Radeon and Blitz Compatibility

Does anyone know if there's any issues with Radeons and Blitz?

Some testers of a demo Ruz and I are making have been geting just a blank screen on the menu, but it works fine in the actual game. The menu screen just consists of a few flat textured meshes and nothing else, just simple hud stuff based on the pixie code in the archives. It's only Radeons that seem to be affected.

update your drivers, from ati.com. they tend to release bugous original drivers.

By any chance are you creating very wide textures for your menu? I did this in ATB and it took me freaking ages to figure out that's why people with old onboard videocards couldn't see the menu but could play the game.

( When I say very wide, I mean greater than an 8:1 width to height ratio )

You could solve this by using a GUI system ( FonText($) , SSwift's GUI($), CyberSeth's Bitmap Font Functions(Free)

I think Beaker and SSwift have details in their sigs, whereas Seth's library is in the Blitzcoder showcase area.

I have a radeon 9600 pro, and haven't had many problems except in blitz programs except in things that have odd resolutions set up, like the first version of the Tecno demo.

Someone who have a Radeon card told me once that using the flag 256 on textures (store in VRam) sometimes cause problems...

Paolo.

Thanks for all the replies.

jfk: I dont's actually own a radeon myself, but I'm sure all the testers were using updated drivers.

Sybixsus: Yeah I think it must be some sort of texture weirdness. I do actually own FonText but it doesn't do everthing I need.

Dylan McCall: Nope just a standard 800/600, could you possibly test the code below, see if it works on your radeon.

Paolo: I only used texture flags for alpha and clamping the u/v's

displaywidth=640 : displayheight=480

displaydepth=0

Global texturewid=256, texturehgt=256, textureflags=1

;------------------

Graphics3D displaywidth,displayheight,displaydepth 

cam=CreateCamera() 
CameraRange cam,.1,1000 
pixie=LoadPixie(cam)
While Not KeyHit(1) 
	PositionEntity pixie,MouseX(),MouseY(),0
	RenderWorld 
	UpdateWorld 
	TurnEntity cam,1,2,0	;test texel drift
	Flip 
	Wend 
End 

Function LoadPixie(camera)
	texture=CreateTexture(texturewid,texturehgt,textureflags)
	width=TextureWidth(texture)
	height=TextureHeight(texture)
	SetBuffer(TextureBuffer(texture))
	Color 0,0,150 : Rect 0,0,256,256,1
	Color 255,255,255 : Rect 0,0,128,128,1 : Rect 128,128,255,255,1
	SetBuffer(BackBuffer())

	viewwidth=GraphicsWidth()
	viewheight=GraphicsHeight()
; find existing pixiespace parented to camera
	magic=0
	n=CountChildren(camera)
	For i=1 To n
		If EntityName(GetChild(camera,i))="pixiespace" 
			magic=GetChild(GetChild(camera,i),1)
		EndIf
	Next
	If magic=0
		magic=CreatePivot(camera) 
		NameEntity(magic,"pixiespace")
		aspect#=Float(viewheight)/viewwidth
		PositionEntity magic,-1,aspect,1 
		scale#=2.0/viewwidth 
		ScaleEntity magic,scale,-scale,-scale 
		magic=CreatePivot(magic)
		PositionEntity magic,-.5,-.5,0
	EndIf
; create sprite from texture as child of magic overlay	
	sprite=CreateSprite()
	EntityParent sprite,magic		;cludge for blitz bug in createsprite(parent)
	brush=CreateBrush()
	BrushFX brush,1
	BrushTexture brush,texture
	PaintEntity sprite,brush
	FreeBrush brush
	SpriteViewMode sprite,2 
	scale#=1.0/viewwidth 
	ScaleSprite sprite,width*scale,height*scale
	Return sprite
End Function

Yep, it works no problem.

I wonder if it is a Wbuffer thing (yet again). Try Wbuffer False.

You gave us an example but didn't tell us what to look for.
I get a blue and white checker box that follows the mouse around.
You mentioned getting a blank screen on the menu. Do you have an example for me to test?

the only "problem" with my radeon and blitz is that blitzs' anti-aliasing does not work. i've had a lot more and more serious problems with my geforce...

OK here's the actual menu, at the moment radeon users seem to just get a blank screen.

Hmm, haven't tried Wbuffer command. I don't like the sound of the docs saying it might make it less compatible though.

Download - 1.15mb

oh yah, AA doesn't work for me in blitz either. I think it sometimes kicks in automatically without me tlling it to, which is good; but it is hard to tell because I'm so used to the wonderful world of smooth curves.


Sadly that menu doesn't work...

AA works for me, but only if I set it from the Advanced Display off Control Panel to be always on. Doesn't seem to work via Blitz, though.

that test failed for me
ATI Radeon Mobility M6

That test failed for me too. I just get a black screen that won't let me exit with ESC key.
I had to use alt ctrl del keys to exit.
My system specs posted below.

Sorry AbbaRue I guess I should of mentioned it might be a good idea to save any work before running.

Thanks to all who tested, could I trouble you for one more test. This time though there's a config file with settings you can turn off/on.

If you could try turing off the 3 hud items first by setting them to 0, then if that doesn't work try the wbuffer and various screen modes.

Cheers.

Download

I was one of the testers that got the black menu screen. I've tested the exe you posted above but no matter what settings I use (huds on/off, wbuffer on/off and various screen modes) it still stays black :(

BTW it would be a bad idea to expect end-users to upgrade their gfx drivers, chances are they still have the original drivers and won't have a clue how to update it.

Tested it on my Radeon 9800XT, all black regardless of the config settings... tested it on my gf 5950 - worked fine.

A few problems I think you might need to address:

You can't draw safely to a texture buffer with mask or alpha properties as the alpha bits of each pixel from draw operation are undefined (IMHO Blitz3D should throw a runtime error). If you must then loop through the pixels afterwards or'ing all the alpha bits on - writepixel x,y,readpixel(x,y)or$ff000000

You should probably have a flip at the end of any drawing to texture buffers.

If at all possible don't draw to texture buffers, the direct draw commands used by Rect() etc. and Direct Draw in general (the Blitz2D commands) are probably the worst supported in modern drivers and you will get a much more stable product if you keep strictly to the 3D command set only.

A nice pure black screen whatever I set in the config.txt file on a Radeon 9800 Pro [Catalyst 4.6]...but it works pretty well on my 5 years old laptop Rage3D Mobility M 8Mb [Drivers ATI 6.13]. Perhaps you could post the source...

I still get a black window or screen. I was able to exit this time with esc key.
Last time I hit alt ctrl del key but only once so I was back at windows.
So it didn't cause any problems for my system, but thanks for the apology anyway.
I am interested in knowing what kind of menus you are useing that would cause this type of problem?
I have never had a menu fail for me before.

VIP3R: I totally agree. Did you get a hud in the game? There should be a stars collected and life counter.

Skid: The menu doesn't draw to textures I just modified your code above to save people finding a image to test it with. Thanks for the info though, good to know.

Ulric: It loads FonText files and I wouldn't want to do the author out of any sales of his system. If the below test doesn't work though I'll cut out the text loading parts and some other gumf and post it.

AbbaRue: The code is based the pixie code with a few adjustments for text and stuff, which is why I'm stumped as to why it's not working.

I'm cluching at straws here but I've made a few adjustments.

Download

Hey Algo,

I don't know what you did, but you've fixed it here :)

Everything works fine with all huds on (wbuffer on or off).

To answer your question, yes the huds worked in the game. Suppose thats neither here nor there now though ;)

Good work.

WooHoo!

I think the culprit was a CameraRange camera,.1,1, could you test the code above with these settings?

The last posted link works on my Radeon.

radeon 9700..the test worked for me..didnt in the demo..seems u fixed it:)

Edit (default settings here)

Works here (I used that last link with default settings)...

good to know that its fixed Algo . nice one

yup. works here too.

I tested the code you posted at the top of the post (if that's what you mean?) with the new camera settings... it sort of works but it flickers very badly. I can just about make out it is a blue/white square.

Cheers VIP3R, and thanks to all who tested.