GZDoom software toggle

I personally don't see the problem of just telling people to use plain old ZDoom if they want a software renderer.

I personally don't see the problem of putting it back in the menu since it wasn't hurting anybody.

Graf Zahl said:

The real problem is that the D3D code comes from ZDoom which doesn't have a GL renderer so on Randy's part there's no motivation to switch, mostly because he'd lose a lot of compatibility, since D3D drivers from some vendors are much more stable than GL. And since it relies heavily on shaders, it would lock out many Intel chipsets which come with an ok D3D driver but utterly shitty GL support.

Randy hinted he was thinking about adding an OpenGL version of the D3D code for Linux, but puts it off because he doesn't like the IDEs on Linux.

killer2 said:

I personally don't see the problem of putting it back in the menu since it wasn't hurting anybody.

The problem was that the switch isn't instantaneous, and that despite GZDoom printing the message that "you must quit and restart for this change to take effect", people were still making bug reports about the render remaining the same after switching. Now people can't switch unless they invest a minimal amount of effort in RTFWing.

Oh well, I guess I see the problem, but said bug reports could just be deleted or ignored. Plus, if there's a thread with a bug report, as far as I know people will read it and not create another one.

Graf Zahl said:

The real problem is that the D3D code comes from ZDoom which doesn't have a GL renderer so on Randy's part there's no motivation to switch, mostly because he'd lose a lot of compatibility, since D3D drivers from some vendors are much more stable than GL. And since it relies heavily on shaders, it would lock out many Intel chipsets which come with an ok D3D driver but utterly shitty GL support.

Wait a minute, I thought that ZDoom just rendered to a giant square that takes up the entire screen. Where do shaders come into the picture?

Modern D3D versions use shaders for everything.

The main reason is to do palette mapping when rendering from an 8 bit texture because the screenbuffer is still 8 bit paletted. No current graphics hardware has native palette support left so you have to use a shader.

Shaders are also needed to render 2D HUD sprites with palette effects like invulnerability.

Also, if you're not using the old DirectDraw code, interface elements (HUD, menus, console, etc.) are rendered in truecolor over the "giant square".

Something you can do: open the console, and type vid_hw2d 0. The difference should be obvious.