Duke4.net Forums: EDuke32, Polymer: Shadows and specular effects disabling after reloading a game - Duke4.net Forums

Jump to content

  • 4 Pages +
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

EDuke32, Polymer: Shadows and specular effects disabling after reloading a game

User is online   Mark 

#61

View PostFRVIND, on 18 July 2020 - 07:41 AM, said:

ok ok i understand. without money nothing moves. I will finance the revival of polymers. who wants to be part of the group?

Good idea but we tried before to get someone to fix Polymer but they said the code was so broken and hard to follow and it wasn't worth the time or money.
I have had to go thru other people's code before in my mods and its not always an easy thing to make sense of someone else's way of coding.

This post has been edited by Mark: 18 July 2020 - 07:54 AM

0

User is offline   Tea Monster 

  • Polymancer

#62

View PostMusicallyInspired, on 18 July 2020 - 05:55 AM, said:

I love Polymer. Don't understand the hate it gets. I understand the frustrations of performance, but some people are just deadset against the whole idea and this makes no sense to me.


Try making a mod with it!

You've got the "32 Pixel Cult" who suffer from Polygon Aversion Disorder (P.A.D.). Anything that isn't in strict classic style will have them swooping in with snarky comments while up voting each other.

My reason for hating on Polymer is entirely practical. Just a few points:

1. Shaders: Trying to get crap to look correct with specular and gloss highlights is a frigging nightmare. Nothing works. Loads of people have deffed in 200% gloss and specular levels to get stuff to look like it should do. Getting models to look right is a bizzaro-go-round of tweaking levels, getting unexpected results, and then repeating till you go insane or vote Tory . God knows what is going on under the hood there.

2. Lighting: Polymer is doing the job of Doom 3, but with the hardware requirements of Star Citizen. We had ONE spot light in HHR and it completely busted the lighting budget. That's ridiculous. The main problem is that without lights, you can't have normal and specular maps. Without the lights, the effects don't show up. If you put enough lights in your Polymer level to enable the texture maps, the level wont run. So you have all the detail on weapons flicking in and out of existence as you travel between where you can place lights. It's a mess.

3. MD3 Models: Problems with exported normals on MD3 models in Polymer. Don't start me on this shit.

Although I love me some next gen gaming art, I looked back on my time on HHR and decided that in future I'd much rather 1. Make my own projects on my own time and with tools of my choice. 2. Ugly-cry over the amount of platforming in Doom Eternal. 3. Drink too much and shout at the dog about how Duke4.net has become a sump of hoovery.

Mark: He was doing quite well and remaking Polymer - until he suddenly and with no explanation decided to do something else - without informing any of his team mates. Said team mates discovered he'd switched projects by reading about it on Duke4.

This post has been edited by Tea Monster: 18 July 2020 - 09:01 AM

0

User is online   Mark 

#63

I was refering to before ICD and Polymer NG. I was one of the cheerleaders for bundling donations to hire Plagman or someone else to optimize Polymer. At the time I was willing to kick in around $200. I still would if it was a possibility.

This post has been edited by Mark: 18 July 2020 - 09:31 AM

0

User is offline   FRVIND 

#64

Tea Monster sorry but these rantings do not make sense (?) Are you accusing someone who still wants to work for Duke Nukem and who is even willing to give help in money? We don't need destructive speeches, we need people who believe in duke and want to make it more modern
-1

User is offline   FRVIND 

#65

Mark my base version is 8130. I have tested many. Which version do You use or prefer?
0

User is offline   Tea Monster 

  • Polymancer

#66

View PostFRVIND, on 18 July 2020 - 11:40 AM, said:

Tea Monster sorry but these rantings do not make sense (?) Are you accusing someone who still wants to work for Duke Nukem and who is even willing to give help in money? We don't need destructive speeches, we need people who believe in duke and want to make it more modern



View PostTea Monster, on 18 July 2020 - 08:56 AM, said:

Duke4.net has become a sump of hoovery.

0

User is offline   FRVIND 

#67

yet it moves 😏
0

User is online   Mark 

#68

View PostFRVIND, on 18 July 2020 - 11:43 AM, said:

Mark my base version is 8130. I have tested many. Which version do You use or prefer?

For quite a long time I stayed with 4593 from 2014 because anything after that messed up normal and spec texture maps in Polymer. In early 2017 IIRC, that issue was finally fixed but framerate had dropped from some other updates in that time span. Since then I have been using many new revisions as they come out in order to help look for any bugs. I remember staying with some revision in the 75xx range for a while. I guess I don't really have a favorite newer version right right now.
0

User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#69

View PostR A D A Я, on 18 July 2020 - 07:03 AM, said:

Pretty sure that was just Plagman not giving a sh!t. There's no reason OpenGL code can't be optimized to run well on AMD hardware.


I'm going to have to step in here and defend Plagman because he went above and beyond the call of duty to look into why Polymer wasn't working with my ATI card to the point of buying one himself and what he did really helped my performance on that card. Now I have Nvidia and I don't care, but Plagman did quite a lot for a free project and I don't blame him for casting it aside to spend his time actually making money.
1

User is offline   Radar 

  • King of SOVL

#70

The point is OpenGL code can be optimized for AMD hardware if someone puts effort into it.
0

User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#71

And I'm saying that if he went out of his way to BUY the card to try and solve the issue, he was doing at least that.
0

User is offline   Radar 

  • King of SOVL

#72

I get your point but you really can't deny that polymer is an abandoned renderer that none of the developers give a sh!t about anymore.
0

User is online   Mark 

#73

Well, they cared a little. Enough to finally fix the long standing problem with texture maps when we asked so we could finish the HHR project.

This post has been edited by Mark: 18 July 2020 - 05:47 PM

0

#74

I've discovered and fallen in love with eduke32 and this site right thanks to an HRP+Polymer video on Youtube.
I was searching for HD pics to put on Project64 for DN64, then an HRP image pushed me on YT, i was so damn freaking excited.
Personally , it always ran everything pretty well both on AMD and NVIDIA GPUs (better on NVIDIA anyway), just let eduke32 build its texturecache, next time almost everything will run smoothly enough.

View PostMark, on 18 July 2020 - 05:45 PM, said:

Well, they cared a little. Enough to finally fix the long standing problem with texture maps when we asked so we could finish the HHR project.

Yes, thing are changed since the r4XXX:

Posted Image


And 75XX "+":

Posted Image
0

User is offline   FRVIND 

#75

View PostFRVIND, on 18 July 2020 - 11:43 AM, said:

Mark my base version is 8130. I have tested many. Which version do You use or prefer?


I kept this for some compatibility with the past (for example visibility beyond the "island" via parallax) and because it is close to the new Dukeplus. And then with it my XBox controller works very well
0

User is offline   FRVIND 

#76

This is what I meant <visibility beyond the "island" via parallax>. And this post is dedicated to those who said that polymers are dead... :)
By Mapster ONLY POLYMOST
Map 2D

Mapster 3D

By Mapster POLYMER!
Mapster 3D Polymer

Now, two video...
POLYMOST...
https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing


POLYMER
https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing


This result can only be achieved with polymers and can be important in many situations
0

User is offline   Micky C 

  • Honored Donor

#77

We’re aware of the advantages of polymer. People say it’s dead because it’s buggy, very slow, and most importantly; nobody is capable and willing to work on it.

It’s not an issue of money, at least not one the community can solve. Mark’s $200 for example would fund maybe 5 hours of development. Anyone putting a serious investment into a modern eduke renderer would either need to take a lot of time off work (which isn’t very doable, even if the community did produce a lot of funding), or otherwise spend their holidays away from programming doing programming. In other words, such a person would have to be extremely motivated.

Most of what the current devs do involves incremental improvements. Making a new renderer is an enormous undertaking as far as a single feature goes.

Keep in mind that build is an extremely dynamic engine that has paradigms that are contrary to many modern graphics optimisations. A new renderer capable of handling all of build’s corner cases would be a very finicky thing. So far, the only person who’s written any finished build renderers from scratch is Ken Silverman; that should tell you something :)

Dynamic lights are probably the single biggest Polymer feature missing from polymost. If those were added in, it would make a lot of people happy. One of the reasons for this is that they can be added in easily via mapster or con code. Many other features like normal maps require specialised custom art content, which takes a lot more effort to produce.

This post has been edited by Micky C: 19 July 2020 - 04:26 AM

2

User is online   Mark 

#78

The 5 hours paid for with my $200 would have been enough for the programmer to closely look at the code and say "I can't do it. Its too messed up." :)
It was my hope at the time to have that total up to around $1500-$2000 which might have been enough incentive. With fewer people on the Polymer bandwagon these days we probably couldn't raise that much.

I was going back and reading older posts from the last few years. I was reminded about testing I did that showed a major part of Polymer slowdowns is that it renders too much at one time. Even if I was in a small, unattached, totally isolated part of the map Polymer would be rendering things from the other larger part of the map. So maybe all that is needed is a small surgical strike at just that 1 aspect. I'm guessing it still wouldn't be a quick and easy fix but a complete remake isn't needed.

This post has been edited by Mark: 19 July 2020 - 05:31 AM

0

User is online   Phredreeke 

#79

The problem is that you can't simply cull what's off screen or obscured by a wall because the object may be casting a shadow that is visible off screen.
0

User is online   Mark 

#80

Here is a link that has a pic of what I was refering to. When inside section X, the main larger part of the map is dragging down framerate even though its nowhere near the player and completely unseen. https://forums.duke4...post__p__256721
0

User is offline   Micky C 

  • Honored Donor

#81

Even if that were fixed, there’s still the issue of each map only having 1 paralax sky, and the showview command not working. That means that Ion Fury-like skyboxes wouldn’t work, along with some other effects. Ideally Polymer would be able to fully match all features available in the other renderers.

This post has been edited by Micky C: 19 July 2020 - 06:10 AM

0

User is offline   FRVIND 

#82

Yes, but Hollywood Holocaust (E1L1) when starts hasn't drop of frames, only during plane crash. Only when go down the street there's some problem.
So I assume when I'm on the roof then lights below are still off? 🤔
0

User is offline   FRVIND 

#83

I thought it could be a problem of addressing the groups of instances to the memory.
And this in part could be related to the purpose for which this thread had started: when you save and then load the lights go out. Problem of erroneous saving of the momentary state
0

User is online   Mark 

#84

The 1 skybox limit is no big deal to me. Maybe its because I never tried mapping for more than one I can't think why I would need to. Showview would be cool for certain types of maps or mods but its not anything I really miss. Framerate is the most important. Then fix transparency issues. Anything after that is minor. But I get MickyC's point. If it handled everything the other renderers do, Polymer might get more love than it does now.
0

User is offline   Jimmy 

  • Let's go Brandon!

#85

I still don't know why Tea Monster is so butthurt.

Polymer is buggy, abandoned, and sucks. The HRP is buggy, abandoned, and sucks. Both of those things COULD be good, but they're not. Tea Monster takes valid criticism of poorly put together, sloppy, and abandoned projects as people not liking polygonal games. I don't know if there's anyone here who doesn't play polygonal games. The Watchtower maybe? I'm not too hard to please, visually. I think that Goldeneye on the N64 is a good looking game, especially for the era. But it's more because its complete and consistently styled. Are there good maps that were put out for Polymer/HRP? Sure, I believe that. Have I played them? Nope. I have no interest in downloading all that shit and figuring out how to get it all to work, because that's what you have to do when it comes to Polymer anything. It has to be tinkered with and there's no guarantee it'll even work. And even if you get it working, you'll get what, 28 frames a second? Hard fucking pass, mate.

This post has been edited by /Defiatron\: 19 July 2020 - 10:33 AM

1

User is offline   Tea Monster 

  • Polymancer

#86

View Post/Defiatron\, on 19 July 2020 - 10:32 AM, said:

I still don't know why Tea Monster is so butthurt.

That's two of us.

View Post/Defiatron\, on 19 July 2020 - 10:32 AM, said:

Polymer is buggy, abandoned, and sucks. **SNIP**. I have no interest in downloading all that shit and figuring out how to get it all to work, because that's what you have to do when it comes to Polymer anything. It has to be tinkered with and there's no guarantee it'll even work. And even if you get it working, you'll get what, 28 frames a second? Hard fucking pass, mate.


You are accusing me of being butthurt then almost directly quote my previous post back at me? Those are the most of same reasons that I said that I wanted nothing to do with Polymer.

Great minds!

This post has been edited by Tea Monster: 19 July 2020 - 11:03 AM

0

User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#87

I say both have issues but are good and do not suck.

Quote

I have no interest in downloading all that shit and figuring out how to get it all to work, because that's what you have to do when it comes to Polymer anything.


You're just lazy.

This post has been edited by MusicallyInspired: 19 July 2020 - 11:09 AM

3

User is offline   Tea Monster 

  • Polymancer

#88

I *did* download all that shit. I *did* figure out how to get it to work. What I found out was in the end, after putting in all the effort - it doesn't really work at all. Not properly anyway. Not without a ton of caveats, shortcomings and show-stopping problems. So, he's right "Hard fucking pass" indeed! Tea Monster agreeing with Jimmy about Polymer? It IS the end times!

I love polygons, lighting and some shiny in my games. It's loads of fun. Polymer is not how to achieve this for EDuke. It's broken. It sucks.

Rewrite Polymer so it works, or spend the millions of dollars on hiring Elon Musk to send all copies of the source code into the Sun and start again with something else.

Upgrade Polymost and add lights or ask the nice people over at Doomsday to port their renderer - something - ANYTHING other than going forward with this hot, creaking mess (sorry Mark!).
0

User is online   Mark 

#89

.

Attached thumbnail(s)

  • Attached Image: polymerlove.jpg

0

User is offline   Jimmy 

  • Let's go Brandon!

#90

View PostMusicallyInspired, on 19 July 2020 - 11:08 AM, said:

You're just lazy.

Posted Image
0

Share this topic:


  • 4 Pages +
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic


All copyrights and trademarks not owned by Voidpoint, LLC are the sole property of their respective owners. Play Ion Fury! ;) © Voidpoint, LLC

Enter your sign in name and password


Sign in options