[miskat]

Hi all.  I just got FS2_open working on my PC (using all those new spiffy ZETA MediaVPs and the 710 patches, the Launcher 5.5, and... the EXE I'm using is FS2_open_r_P420061115.exe  Got it from a CVS link here on HL) got it all set up with, I think, everything enabled.  And it works GREAT except for one, excrusiatingly annoying... er... annoyance.

We all know that room you're greated with when you start up the game?  That room where you can get to options, the tech room, campaigns, etc?  Well... when I mouseover an area on the screen that is mapped to take me to another location, it offsets itself from the background!  Not by much, just a few pixels down and to the right.  (I think to the right... maybe just down)  Talk about distracting!  Then again, maybe I'm just a bit... neurotic.  Anyway.

Now... here's the catch: I run the game in Direct3D mode.  If I turn on OpenGL mode, it goes away!  HOWEVER: OpenGL mode looks horrendous!  (IE the primary lasers don't show when they fire, even in the tutorial missions!, pretty much all lighting is disabled so everything is bright and seemingly lit by ambiant light.  Wish I could get a screenie.  XD)

Ah... System specs.

Windows XP Home
2.4GHZ P4
1024mb DDR333 RAM
GeForce FX5200
SoundBlaster Live! X-Gamer  <--*sigh*

I think that's all that would be relevant.

So if anyone has any suggestions... anything I could try, that would be great.  I've tried numerous different builds of the exe and launcher but that changed nothing. =/

I'd also like to take the time here--instead of making another thread--to add just how amazed I am at what you all have done for this game.  I managed to pick up a copy of Freespace and Silent Threat many many years ago for a whole of US$10 and... I was stunned.  It was the greatest space sim experience ever.  Never got FS2 due to being a broke High School student.  But to come here and find all this for FS2, all the updates, all the enhancements, and a FS/ST port!  And it's all beautiful!  You all should be very, very, proud.

Good work, and thank you, to everyone involved with the continued life of Freespace and Freespace 2.

-Miskat Citnamor, Weapons Master of House Citnamor, Shailak Teresthall

[Mathwiz6]

So when you go to mainhall, and mouseover, say, missions, your cursor goes down and to the right a few pixels?

And you say it goes away in Direct 3D, and OpenGL looks horrible...

Then use Direct3D?

Don't forget to get missions 


I think CVS builds aren't totally stable.... I'm still using 3.6.9 RC7

[miskat]

Hiya!  Fast responce~!  =D

I'm sorry, I know I didn't exactly word all that clearly.  heh  Lots too say and a very jumbled brain.  =)

Anyway, the strange offsetting effect in mainhall happend in Direct3D and goes aweay in OpenGL.  But OpenGL looks terrible.

Also, I tried the newest build 3.6.9rc7dot9 but when I loaded up the first tutorial mission, the instructors ship was all white.  No textures, no env mapping, nothing.  All white.  Strange.  XD  And the offset effect in mainhall was still there anyway.  So I stuck with the older one, seemed to work better.

[Einstine909]

Target newcomer...Locked, Begin plasma core insertion... FIRE!!



Welcome to the Hlpbb! Please keep all hands and feet inside the installation at all times... the exit you see aren't exits, they are normal mapped look a likes due to the new SCP code, in fact no exits existed in the first place. Under your seats you will find flamethrowers but due to budget cuts and the lack of napalm production, they have been filled with holy water.
If you hear sound in the ventilation ducts, it’s probably just Carl, the resident Shivan. If you encounter him, just give him your lunch and back away...it better not be tuna, if it is try to find a gattling turret with a lunch bag attached to it, this should keep him for awhile...and agitate him, maybe you should just run, your choice.
The plasma rifles and other assorted weapons are found in a locker in a lounge that only Moderators, the :V: gods, and a hyper intelligent shade of blue have the combo for, although I swear its 42... Treat all SCP coders like the code gods they are, do this and you have a very important friend.
For anything not answered here: visit the all knowing Kara FAQ. For any initial questions you may have: visit the all knowing Kara FAQ. For anything I have said that was confusing: visit the all knowing Kara FAQ. (Just a little piece of advice: visit the all knowing Kara FAQ.) For your continued survival, the letter after E, the letter before T and the # 1+2 must not be combined in sequence, or those with napalm will use it.
In the event of a catastrophic failure of the Hlpbb, please enter an escape pod preprogrammed to HLP's sister installation: Game Warden.
Thank you and have a nice day.

Anyway, like he said use the 3.6.9 RC7. and that shift in the animations has been there for a while. to fix the all ambient lighting, use the cmd line flags found in the wiki. actually ill get back to u on that

[miskat]

Here is the command line I am using (tried the same with Direct3D and OpenGL)

C:\FreeSpace2\fs2_open_r-P420061115.exe -spec -glow -env -jpgtga -mipmap -nomotiondebris -2d_poof -missile_lighting -dualscanlines -targetinfo -orbradar -rearm_timer -ballistic_gauge -3dwarp -warp_flash -snd_preload -alpha_env  -fov 0.39 -ambient_factor 75

And is there a reason to use 3.6.9rc7?  And do you mean rc7 or rc7dot8 or 7dot9?

[Turey]

did you download the mediaVPs? they make the game look much nicer. You can get them here. You'll need the patches as well.

As to OpenGL vs. D3D, OpenGL is better. make sure to turn up all the detail settings in game and to select the mediavps folder as your mod folder. It should improve the graphics a lot.

[Flipside]

Hmmm... I used to get the same problem with the displacement on my old GeForce, is it a BFG overclocked jobbie?

The OpenGL thing sounds like a driver problem, what drivers do you have installed?

[miskat]

Turey: Already have every available MediaVP =P  And patches.  =P

Flipside: I had thought drivers too, actually.  Interestingly, I haven't installed ANY OpenGL drivers, that I am aware of.  Which could explain .  If I were to select OpenGL, and didn't have the drivers for it, would the game default to Software rendering?  That could explain the bad quality.  Question is... where do I find drivers?  I tried looking earlier but... time to try again.  Oh... and I have no idea if this GeForce is O/C'd.  It's a hand-me-down after Eve-Online fried my gorram Radeon9800Pro.

[Flipside]

Well, the OpenGL drivers should be built into the drivers for the card, but if you're using the drivers that came on the install disk, you may well have very old drivers running.

Ironically enough, new drivers can also cause problems, Shine-mapping was incompatible with ATI DirectX drivers for quite a while, for example, not because of the code but because of how the drivers worked.

First thing I'd suggest, if you haven't already is go to www.nvidia.com and get the latest drivers, next up is check your settings from your visual settings (right click on the Desktop, click Properties - Settings and then the Advanced button) and make sure you haven't got anything like 'Use lowest level MipMaps' or the like turned on.

[miskat]

Well... I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from nvidia to no avail.  OpenGL looks just as horrid as ever.  But now the movies don't work.  I uninstalled my codecs and re-installed them to no avail.

And by "not working" I don't mean they don't display... they do.  But... huh... wish I knew how to describe this.  =/  No... this is a problem with the new driver and my codecs.  Crap.  All DivX videos play like this.  Very blocky and almost all in black.

[Turey]

Well... I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from nvidia to no avail.  OpenGL looks just as horrid as ever.  But now the movies don't work.  I uninstalled my codecs and re-installed them to no avail.

And by "not working" I don't mean they don't display... they do.  But... huh... wish I knew how to describe this.  =/  No... this is a problem with the new driver and my codecs.  Crap.  All DivX videos play like this.  Very blocky and almost all in black.

You problem isn't the drivers, it's the fact that you're using the AVI cutscenes. SCP now works with the MVE cutscenes, so you should use those.

[miskat]

*blinks*

Well, then.  MVE it is.

But... why did it break after installing the drivers?  SCP was working fine with the AVIs before.  And it is worthwhile to note that the avi cutscenes don't play in WMP or MediaPlayer Classic, either.  Somewhat worrisome.

[taylor]

Well... I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from nvidia to no avail.  OpenGL looks just as horrid as ever.

Screenshots?  ...  Of how it looks in both D3D and OGL if possible.

[miskat]

Firstly: Taylor: I'd love to post screenies, but I honestly have nowhere to host 'em.  I guess I could ressurrect my old (and I do mean OLD, yech) Geocities account (rofl) but I remember there being some problem with linking images off of there.  =/

Secondly: I rolled my system back to before the driver update (I think) using Windows System Restore and tried to fire up the AVIs in WMPClassic and they worked just fine... until I started the game in OpenGL mode (which, admittedly, is the first mode I tried.)  I'm going to pull a stupid now and see if just restarting my flipping computer fixes the issue.  If so... I wonder why OpenGL is breaking my ability to decode and play AVIs properly?

[Edit:] OpenGL is, indeed, killing my AVI playback.  Restarting my computer rids me of the problem and Direct3D still works fine.  Why OpenGL would have this reaction is beyond me, though.  I'm gonna try to get screenies of the mainhall in Direct3D and OpenGL.

[miskat]

Alright, I played with the settings while using OpenGL for a bit and now I feel somewhat dumb.  Most of the problems I saw immediately when using OpenGL were cause by the brightness option being turned up "too high" (It was set the same for Direct3D.  Direct3D renders are darker?)

However, I'm still not seeing my lasers in the training.  =/  And who knows what else I'll be missing?  O.o

And my AVIs still don't like it.  XD

[Turey]

Alright, I played with the settings while using OpenGL for a bit and now I feel somewhat dumb.  Most of the problems I saw immediately when using OpenGL were cause by the brightness option being turned up "too high" (It was set the same for Direct3D.  Direct3D renders are darker?)

However, I'm still not seeing my lasers in the training.  =/  And who knows what else I'll be missing?  O.o

And my AVIs still don't like it.  XD

Do your lasers still do damage? If so, it's a mediavp problem, not a Open problem. Try re-downloading the patches.

[miskat]

Aye, they still do damage.

But are you sure it's a mediavp problem?  I mean... they work in Direct3D mode....

[karajorma]

D3D has hardly been touched in well over a year. It's very possible that something was improved for OpenGL which had this side effect and the media was then fixed to solve the problem.

[miskat]

Alright... I was re-reading the posts above and realized that I had missed something important... I needed to set my MOD to the MediaVPs folder?  Wow... I did that, and it fixed theproblem with OpenGL not showing lasers!  I also see the ship models in 3.6.9rc7dot8 now (I can't find rc7dot9 for the life of me!)

However, not all is well.  The engine glow is not shown in OpenGL mode as of rc7.8 (another minor annoyance, as I like the effect) however, I do see the engine cone.  Also, and more notably, I seem to be having an alpha problem with the textures (or whatever is used) for the lasers.  They fire, and I see them move, but... well... there's a black rectangular box around them.  Nasty looking.  Not really sure what is causing it, but it's not there in D3D mode.

For that matter... everything works plenty fine in D3D mode... except that darn mainhall displacement issue.  >.<

Edit: I was just reading the ambient engine glow topic below and realized that that was the engine glow issue I mentioned above.  Guess it's not an issue after all... I'll just have to take a look at the tbl files and see if I can't find something nice.  XD  As a suggestion: if the omnidirectional ball was a bug, maybe make a section of the back engine emit a soft glow in a 2d circle.  As it is, if you are directly behind another ship, it is just the outline of a circle, which looks funny.  I would also personally recommend having a close-tipped engine cone as well so that you don't see a depth issue between the end of the cone and whatever is behind it.  But then again, there are probably very good reasons why what was done... was done.

[Turey]

Alright... I was re-reading the posts above and realized that I had missed something important... I needed to set my MOD to the MediaVPs folder?  Wow... I did that, and it fixed theproblem with OpenGL not showing lasers!  I also see the ship models in 3.6.9rc7dot8 now (I can't find rc7dot9 for the life of me!)

However, not all is well.  The engine glow is not shown in OpenGL mode as of rc7.8 (another minor annoyance, as I like the effect) however, I do see the engine cone.  Also, and more notably, I seem to be having an alpha problem with the textures (or whatever is used) for the lasers.  They fire, and I see them move, but... well... there's a black rectangular box around them.  Nasty looking.  Not really sure what is causing it, but it's not there in D3D mode.

For that matter... everything works plenty fine in D3D mode... except that darn mainhall displacement issue.  >.<

3.6.9 RC7.9x


as to the black boxes (and possibly the engine glow): That almost always means you didn't download the mediavp patches in addition to the actual mediavps. patches go in the same folder as the mediavps, and you get them here:
regular patches (get these no matter what)
mp-710_adveffects (get this only if you are using the adveffects mediavp.)

unzip those into C:\Games\Freespace2\mediavps\