[Mark]

A mapper has a 6 tile skybox that displays fine in Mapster but shows only as a solid light blue sky in eduke32. It displays properly in both for me.

I had him clear his texture cache files and let them rebuild. No difference.

I had him change the skybox to something else and then change it back to the desired one. Made sure he was using ALT + C to copy/paste to all sectors. No difference.

This is under Polymost and a close to most recent revision of eduke32. Any hints to fix?

[Danukem]

We had a similar issue in Demon Throne during the overhaul when upgrading from a really old eduke32 to a newer one. In our case the skyboxes just went black in game. I don't recall what the solution was at the moment, but Doom64hunter helped us with it and I have asked him if he remembers.

In the meantime, see what happens if you comment out everything from the .def file except for the skybox definitions and see if they are still broken. Possibly something else is breaking before the skyboxes load and causing the rest of the .def stuff to abort.

[Mark]

Me and the guy with the problem are working from the same svn and eduke32 revision and the issue doesn't happen for me. I'll go thru the menu settings with him to see if anything there could be his problem.

[Danukem]

Make sure your svn does not track any cfg files or any other files it doesn't need to. Untrack those from svn if you find them. Then have your guy do a 100% clean install from scratch, redownloading from the svn. I wouldn't waste time in the menus with him.

[Mark]

I looked and found nothing in the menus so I dropped that. He already tried a clean install just before I posted. He has no extra cfg files. IDK if it matters, but I'll ask where he got his duke3d.grp file from. Maybe a Steam, Gog or WT version is different and conflicting? Doesn't seem likely but I'm runing out of things to try.

[Danukem]

Mark, on 12 April 2021 - 12:02 PM, said:

I looked and found nothing in the menus so I dropped that. He already tried a clean install just before I posted. He has no extra cfg files.

In our case, the black skies were caused because we had an autoexec.cfg file that would apply invalid settings from an older version of eduke32 every time we ran the game. For that reason, the skies displayed correctly in mapster but not in eduke32 since the autoexec was fucking with the eduke settings specifically. We deleted that autoexec.cfg and the other cfgs and the problem went away.

[Mark]

We don't have an autoexec.cfg file in the svn or either of our copies. I'll ask him again to be sure, but supposedly he did not transfer a cfg file of any kind from another project folder. Just the bare bones svn with duke3d.grp and eduke32 added in.

[Danukem]

Mark, on 12 April 2021 - 12:09 PM, said:

We don't have an autoexec.cfg file in the svn or either of our copies. I'll ask him again to be sure, but supposedly he did not transfer a cfg file of any kind from another project folder. Just the bare bones svn with duke3d.grp and eduke32 added in.

Well it sounds like you're fucked, then. Good luck!

[Mark]

I ticked the Polymer box on and got the blue sky problem he did. GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think this is his first non polymer project in ages. He evidently assumed it was.

Thanks Dan.

[Danukem]

Mark, on 12 April 2021 - 12:13 PM, said:

I ticked the Polymer box on and got the blue sky problem he did. GAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think this is his first non polymer project in ages. He assumed it was.

Thanks Dan.

Maybe you have multiple different skyboxes in the map (polymer only supports one per map).

[Mark]

Thats why I stressed to do the ALT + C thing but didn't realise he must have placed a sector of blue sky sometime early in the map that wasn't getting pasted over.

[Danukem]

At this point, the Polymer checkbox should be removed, or if its there rename it to "run game in broken state"

[Mark]

Yeah, I don't know why it's there. Just an oversight by the group I guess.

[Doom64hunter]

Danukem, on 12 April 2021 - 10:50 AM, said:

We had a similar issue in Demon Throne during the overhaul when upgrading from a really old eduke32 to a newer one. In our case the skyboxes just went black in game. I don't recall what the solution was at the moment, but Doom64hunter helped us with it and I have asked him if he remembers.

In the meantime, see what happens if you comment out everything from the .def file except for the skybox definitions and see if they are still broken. Possibly something else is breaking before the skyboxes load and causing the rest of the .def stuff to abort.

Just for completeness, the parameters that caused our problem back then were:

r_shadescale 1.05
r_pr_specularmapping 0
r_pr_shadowcount 2
r_pr_shadowdetail 1
r_pr_maxlightpasses 5
r_pr_artmapping 0
r_usenewshading = 0
r_pr_lighting 1
r_usetileshades = 0

Removing these undid the black skybox issue.

Perhaps the new synthesis executables should be compiled with POLYMER=0.

[Mark]

Does "Polymer =0" mean no more Polymer support in eduke32 or does it mean all Polymer related menu or cfg items set to off by default and must be manually enabled?

[Doom64hunter]

Mark, on 13 April 2021 - 07:50 AM, said:

Does "Polymer =0" mean no more Polymer support in eduke32 or does it mean all Polymer related menu or cfg items set to off by default and must be manually enabled?

It would mean that polymer support would be disabled entirely.

[Mark]

At first I thought if that happens I quit modding. Then I realized that there probably isn't much more that can be done with Eduke32 ( that I know of ) so if I stay with a present day revision for all my projects I won't be missing out on much. I can get by.

[NightFright]

Is it just me or aren't skies showing up at all in the game any more in recent EDuke32 snapshots (Polymost) with r_useindexedcolortextures 0 ?