r7326 fog and viewscreens

High Treason

#1 Posted 04 February 2019 - 09:22 AM

Visibility fog is not present in Polymer in this build, compare with how this should look;

Spoiler

This only appears to affect Polymer and may be due to a drill effect in the map, the one which spawns smoke and explosions. Whilst the effect could be removed, this behavior appears to be invalid when the player is not looking at (or in this case, can't see at all) the explosions. Also just noticed a possible issue with texture panning in the second (8-Bit renderer) shot that I'd have to check, there have been some strange goings on with that in both builds.
- Checked and the panning issue existed for both Polymost and Polymer at least as far back as r4593. As nobody else is complaining about that one it isn't important to me as the panning is fine in the map's intended renderer.

Viewscreens are also broken in all renderers, compare with r4593 which is what I made the map with;

Spoiler

Whilst this is an exploit of the screens (in fact I've not seen it done before) it was their original behavior when set up this way. I can provide an example map if required.

I do not know when this issue started as I have not updated EDuke32 in years - "Compiled Sep 7 2014 11:17:13" for r4593 - and only did so to check for such problems. I may have time to backtrack some ways and try to find where these problems started, but damn, there's like five years of snapshots to slog through. Should be able to narrow it down to a year, then a quarter, then a month I guess rather than trying every single one sequentially. I will report back if I have any more information such as tracking down the start of these issues.

EDIT: Viewscreen bug first encountered in r4777 - just one build (in the archives) after the one I've been using for years. I swear I didn't know and it's by pure coincidence, what are the odds?
EDIT 2: Fog issues appear in r6597.

This post has been edited by High Treason: 04 February 2019 - 10:14 AM

Mark

#2 Posted 04 February 2019 - 10:32 AM

I never really paid much attention to the viewscreens other than they worked while activated. But if you pull away I noticed just now that they revert not only to a very pixelated display but its also a default vanilla view with no models or HRP. Not a big deal to me.

High Treason

#3 Posted 04 February 2019 - 10:43 AM

This viewscreen is tagged so that it acts like a camera and displays what it can see when the player is within range. I discovered this behavior somewhere between Riverside Town and Quantum Physics (it has some other behaviors I'm not using here) but something has broken this exploit in the intervening years.

Also, in case it was missed (probably wasn't) I tracked down the start of both problems and added the relevant build numbers to the first post. I can safely conclude that the problems aren't system specific as they were witnessed by this map's playtester too, somewhat unknowingly.

This post has been edited by High Treason: 04 February 2019 - 10:43 AM

High Treason

#4 Posted 05 February 2019 - 01:16 AM

Update: The visibility fog appears to be from r_usenewshading "2" being in settings.cfg, I was sure I'd removed that file but must have forgotten, not sure why that would happen though.
Still none the wiser as to what's wrong with viewscreens.

This post has been edited by High Treason: 05 February 2019 - 01:17 AM

High Treason

#5 Posted 06 February 2019 - 02:59 AM

Did some further tests, this is what it's supposed to do as seen in the DOS version;

Here's the map;

___scrn2.zip (3.21K)
Number of downloads: 178

The 'remote viewing' appears to have never worked in Polymer, but is working fine in all other modes between r4399 and r4593 - seemingly in varying states of working prior to 4399 as far back as builds from 2011 but largely broken in Polymer. Remote viewing is not used in the map I'm waiting to release, so whilst I would like it fixed for the future (pretty please?), I'd be happy for now with only the first one (single viewscreen) working again in Polymer - and obviously the other renderers, both tricks used to work fine in those. If you really need me to find more specifics I probably can, but my time to dig through things is still kinda short.
I'm sure there was a build where both worked on Polymer to some degree but I have been unsuccessful in finding it as yet. Some builds will have the viewscreen flash just one frame and then turn black. Some of the breakages appear to be related to the screen's CSTAT flags, largely being set to wall aligned rather than billboard.

This post has been edited by High Treason: 06 February 2019 - 03:52 AM