[Stabs]

helix that kind of stuff is perfectly ok, ive been using it for months now without any problems

[TerminX]

Sangman, on Jul 31 2009, 08:25 AM, said:

Disable the HRP def files and you'll be able to play Polymost (and Polymer, I guess) with the 8bit textures, even though you'll be playing in 32-bit mode. Or is that not what you're getting at?

Nah, he's talking about the software driven test code Ken wrote to make sure his Polymost algorithms were going to work out properly before committing to writing an actual OpenGL renderer.

It was:

a) buggy
b) very slow
c) unfinished
d) completely broken by changes made to how EDuke32 renders scenes
e) all of the above

It was never anything designed to actually be playable AFAIK. I don't even know why it was ever made a menu option in JFDuke3D in the first place... that thing had to have been one of the biggest single causes of strange bug reports. I imagine it also drove anyone who managed to see it as their first exposure to EDuke32/JFDuke3D away from the community due to how bad it was. For the last few months it was in there (after the menu option was removed but before it was disabled completely) I think it was even rendering sprites in front of walls they were behind.

Does someone need to make one of those stupid inspirational poster type image macros with a software mode Polymost screenshot and the text "useless renderer is useless" before people stop asking about it? It's never coming back!

[Jimmy]

Do you mean 16 bit? I hated that mode.

[Gambini]

You TX told me once it was buggy, i know. I just wanted to know if you would do a hack to make polymer look like 8bits but nevermind.

There IS a difference between ¨32 bits with 8bits art¨ and ¨plain 8bits¨ Sang-Man! But nobody seems (or wants) to understand me.

A simple example that comes to my mind right now is one of the Source Engine´s shaders. There is an effect that makes the world turn cephia colour in some scenarios, it´s still being the same engine, just the tint or palette or whatever changes to make the screen look like something in particular. Well the same trick could be used to make Polymer look like 8bits, that´s it.

In other news, Polymer inherits from Polymost this issue with transparent sprites/maskwalls. Those basically cancel other sprites or maskwalls that are behind, somebody told me this is very hard to fix.

My idea is this: There are some highres sprites that look transparent not because they have transpacency but because they have a mesh of alpha pixels combined within the entire bitmap. A good example is those shade sprites that some hires mods were using sometime ago.
Well, those fake transparent tiles dont cause this glitch in polymost because they´re not really transparent although they look like. So, if somehow, Polymer could deduce every transparent sprite/maskwall and automatically generate a solid tile with this alpha mesh and store it in the textures cache, the problem should be history I have no idea about how hard would be doing it but i´m pretty sure it will work.

[Jblade]

Quote

There IS a difference between ¨32 bits with 8bits art¨ and ¨plain 8bits¨ Sang-Man! But nobody seems (or wants) to understand me.

I understand you; and I agree, there is a clear difference between the two. It's far more noticable in dark maps than anything else. The way shading and translucency worked in 8bit gave the graphics a certain grittyness that's missing in the new renderers.

[Chip]

As for my texture problem - fixed it!
Apparently the "GL texture compression" causes the problem when enabled...... for my graphics card anyway. I disabled that and I have no problems.


Now, the Eduk32 builds that did work wrote the textures into a folder. These newer builds that don't work write textures into a file (not a folder) so what ever was changed involving that causes the problem for me.

[Fox]

Gambini, on Jul 31 2009, 10:40 PM, said:

Well, those fake transparent tiles dont cause this glitch in polymost because they´re not really transparent although they look like. So, if somehow, Polymer could deduce every transparent sprite/maskwall and automatically generate a solid tile with this alpha mesh and store it in the textures cache, the problem should be history I have no idea about how hard would be doing it but i´m pretty sure it will work.

Heh, such obvious solution. If there can be rendered transparent areas of images, I don't see why that woudn't be possible.

[High Treason]

I have a "better"? iodea about this transpoarency, how about you can state a different image file for each stage of transparency? i'm sure it would be less complicated to code.

That is, of course, if such a feature were included or needed (as polymer might be going to fix it anyway for all we know).

[Gambini]

do you have thick fingers that can´t hit the ¨I¨ or the ¨P¨ key without pressing O?

Your idea would not do a change unless the ¨transparent¨ versions of the image are made the way i mentioned. The transparency problem is not just with the tiles that you set transparent pressing T in Mapster32 but with all the transparences (skin models included).

[High Treason]

Nah, my fingers are fine, i had something stuck between the keys, that might be why.

If i remember rightly, this problem went away in JFDuke3D if you entered "usegoodalpha 0" into the console if it's the one i think we are on about now, but i've already been wrong once by the looks of things.

But the only drawback with that was that it made the edges of some images with transparency look a bit odd, you could play with the alpha related option in SWP in front of some glass to see what this option changed.

[Gambini]

I will try that command, maybe it still works. I prefer myself to have odd borders in transparent tiles that the ugly clip that happens now

[Stabs]

is it possible to code in some experimental flashing for point lights?, they have an extra & shade bit free that could be used

[Razzy]

Wow, the pictures here look increasingly more awesome. o.O I can't believe I almost missed this development.

One request, though... Could someone post a simple map, maybe even just two rooms connected with a corridor, that uses both polymer lights sectoreffectors? Just so that I can check if the spotlight not working is caused by me being a moron and doing something wrong or some compiling error I haven't noticed initially.

cya
Raziel-chan

[Ryan Cordell]

Well, it could be you don't have the Polymer built in version of EDuke32, or you didn't define a specific lotag/hitag (I think it was lotag..) to make the SE be either a Spotlight or a Pointlight. =P

[Danukem]

Two of the new Duke Plus maps already have Polymer lights (Haunted Castle and DPCBP). There might be some in Tribute to Action II as well, but I'm not sure about that one.

[Stabs]

tta2 has plenty of poly light fires in it too kill your framerate, it manages that quite well

i want to do a proper conversion but i need to make all shade values uniform, the new mapster needs 2 features

1) Shade of Selected Sectors

2) Shade of sky, you need the sky to be brighter than the level to make it look right, or just make alt+c carry the shade value over aswell.

[Razzy]

@Ryan Cordell: I've compiled the newest Polymer-enabled version of Eduke32 from source, in MinGW and I used a lotag 50 sector effector.

I've checked Haunted Castle and it appears that my earlier observations are correct - point lights work, but not spot lights.

cya
Raziel-chan

[Helixhorned]

@DanM: You can already set map shade globally in the special functions menu ('F in 2D mode).

Now, for similar features (changing structure members of a large number of things) I'd point you to a scripting language for Mapster32 I wrote some time ago, but I haven't maintained it in a while...

[TerminX]

Helixhorned, on Aug 5 2009, 11:25 AM, said:

@DanM: You can already set map shade globally in the special functions menu ('F in 2D mode).

Now, for similar features (changing structure members of a large number of things) I'd point you to a scripting language for Mapster32 I wrote some time ago, but I haven't maintained it in a while...

I still think Mapster scripting would best be accomplished by using some subset of the EDuke32 CON language. Taking away everything explicitly game related (actions, AI, moving, etc) and just leaving the gamevar stuff and map interaction via structure member manipulation would go a long way. Give it its own set of events and give it access to some of the internal editor variables and people would probably come up with some clever mods.

[Stabs]

thanks helix

few other interesting options in here too

[Piano Man]

Any chance we can have a few more screenshots to tide the blood-thirsty cravings of wanting to illegally download a copy of the polymer engine because the wait it tearing us up inside???

[Gambini]

Just an idea i got for polymer:

What about projecting the ceiling´s texture of the sector as a shine in the metalic parts of the hud? The concept of cubemap would not be so easy to apply in duke since maps are not designed for it. But sector based engines have this advantaje of the ¨ceiling texture or parallax¨. So, the only thing to do would be projecting this texture on a specular map of the hud´s model.

Doomsday engine has a sort of this effect and looks really cool.

[Jimmy]

Piano Man, on Aug 5 2009, 09:00 PM, said:

Any chance we can have a few more screenshots to tide the blood-thirsty cravings of wanting to illegally download a copy of the polymer engine because the wait it tearing us up inside???

Illegal? Hardly.

[Sobek]

This is more of an Eduke32 question than a Polymer, but for all I know they could be related in some way.

What I was wondering about was the drawing of sprites. In Duke3D, sprites seem to be drawn based on the player's viewpoint, so as you move your view about, the sprites move with you. In some other games, I've noticed that the rotation of sprites is based on the physical players themselves, and not their viewpoint. So if you stand still and look around, sprites stay rotated towards you on that one angle and do not move, but as you physically move about, they shift accordingly. This is a heck of a lot nicer looking than having them move with your viewpoint... Probably the best example of this I've seen is in Left 4 Dead. Almost all of the ground foliage (grass, reeds, that kind of stuff) moves with your physical body instead of with your viewpoint, and it gives the illusion that they're not even rotating at all, but rather that they're perhaps a solid, unmoving object within the gameworld (which I suppose they are to a degree, but you get what I mean) or some kind of 3d object or multi-faced sprite.

Is this something that can be applied to eDuke32? I suspect that it's deeply entrenched within the very code of the game, so it's not as if I expect miracles, but damned if this wouldn't make an incredible difference to the visuals.

[Stabs]

whats the deal behind pressing t on the floor and it goes all funky looking?

i have no idea what i pressed the other day but all the floors went a mask purple and i noticed some floors had changed to that blurring effect.

[The Commander]

 DanM, on Aug 6 2009, 08:36 PM, said:

whats the deal behind pressing t on the floor and it goes all funky looking?

i have no idea what i pressed the other day but all the floors went a mask purple and i noticed some floors had changed to that blurring effect.

Thats used for making see through water and etc. See the "ROR" map.

[Piano Man]

 Captain Awesome, on Aug 6 2009, 09:18 AM, said:

Illegal? Hardly.

Then can we get a Beta or Alpha test just to play about with it??? I'm sure I'm not the only one dying to give it a whirl.

Please???

[Stabs]

ahh just check the svn & compiling eduke thread, supergoofy has made it pretty much fool proof when it comes to compiling it, i dont really have a clue what iam actually doing but it works

think his last post has the latest MinGW with all the addon stuff.

[Chip]

Well if there are now threads telling you how to get Polymer and providing links to the source then why isn't Polymer actually released?
I bet by the time it actually is released, everyone will already have a copy of it - it already feels like 90% of the Duke3D community already have it

[Stabs]

still more stuff too implement, & i think gambinis right about transparencys.
i notice my biggest frame hits from transparent stuff.