[Dr. Cheis]

Hi, first time poster here.
Attempting to find out why ground shadows aren't showing below enemies when using polymer rendering mode.
First screenshot shows the shadow displaying correctly in polymost mode. Secondscreenshot shows missing shadow in polymer mode.

Not running high resolution pack. Have tried with clean install on latest eduke32 release.

Running Windows 10 64 bit.

Edit: embarrasing newbie mistake. meant to post in "Bug reports & 'help me' threads"

Attached thumbnail(s)

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[Ninety-Six]

Polymer is currently a broken renderer, so that's probably part of it.

[Danukem]

Ninety-Six, on 27 December 2022 - 07:15 PM, said:

Polymer is currently a broken renderer, so that's probably part of it.

The lack of 2D sprite shadows is normal for polymer, though. The idea was that proper shadows would be generated by spotlights, making the old-fashioned shadows redundant. And AFAIK you can still make that happen by adding spotlights to the maps.

[Ninety-Six]

Danukem, on 27 December 2022 - 08:01 PM, said:

The lack of 2D sprite shadows is normal for polymer, though. The idea was that proper shadows would be generated by spotlights, making the old-fashioned shadows redundant. And AFAIK you can still make that happen by adding spotlights to the maps.

That makes sense. Pretty useless feature in vanilla maps though, unless using the 20th anniversary version of the maps.

(Actually, does that even work? I've always assumed Polymer would work with the WT point lights but I've never verified it since I can't run Polymer and probably never will)

[Dr. Cheis]

I appreciate the responses. Ended up tinkering with the HRP and deleted basically everything except the projections features, now I have cool (it somewhat unrealistic) shadows for my sprites that don't simply hover under the character's feet.

On a related note, I have seen a lot of negativity towards Polymer in recent discussions, while the eDuke32 website still lauds it as a massive improvement over Polymost. It certainly looks better to me due to the lighting features. What is the nature of the trouble people are having with Polymer? Is it simply a matter of consuming system resources?

[Mark]

Polymer bogs down in large open maps more than other modes. It supports only a single skybox. The showview feature in custom maps doesn't work properly. There are still a surprising number of players with old computers that just can't get playable framerates with it. On a more technical note it can sometimes be a bit fussy when it comes to displaying the fancy texture features like normal and spec maps. Personally I love Polymer and have been using it since my first project in 2010. As long as you realize it's limitations there is still a lot you can make with it.

The original author of Polymer left the modding community before putting in the finishing touches. Others have tried or are occasionally trying to patch it up but its still has a ways to go.

[Danukem]

Mark, on 28 December 2022 - 05:52 PM, said:

Polymer bogs down in large open maps more than other modes. It supports only a single skybox. The showview feature in custom maps doesn't work properly. There are still a surprising number of players with old computers that just can't get playable framerates with it. On a more technical note it can sometimes be a bit fussy when it comes to displaying the fancy texture features like normal and spec maps. Personally I love Polymer and have been using it since my first project in 2010. As long as you realize it's limitations there is still a lot you can make with it.

The original author of Polymer left the modding community before putting in the finishing touches. Others have tried or are occasionally trying to patch it up but its still has a ways to go.

You left out two of worst things: It doesn't support blend modes, and doesn't support voxels.

[Phredreeke]

Mark, on 28 December 2022 - 05:52 PM, said:

It supports only a single skybox.

I think TerminX fixed that a while ago actually...

Quote

2effd514e | [terminx] engine: set polymer sky according to the first sector drawn per frame instead of predetermining it at map load time
This allows maps that use more than one parallax sky texture to look more correct in polymer, assuming only one type of sky is visible at once.

[oasiz]

Dr. Cheis, on 28 December 2022 - 04:11 PM, said:

On a related note, I have seen a lot of negativity towards Polymer in recent discussions, while the eDuke32 website still lauds it as a massive improvement over Polymost. It certainly looks better to me due to the lighting features. What is the nature of the trouble people are having with Polymer? Is it simply a matter of consuming system resources?

A lot of this was written 10 years ago when it was in active dev. Mentions in the web page and wiki are very outdated.

[Ninety-Six]

Dr. Cheis, on 28 December 2022 - 04:11 PM, said:

What is the nature of the trouble people are having with Polymer? Is it simply a matter of consuming system resources?

That and that it's currently broken in many ways. I don't think most of us have issues with polymer in concept (there are always purists of course, and personally I wouldn't bother using Polymer in classic maps unless they had specific support for point lights), it just requires a surprisingly beefy PC, and over the years with it being unfinished and untouched, it started to break with updates.

Though TerminX has been working on it behind the scenes over the past year or so, so hopefully the second problem will be addressed in the near future.


I know that I, personally, would love to run Polymer if I were physically possible capable of it. I'm part moth and so am a sucker for really fancy lighting. I've just sat and stared at certain lighting effects in games and would love to do so in Duke before being subsequently killed because i got too enveloped in watching a literal dumpster fire that i get killed by an assault trooper

[Mark]

I'm running polymer mods with my 13 year old Dell computer and a 5 or 6 year old Nvidia 750ti video card. Yeah, I get slowdowns in some mods with large maps using tons of models lights and sprites, but most of the time I can run games at playable speeds.

[Ninety-Six]

Mark, on 29 December 2022 - 11:46 AM, said:

I'm running polymer mods with my 13 year old Dell computer and a 5 or 6 year old Nvidia 750ti video card. Yeah, I get slowdowns in some mods with large maps using tons of models lights and sprites, but most of the time I can run games at playable speeds.

That's also a thing with Polymer. Sometimes systems can run it fine and other times it absolutely refuses no matter how powerful it is. It's very strange.

[Reaper_Man]

As I understand it, that seems to be more of a chipset / driver issue than anything else. Specifically non-Nvidia cards have more issues, or run into issues sooner. That's why you can have a 750 TI cruising at 100+ frames, but a 6600 XT isn't even playable, when both are rendering or playing the same scene. But even that isn't an exact science either, as plenty of people on Nvidia cards have had problems and people on AMD cards have none. It seems like you either can run it or you can't, and if you can't, then there's literally nothing you can do about it. Above all else, that is the most likely reason it hasn't been widely adopted, by players or developers.

[Aleks]

I'd say the main reason it's never really been widely adopted is because the guy working on it quit and left it in a kind of unfinished state. I wouldn't mind using the new thing TX announced that would replace Polymer. Not really interested in models, and as much as I like fancy lights, it's not something to kill the framerate for, but the TROR compatibility is definitely better. But right now, I can't even run a relatively simple map like last year's The Division which only "required" Polymer due to complex TROR - had to run it with Polymost, as a couple of visual glitches were far more acceptable than framerate of 16. And I'm using a fairly recent gear, too.

[Reaper_Man]

That's sort of what I mean. Why it doesn't work doesn't really matter to 99.9% of people as much as the fact that it doesn't work. If something isn't finished, then of course it isn't going to be used in a "production environment"; as a developer, why would I choose to build a project that an unknown percent of players simply will not be able to run, and with no options or alternatives for those players if they can't? Telling those players "it's okay, because the renderer is unfinished" A.) sounds bad and B.) doesn't change that they still can't run it.

[dwtietz]

Danukem, on 28 December 2022 - 06:49 PM, said:

You left out two of worst things: It doesn't support blend modes...

Haha. Mark surely is aware of this one. He and I just ran into that a couple of days ago when we were working on something together.

[Phredreeke]

Aleks, on 30 December 2022 - 04:04 AM, said:

I wouldn't mind using the new thing TX announced that would replace Polymer.

I wasn't aware of any such announcement,

[Ninety-Six]

dwtietz, on 30 December 2022 - 07:05 AM, said:

Haha. Mark surely is aware of this one. He and I just ran into that a couple of days ago when we were working on something together.

Feel free to call me an idiot, but what is a "blend mode?"

[Phredreeke]

I assume additive lights

[Danukem]

Ninety-Six, on 30 December 2022 - 06:23 PM, said:

Feel free to call me an idiot, but what is a "blend mode?"

Read this thread and do google searches for terms you don't know: https://forums.duke4...cency-in-eduke/

[Reaper_Man]

From the wiki:



Basically, complex transparency.

[Micky C]

Aleks, on 30 December 2022 - 04:04 AM, said:

I'd say the main reason it's never really been widely adopted is because the guy working on it quit and left it in a kind of unfinished state. I wouldn't mind using the new thing TX announced that would replace Polymer. Not really interested in models, and as much as I like fancy lights, it's not something to kill the framerate for, but the TROR compatibility is definitely better. But right now, I can't even run a relatively simple map like last year's The Division which only "required" Polymer due to complex TROR - had to run it with Polymost, as a couple of visual glitches were far more acceptable than framerate of 16. And I'm using a fairly recent gear, too.

Phredreeke, on 30 December 2022 - 08:39 AM, said:

I wasn't aware of any such announcement,

I'm also not aware of any announcement. I assume this was on discord. Could someone please elaborate?

[Doom64hunter]

Micky C, on 02 January 2023 - 01:19 AM, said:

I'm also not aware of any announcement. I assume this was on discord. Could someone please elaborate?

The only thing I'm aware of were a number of Polymer performance improvements, but development has slowed due to various reasons.

[Mark]

Thats disappointing. Performance aside, there are other reported issues that haven't been addressed for quite some time.