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Opengl2d3d

by Franich · in Torque Game Engine · 11/22/2004 (12:34 am) · 10 replies

I have some questions regarding graphics engine.

Usually I'm testing graphics engines on my old laptop where I can see how engine works with older hardware. Torque is working fine on newest hardver, but on older not so perfect or not at all.

I believe that Torque graphics engine needs multitexturing capabilites and some others to work properly.

Although Torque needs newest hardware, it is still working with directX7?

However, Torque was not working on my laptop until I haven't changed opengl2d3d and made following change (read comment):


at opengl2d3d: fillVB(BOOL process, unsigned min, unsigned vcount):

unsigned char *tex0 = &((unsigned char *) g.m_texcoordary[0])[min*g.m_texcoordstride[0]];

/*********** check if text0 is not NULL **************/
if (tex0)
{
D3DVALUE *data = (D3DVALUE *) g.m_verts+7 + g.m_usefogary;

for (i = 0; i < vcount; ++i)
{
memcpy(data,tex0,2*sizeof(GLfloat));
tex0 += g.m_texcoordstride[0];
data += dstride;
}
}


After this small change, Torque is working, but with white textures and some other problems. Because I don't have OpenGL experience (only DirectX) my question is: what have to be done to get Torque working properly on older hardware? Is it possible?

#1
11/22/2004 (12:45 am)
What exactly do you mean with older hardware?
I never had big problems with "older" hardware as of what I think is older hardware.
#2
11/22/2004 (12:52 am)
Older hardware means: Trident Blade 3D graphics card.

Other graphics engines (not only commercial) are working on my laptop. For example I can run and play games like AOM or EE. It is slow, but it works. I can work with different engines like Irrlicht, PowerRender, 3DState, etc.
#3
11/22/2004 (3:04 am)
I couldn't run the original Tribes II when I had about the same card as you have, and I don't think the engine was made to run on such old hardware, anyway.

Well, wait.. it RAN, but it didn't run with a good framerate. That's not strange, it's a very old card.
#4
11/22/2004 (3:33 am)
Well, not in my case. First I had problem while running. After I fixed problem, it runns, but faces are not textured. Skybox is ok, terrain not. Yes, framerate is not good, but it doesn't matter. It is only important for me to see if everything is rendered ok.

I don't have any other possibility except to use old hardware at the moment. I would like to play with Torque (RTSKit) but I can't. If you say that it was working for you, maybe the problem is in driver? I think driver is old as hardware.
#5
11/22/2004 (4:30 am)
You haven't told anyone yet what your system specs are, and what drivers you are running, under what O/S and what renderer you use. I suppose it's direct3D since you're using the wrapper.

But what else?
It might be the driver, but it could also be your version of DirectX.. DirectX8 is required I think.. but again, I might be wrong.
#6
11/22/2004 (4:37 am)
OK, details for you:

Toshiba Sattelite 1GHZ, 256 MB RAM, Trident Blade 3D, DirectX9c (SDK), WIN 2000.

Driver is original, never updated because 3D has been working quite well (except framerate) so far.
#7
11/22/2004 (4:45 am)
Oh, yes, about renderer.

If I choose OpenGL, then Torque works, but terrain textures are not drawn or terrain has strange look. Maybe I can take screenshot to show you.

If I choose DirectX, then Torque doesn't work. I got it running after small change in opengl2d3d, but rendered scene is exactly the same (it's mess).
#8
11/22/2004 (5:43 am)
I seriously think this is a driver issue. Not updating the drivers for such a long time, probably for longer than the TGE engine has been available (even trough Tribes II).

There shouldn't be any disadvantages if you upgrade your drivers. Go try, and update us on the progress, please :)
#9
11/23/2004 (11:41 pm)
I did. Still doesn't work. Anyway, it's old hardware, it should be recycled :-)
#10
11/25/2004 (11:06 pm)
If you have to deal with old hardware, I recommend SciTech GLDirect. Wonderful thing. It's just wrapper for DirectX fixing bugy GL drivers. But it works, in difference to the Torque DirectX wrapper.

Problem solved!