Descent 2 Interpreter V0.01 Released


Fishbong posted on Oct 18 2006 at 10:34 AM said:
DaveC posted on Oct 18 2006 at 05:34 AM said:
This means that it would have to be scaled to get 320 x 240 which looks like crap. Which is why it should be an option and not required.
It´s a 3D game you dork, everything in a 3D game is constantly being scaled dependig on the distance to the players Point of view. The graphics are made out of polygons and textures, not sprites. Got the difference?

Say, did you ever play a 3D game on a PC and changed the resolution? Or were you too afraid of it "looking crap"?


The text, HUD and menus will look like crap "you dork" if stretched. And yes the textures will look worse because the edges will have an extra level of blockyness and distortion due to the *uneven* stretching.
 
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You dork! :)P)

Played Quake or Doom? Those games are split up in two, basically:
1) the 3d rendering
2) the HUD
(The same goes for Descent. It is split up in a 3d area and a 2d hud area)

The 3d rendering can be natively (without stretching) rendered on pretty much any resolution. 200x200? Possible and it would NOT look stretched or distorted at all, since the 200x200 area isn't the same image as the 320x200 or whatever image. The 200x200 gives you less horizontal viewing range.
Same aspect ratio means different image quality (640x480 has better quality than 320x240).
Different aspect ratio means different area of view (200x200: less horizontal viewing range than on 320x200).

The best way of looking at this is actually by defining the 3d display as a raytraced image. For every pixel, you send a ray outwards and check where it stops, what color that should be, and plot it on the screen. More pixels means more rays (hence the reason why 1280x1024 has slower rendering times than 320x240)..

Now, about Quake and Doom: you can resize the area of the 3d rendering in those games, too. The effect doesn't look weird at all. It just makes the rendering area a bit smaller or bigger. The HUD won't be stretched at all, since the HUD doesn't use the same renderer as the 3d rendering.

With Descent, you can basically add 40 vertical pixels to the 3D RENDERED image, so that you can see "just a bit more up and down", and pull the HUD (the cockpit) down a bit. And voila! 320x240 image with nothing that looks distorted or weird, because NO scaling is used AT ALL, because NOTHING is rendered at, say, 320x240 and then stretched. 3d games generally don't use stretching at all, unless you want a high resolution HUD with a fast, low native resolution 3d rendering. For example, Zdaemon, a doom port, has the ability to render the window of the game in 640x480 and render the 3d rendering at half of what it should be at 640x480, and then stretch it. This makes the 3d rendered area look blocky in comparison to the high resolution HUD, but it is really neat for when your PC or monitor doesn't support low resolution displays, yet when your PC isn't powerful enough to handle the higher resolution 3d renderings.

In other words, if you haven't understood a clue of what I was saying: Have you ever toyed around with 3ds MAX? Rendering an image in 3dsmax in 400x400 is possible, and it does not look stretched at all, because it doesn't render the thing in 320x240 first and then stretch it to 400x400. It instead renders the thing in 400x400. There is no 'uneven' stretching AT ALL because there is NO stretching AT ALL. Same goes for 3d games!

So, instead of STRETCHING:
d2x2.gif

you RENDER the BLUE pixels on this image:
d2x.gif
 
Thank you megeagun. You saved me a lot of effort.

@Dave: Please just shut up, you obviously have no clue what you´re talking about? Do you really believe anything in a 3D game has a "native resolution"?

This is ridiculous.
 
DaveC posted on Oct 17 2006 at 10:34 PM said:
Um go into the config screen that is part of Decent itself (not the interpreter). Do you see an option there for 320 x 240? No? 320 x 200 right? Hmm. It seems that you have no information on Decent ;) It uses dos 13h mode which is what resolution? Before flaming and making dickhead comments do research.

This means that it would have to be scaled to get 320 x 240 which looks like crap. Which is why it should be an option and not required.
Yes, I have earned the honor of dickhead (I would add to my sig, or description, but it doesn't seem to fit atm.)

I have finally been flamed!! Since I don't need to do "research" I will just go to the installed legal copy of Descent I have on my Hard Drive, here is an excerpt from the readme:
COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
====================
The following command-line options were not mentioned in the manual:
. . . .
snip
. . . .
-320x100 Uses a low-res graphics mode good for full screen playing
on slower computers. A bit blocky, though.
-320x240 Uses a little better resolution than normal for a crisper
image. Uses ModeX page flipping to reduce "shearing."
-320x400 Same as above, but much more resolution at the expense of
speed. Only recommended for P-90's and above!!
-640x400 Killer high res. Requires a VESA driver.
-640x480 Super-killer high res. Requires a VESA driver.

I guess I did come off a bit haughty, and I do apologize, it seems you are right and there isn't a 320x240 mode already in Descent II.

I just have played Descent and Descent II for hours on end at 320x240 and such resolutions that the thought of it scaling pixels seemed entirely ludicrous and worthy of my ridicule.

A list of machines I have played these games on:

20mhz 486
33mhz 486
40mhz 486 cyrix
100mhz 486 cyrix
60mhz Pentium
90mhz Pentium
166mhz Pentium
233mhz cyrix media gx
233mhz Pentium
266mhz Pentium w/mmx
350mhz Pentium MMX
400mhz Pentium II
450mhz PIII
500mhz K6-2
800mhz Duron
1.1Ghz Duron
2600 AthlonXP
3000 Venice 939 Athlon64

I even had it playing on my two Toshiba Librettos one in each hand with a serial cable multiplayer.

Forgot to add played it first on a MAC and then had a few multi-player battles on the PSX with a link cable, I think that may have been at 320x240, and I didn't notice any scaling on the PSX either.

The mere thought of scaling at a aspect ratio of 320x240 was enough to make me see red, I apologize.

I point out that 640x480 is the same aspect ratio as 320x240, thus it shouldn't be a problem.

Please be Decent and type Descent, it is the name of the game after all.
 
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Always with the bickering. Aish! Ofcourse it looks crap if we simply scale it. The HUD looks awful.

But as nubie so politely pointed out. There is a hidden argument for native QVGA. So, everyone is happy in the end as long as Anes Lihovac is madfe aware of it.

BTW, I played this last night, and it was very playable on 200mhz. Thanks so much Anes!

It might be worth setting up a paypal account for donations.
 
icurafu posted on Oct 18 2006 at 06:54 PM said:
The HUD looks awful.
I don't play with a HUD, you don't need one, the pertinent infos will show up as text in the top corners, the HUD just wastes good space that could be ray-traced bots sneaking up on you.
 
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True, but most people would still use the HUD. Considering I never knew the option existed.

I'm also unsure how scretching would look with point filtering, as its supposed to be symetric.

Looking at the image above, you can see double pixels clustered together, verticle to each other. But, we don't even need to worry about how that would look like at 60fps. (pretty good, I imagine) as we got native QVGA anyway.
 
icurafu posted on Oct 19 2006 at 02:07 AM said:
True, but most people would still use the HUD. Considering I never knew the option existed.

I'm also unsure how scretching would look with point filtering, as its supposed to be symetric.

Looking at the image above, you can see double pixels clustered together, verticle to each other. But, we don't even need to worry about how that would look like at 60fps. (pretty good, I imagine) as we got native QVGA anyway.

Well filtering would be very SLOOOOOooooooow on this. It struggles a bit as it is.

The HUD may not be needed but it speeds up things a bit as it cuts down the rendering area. If it gets optimised someday then it may run ok with out the HUD.

Scaling, especially fractional does effect the look of it even though brainwizard fishbong doesn't realize it. It effects the text as well as distant details, they would just look more blocky and un-even.

But if Descent expert AKA Mr. tactful nubie is right there shouldn't be any need for scaling anyway.
 
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icurafu posted on Oct 19 2006 at 02:07 AM said:
True, but most people would still use the HUD. Considering I never knew the option existed.
If that surprises you, then you should know that pressing the actual - and + keys on a keyboard in a PC version shrinks the screen way down to very very few pixels.

DaveC posted on Oct 18 2006 at 07:33 PM said:
The HUD may not be needed but it speeds up things a bit as it cuts down the rendering area. If it gets optimised someday then it may run ok with out the HUD.
If you really want to speed things up you can do as I suggested above and shrink the rendered area by even more.

I guess you would need to just put in options for how much you want actually rendered. I don't know how the code is set up right now, but if you can map the - and + to something and give it a go we might have something.

160x120 would be FAST!! Raytracing is awesome. Edit: I just tried it, and aside from going like 600 FPS on my athlon64, it seemed to go a little widescreen, I couldn't get a screenshot, so I can't count the actual aspect ratio, I might have a slower PC running actual DOS that would get a proper screenshot. F3 seems to toggle the HUD and non HUD modes, also a list of key commands appears on hitting F1.

Forgot to add that I played Descent in the GP2PSX, unplayable, but functional. I guess I should break out the Dreamcast with Bleemcast Beta and Descent Maximum and see how that does, the kyroII with Fullscreen AA and full 640x480 output should be awesome.

I confess, I didn't play the game so much as I tried to play it on whatever I could and with as many different options as possible, I found that to be a lot of fun!
 
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DaveC posted on Oct 19 2006 at 12:33 PM said:
Well filtering would be very SLOOOOOooooooow on this. It struggles a bit as it is.

The HUD may not be needed but it speeds up things a bit as it cuts down the rendering area. If it gets optimised someday then it may run ok with out the HUD.

Scaling, especially fractional does effect the look of it even though brainwizard fishbong doesn't realize it. It effects the text as well as distant details, they would just look more blocky and un-even.

But if Descent expert AKA Mr. tactful nubie is right there shouldn't be any need for scaling anyway.

What I was saying is that point filtering is already there. That's what it uses. I was discussing the effects scaling has on that technique. Obviuos different from what linear filtering would give.
 
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Found the problem, Windows was stealing the print-screen key.

It goes down to 160x64 as the lowest and then steps up, I can make a quick collection of pics if you guys want.

At that res you get a "HUD bar" across the bottom of the screen that just hangs out and a dreary "rock" backdrop that stays as the rendering "window" shrinks, finally disappearing as the final jump to full-screen rendering is made.

I skipped a lot of the pics, the links are to the pics you can't see. The Gif compression isn't the best, but you get the idea.


Smallest screen size:
SCREEN02.gif

SCREEN03.gif
SCREEN04.gif
SCREEN05.gif
SCREEN06.gif

SCREEN07.gif
SCREEN08.gif
SCREEN09.gif

Full-screen, yes it is 320x200
SCREEN10.gif


Hud, I personally hate those "rollbars"
SCREEN11.gif
 
Just out of curiosity, do you get the draw distance and complexity options in the menu?

Those used to really speed things up on the vanilla 486 33s
 
I'd prefer a scaled fullscreen image over the HUD any day, the gp2x screen is only that big and every unused line is a wasted line IMO. An alternative to the scaling would be as DaveC already said, a centered image with equally sized black bars at the top and bottom, as seen in so many movies. But the HUD needs to go, it only takes up valuable space and spoils the cave-feeling when flying through the mines.

(In all 3 Descent games I have always switched off the HUD and as much unnecessary text as possible :p )

"SunSpire"
 
Hey Guys

I am stuck right now.

I ported zico's v0.50 dxx-rebirth to the gp2x, and applied all my changes.
When I start a new game now, you see the briefing (the enemies are shown and stuff) and then the game crashes right after the briefing and starting of the game itself. Due to the fact that the USB Networking isn't working for me, and till I found an German distributor for the Breakout Board, I cannot Debug and so no new Version can be released.

Please be patient.

Best regards
paines
 
Anes: Where are you in Germany? I have two BoB's, if you are nearby I might consider loaning you one for debugging purposes ..
 
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