Oolite Bulletins

Killer Wolf wrote:

did a bios update and now getting a CMOS checksum prob
computers - all fun, aren't they?! :-/

<shudder> I had a bad experience with a BIOS update years ago... I tread very warily around that subject now.

they're bloody annoying alright!

not had time to mess w/ my drivers but had a quick skeg at the cat and it say :-
drivers - 8.64.0907
2d driver version- 6.14.10.6983
direct 3d - 6.14.10.0685
open gl version - 6.14.10.8870
ccc version - 2009.0714.2132.36830
and i got two AIW/VIVO drivers listed too :-/
crikey. oh, and direct x 9.c too.
talk about confusing!

Driver version 8.64.0907 is from CCC (Catalyst Software suite) 9.8 and from what ‘dmipet’ said a few posts above, that worked for him. It certainly supports full shaders… I noticed the difference when I updated from CCC 9.7 to 9.8 on my Radeon 3650 several months ago. If that is the version installed on your PC then it should work okay. You could try updating to CCC 9.9 or 9.10 if it still isn’t up to scratch. There is a small performance improvement between 9.8 and 9.10. Don’t bother with 9.11, 9.12, 10.1 or 10.2.

If you wish to update go here:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

Once the appropriate driver page is displayed, find the link to ‘previous drivers’ and there you can select Catalyst version 9.8, 9.9 or 9.10. Follow the installation instructions carefully (there is a link on the page). You will need to uninstall the previous CCC completely, using the add/remove programs tool in Windows (or other OS equivalent).

Hope you get it sorted.

*adopts sheepish expression (which is really hard to do when you're not much more than a skull in a pirate hat*

hmm, this may not be completely ATI's fault, i'm in the process of going through all the shaders in my normalmapped oxp looking for and fixing bits that i've copied incorrectly from the example shaders or just made up out of thin air, i've just got to the 'organic looking thargoid' shader and when i initially brought it into rendermonkey it rendered almost exactly like the cobraIII with missing texture in El Viejo's earlier post.
the problem was down to me getting the texture coordinates from the vertex shader in a really daft way, basically, i was ignoring the proper 'vec2' containing the texture data from the vertex shader and getting the coordinates using the built in 'gl_TexCoord[0].st' vec instead - as soon as i fixed this i got all the textures displaying correctly - this is probably why the ATI cards are getting these problems in my oxp's, something has changed in the later drivers regarding gl_TexCoord (which my shaders are incorrectly using)

Ahh… does a small ray of light break through the ATI clouds. I hope so, it would save me having to keep updating this thread (all these driver numbers are doing my poor old brain in).

If you find a fix, please sort the Cobra III out soonest (pretty please).

Thanks Griff.

edit: mind you, there is much anger on the ATI blog about the later ATI drivers, especially 10.1 and 10.2... people are having major problems with them.

well i managed to get Oolite up for a quick run last night, and it seems that it definitely isn't what i expected. the glowy lights/windows of the Nuit don't glow. looks canny apart from that, and boy does my new set up do the trick - trying to dock there used to choke my machine to about 1 frame a sec, now it's smooth as silk.
i'll let the rest of you clever people investigate fully into poss shader probs and drivers before i start effing around changing things

Griff wrote:

*adopts sheepish expression (which is really hard to do when you're not much more than a skull in a pirate hat*

hmm, this may not be completely ATI's fault, i'm in the process of going through all the shaders in my normalmapped oxp looking for and fixing bits that i've copied incorrectly from the example shaders or just made up out of thin air, i've just got to the 'organic looking thargoid' shader and when i initially brought it into rendermonkey it rendered almost exactly like the cobraIII with missing texture in El Viejo's earlier post.
the problem was down to me getting the texture coordinates from the vertex shader in a really daft way, basically, i was ignoring the proper 'vec2' containing the texture data from the vertex shader and getting the coordinates using the built in 'gl_TexCoord[0].st' vec instead - as soon as i fixed this i got all the textures displaying correctly - this is probably why the ATI cards are getting these problems in my oxp's, something has changed in the later drivers regarding gl_TexCoord (which my shaders are incorrectly using)

Griff, will this re-investigation include the Moray - of all your ships this one gives my 128MB GF 6600GT (on my Athlon XP2800+) no end of stick - two of them on the screen at the same time can bring my fps down from 50(ish) to about 15...

yep, i'll be going through all the ships and putting these fixes in, we'll have to test the moray on your system DH, it could be the wishy washy cloud effect on it causing the frame rate drop, i think if after tweaking the shader you still get problems, i'll take the effect out and i can use the texture map for adding decals back in instead.

Been cruising the space lanes all day, using CCC 10.2 (it’s hard looking at all those tinny ships), however… the Transporter, the Escape Capsule, the Anaconda, the Orbital Shuttle, the Cargo Pod and the Coriolis station all seem to look as they should, I think.

Thumbnail of Coriolis below.

Griff wrote:

yep, i'll be going through all the ships and putting these fixes in, we'll have to test the moray on your system DH, it could be the wishy washy cloud effect on it causing the frame rate drop, i think if after tweaking the shader you still get problems, i'll take the effect out and i can use the texture map for adding decals back in instead.

But it's such a fab effect! I just need a better PC/GFX!

here's the moray with a tweaked shader
http://www.box.net/shared/uzaufo1o6m
it's got the texture coordinate fixes in it that got the cobraIII working for El Viejo, plus i've been tweaking the effects to make them simpler (but still just as colourful)
there's a script.js file in the config folder of the oxp that spawns 2 morays outside the station when you launch, plus there's also a savegame in the .zip with the moray as the players ship

Griff wrote:

here's the moray with a tweaked shader
http://www.box.net/shared/uzaufo1o6m
it's got the texture coordinate fixes in it that got the cobraIII working for El Viejo,

Would have thought El Viejo would have replied on here reporting back, but I see he posted on the Screenshots thread nearly two hours ago with a screenshot of the Moray....! Check it out and see if it looks ok to you, looks weird to me, but maybe you meant it to be psychodelic....?

yeah, it looks like that - the purple bits sort of move around the hull like speeded up film of clouds forming in the sky, they are supposed to be tied into the specular channel so they get really shiny and look 'wet', i wonder if i've broken that effect somehow? i didn't really test that much, just a quick launch of the game to see if the moray appeared and then a scan through the log to see if there were any errors, maybe i should limit the randomness of the recolouring a bit more so it doesn't get quite so lurid.
edit: there's a quicktime mov of the shader running here: http://www.box.net/shared/tcrc5nne68 (it's the same one as in the screenshots thread posted a while back) but it's 4.1Mb is size and to be honest a bit boring, not much plot, the characters are 2d and sketchy and everyone could see the twist at the end coming a mile off. spend more money on scriptwriters next time and less on flashy CGI effects.

also, forgot to mention - decals aren't supported on the moray in case anyone is wondering why theirs is not appearing - it's not an arty decision by me, there just isn't a spare texture available to store the decal in, it's been used for extra effects instead.

I had just rolled back to CCC 9.10 when Griff posted the ‘tweaked’ Moray, so I haven’t tested it using CCC 10.2 yet.
That’s why I posted the pic in Screenshots… and I think it looks amazing.
The Moray was originally a submarine/spaceship and the way the colours change and flow mimic the squid beautifully.

... and back to CCC 10.2 (which seems to run my GPU 4-5 degrees hotter than 9.10... not sure I like that).

No problems with shaders or textures on the Moray here:




Griff, if you have any more little testers coming in the next couple of days or so, let me know and I'll keep 10.2 installed.