Aleph One 1.0b2

[quartz]

First of all, sorry I didn't see your post before. Moderated->approved posts don't show up in View New Posts :(

trust me I know, I couldn't see it myself for 4 days :)
if it went another day I was about to try to email someone to see what happened.

Second, are you THE Quartz?

... maybe?

I was a regular on the newsgroup back in the 90's, from the same era as gary simmons (aka battlecat), forrest cameranesi, loren petrich, and other people whose names I can't remember.

I wouldn't call myself famous by any stretch, but I did a handful of things that people talked about at the time: a physics model that made your fists throw explodabobs. an investigation that revealed that physics model "theta error" actually uses precalculated patterns. an explanation of shot damage vs monster health vs difficulty level. a vaporware scenario called "hoth" (which is only really notable for unintentionally discovering that the infinity clut had a few spare slots you could add to). a pack of crappy net levels. I was given by bungie (completely at random) a beta of forge to test out. lots of bitching about how the names and descriptions of various options in anvil were outright wrong.I was the only "quartz" at the time, but I've been out of the loop for ages and ages, so there may have been someone else since that uses that nickname.

Third, you can post them here in as many or as few posts as you like. If you were to post them on SourceForge, we try to keep them separate there. Sometimes things that seem like bugs are really intentional behavior, so you may as well post here first and we'll try to sort it out.

ok fair enough. I'll dump it as a huge list then, just so moderation approval doesn't lose one or put them out of order.

[quartz]

<tldr>

general bugs not specific to any version (I don't think):

first and most importantly, the star networking protocol is outright broken. games lurch, jerk and lock up the machine like nobody's business. go back to the old ring protocol and everything's dandy. note that I'm talking hardwire LAN play here, no internet business is involved. I've tested this with multiple machines (all OSX). this is a big item with some amount of information so I'll put the details in a second post.
can't copy a network saved game to another computer. same machines, ip addresses, player names, etc. app crashes with a "index < sNetworkPlayers.size" assert. might be related to the star business above, I forget if we ever tried this after switching to ring.
the "floating x" hud mod... it works fine in single player, but on a net game only the host gets it. switching who's host switches who gets floating x. not sure if this is a bug re: lua over a network or if our settings are wrong or what.
bugs specific to 1.0b2:

in a net game, "overlay map" doesn't work (you get the classic map). it does however disable your crosshairs. the overlay map should have configurable opacity. on some maps in some areas you can't tell what you're looking at. also, an option to dim the rest of the screen / include the black background would be nice. awesome idea otherwise though, really helps gameplay. some times in some places my framerate drops to the teens/twenties. it's not consistent and hard to pin down, but I can get it to happen more frequently in specific spots in certain maps. first open area with the jugs on "thing what kicks" is a good test spot. only happens when I have a lot of hires textures loaded (ie; goran's sets with the 4096 landscapes), but doesn't seem directly related to polygons-in-view or monsters-in-view or anything. comes and goes by the minute, get it three plays in the same spot but the forth time I load the map I don't get it, then it comes back again later. 23.2 does this too but the episodes are rare and short, so I never noticed until I went looking. in 1.0b2 it happens a lot if I'm using shader, less frequent in classic. turning bloom off doesn't help.
landscapes are misaligned in the shader. even with 'limit vertical view' you can still see over the top (although now it at least mirrors the texture rather than smearing). landscapes have permanent 100000% bloom. all mml values are ignored. you can override it with a custom shader plugin though, which is what I eventually had to do. this is a regression from 23.2 the "bloomtastic" shader plugin doesn't work right, and I've been unsuccessful modifying the frag code to fix it. bloom seems locked at max and ignores the intensity calculations in the code. I know you guys said that old shader plugins might not work in the new version, but I think this is related to the landscape thing above. on the topic of bloom shaders, the "awesome static" plugin works fine on its own, but if I have another shader plugin loaded it turns the static effect into a 50% grey silhouette. if I turn off my new shader plugin, the static effect remains broken until I quit and relaunch. at first I thought there was some variable/function name conflict or something, but this happens even if the frag/vert contain empty dummy code, ie:

Code: Select all

void main(void) {
}

considering these don't do anything, I'm not sure why they conflict with 'awesome static'. at the very least, I should be able to turn it off and not have to relaunch. something's not right here. I know there's a big back and forth about the whole default bloom thing, but I have to agree with pretty much everything ares said earlier in this thread. I was going to list these as bugs until I saw he already did. there really REALLY needs to be a user setting for bloom. in the shader code I see things like

Code: Select all

intensity = color.rgb * clamp(intensity * bloomScale + bloomShift, 0.0, 1.0);

can't you change that to like

Code: Select all

intensity = color.rgb * clamp(intensity * userBloomSetting * bloomScale + bloomShift, 0.0, 1.0);

or something? ie; just add a simple float that acts as an overall scale? that way designers can scale all their texture mods relative to a 'maximum' and let the user set what that max actually is. this alone would be a huge step forward. I noticed the bloom "lens flare" effect too, and I kinda like it. it looks more interesting than a simple gaussian halo. I vote for keeping it if it's easy.
</tldr>

[quartz]

re: star protocol being broke

so basically it's like this:

I have two friends who are sorta interested in marathon, mainly because it's the only non-console fps to have a worthwhile co-op mode. we kept trying off and on to get a game going, but it never worked right. this plagued us for years before we finally figured it out just a little while ago.

setup: three mac laptops. two are from '08, one is I think '10 everyone's using snow leopard (problem was also present back when I had tiger). everyone's using the same shapes and physics. I'm careful to make sure no one's using funky mml or lua.

symptoms:when playing, the game lurches and jerks. like you drop 10-20 frame chunks. this happens 1-4 times a minute and affects all machines.after 15-45 minutes (varies) everyone's machine locks up simultaneously. when I say "locks up" I mean that all monsters/players/platforms/etc freeze in place and no keyboard input is processed (not even cmd-q). ambient sounds continue to play normally. the only solution is to force quit via cmd-opt-esc. often if one person quits first the other player(s) will unfreeze, but in their own private universe with no other players in it.

we have tried/tested:disabling both the system and any 3rd party firewalls.turned logging on and turned the threshold all the way up, but all I get are craploads of network_star_hub messages that don't say anything obvious.swapping around who's the host, and adding/removing machines from the game/network.connecting all machines to a hub via cable and turning airport off.connecting two machines back to back with a crossover cable and setting static addresses.disabling all mml/scripts/plugins.disabling net saved games.disabling view zoom.using opengl classic instead of the shader.resetting the selected physics model each time the app is launched.editing the prefs file to use ring protocol <- this is the only thing that worked.
using ring instead of star fixed everything. we successfully played straight from waterloo up through ex cathedra with no lurches or freezes (normally we would've had to restart at least 3 times in that period). this was using hires textures, all our mml, etc.

the one major thing we haven't tried is dual booting into windows and seeing if it's specifically an OSX problem, but other than that I think I covered all the bases. if there's some corner case I missed I can try testing, but be aware it'll have to wait until I can get together with one of them.

[quartz]

a note on the floating x thing:
we're running a not-quite-standard version in that I turned the standard version into a plugin back when that feature was introduced. (ie; you don't use the "use solo script" option anymore). not sure if this has anything to do with it.

[Switch]

Approved Quartz to post.

[treellama]

I was a regular on the newsgroup back in the 90's, from the same era as gary simmons (aka battlecat), forrest cameranesi, loren petrich, and other people whose names I can't remember.

I posted a handful of times as Wolfy on a.g.m. I even made a map of the AGM compound hehe. Forrest is still around, but few others from those days still are. Welcome back!

can't copy a network saved game to another computer. same machines, ip addresses, player names, etc. app crashes with a "index < sNetworkPlayers.size" assert. might be related to the star business above, I forget if we ever tried this after switching to ring.

Is this a co-op game? Or something you saved in, say, Mars Needs Women?

a note on the floating x thing:
we're running a not-quite-standard version in that I turned the standard version into a plugin back when that feature was introduced. (ie; you don't use the "use solo script" option anymore). not sure if this has anything to do with it.

It's "Use HUD Script," not "Use Solo Script," and everyone needs to enable it locally. As a plugin, the script should be in a "hud_lua" attribute, not a "solo_lua" attribute.

in a net game, "overlay map" doesn't work (you get the classic map). it does however disable your crosshairs.

I think this is the intended behavior. It only works in single player.

some times in some places my framerate drops to the teens/twenties. it's not consistent and hard to pin down, but I can get it to happen more frequently in specific spots in certain maps. first open area with the jugs on "thing what kicks" is a good test spot. only happens when I have a lot of hires textures loaded (ie; goran's sets with the 4096 landscapes), but doesn't seem directly related to polygons-in-view or monsters-in-view or anything. comes and goes by the minute, get it three plays in the same spot but the forth time I load the map I don't get it, then it comes back again later. 23.2 does this too but the episodes are rare and short, so I never noticed until I went looking. in 1.0b2 it happens a lot if I'm using shader, less frequent in classic. turning bloom off doesn't help.

Shader is a lot more demanding, so it's no surprise you get lower framerates. Do things run smoother if you disable the 4K landscapes? If so, you could try enabling "Non-Power-of-Two Textures" in advanced graphics prefs, that will use less VRAM.

landscapes are misaligned in the shader. even with 'limit vertical view' you can still see over the top (although now it at least mirrors the texture rather than smearing).

This would be very difficult to fix, due to the new perspective in OpenGL (Shader). I believe they are correctly aligned at the corners, but squished in the middle. You can see past the bottom, as well as over the top, so they are correctly centered.

landscapes have permanent 100000% bloom. all mml values are ignored. you can override it with a custom shader plugin though, which is what I eventually had to do. this is a regression from 23.2

Enabling bloom on landscapes was intentional. If you don't want it, you can turn off bloom, or you can set the new "landscape_bloom" attribute to 0.0 in MML.

the "bloomtastic" shader plugin doesn't work right, and I've been unsuccessful modifying the frag code to fix it. bloom seems locked at max and ignores the intensity calculations in the code

the "awesome static" plugin

These haven't been updated for 1.0 yet.

re: star protocol being broke

I haven't noticed anything like this, and I've played a lot of net games with Aleph One, including LAN with star. I don't ever use ring--I'm surprised it still works!

My only LAN experience recently was 2 player co-op, so I guess it's possible something broke. It would really surprise me that LAN wouldn't work when online play works smoothly, though. I still suspect something with your setup, I just don't know what.

Are you running any Lua scripts? We've suspected Co-op Lua of freezing the game here and there for a long time, but could never figure out why. Usually you can just command-Q out of that, though.

I'll leave the questions of overlay map translucency and the possibility of configurable bloom strength to Hopper, since he's worked on those features (relatively) recently. I will say, we have been fighting against adding more and more options, making the prefs and maintenance more complicated, for a while, so that's probably where I stand on those options unless someone shows me they can work really well with a simple control and simple code.

[quartz]

<< split into multiple parts because apparently there's some limit to the number of quotes I can put in a reply? >>

I posted a handful of times as Wolfy on a.g.m. I even made a map of the AGM compound hehe. Forrest is still around, but few others from those days still are. Welcome back!

I don't imagine lots of people are still part of the community some 15 years later. when were you on agm? I disappeared for a while and when I came back I didn't recognize any of the people posting anymore.

Is this a co-op game? Or something you saved in, say, Mars Needs Women?

we only ever play co-op.

As a plugin, the script should be in a "hud_lua" attribute, not a "solo_lua" attribute.

that's how I set it up when I pluginized it.

I think this is the intended behavior. It only works in single player.

... wait, what? why?
that doesn't make any sense, why would you change the map display only for net games? even if it is intentional, it shouldn't completely prevent your crosshairs from working.

Shader is a lot more demanding, so it's no surprise you get lower framerates.

you missed my point though. same map, same textures, bloom off -> 1.0b2 is slower than 23.2
something changed.

Do things run smoother if you disable the 4K landscapes? If so, you could try enabling "Non-Power-of-Two Textures" in advanced graphics prefs, that will use less VRAM.

it sorta helps a little kinda maybe. it's somewhat subjective since it's so inconsistent. I tried the ^2 switch, doesn't seem to make a difference on my card.

[quartz]

This would be very difficult to fix, due to the new perspective in OpenGL (Shader). I believe they are correctly aligned at the corners, but squished in the middle. You can see past the bottom, as well as over the top, so they are correctly centered.

I wasn't terribly clear here. what I meant to say is that the landscape alignment changed from 23.2 to 1.0b2. in shader in 23.2 the landscapes were relatively close to how they are in classic/software. in 1.0b2 shader there's a significant offset/scale difference.

Enabling bloom on landscapes was intentional.

right, I assumed that.

If you don't want it, you can turn off bloom, or you can set the new "landscape_bloom" attribute to 0.0 in MML.

is that documented anywhere? the only landscape_bloom mml option I see is in the shader tag, and it's a possible value to the "name" attribute, not an attribute itself. I assume this is the same as like normal_bloom_scale in that it takes a float and is an attribute to the texture tag?

These haven't been updated for 1.0 yet.

right, but you missed my point. 'awesome static' works, but stops working if I loaded another shader. even if it's a dummy shader. even if I turned that shader back off in the environment settings.
something is wrong here. loading one shader (especially a dummy) shouldn't break some other different shader that is otherwise working, and it definitely shouldn't stay broke until I relaunch.

I haven't noticed anything like this, and I've played a lot of net games with Aleph One, including LAN with star. I don't ever use ring--I'm surprised it still works!

My only LAN experience recently was 2 player co-op, so I guess it's possible something broke. It would really surprise me that LAN wouldn't work when online play works smoothly, though. I still suspect something with your setup, I just don't know what.

it happens under any combination of the three machines. ie; if I play just one friend it happens, if they play just eachother it happens, etc. none of us are running any particularly weird software. our setups have changed over the years, but the problem was always there.

[quartz]

Are you running any Lua scripts?

no. as I said before, we tried a game where we removed all mml/lua/plugins of any kind, disabled net saves and zoom and everything. same deal. the one and only thing that fixed it was switching to ring. with ring we can load all our original mml/etc and play just fine, with star nothing works, in any combination, as far as I can tell.

I will say, we have been fighting against adding more and more options, making the prefs and maintenance more complicated, for a while, so that's probably where I stand on those options unless someone shows me they can work really well with a simple control and simple code.

well, I mean the functionality is already there in the current branch basically. the app already supports reading a float const out of the mml on the fly, it's not like you have to recompile every time you change your mml. what I'm proposing is just adding another float const but having it live in the prefs and just multiplying that against the ones in the mml. so for example a user setting of 0.5 would be precisely identical to going into your mml and cutting all the bloom values in half.

I've done UI work so I understand about having too many options, but I think the engine really needs this or else people will keep complaining. even if there was no UI element and you had to edit the prefs manually it would be better than nothing.

[quartz]

Approved Quartz to post.

thankies

[quartz]

I assume this is the same as like normal_bloom_scale in that it takes a float and is an attribute to the texture tag?

tried this for the heck of it and it works. thanks!

a question though, why'd you guys make a special landscape_bloom attribute and not just reuse the normal_bloom_scale/glow_bloom_scale ones?

[quartz]

it happens under any combination of the three machines. ie; if I play just one friend it happens, if they play just eachother it happens, etc. none of us are running any particularly weird software. our setups have changed over the years, but the problem was always there.

I should point out here that for both my machine and one of my friend's:
- we have almost identical models purchased the same week. the only difference is that he got the low-end 15" with 128mb vram, whereas I got the highend with 256.
- we both were bitten with the blown nvidia chip issue. we both had our motherboards replaced by apple. (this means new onboard ethernet remember)
- we had this problem before the replacements, and it was still there afterward.

my other friend had an '09 15" pro when we first had problems. that machine was stolen and was replaced by I think a '10.

so the old setup:
- '08 with original mobo
- '08 with original mobo
- '09 with no known issues

the current setup:
- '08 with replacement mobo
- '08 with replacement mobo
- '10 with no known issues

what I'm getting at is that I seriously doubt this is a 'bad hardware' issue, before anybody tries to suggest that.

[quartz]

can't copy a network saved game to another computer. same machines, ip addresses, player names, etc. app crashes with a "index < sNetworkPlayers.size" assert. might be related to the star business above, I forget if we ever tried this after switching to ring.

forgot to mention that the host is who crashes, joiners just get a black screen. this is again machine-independent in that no save can be resumed on a different host from where it was created. I can't remember if we tried having a joiner save and then resume from that as host.

[treellama]

<< split into multiple parts because apparently there's some limit to the number of quotes I can put in a reply? >>
I don't imagine lots of people are still part of the community some 15 years later. when were you on agm?

1997, 1998

we only ever play co-op.

OK it should be easy to give this a try and see if it happens to me.

... wait, what? why?
that doesn't make any sense, why would you change the map display only for net games? even if it is intentional, it shouldn't completely prevent your crosshairs from working.

The player_count == 1 check clearly indicates it was intentional. The lack of crosshair is mentioned here: http://www.pfhorums.com/index.php?s=&s...ost&p=88310

you missed my point though. same map, same textures, bloom off -> 1.0b2 is slower than 23.2
something changed.

Before each beta I test with an old computer, to make sure my FPS doesn't drop too much. No problems getting 30 fps on an ancient 667 Mhz G4 laptop in software and OpenGL (Classic). Also tested bloom on a G4/1000, with our minimum spec bloom GPU, a GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, and no problems there either. I simplified the texture cache in 1.0b2, so I made sure to test with the full XBLA replacements loaded, quite a texture cache workout. You could try 1.0b1 to see if that's where the change happened, but I don't intend to revert that code.

[treellama]

I wasn't terribly clear here. what I meant to say is that the landscape alignment changed from 23.2 to 1.0b2. in shader in 23.2 the landscapes were relatively close to how they are in classic/software. in 1.0b2 shader there's a significant offset/scale difference.

Load up Waterloo Waterpark with OpenGL (Shader) in 0.23.2 and look up at the pink moon. No way that is close to classic/software

is that documented anywhere? the only landscape_bloom mml option I see is in the shader tag, and it's a possible value to the "name" attribute, not an attribute itself. I assume this is the same as like normal_bloom_scale in that it takes a float and is an attribute to the texture tag?

It's in the MML guide:
http://marathon.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc...k/docs/MML.html

There's a small chance I didn't check out the docs directory when I built 1.0b2--if you're looking at the included MML.html, and it's not in there, that's what happened.

it happens under any combination of the three machines. ie; if I play just one friend it happens, if they play just eachother it happens, etc. none of us are running any particularly weird software. our setups have changed over the years, but the problem was always there.

We were using two modern machines with Snow Leopard, running co-op with 0.23.2, playing about an hour at a time, with the co-op script, no issues with star. I'm not saying the problem isn't there, just that if there is a problem, and most people, including myself, can't see it, it's going to be a real bear to fix.

[quartz]

1997, 1998

hmm... that was I think after or just before I disappeared.... I forget...

The player_count == 1 check clearly indicates it was intentional.

... ok, I'll take you word for it. why though? that doesn't make any sense to me.

The lack of crosshair is mentioned here: http://www.pfhorums.com/index.php?s=&s...ost&p=88310

miss communication here. I understand and agree that when you have the transparent overlay map activated the crosshairs should disappear, that makes perfect sense. the problem I'm seeing is that in a net game, with overlay map turned on, crosshairs never show up ever. not when looking at the map, not when not looking at the map. doesn't matter how many times you press the Fkey. they're totally disabled. in single player crosshairs show up when you're not looking at the map, in a net game they never show up. if you turn the 'overlay map' option off, crosshairs work as expected in net games.

You could try 1.0b1 to see if that's where the change happened, but I don't intend to revert that code.

I'm not saying revert the code, but to look over it. there's a bug or side effect in there somewhere. it shouldn't be slower when compared side by side on the same machine.

I'll try to grab 1.0b1 at some point and see what happens.

[treellama]

well, I mean the functionality is already there in the current branch basically. the app already supports reading a float const out of the mml on the fly, it's not like you have to recompile every time you change your mml. what I'm proposing is just adding another float const but having it live in the prefs and just multiplying that against the ones in the mml. so for example a user setting of 0.5 would be precisely identical to going into your mml and cutting all the bloom values in half.

There are many factors involved in the bloom strength: the resolution of the blur framebuffer; the tap number of the blur filter; the tap coefficients; the number of passes of bloom; and the blending weights. All but the FBO resolution are configurable in shader MML, so if you think you can come up with a system of reducing these to a simple slider that works well, by all means please suggest it.

a question though, why'd you guys make a special landscape_bloom attribute and not just reuse the normal_bloom_scale/glow_bloom_scale ones?

So that textures can bloom differently when used as landscapes, versus walls. For example, the YAFNM remake from the pack Second Quest uses a lava texture as the landscape. Also, in case scenarios use different collections for landscapes, we didn't want to make the defaults based on collection.

what I'm getting at is that I seriously doubt this is a 'bad hardware' issue, before anybody tries to suggest that.

The fact that it happens with three different machines pretty much rules that out. It still doesn't help me understand how I might cause it myself, and try to fix it. I haven't messed with the star code in years so it would take me a while just to remember what is going on in there.

[treellama]

the problem I'm seeing is that in a net game, with overlay map turned on, crosshairs never show up ever. not when looking at the map, not when not looking at the map. doesn't matter how many times you press the Fkey. they're totally disabled. in single player crosshairs show up when you're not looking at the map, in a net game they never show up. if you turn the 'overlay map' option off, crosshairs work as expected in net games.

Are you sure the host has allowed using crosshairs? I don't see any way that translucent map and crosshairs would be related in the code.

[quartz]

Load up Waterloo Waterpark with OpenGL (Shader) in 0.23.2 and look up at the pink moon. No way that is close to classic/software :)

ok, I guess I'll have to take screenshots to show you what I mean.

It's in the MML guide:
http://marathon.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc...k/docs/MML.html

There's a small chance I didn't check out the docs directory when I built 1.0b2--if you're looking at the included MML.html, and it's not in there, that's what happened.

yeah I was looking at the included file. I also googled for "landscape_bloom" but got no hits. I didn't know about the svn copy.

We were using two modern machines with Snow Leopard, running co-op with 0.23.2, playing about an hour at a time, with the co-op script, no issues with star. I'm not saying the problem isn't there, just that if there is a problem, and most people, including myself, can't see it, it's going to be a real bear to fix.

well, it's 100% repeatable on our setup, so if you have any ideas I can test :)

[quartz]

Are you sure the host has allowed using crosshairs?

yes, because when we quit out, turned off 'overlay map' and started a new game the crosshairs were back. I'll triple check the next time we get together, but I remember checking to see if 'allow crosshairs' was off because that's the obvious first place to look.

[quartz]

I don't see any way that translucent map and crosshairs would be related in the code.

well I mean they're related at least somewhat, since crosshairs turn off temporarily when you have the overlay map up.

[treellama]

well I mean they're related at least somewhat, since crosshairs turn off temporarily when you have the overlay map up.

It could be a coincidence that starting a new game is what fixed it. I think we had an issue with crosshairs when playing co-op at one point. Normally I don't use them, I'm not that much of a spazeroid, but this was Phoenix, and you have to turn them on to hit anything with the fusion gun, which otherwise actively tries to prevent you from aiming correctly.

So, that's the more likely explanation, but I looked into it and couldn't find anything. If it's happening to others, maybe it's worth another look.

[quartz]

so if you think you can come up with a system of reducing these to a simple slider that works well, by all means please suggest it.

I already did :)
use a float const that gets multiplied against what that intensity would otherwise be. I tried this myself when I was messing around with writing a landscape shader plugin and it works pretty much like I had just changed the mml values. look at the shader code lines I mentioned in #8 in my first bug post.

So that textures can bloom differently when used as landscapes, versus walls. For example, the YAFNM remake from the pack Second Quest uses a lava texture as the landscape. Also, in case scenarios use different collections for landscapes, we didn't want to make the defaults based on collection.

ok, that makes sense. I forgot that you only reference a <texture> once per image, no matter how often it's used in the map.

The fact that it happens with three different machines pretty much rules that out. It still doesn't help me understand how I might cause it myself, and try to fix it. I haven't messed with the star code in years so it would take me a while just to remember what is going on in there.

well I never figured that fixing this would be easy :)
I'll try and help out any way I can as far as testing goes. I can also try to give you any info you need.

[quartz]

Normally I don't use them, I'm not that much of a spazeroid

heh. I'm so used to them from every other FPS that I turn them on just because it looks weird without them. I totally don't need them. my friends however are not experienced FPS people and can't live without them.

I thought I confirmed the crosshairs thing by turning 'overlay' back on, but I may be misremembering that. I'll check again next time we get together (which will be days from now at least).

[quartz]

and it works pretty much like I had just changed the mml values.

I mean "normal_bloom_scale" when I say this.