.

[shiny_red_cobra]

Me too, I thought it was a bug at first, but it's just the new way fonts are displayed to allow for the asian characters.

[D_Thrasher]

Hey Scawen,

Sorry I took so long, but I've attached the Zip file of my language folder. I'm still having this problem with my options screen, even with Y12:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v654/daggerthrasher/LFSProblem.jpg

Hope that helps...and good job with the continuous development.:)

[Scawen]

Thanks, I can see the problem - all those lesson texts should not be in there at all. Your game options page is trying to draw hundreds of "languages" which are actually lesson texts. You must have installed a lesson pack into the wrong place at some point.

I've attached the correct language folder contents, just delete everything in your language folder and put the files from this zip in there.

[Dandy Dust]

China! Wow! What a marked!

My the billions be with You Devs! :nod:

Greetings, Dandy

[D_Thrasher]

Cheers Scawen! I've never installed any extra lessons though, so where that lot have come from I've no idea lol. Thanks for that though. :)

[carplayer]

In my Vista system, Y12 can identify Chinese IME downloaded from internet but not Microsoft PinYin IME included in Windows.

I rebuilt the system last few days. I have only installed SOGOU PinYin IME. So I dump another file from registry and attach it here.

[Scawen]

Hi carplayer. I think this is the only real problem remaining with the East Asian support.

As far as I am aware, this is only a problem with Simplified Chinese running on Vista, as all different input methods were unified into a single input method editor which runs in different modes. This is why there is only one single Chinese entry in your registry, whereas on an XP machine there is a different entry for every input method.

I've written a special thread in the programmers section to see if anyone can help with this. Some days of searching have resulted in no progress, I just can't find the answer. :schwitz:

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=39845

[mcgas001]

Scawen: Have you checked to see if thats a bug in Vista? Ive been doing some research after the post in the progammer forum for the last hour or so. There seems to be some issues with other stuff related to chinese with Vista. Im not sure if its possible but have you tried contacting microsoft?

[Scawen]

I don't think it's really a bug - the problem arises because the different input methods are combined into a single input method with different modes. So not only does the GetKeyboardLayoutName function always return the same value (i.e. the unified input method) but also the different input method names do not appear in the registry. So it's not really a bug, but could well be a design oversight. If there is no way of external programs to acquire the name of the active input method then that is an oversight, something the Vista programmers did not think of, possibly they did not consider full screen programs needing to display the name of the input method. I did write to someone at Microsoft recently but got no answer.

[shiny_red_cobra]

Do you think Vista SP1 has any fixes for this issue?

[NotAnIllusion]

Do you think Vista SP1 has any fixes for this issue?
Have a look
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20071208/vista-sp1-changelog/

[zloyadmin]

Тhanks for this patch!

[Kancel]

:thumb: thank you soooo much scawen!!

[Gekkibi]

Just have to make this sure before patching to Y12:
Is it possible to join normal Y-servers after the patch?

[three_jump]

Here is a new compatible test patch Y12.

:shrug:

[ekze]

Don't know if it has been reported or not...
In Windows XP when changing to/from Cyrillic layout, message "UpdateConversion : Could not get input context" appears...
http://i010.radikal.ru/0803/15/c5991726e4e0.jpg

[Flame CZE]

Is doesn't happen to me

[three_jump]

In game text can sometimes appear blurred (not reproducable)

This works for me in reproducing (tested 6 times and always got this):
Start LFS (no matter if full screen or windowed) -> Multiplayer (can't reproduce that in single player) -> Join specific host (only tried with one which was empty at that time) and go to the track, press F12 and the menu is blurry for me.

[AndroidXP]

Just recently started testing Y12, and something is up with the text render quality. Never had problems before, but now the text is in general rather blurry and suffers from pixels of adjacent characters bleeding over (I think).

It seems to have something to do with the texture mip bias, or rather by some driver setting of whether to allow negative mip bias or not (illustrated in the attachment). Personally I cannot live without "clamping" the mip bias in the GFX driver, or else I get absolutely horrible texture shimmering all over LFS. However, back in Y all was fine, no matter which setting.

Anti-aliasing seems to affect it a little, but only in such a way that it blurs the parts where pixel bleeding occurred a bit, making it less noticeable.

[dawesdust_12]

I've had this happen before. With ATITool, it gives a blur (even in Y), but without it, just with normal, it works fine. I know that I could force it, by forcing certain mip bias levels, even on the main menu.

[Scawen]

This works for me in reproducing (tested 6 times and always got this):
Start LFS (no matter if full screen or windowed) -> Multiplayer (can't reproduce that in single player) -> Join specific host (only tried with one which was empty at that time) and go to the track, press F12 and the menu is blurry for me.Thanks for that bug reproduction method. I can now reproduce this and I see that it is related to the drawing of the network status bars, for some reason the mip bias for that (0.0) carries on to the in-game text which should be -1.0.

Just recently started testing Y12, and something is up with the text render quality. Never had problems before, but now the text is in general rather blurry and suffers from pixels of adjacent characters bleeding over (I think).

It seems to have something to do with the texture mip bias, or rather by some driver setting of whether to allow negative mip bias or not (illustrated in the attachment). Personally I cannot live without "clamping" the mip bias in the GFX driver, or else I get absolutely horrible texture shimmering all over LFS. However, back in Y all was fine, no matter which setting.OK, try again in the next text patch because that blurry text should be fixed. However, the text mip bias in LFS is -1.0 (no option) and that gives clean text (when there is no bug). I'm a bit confused though, I don't think it's going to help if you use the clamp option. I'm not sure why you want to use the clamp option in your card driver settings though - doesn't the mip bias slider in LFS graphics options do the job?

[AndroidXP]

No, unfortunately it doesn't. I know, it doesn't really make any sense, as setting the mip bias to 0 and clamping it should theoretically have the same effect, but the difference is very noticeable.

E: Sorry for the non-contributing attachment, but be warned guys, forcing the mip level to +3.0 doesn't help either. But it enables LFS comic mode :D
(Scawen, ignore this)

[dawesdust_12]

Team Fortress 2 For Speed? :P

Android, Higher values (or lower) look entirely comical also.

[nesrulz]

Don't know if it has been reported or not...
In Windows XP when changing to/from Cyrillic layout, message "UpdateConversion : Could not get input context" appears...

Same here...

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/5997/46216199xq5.png

[RoosaRuulibPlx]

How to change font in LFS...I cant see the place anywhere....

[Scawen]

You can only select the font in Chinese, Japanese, Korean languages.

[AndroidXP]

Scawen, I think the LFS graphics engine isn't using mip bias right (E: or maybe it is?). For testing, I created a texture with coloured mip levels to see where they start/end. Level 0 I left with the original texture, all other levels have been coloured.

This is the result:
(using 8x Anisotropic filtering, forced trilinear mipmaps)

E: It seems that the anisotropic filtering is causing the mipmaps to change much earlier. When I turn it off, the clamped setting looks much more like the middle picture. :scratchch

E2: It has definitely something to do with the combination of clamped bias + AF enabled. For some reason mip levels change very early when both are active. If I disable either, the mip levels act pretty much the same (as LFS @ 0.0). Maybe it's actually something of the ForceWare drivers? Maybe you can incorporate a setting in LFS that allows us to generate a similar effect as seen in the third picture without having to rely on clamping the mip bias?

[Scawen]

[post written before your edit]

The reason for the difference in the 2nd and 3rd pictures is that LFS has an additional mip bias that can be set per surface type.

The reason for that is because textures that are seen very flat-on (I mean, at an oblique angle to the camera) like road textures, and to a lesser extent walls, need a lower mip bias or they go soft too early [this is certainly true if anisotropic filtering is not enabled].

To say that another way... if you set the mip bias correctly for a texture that is seen flat-on (about 0 or -1) this is too low for road textures. I just had a look in LFS and currently the road textures are set to have an extra -2.0 mip bias.

This issue I've described is (or was) a problem in racing games because the road is drawn so flat as it goes into the distance. But you've got me thinking now because as I expect you know, this is in fact the purpose of anisotropic filtering... to solve this problem "properly" without the "hack" of assigning a lower mip bias to textures that are likely to be seen flat-on.

I'm not sure if this extra mip bias is needed any more now that we have anisotropic filtering... but maybe anisotropic filtering isn't perfect and can still be helped by having additional mip bias?

I think that it should be possible to turn on anisotropic filtering inside LFS, at the moment you can only switch between bilinear and trilinear. Maybe the additional mip bias should only be enabled when the filtering is bilinear / off... :scratchch

Opinions welcome.

[AndroidXP]

I'd certainly welcome an option to manually change the extra mip bias you apply to the road/flat surface textures, either by a slider or a simple on/off switch. Heck, even a hidden cfg.txt entry would suffice :thumbsup:

The possibility to set the AF level (any maybe AA too, while you're at it ;)), would also be a good addition, opening up the more eye-pleasing graphic options to people who don't know about them or how to force them via the GFX drivers. It would also (I think) give you the possibility to control which surfaces AF/AA is being used on, enhancing the performance compared to forced AF/AA (though the hit isn't that big for modern cards anyway).

For me the extra mip bias adjustment would be enough - the other options depend on how much time you want to invest on the issue. Personally though I'd either do the former and not waste too much time, or do the full deal with complete AA/AF options and whatnot. Doing it only halfway might bite you in the arse later on :thumb:

[dawesdust_12]

Scawen, I think that the filtering in LFS would be great, especially seeing most modern games allow this access within the application itself. Having this would be a good step forward for LFS I think. I also think that the ability to adjust the road mip bias (for road, maybe make it cfg.txt adjustable?) might be nice too, to give us the ability to finer tune LFS to our visual preferences.

It is nice now to know what LFS is doing with the filtering, and AF (and AA.. :p) would be an excellent addition.

EDIT : Seems Android and I had the same idea to change the road mip bias, which means it must be brilliant... (COME ON Y13!!! ;))

[MataGyula]

Definately a +1 for changeable AF inside LFS ( while you are at it, why not add AA also ? :o ) . I don't know how others are doing it, but i have to run AtiTrayTools if I want to change AA and AF settings, so that means plus one program has to be running in the background.

edit:beatenby2posts:[

[Shotglass]

a bit off topic but what exactly are negative mip values anyway? i thought 0 was the original texture

and almost completely unrelated: andriod you should turn off the trilinear (aka brilinear) optimisation in the driver settings

[AndroidXP]

Just did that, finally I could actually see what effect those settings have, and I promptly turned it off ;)

Negative mip bias just means that level 0 is used for a longer distance, pushing the other levels further back.

[Scawen]

Android, please could you attach that test texture you made, just to save me doing one, that would be quite useful for testing.

[Shotglass]

Negative mip bias just means that level 0 is used for a longer distance, pushing the other levels further back.

that doesnt explain why clamping it to 0 negatively (no pun intended) influences the text rendering which should happen on polys with mip 0 either way

btw which tool allows you to visualize the mip level on only 1 texture or are those photoshopped together from shots with and without the colouring?

[AndroidXP]

Of course, here you are. It's a high-res texture, though, so forgive the size.

@Shotglass: The text is rendered with -1 mip bias at a certain distance away from the user, so when I clamp it to 0, I make LFS use less detailed mipmaps for the text, causing the pixel bleeding. The mipmaps are visualised via the texture I attached, I simply saved and modified pre-generated mip maps into the dds texture. Normally LFS dds textures don't have mipmaps generated so LFS does it on the fly.

The texture looks like this now:
http://members.chello.at/fam-jelinek/christian/miplevels.jpg

[Shotglass]

The text is rendered with -1 mip bias at a certain distance away from the user

why would it be rendered at a distance? its on the frontmost polys (obvious since they overlay everything else) and certainly much much closer than any of the road you see in front of you
i just dont understand why youd ever put text somewhere that isnt on mip0 (or less) in every case

[AndroidXP]

No idea, really. It probably has a reason, but I've never worked on a 3D application myself, only simple sprite based 2D stuff. :shrug:

[PioneerLv]

Same here...

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/5997/46216199xq5.png

Same here when i press key combination of Ctrl + Shift to see player LFSWorld usernames in connection's list.

[Scawen]

why would it be rendered at a distance? its on the frontmost polys (obvious since they overlay everything else) and certainly much much closer than any of the road you see in front of you
i just dont understand why youd ever put text somewhere that isnt on mip0 (or less) in every caseThe characters on the character textures are made large enough to be seen at an acceptable resolution when they are drawn as large characters in LFS. Smaller characters (i.e. most of them) have less pixels on screen than there are on the character texture. So they are drawn using a smaller mipmap. That's just how mipmaps work, it's nothing to do with distance, it's purely related to the size. A mipmap is chosen by the card that is a close match between the mipmap texels and the screen pixels. Bilinear filtering chooses one single mipmap. Trilinear filtering blends between two mipmaps. Anisotropic deals with this in a better looking but more computationally expensive way.

Anyway of course at some point there is a transition between one mipmap and the next. Mip bias affects these transition points. With LFS text, the best bias is -1.0. Because 0.0 comes out a bit too blurred. This is not provided as a user option. In 3d it is a matter of preference, but for 2d it's very clear what looks best.

[Shotglass]

That's just how mipmaps work, it's nothing to do with distance, it's purely related to the size.

Ah OK thanks that clears up the confusion on my part, I thought the Z value was the basis for choosing a MIP level.

BTW when you change the way the MIP bias is adjusted for road textures keep in mind that, as illustrated by the step in the MIP levels in Androids pics, Nvidia cards (6 and 7 series and 8 if you dont disable the optimizations) do a horrible job at aniso filtering at certain angles, like eg. flat right in front of you. The effect is that with clamp on lines on the road that strech out right in front of you (eg on the car park) will blur far too soon even with agressive levels of aniso.
IIRC this is precisely the reason why Android wants a lower MIP bias in the first place, properly functioning aniso should not cause the texture shimering you get with lines across the road even with the current negative MIP bias.

[AndroidXP]

Yes, it might just be a problem of my 6600GT, which seem to be notorious for this shimmering. So whatever you do, provide it as an optional setting, nothing that should be enabled by default (of course it can be enabled if the majority thinks it looks better). Unfortunately nothing else besides the mip bias clamp option fixes the shimmering for me, no amount of AF and disabled optimizations helps. :shrug:

[xaotik]

I've seen much the same on a 6600gt, a 6800gt I own and a 8600gt a pal has - only one of the previous is on a reference PCB. At first I didn't notice that on my 6xxx cards as I had clamped the mip bias to start with in a generic AF-applying profile I had that applies to just about all 3d sims I play. Later when the "improve quality" thread by Jakg came up I noticed people talking about it being an issue with nvidia cards - sure enough, when I disabled clamping on my 6xxx cards it showed up.

[Scawen]

I've fixed the reported issues and added support for anisotropic filtering (select 2x to 16x in Graphics Options).

Please read the help text on those screens for more explanation.

Mip bias is also separately adjustable for various categories of surfaces.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=40303