[MacoMan]

I've been playing The Gate lately and was startled by how much better it looked in 8-bit software mode vs. 32-bit polymost or polymer. I just assumed that OpenGL 32-bit would make any old map look better but I now realize that shading & textures can be quite inferior in 32-bit as opposed to software. Look at these screenshots. The first is 8-bit, the 2nd 32-bit. It actually looks much higher resolution in software.





At what point did maps start taking advantage of 32-bit? But going by this I've decided to play all older maps in 8-bit, else I could be missing out on some nice shading & textures. What's your preferred graphics mode, and why?

[TerminX]

In this case, it looks like the mapper purposely placed a non-power of two sized texture on the floors and ceilings, knowing full well that they would be drawn incorrectly and banking on that fact. The second shot is the proper way to draw the scene and the first shot showcases the classic renderer's inability to draw floors using non-power of two textures. I believe there's actually a compile time option in the source code to correct the drawing in 8-bit but it's left disabled because there are a few cases where it causes visual anomalies in the original maps.

Other stuff like shading, etc should be as close as possible to being identical to classic.

[MacoMan]

TerminX, on 12 November 2013 - 06:35 PM, said:

In this case, it looks like the mapper purposely placed a non-power of two sized texture on the floors and ceilings, knowing full well that they would be drawn incorrectly and banking on that fact. The second shot is the proper way to draw the scene and the first shot showcases the classic renderer's inability to draw floors using non-power of two textures. I believe there's actually a compile time option in the source code to correct the drawing in 8-bit but it's left disabled because there are a few cases where it causes visual anomalies in the original maps.

Other stuff like shading, etc should be as close as possible to being identical to classic.

Personally, I thought it looked better with the tighter, smaller lights. And though screenshots can't capture it, it had a nice undulating lighting effect. Which brings up another issue I noticed with 32-bit in The Gate. At some locations, lights don't even animate in 32-bit, and I think lighting, along with shading & textures, are the reason I'm going with 8-bit now for all old maps unless specifically stated in the readme by the author that it's designed for polymost/polymer. Another reason I'm going with 8-bit now unless suggested otherwise is that some of these maps have a nightmare difficulty in finding certain keys & locations. I figure that in some cases finding that crack in the wall might show up easier in 8-bit. I'd prefer not chasing my tail trying to find certain things due to invisibility under 32-bit because the maps were designed for 8-bit.

[TerminX]

MacoMan, on 12 November 2013 - 07:12 PM, said:

Personally, I thought it looked better with the tighter, smaller lights. And though screenshots can't capture it, it had a nice undulating lighting effect. Which brings up another issue I noticed with 32-bit in The Gate. At some locations, lights don't even animate in 32-bit, and I think lighting, along with shading & textures, are the reason I'm going with 8-bit now for all old maps unless specifically stated in the readme by the author that it's designed for polymost/polymer. Another reason I'm going with 8-bit now unless suggested otherwise is that some of these maps have a nightmare difficulty in finding certain keys & locations. I figure that in some cases finding that crack in the wall might show up easier in 8-bit. I'd prefer not chasing my tail trying to find certain things due to invisibility under 32-bit because the maps were designed for 8-bit.

I think I'm gonna have to call bullshit on "lights don't even animate in 32-bit." Seriously, go find even one single instance of that... I'll wait. If you can, we'll fix it. Same thing with the idea that the maps might somehow be easier to navigate in 8-bit... can you qualify this statement with some evidence, or is it just how you feel it might be if you tried? Having a preference for one renderer or the other is fine (I certainly don't care, it's not like I wrote any of them) but you don't need to make up reasons to justify that preference (there are plenty of legitimate ones not covered here).

Saying that you like the way it looks better is perfectly valid enough on its own... though it is somewhat funny that you've confused what is essentially corrupted texture pixel garbage with some kind of higher quality image in the first place. Not "haha, you're stupid!" funny, but more of an oddness in how differently people can perceive scenes composed of low detail textures like these.

[MacoMan]

TerminX, on 12 November 2013 - 08:09 PM, said:

I think I'm gonna have to call bullshit on "lights don't even animate in 32-bit." Seriously, go find even one single instance of that... I'll wait. If you can, we'll fix it. Same thing with the idea that the maps might somehow be easier to navigate in 8-bit... can you qualify this statement with some evidence, or is it just how you feel it might be if you tried? Having a preference for one renderer or the other is fine (I certainly don't care, it's not like I wrote any of them) but you don't need to make up reasons to justify that preference (there are plenty of legitimate ones not covered here).

Saying that you like the way it looks better is perfectly valid enough on its own... though it is somewhat funny that you've confused what is essentially corrupted texture pixel garbage with some kind of higher quality image in the first place. Not "haha, you're stupid!" funny, but more of an oddness in how differently people can perceive scenes composed of low detail textures like these.

Wow, so protective of your baby! Understandable since eduke is your baby and a lot of hard work was put into it. Appreciated of course. Okay, I only saw ONE instance of lights not animating (pardon my hyperbole in implying it was multiple areas, though I assumed where there's one lighting snafu under eduke 32-bit OpenGL there might be others) but, sorry, it was most definitely there. No bullshit. It's in the first map in the stripper/karaoke bar in The Gate, I think. To be honest, don't feel like playing that map again since I'm finishing up the last episode and- well, so many maps, so little time. I had instantaneous ability to switch between 8-bit & 32-bit and that's exactly what I did, and it was annoying enough to help me decide that it was probably best to be safe than sorry than missing out on certain lighting effects with the 32-bit renderer. As for making up reasons/excuses for not using 32-bit, admittedly I got my info about OpenGL possibly not showing certain crucial things secondhand, reading reviews of usermaps where people implied that this was an issue. If it's not, and the information was incorrect, well, then good for you... and us.

[OpenMaw]

Dude. Don't claim that you're seeing freaking issues and then be unwilling to demonstrate them. That's a crap move and rather selfish. The only way things get fixed or improved is if the people coding Eduke32 know what the Hell is going on with it among the user base.

[MacoMan]

Commando Nukem, on 12 November 2013 - 09:07 PM, said:

Dude. Don't claim that you're seeing freaking issues and then be unwilling to demonstrate them. That's a crap move and rather selfish. The only way things get fixed or improved is if the people coding Eduke32 know what the Hell is going on with it among the user base.

I'm kind of not liking the tone here. Look, I love Duke 3D (my all-time favorite game) and I love what the community has done with mods & usermaps, and I love eduke, but what I'm not loving is what feels like the third degree I'm getting on this forum. I came here as a relative newbie, and rather than being treated with patience, the whole attitude seems to be "you're full of shit" or "you're selfish" and quite frankly it's very condescending. So don't be surprised if I'm currently feeling why the fuck should I even bother? I don't care anymore. I'll just stop posting and continue to enjoy the maps & the mods. Thank you for all the hard work & genuinely creativity you guys have put in over the years. Forgive my enthusiasm, sometimes it's best not to interact with the developers of something solid & worthwhile because they can be understandably touchy, even arrogant, about their successes and I guess this is one of those instances so I'll bid you goodbye.

[Micky C]

I didnt see any negativity in TerminX's post. All he simply said was "you're possibly a little bit confused on the technical side of things, but if there is a genuine problem, we can patiently wait while you provide us some specific evidence of said problem, after which we are happy to fix it".

[Cage]

Hey, don't be angry! It's just that you've reported an potential issue, without any detail. What do you mean with light "not working/not animating"? An animated texture rendered as still frame, different (worse?) appearance of the light in 32bit, or you're talking about engine-based light effects like flickering, lights turned by switches, breaking when shot, etc.? If it's the last one, this might require a good look, since it may be something in the engine. Please refine what you've meant.

As for the general appearance, keep in mind that 8-bit mode is bound to palette/colormap, which results in vastly different appearance, especially in dark areas - the colors in the palette maintain their saturation throughout the whole ramp (from light to dark), while in 32-bit mode, the colors darken to "black" which results in them graying out a bit. This can be seen especially well on the red/orange colors. It is possible to tweak it's look in 32bit to make it even closer to the original 8-bit (I think GZDoom did it quite recently with very good results).

As for the "noisy" texture in the screenshots, as already written above, it's a clever use of an engine bug - that's very creative, but I think I've never seen it during my Duking yet - I haven't played The Gate yet, maybe I should? I guess it would be possible to have an "compatibility flag" for this (like Doom ports have), but I'm not sure if this "effect" is common enough to warrant it?

Keep in mind that those two things would be a new feature requests, and Eduke32 team is already very busy, with both the port and their own lives. As a fellow 8-bit mode enthusiast, I guess that sticking to 8-bit mode (If possible - mods not using 32 bit assets like highres textures and models) is the best way for now. But if you think you've stumbled upon a some kind of bug, write ASAP.

Thanks for the input.

[OpenMaw]

MacoMan, on 12 November 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

I'm kind of not liking the tone here. Look, I love Duke 3D (my all-time favorite game) and I love what the community has done with mods & usermaps, and I love eduke, but what I'm not loving is what feels like the third degree I'm getting on this forum. I came here as a relative newbie, and rather than being treated with patience, the whole attitude seems to be "you're full of shit" or "you're selfish" and quite frankly it's very condescending. So don't be surprised if I'm currently feeling why the fuck should I even bother? I don't care anymore. I'll just stop posting and continue to enjoy the maps & the mods. Thank you for all the hard work & genuinely creativity you guys have put in over the years. Forgive my enthusiasm, sometimes it's best not to interact with the developers of something solid & worthwhile because they can be understandably touchy, even arrogant, about their successes and I guess this is one of those instances so I'll bid you goodbye.

Nobody is being arrogant here. And everyone involved with the coding of Eduke32 (not me, by the way, so I'm not being protective of my "baby") is more than perceptive to fixing problems that arise. If you're going to report a bug you should do a little more than say "Oh yeah, lights weren't flickering in 32 bit on this one map, but I'm not going to bother to provide you any further information, like my hardware specs, a log file, video capture proof, or any additional examples, because i'm 'lazy'. I'm just going to assume you're a lot of overprotective asses out to get me."


Things cannot be fixed if all you say is "something is broken." You have to go a little further than that, and actually show what is broken. That is the easy part, by the way. The hard part is on the coders like TerminX to actually fix those issues. So you make their job a lot easier if you show them as much information as possible.

[Helixhorned]

TLDR after TX's last post. MacoMan: can you post the coordinates (read off with DNCOORDS) of where the "light animation" is missing?

[TerminX]

Cage, on 13 November 2013 - 02:09 AM, said:

As for the general appearance, keep in mind that 8-bit mode is bound to palette/colormap, which results in vastly different appearance, especially in dark areas - the colors in the palette maintain their saturation throughout the whole ramp (from light to dark), while in 32-bit mode, the colors darken to "black" which results in them graying out a bit. This can be seen especially well on the red/orange colors. It is possible to tweak it's look in 32bit to make it even closer to the original 8-bit (I think GZDoom did it quite recently with very good results).

Even that isn't an issue anymore, with r_pr_artmapping (for Polymer) or r_usetileshades (for Polymost) enabled. We use the shade tables directly or generate texture data using them when those modes are enabled.

So... should I just lock this now because the original poster would rather whine than actually provide any evidence of any of the issues he mentioned? If they aren't a figment of his imagination, I'd really like to see them fixed.

There, now that was arrogant. Right here on my own forum. Which I personally maintain. For a project I started and donated almost 10 years of free time to. Bam.

[Hendricks266]

Go home, TX. You're drunk. You sound like you want to start a bar fight.

[Cage]

TerminX, on 13 November 2013 - 09:35 PM, said:

Even that isn't an issue anymore, with r_pr_artmapping (for Polymer) or r_usetileshades (for Polymost) enabled. We use the shade tables directly or generate texture data using them when those modes are enabled.

And that's why should I follow updates more often Thanks for the info.

[MacoMan]

TerminX, on 13 November 2013 - 09:35 PM, said:

Even that isn't an issue anymore, with r_pr_artmapping (for Polymer) or r_usetileshades (for Polymost) enabled. We use the shade tables directly or generate texture data using them when those modes are enabled.

So... should I just lock this now because the original poster would rather whine than actually provide any evidence of any of the issues he mentioned? If they aren't a figment of his imagination, I'd really like to see them fixed.

There, now that was arrogant. Right here on my own forum. Which I personally maintain. For a project I started and donated almost 10 years of free time to. Bam.

It's all about attitude, chief. So I will respond to a rudeness with a rudeness. I pointed out the general direction of where the anomaly is. Play the map, and find it if you give a shit... or not. It's absolutely no skin off my ass if you believe me or not. It's your baby. I'll just continue to play & enjoy the maps & the mods... in software mode. I am done here, so take the ball & go home. Lock the thread.

[Forge]

group hug!!

[leilei]

8-bit

32-bit

32-BIT CANT SUPPORT RIPPLED GLASS

[Jimmy]

>2013
>reporting bugs
>no info, so the bug cant be reproduced and fixed
>people ask for more info
>"omg y u so mean plx lock thread"
costanza.jpg

[Fox]

Really? It always looked like this for me:

>Duke4.net
>reporting bugs / game not working / idea for a map
>"omg noob gtfo"
>"why so mean??"
>"look what this noob is doing he should kill himself"
>"fuck you"
>*thread locked and new user is blamed

[TerminX]

This thread isn't locked. I'm still waiting for an actual bug report beyond an exchange like "omg the lights aren't working" "okay, show me" "find it yourself!"

I don't mean to be rude, but if a user can't or won't explain what the actual problem is, nobody can ever fix it. It's irritating, like when a woman is angry with you and expects you to figure out why and fix it without ever saying anything to you about it.

[MacoMan]

TerminX, on 15 November 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

This thread isn't locked. I'm still waiting for an actual bug report beyond an exchange like "omg the lights aren't working" "okay, show me" "find it yourself!"

I don't mean to be rude, but if a user can't or won't explain what the actual problem is, nobody can ever fix it. It's irritating, like when a woman is angry with you and expects you to figure out why and fix it without ever saying anything to you about it.

I know you probably don't mean to be rude, TX, it's just how some people are. It's like some asperger syndrome sufferers, they're frequently brilliant at things like artistic endeavors and coding, but they can have poor people skills. I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot here, but it's your lecturing & condescending tone that's a real pisser-offer. I sure don't know my shit when it comes to the technical aspects of source ports and such, as demonstrated in this topic, but you make certain people know you do. However, I can see how important this is to you, and you did bring eduke into the world, so I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. Someday when I get around to replaying The Gate (or some other TC that uses similar lighting that brings up the issue), I'll carefully write down the coordinates when I encounter the bug again. Well, you did say you were willing to wait. So wait you will.

[Silentwulf]

TerminX, on 15 November 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

This thread isn't locked. I'm still waiting for an actual bug report beyond an exchange like "omg the lights aren't working" "okay, show me" "find it yourself!"

I don't mean to be rude, but if a user can't or won't explain what the actual problem is, nobody can ever fix it. It's irritating, like when a woman is angry with you and expects you to figure out why and fix it without ever saying anything to you about it.

Amen.

To be fair, I don't think I've ever recalled a bug in eDuke32 o.o'
Been using it for quite some time in various environments. It's the tightest source port I've played next to zDoom.

[Forge]

TerminX, on 15 November 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

I don't mean to be rude,

since when?

i like my admins sassy (with a little aspergers on the side). If I want to be bored i'll strike up an economics discussion with Sandt

[TerminX]

I don't have assburgers, I have a TBI.

[Forge]

TerminX, on 15 November 2013 - 08:25 PM, said:

I don't have assburgers, I have a TBI.

and i have PTSD

If we can find a couple more people with some disorders that have more vowels we can start a game of scrabble.

[Micky C]

I have an STI.

/Jks

[TerminX]

Great idea. If we get someone with ADHD and someone with ICD to join in we can spell "dipshit".

[Mblackwell]

*raises hand*
ADHD

Fox, on 14 November 2013 - 10:21 PM, said:

Really? It always looked like this for me:

>Duke4.net
>reporting bugs / game not working / idea for a map
>"omg noob gtfo"
>"why so mean??"
>"look what this noob is doing he should kill himself"
>"fuck you"
>*thread locked and new user is blamed

Ahem

Stickied here

I love it when people post there with everything as requested, and not in the general forum.

[Helixhorned]

Jimmy, on 14 November 2013 - 07:38 PM, said:

>2013
>reporting bugs
>no info, so the bug cant be reproduced and fixed
>people ask for more info
>"omg y u so mean plx lock thread"

Yeah, sometimes it feels like that, though thankfully not too often.

Broadly speaking, there are two classes of bugs.
There are the critical ones: when it's possible to invoke undefined behavior (such as accessing arrays out of bounds) by any user input, that's something I always consider a bug, and we're thankful for crash reports. (Crashes are notifications courtesy of the OS that certain classes of undefined behavior happened.) In this case, we're willing to accept less-than-ideal reports because of the severity. Also in the "critical" bag are regressions that break map effects, for example.
Then there are bugs that are an annoyance to a subset of people, but don't present a very urgent issue, such as maybe inconsistent display between renderers, or performance problems on particular platforms. While we like to make EDuke32 as awesome as possible, and this means that minor issues should be heard as well, we can't do much unless questions to clarify or requests to run a test (of easy to moderate complexity) are followed. Sorry, but then the reporters have only themselves to blame if their complaints aren't looked at.

So, MacoMan: could you at least say what kind of "light animation" you meant? An SE effect? Cyclers? I tried breaking lights that flicker afterwards, but that works fine here...

[Forge]

you're asking for too much in a hostile manner
i'm taking my ball and going home

his little ego was already catered to and he still refused to provide any evidence of this alleged "issue". Either he now feels he somehow has the upper hand and refuses to pull that stick out of his ass and be helpful, or he was full of bullshit from the git-go