Aug 13 update

[timmie]

Well, about time for another update...

What have I been working on? Here's the list:

- finished geometry optimizations (runs much nicer now)
- changes to the clipper to properly get seg heights for transparent walls
- working on getting multitexturing working for blended animations. It's mostly there, but still needs a bit more work. As a nice side effect of this, you can have animation blending on walls with alpha values now (but only when you have multitexturing enabled)
- optimizations to the sky and got rid of the gl_clear cvar because the screen gets cleared to the average sky color now instead of drawing it each frame
- menu item for texture filtering mode

[Ultraviolet]

So when can we expect another beta or something?

EDIT: And that font issue is taken care of?

[timmie]

Yeah, I'll put up another beta after I get the multitexture stuff sorted out. And the font issue has been handled for awhile now... Have you tried the latest beta yet? If not you may be pleasantly surprised :)

[Ultraviolet]

Wasn't aware there was a new beta with that fixed... SWEET! I'm gonna have to remember to check on that tomorrow.

[timmie]

Haha, just had to post this:

http://timmie.squabble.org/screenshots/omg_fast.jpg

That's running at 640*480 (which is faster than 320*200, btw), 16bit color, vsync turned off (obviously), anisotropic texturing off, texture mode set to trilinear (GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR). It's running on my dev machine, which is a 1.2GHz Athlon, 512MB RAM, and a Geforce2 Pro (64MB).

[Ultraviolet]

HOLYSHIT!
How do you think it will fare with my machine (old)?:

ATI Rage/Xpert 128 (16 meg)
266 mhz K6-2 (100 mhz bus * 2.6)
256 mb DRAM
Win98

Latest posted version I see on SF.net is still 0.74... is that the latest? I've had that version for a while now, and the font issue isn't fixed on it. Still running at < 5 FPS.

[timmie]

Ah, you need access to the beta site to get the super-duper beta versions :)

[Ultraviolet]

Heh. Well shit. Might I be provided with access? I could be your beta tester for low-end machines. Uh, by that I mean mine. Just to give you a clue at how much your optimizations are really working...

EDIT: <gringo>Muchos Garcias el pato grande!</gringo>

[Darmuss]

How do I acces the betapage?
Where is it?

[LorD BaZTArD]

At the risk of sounding stupid timmie, would that Helms Deep map run on this beta without looking really odd or is that still a way off?

[timmie]

How do you mean "really odd"? I do test on it and about the only thing wrong with it right now is the texture alignment on slopes.

[Ultraviolet]

My findings:

- ZGL's sprites suddenly look very bad compared to those in 0.74. Is there a way to change the way the mipping is done?
- Used to be capable of blending animations, but now get yellow lines and extreme slowdown when viewing a would-be blended animation instead.
- Framerate is quite smooth until I fire or something happens. Framerate during normal movement stays consistent.

I hope this can help you look into further speed optimizations.

[timmie]

For the blending, try turning multitexturing off (gl_texture_multitexture 0). That will use the old method of blending. Maybe your card doesn't fully support the required texture environment stuff =/

[boris]

I just tried the latest beta and it runs a lot faster for me now. When I'm standing still at the beginning of map01 I'm getting like 30-40 more fps than in the previous beta! Nice!

[Ultraviolet]

timmie said:

gl_texture_multitexture 0

Worked perfectly. Other stated issues still exist.

[timmie]

Hmm, for the sprites, does it improve if you set "gl_texture_format" to "GL_RGBA8" (case sensitive)? The 3Dfx card I test on looks like crap when using GL_RGB5_A1 (16 bit textures), but cleans up pretty nicely when using GL_RGBA8 (32 bit textures).

[sirjuddington]

Heh, I've noticed that the sprites look quite bad too. They are all blurry, and the borders are back again...

[LorD BaZTArD]

Heh, I knew I should of checked before I asked, yeah Helms Deep is working fine, just slow, which is a puzzle to me, although I doubt my problem is zdoom related, so I'll retract my statement and leave it at that.

[Arioch]

I can get 20-40 fps in Helm's Deep at 1280x1024x32 in the latest beta, but there are no decals so that's probably why it's so fast. :)

[Ultraviolet]

Could you disable console translucency? I think that would make working in the console a LOT faster. If there's already a variable I can just turn off, please let me know...

GL_RGBA8 does look a lot better than whatever it was defaulting to. The sprites still do look funny, such as the health potions all looking like they have rounded blocky edges all over, but not to the degree that it appeared so with whatever texture format I was using before.

[Farlowj]

Is anybody still alive? Or are we just waiting for zdoom 2.0.48 or something?

[boris]

Good question. Looks like timmie is gone or something, he didn't post on the beta forum neither.

[timmie]

Heh, not gone, just away for two weddings. I'll be back for good on Monday (updating from my dads computer with a damn trackball)...

Yup, first wedding was last weekend in Edmonton, then this one is in Vernon (right around all the forest fires in BC, we actually drove through Barriere to get from Saskatchewan to BC).

It feels like it's about 40 degrees here in the Okanagan (the sunburn probably doesn't help matters at all), guess I'm aclimatized to Vancouver weather for good now :)

I would have left a message or something, but we were in a big rush last Wednesday to get going after work that I completely forgot.