[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.

[High Treason]

If we are still on build 1485 there is a couple of problems i haven't seen mentioned;

1. Music keeps playing grabbag.mid or grabbag.ogg sometimes regardless of starting game or finishing a level, similar to a problem that was known about previously and goes away when entering music related commands in the console or quitting to title.

2. Black squares happen and the test is weird sizes, image attached.

3. textures are not tiling properly or tiling where they shouldn't be (like explosions appear as a large sprite made of 4 explosions).

Dunno what causes these, but i thought i should point them out.

Also, this doesn't only happen when running Duke Plus (I know someone would ask this you see) so I am aware that i was running that when i took the screenshot.

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[Spiker]

Apart from the music none of these happens to me.

[High Treason]

It only happens every so often, it doesn't happen every time, i should have probably said that earlier.

[Piterplus]

Are you sure you've deleted old cache files when running game without Duke plus?

[High Treason]

Yes, i did delete them, and i delete cache files every so often anyway because i am down to my last gig and a half of drive space, this could be why it happens on occasions, maybe it is when the cache gets so full or the frive it is on is too full perhaps.

It doesn't happen when i run it on my Athlon system though (or it hasn't yet) so maybe it could be related to the other system, but i can't see why, and i havent ran it much on the Athlon because Polymer doesn't mix well with Geforce 5 for obvious reasons - which reminds me, Framerate is vastly imrpooved in this build.

[Danukem]

It has now been four months and a week since Polymer was unveiled (it's easy to remember the unveiling date, since it was April 1st). The majority hardcore EDuke32 users and (nearly?) all mod developers are using builds of EDuke32 that have Polymer, which they have either compiled themselves or received from others.

There was a good case to be made for not officially releasing Polymer in the first few months after it was unveiled. There were major bugs and unfinished things. But AFAIK, the major problems have been fixed and what remains is optimization and adding new features. This by itself suggests it is time to consider releasing Polymer. But more importantly, the non-release of Polymer is now becoming a liability to the community. There have been a lot of changes and game fixes to EDuke32 in the last four months which have nothing to do with Polymer, and those changes have been held back along with Polymer, since they come with the package. There are new commands, such as stopactorsound, which I can't use with my released mods, because I can't distribute the eduke32.exe needed to use them. And with all the changes, I can't be sure that my mods work correctly with the last official snapshot. I barely have time to test things with the current build, let alone a build from 4+ months ago. I presume that other modders are having the same issues. I also think it would be good for the community's morale to have Polymer released, especially in the aftermath of DNF's demise. In my humble opinion, we have now reached the point where the considerations in favor of releasing Polymer outweigh those in favor of continuing to withhold it.

Releasing Polymer doesn't mean it has to be declared finished. In the startup window, where there is a checkbox for Polymer, there could be a warning that it is beta and may perform poorly etc. Polymost would still be the default renderer.

[Richard Shead]

DeeperThought, on Aug 7 2009, 09:15 AM, said:

It has now been four months and a week since Polymer was unveiled (it's easy to remember the unveiling date, since it was April 1st). The majority hardcore EDuke32 users and (nearly?) all mod developers are using builds of EDuke32 that have Polymer, which they have either compiled themselves or received from others.

There was a good case to be made for not officially releasing Polymer in the first few months after it was unveiled. There were major bugs and unfinished things. But AFAIK, the major problems have been fixed and what remains is optimization and adding new features. This by itself suggests it is time to consider releasing Polymer. But more importantly, the non-release of Polymer is now becoming a liability to the community. There have been a lot of changes and game fixes to EDuke32 in the last four months which have nothing to do with Polymer, and those changes have been held back along with Polymer, since they come with the package. There are new commands, such as stopactorsound, which I can't use with my released mods, because I can't distribute the eduke32.exe needed to use them. And with all the changes, I can't be sure that my mods work correctly with the last official snapshot. I barely have time to test things with the current build, let alone a build from 4+ months ago. I presume that other modders are having the same issues. I also think it would be good for the community's morale to have Polymer released, especially in the aftermath of DNF's demise. In my humble opinion, we have now reached the point where the considerations in favor of releasing Polymer outweigh those in favor of continuing to withhold it.

Releasing Polymer doesn't mean it has to be declared finished. In the startup window, where there is a checkbox for Polymer, there could be a warning that it is beta and may perform poorly etc. Polymost would still be the default renderer.

I totally agree with you and I'm sure many other people do, too.
The first public release of polymer was promised within about a week of it's 4/1 unveiling date, iirc.

At this point, the project really has become "the new DNF"- but in all the wrong ways.....

[High Treason]

I said this ages ago, i dunno why they don't just release it already, everybody already has it anyway i think - and i reckon they probably wanted us to or else they would have made it harder to obtain and not even mentioned it, and i think they probably want to release it.

[Jimmy]

It's not released because Polymer is a very big thing to implement. DT mentioned that it hasn't been released because Polymer has had bugs and whatnot. The thing is, even though Polymer is separate from 8bit and Polymost simply changing something in Polymer could completely break another aspect of 8bit/Polymost. Care must be taken before release. Have patience, TX and the team have not let us down before.

[Danukem]

High Treason, on Aug 7 2009, 10:52 AM, said:

I said this ages ago, i dunno why they don't just release it already, everybody already has it anyway i think - and i reckon they probably wanted us to or else they would have made it harder to obtain and not even mentioned it, and i think they probably want to release it.

No, in fact most people don't have it. It seems like everyone does because you hang out amongst the hardcore community members. And if in your opinion Polymer should be been released "ages ago", then I disagree. Only in the last month or so has Polymer been ready enough. Even now there will be serious problems for many people trying to use it.

[Danukem]

Captain Awesome, on Aug 7 2009, 11:43 AM, said:

The thing is, even though Polymer is separate from 8bit and Polymost simply changing something in Polymer could completely break another aspect of 8bit/Polymost

Are you saying that 8bit and/or Polymost are broken in the current build due to changes made in Polymer? If that's the case, then by all means tell us about it. Otherwise, you have no valid point.

[Richard Shead]

I simply want it to be released when the experts(i.e. Plagman, TX) feel as though it's fully ready.

Not a second sooner.

[Jimmy]

DeeperThought, on Aug 7 2009, 02:50 PM, said:

Are you saying that 8bit and/or Polymost are broken in the current build due to changes made in Polymer? If that's the case, then by all means tell us about it. Otherwise, you have no valid point.

I haven't noticed it myself, but it is not entirely impossible. The last build I received however had a very terrible issue with music, playing this loud blip noise over the music.

[TerminX]

Okay, I released a new build today, but without Polymer. DeeperThought is right in that there are a bunch of unrelated changes that need to be tested/available for the sake of existing mods. It can be found in the usual place: http://dukeworld.duk...e32_current.zip

[Daedolon]

Thanks TX. Does that include the quote copy command?

[Jimmy]

I've had this issue with the past few builds where music, .oggs and .mids, will refuse to play at all, or will play with this odd clipping noise over them. Switching the sound quality to 44100khz from 48000khz will fix the problem as far as I've tested. I also noticed an .ogg I couldn't get to play now plays.

[LeoD]

I agree with DeeperThought that polymer should be released, at least once TX is done with the 'sound f*ckery' ;-)
For the first months after April 1st I agree that those who could or would not compile it didn't deserve it.
Call it v1.999999999 or whatever, but it is stable enough to give public access to a preview of the glorious new effects IMHO.

[Danukem]

TX, on Aug 7 2009, 01:30 PM, said:

Okay, I released a new build today, but without Polymer. DeeperThought is right in that there are a bunch of unrelated changes that need to be tested/available for the sake of existing mods. It can be found in the usual place: http://dukeworld.duk...e32_current.zip

Thanks. Now we have a build we can distribute with WGR2, even if Polymer isn't released yet.

[KillerBudgie]

Will this still have compatibility with Duke Plus?