[ultimateloather]

Hi folks,
   I recently installed BP:AOA and ran into a few problems.

First, the executable didn't decompress properly - the executable permissions didn't carry over nor did any of the symbolic links within the .app directory. That was easy enough to fix but something that should probably be addressed

Second, no matter what graphics settings I use there are large, blocky artifacts coming mainly from explosions and the engines of ships, but also occasionally from weapons fire. It looks like missing textures or something but I'm not receiving any error messages stating that. I've gone through the troubleshooting guide as well and nothing seems to help.

Other than that the game is mostly playable, though these artifacts make it difficult to see what I'm shooting at.

When I get home I'll hack the debug executable and make it work, then see if I can get a debug log uploaded and attached to the message. Before I do that though, any thoughts?

ETA: System is an early 2008 Mac Pro 8-core system with 20 GB RAM running OS X 10.8.
Graphics card is a Radeon 5870 with 1GB RAM, so it has enough juice to handle whatever BP throws at it ...

I'll post more details when I get home.

[jg18]

Hi folks,
   I recently installed BP:AOA and ran into a few problems.

First, the executable didn't decompress properly - the executable permissions didn't carry over nor did any of the symbolic links within the .app directory. That was easy enough to fix but something that should probably be addressed

You know, now that you mention it, I had that problem, too, although I didn't look that deeply into fixing it, since I ended up making my own builds, with limited success (more here).

Second, no matter what graphics settings I use there are large, blocky artifacts coming mainly from explosions and the engines of ships, but also occasionally from weapons fire. It looks like missing textures or something but I'm not receiving any error messages stating that. I've gone through the troubleshooting guide as well and nothing seems to help.

Other than that the game is mostly playable, though these artifacts make it difficult to see what I'm shooting at.

No idea myself, since that's way outside of my expertise, but other people will know more, and a debug log should help a lot.

When I get home I'll hack the debug executable and make it work, then see if I can get a debug log uploaded and attached to the message. Before I do that though, any thoughts?

Besides the log, a list of system specs never hurts, e.g., which Mac you have and when it's from, OS X version, CPU, graphics card, RAM, etc, although some of those things will be in the debug log. You might want to enable the FPS counter as well -- it's "Show frames per second on HUD" under "Dev Tool" in the launcher's advanced settings.

[ultimateloather]

It appears to be an incompatibility with the executable build and MediaVPs. I ran it independent of BP with the standard campaign and the artifacts remained. Without MediaVPs there were no artifacts.

I'll work on getting a debug build up later.

 

[jg18]

I get the same results on my machine (mid-2010 MacBook Pro, OS X 10.6.8, Intel Core i5 2.4 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 256MB) with the debug build I made. Logs attached.

[attachment deleted by a basterd]

[ultimateloather]

OK - got the fs2_open.log created. I played through one of the missions

Spoiler:

the one in the nebula where you rendezvous with the sleeper ship

.

I've also done a dump of the sexps and attached that (not sure how useful that will be).

I'm willing to test just about anything - i can even compile the build locally if I can figure out where to obtain sources.


[attachment deleted by a basterd]

[The E]

Yes, well, the thing is....

Code: [Select]

OpenGL Renderer  : ATI Radeon HD 5870 OpenGL Engine
  OpenGL Version   : 2.1 ATI-1.0.29
Apple's OpenGL support in that version is pretty much ****. You have an OpenGL 4 capable GPU, but the OS is limiting it to run at OpenGL 2. The new shader features in the BP build require capabilities found in OpenGL 3 and higher, so you need to do one of the following:
1. Use Windows.
2. Upgrade MacOS to a version that can do the required things (AKA 10.8)
3. Start the executable with -no_glsl

[swashmebuckle]

I'm on 10.6 as well, and the -no_glsl flag doesn't seem to be a working solution on any of the builds I've tried (original mac build provided in the thread as well as patched Antipodes 8 at revisions 9496 and 9509).  All the release builds crash instantly no matter what flags are on, and debug runs at around 4fps with all the same graphical errors. Software rendering mode still works, but it's also <4fps, so not much help there.

[jg18]

2. Upgrade MacOS to a version that can do the required things (AKA 10.8)

The OP said he was running 10.8, although I thought OpenGL 3 support was added in 10.7.

E9 said a while back that getting OpenGL 3 support working on OS X required some FSO-side configuration:

Take a look at the thread immediately below this one in the sub-forum.

In short:
- Yes, Lion includes an OpenGL 3.2 profile, as well as the older OpenGL 2.1
- Programs must explicitly call, and setup, an OpenGL 3.2 profile in order to receive one. It's not like Windows where the drivers provide the best the hardware can support.
- At present, we have not modified the FS2 Open engine to call the OpenGL 3.2 profile.

Could that also be a factor here?

[ultimateloather]

Using windows isn't an option. I don't own a license for it and I tend not to run operating systems that cause me to rage.

I'm running 10.8, so it has the necessary OpenGL 3 libraries.

I'll try the -nogl_sl flag but I don't think my luck will be any better than swashmebuckle's - though, worth trying!

If that's not working at all then I'll look into modifying the engine so it calls the 3.2 profile. I'm no stranger to programming (that degree in computer science should come in handy here) but I've never worked with OpenGL before, so that should be interesting. Not being familiar with the sources nor 3D graphics in general may be biting off more than I can chew, however. That combined with limited free time it may not be feasible.

At least now I know what the problem is, and that's extremely helpful. Guess I should go look for sources and patches!

[ultimateloather]

Adding -no_glsl to the command line fixes the problem at the first glance - the artifacts are gone and some beautiful effects are in their place.

As GL support is kind of important I'm still going to work on modifying the engine to call the 3.2 profile, but at least now things look as they're supposed to.

I put a couple minutes into looking for the sourcecode, but it seems to be in a non-obvious location. Or I might be blind. Any pointers? I was able to find the Blue Planet patch file, though.

[jg18]

The instructions here are approximately correct for OS X, with a few changes:

For Step 1, the OS X terminal is in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

Instead of Steps 2 and 3, get Xcode 4. I think you can get it from the Mac App Store.

For Step 10, apply the patch from the command line with the Unix patch command:

Code: [Select]

patch -p0 < ~/path/to/BP.patch

For Step 11, open the project file (FS2_Open.xcodeproj) in antipodes/projects/Xcode4/. You'll need to extract the Frameworks.tgz tarball that's in that folder first. From the command line, it's

Code: [Select]

tar -xf Frameworks.tgz

I'm not familiar with Xcode 4, so I can't help you beyond that, but it's probably straightforward from there.

Hope that helps.

[ultimateloather]

You rule - thanks for the hints on where to find the sources. I have xcode 4 installed already as I need it for all the macports stuff. As far as using it as an IDE that's something I've never done either. We'll see how it goes.

Once I have something going i'll post a link to the build.

cheers!

[crazy_dave]

I am running OS X 10.6.8 on 2010 Macbook Pro with 330M Nvidia graphics and i7 chip. I have interesting variation on this bug (set of bugs?):

1. If I run release BP executable I crash immediately upon entering the program. If I run the Debug BP I can run AoA and WiH parts 1 & 2 (with the aforementioned black boxes typically/always trailing ships). Frame rate is great. However, WiH part 3 crashes when I tried to start the campaign.

2. I removed the advanced graphical packages. I can now start the WiH part 3 campaign as well as parts 1 and 2. Frame rate is great.

3. If I try to use the no_glsl flag to get rid of the black boxes, I crash to desktop either immediately or when I try to go into a mission (can't remember) for all 3 campaigns.

4. I got as far as the mission "Everything is permitted" which lets me into the mission most of the time, but sometimes crashes to desktop (I think if I click through the log and briefing screens too fast it has a higher chance of crashing). However, whenever I

Spoiler:

attack the shuttle I am supposed to be targeting

, I always crash to desktop.

------------

If any of the debug logs for these bugs would be helpful, I can try to recreate the bugs and post the ensuing debug logs - unless you think this has been covered by the other debug logs.

For the first mission "Nothing is true" I think I found a small, unimportant bug. I failed the mission

Spoiler:

by letting the UEF fighters escape

, but got the successful mission debrief. I was correctly not allowed to continue. If I fail the mission

Spoiler:

by letting the Vasudans escape

, I get the failed mission debriefing, as I should.

Anyway part 3 looks great from what I've gotten to play! Kudos! 

EDIT: Managed to get past the mission by

Spoiler:

using the Tev defense turrets to assassinate the target

which doesn't trigger the crash, but the next mission "One Future" crashes about 10 secs after I hit alt-J to begin the mission.

[Echelon9]

Essentially these known issues with Mac builds of BP are going to require the changes noted above to allow the FS2Open engine to call an OpenGL 3.2 compatible context on OS X. At present we only call a legacy OpenGL 2.1 context.

Until that happens, there is going to be some degree of 'black box' textures and the like. You'll also note that at present the z-buffering isn't working properly.

This is present even with the latest 27 January 2013 BP.patch builds.

This is something that coding efforts here will greatly improve the experience for all FS2Open engine based games.

[crazy_dave]

Essentially these known issues with Mac builds of BP are going to require the changes noted above to allow the FS2Open engine to call an OpenGL 3.2 compatible context on OS X. At present we only call a legacy OpenGL 2.1 context.

Until that happens, there is going to be some degree of 'black box' textures and the like. You'll also note that at present the z-buffering isn't working properly.

This is present even with the latest 27 January 2013 BP.patch builds.

This is something that coding efforts here will greatly improve the experience for all FS2Open engine based games.

Interesting! Even once the situation is remedied for OS X 10.8 with OpenGL 3.2, is there a way to make the game stably fall back on older graphics assets for those of us without OpenGL 3.2 (10.6) or high-end cards? Or is it just time for some of us to let go of our aging OSes/machines? I mean my laptop I think is capable enough, but the OpenGL I'm running is clearly not. I get good frame rates, but sadly -no_glsl simply causes crashes for me with the standard 3.6.17 Debug build and Blue Planet.

[ultimateloather]

I should be able to code it in such a way as to make it fall back gracefully to older OpenGL ICDs if a 3.2 profile isn't available. Should be a simple comparison to see if what I requested is what I got. In any case I haven't been able to put much time into it so far - just enough to check the sources out from subversion and patch them with the BP patch and do a cursory look for what file(s) I'd have to make my changes in. It's not immediately obvious but goes with the territory when modifying a large, complex project such as this.

[crazy_dave]

I should be able to code it in such a way as to make it fall back gracefully to older OpenGL ICDs if a 3.2 profile isn't available.

Ah cool.

Should be a simple comparison to see if what I requested is what I got. In any case I haven't been able to put much time into it so far - just enough to check the sources out from subversion and patch them with the BP patch and do a cursory look for what file(s) I'd have to make my changes in. It's not immediately obvious but goes with the territory when modifying a large, complex project such as this.

I'm getting use the fruits of other people's hard work for free - so no demands on your time coming from here.

[General Battuta]

Whatever we can do to allow more people to play is really good in my book.

[jg18]

Whatever we can do to allow more people to play is really good in my book.

Releasing alternate builds that don't include the new graphics code would be a great move towards that goal IMO. That would allow people having graphics-related problems with the current builds to play now using the tried and true standard rendering pipelines. They'd only be a short term solution, but since deferred rendering and shadows may not be in trunk for at least a little while, they'd do for now.

EDIT: [selfpromotion]I have posted unofficial OS X builds here that attempt to do just that.[/selfpromotion]

[General Battuta]

I am 100% with you on that but I know nothing about the technical feasibility thereof.