Direct3D Accelerated AGS (beta 6) - Please Test

Started by Pumaman, Sun 02/09/2007 17:45:12

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DoorKnobHandle

Yep, how old is a GeForce 2 now? Close to ten years? That's a bit too old, I guess. :=

Ali

Quote from: Pumaman on Tue 11/09/2007 21:54:20
Hmm, you're right. What colour is the GUI itself? I notice that it comes out pinkish with 2.72, but more purpleish with D3D ... it might be that the two drivers handle transparency slightly differently.

The GUI was maroon with DX5 and came out a An indigo/violet hue. The labels became cyan rather than magenta.

Quote from: Pumaman on Tue 11/09/2007 21:54:20
QuoteAlso, would this make anti-aliasing and smooth scaling together a realistic possibility at some point in the future?

I'd like to think so. So far I haven't found a way of enabling anti-aliasing for specific sprites in D3D -- it seems to be an all-or-nothing thing of having the whole screen anti-aliased or not, which obviously slows it down quite a bit.

I know nothing of Direct X, but rather than having genuine full screen anti-aliasing, couldn't it be achieved through alpha-blended sprites as it is now, but with smooth scaling? That's probably nonsense, so I'm sorry if it's a stupid question.


scotch

#62
"I know nothing of Direct X, but rather than having genuine full screen anti-aliasing, couldn't it be achieved through alpha-blended sprites as it is now, but with smooth scaling?"

Yes, you're basically right, there's no need to do FSAA, the alpha + smooth scaling approach should work right. And of course scaling + alpha channel is nothing for 3d hardware. FSAA doesn't help much on sprites anyway, it's meant for reducing jagged edges on geometry by supersampling. On a sprite there's nothing to supersample at 100% or greater, and at lower MIPmapping is a fast, and often better effect.

3D apis will autogenerate mipmaps and texture filtering on a per texture basis, so it's easy to have the "Smooth scaling" option in setup govern that.

Edit: Yeah a Geforce 2 is old, but it's fairly powerful and should run games in D3D a lot faster than software mode, if the shader was optional.

Pumaman

Quote- Video playback doesn't seem to unload the codecs (or whatever) when they're done playing. (It just keeps opening new ffdshow tray icons.)
- The "letterbox black area" isn't black: at least guis and overlays are visible there.
- With the DirectDraw 5 setting the game hungs on startup and only shows a black screen.

Thanks for the reports, I'll look into these.

QuoteI just noticed that there seems to be a highlighted "garbage matte" around my alpha'd sprites that I didn't notice before while using the DX5 setting.  I'll post a pic later.

Hmm, strange. Are these alpha-channel sprites or do you mean the scaled sprite anti-aliasing?

QuoteI know nothing of Direct X, but rather than having genuine full screen anti-aliasing, couldn't it be achieved through alpha-blended sprites as it is now, but with smooth scaling? That's probably nonsense, so I'm sorry if it's a stupid question.

Well yes, and scotch seems to be saying that it's possible; I just haven't worked out how to do it. I'll need to rummage through the D3D API some more.

ciborium

They are alpha channel sprites.  My artist is making 3d sprites like the ones in Al Emmo.  If I can get a good screen capture, I'll post it.  But so far, no luck.

Pumaman

Hmm, well I had a look at some alpha-channel sprites and I couldn't see any problems. If you can get a screenshot, please do post it.

Quote- Video playback doesn't seem to unload the codecs (or whatever) when they're done playing. (It just keeps opening new ffdshow tray icons.)

Hmm, I don't get this behaviour, but I've twiddled a bit with beta 6, is it any better now? Also, do the tray icons disappear when you quit the game or do they remain forever?

Quote- With the DirectDraw 5 setting the game hungs on startup and only shows a black screen.

Hmm, I tried this but it was fine. Do you get this every time?

Beta 6 is now up, with these changes:
* Implemented smooth scaling on D3D driver (using the same option in Setup for smooth scaled sprites)
* Fixed colour corruption on preload screen with DX5 driver
* Fixed graphics spilling over into letterbox borders with D3D driver
* Fixed D3D color corruption on some systems when returning from alt+tab

AJA

Quote from: Pumaman on Sun 16/09/2007 14:56:20
Quote- Video playback doesn't seem to unload the codecs (or whatever) when they're done playing. (It just keeps opening new ffdshow tray icons.)

Hmm, I don't get this behaviour, but I've twiddled a bit with beta 6, is it any better now? Also, do the tray icons disappear when you quit the game or do they remain forever?

I played the game through once and this is what the tray looked like:


After the game is closed the icons disappear when you move the mouse cursor over them. So it's not a big deal but a bit annoying. (The ones with black "text" are video filters and the ones with cyan text are for audio.)


Quote
Quote- With the DirectDraw 5 setting the game hungs on startup and only shows a black screen.

Hmm, I tried this but it was fine. Do you get this every time?

It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the D3D engine since the same thing apparently happens with the old 2.71 engine also. So, I guess my there's a problem with my video codecs... (DivX works, XviD hangs works when DivX is uninstalled, libavcodec hangs.) With the D3D engine, however, CPU usage goes up to ~98% while playing a video (doesn't seem to depend on the decoding codec) and the playback is really choppy.

-edit-
The playback goes back to smooth when I play the game windowed and give focus to a different window. Weird.

Pumaman

Hmm, sounds like your problems are mainly due to using a dodgy codec. I tried out The Heist and the videos didn't play properly either; I'd recommend using a better supported codec (eg. standard XVid rather than something that relies on ffdshow) in future.

As for the smoothness, that should be fixed in 2.8 beta 10, see below:

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Thanks for all your feedback with this new D3D engine guys, I think now is the time for me to merge it into the main 2.8 distribution. Therefore, this thread is now closed. Any further discussion, please use the 2.8 beta thread:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=31519.0

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