New demo based on the graphics engine I'm working on

[Doomtrooper]

On 2002-02-14 23:41, Xmas wrote:

On 2002-02-14 20:18, Doomtrooper wrote:
Pretty hard to judge if you can't see it.

Maybe you didn't see this

On 2002-02-14 17:34, Reverend wrote:
Joe, there's a smiley (and a winky) in my post.

Seriously though, anyone that aims to *make money* with anything (game engine, specific graphics codes, specific sound codes) would definitely want to ensure their thing runs on a GF3. If it requires a "fallback", mention it as such with explanations and so be it.

Humus may be doing something as a matter of pure "hobby" and "self interest". But the minute he shows it to any developer of publisher, he won't, IMO, get anywhere, and as nice as it may look, his hard work will be either wasted or simply a matter of self satisfaction.

You can't fight the market if you want to make money. If you don't want to make money and simply want to show, er, "the future", then that's fine.

It took the smilies and winkies as <sarcasm>, maybe it read it wrong. Either way I don't agree with not using advanced effects on a card because another can't do it..
So Xmas I guess we just let one company determine the future of game development, because thats what I'm feeling from this thread..I wonder what the statements would have been if this was coded on A Geforce 3 and the 8500 guys couldn't view it...
Hmmmm...

Probably "Typical ATI drivers", "Nvidia is the market leader, should have bought Nvidia" yada yada...

 

[Xmas]

Doomtrooper, I agree with you, I too want developers to support all the advanced effects new hardware is able to do.

But hey, this thread (or part of it) isn't about "not using advanced effects on a card because another can't do it", it's about a demo crashing on a particular hardware, which is never a good thing.

 

[Althornin]

Well, you all seem to be postulating its a bug in the engine...isnt it possible that the nVidia drivers could have a bug in them? I know, i know, but still, one day you guys are gonna have to wake up and get stereotypes out of your heads.

And Rev, not that you care about my opinion, but when i read your first post, it seemed VERY harsh to me. Frankly, i was fucking astonished that you'd be such an asshole. Your later posts may have helped clear things up, but thats what the EDIT feature is for...If ya fuck up, FIX IT.

Back on Topic: As an owner of a Radeon DDR (32mb) and a GF3 (currently) i cant really comment on the demo - looks fine on my old radeon, but its rather plain-jane without all tthe cool effects i see in screenshots. I am sure its your usual great work though, Humus. Keep it up, when i get one of those 128MB r8500's, i'll send you my gf3 to dev. with.

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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Althornin on 2002-02-15 02:38 ]</font>

 

[Xmas]

On 2002-02-15 02:36, Althornin wrote:
Well, you all seem to be postulating its a bug in the engine...isnt it possible that the nVidia drivers could have a bug in them? I know, i know, but still, one day you guys are gonna have to wake up and get stereotypes out of your heads.

Perfectly possible. Either way, it's not a good thing having the program crash. In no way do I want to criticise Humus, I know how hard it is to make a program run on hardware you don't know. If he had a GF3 I guess he would be able to fix it or find a workaround. That's a reason why I think game developers should develop on several different hardware platforms.

 

[Reverend]

Doomtrooper, you are clinging to a simplistic view. You want "the best" and, really, so do I, but the reality of the situation is that we'll both never get it 99% of the time. My comments thus far is more of a question to Humus more than anything else - is he doing what he's doing more as a hobby or does he hope to impress someone enough to get a career with a company or does he hope to start out completely on his own? The first two is fine going by this engine of his but tell me if he'll be in it for the long run on his own if he keeps using this engine of his.

Let's quit with this OT diatribe. I know enough people that makes game/graphics engine that consistently tells me that "compatibility" is at the forefront of their design. Hell, read JC's plan properly... even he is making such "sacrifices". Many enthusiasts here will hate this, so do I, but facts are facts.

Of course, if Humus has two, three or four different cards to play with during his development of this engine and he plans to make money off this engine of his, this stupid discussion will not have appeared... he'd probably ensure it runs on a GF3 as well, perhaps not as pretty, but it should run and we'd all (Kyro2 owners, GF3 owners, Radeon owners, etc) be saying nice things to him. But that's just my assumption/guess about Humus.

I think you're completely missing my point, Doomtrooper. As for Humus, if he'll shoot me an email, I can put him in touch with some folks I know... I've (gladly) done such things before.

[edit]Just saw a comment you made about favoring one vendor over another... to all developers aiming to make a living, this is not the case. It's about favoring their *game*. About the only vendor (actually, cards, not vendor) most developers don't care about right now is 3dfx. One further point - I'm assuming you, Doomtrooper, don't have a website, and is actually paying for a video card... I can only imagine your reaction if you have, say, a Kyro2 or a GF2 or a GF3, and *only* those vid cards, in your machine right now, in the context of this thread. Heck, you may not even *have* a reaction, other than a post that would say something like "Bummer, crashed on my xxx machine".[/edit]
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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Reverend on 2002-02-15 03:25 ]</font>

 

[Humus]

On 2002-02-14 20:04, gking wrote:
Then I'd recommend you double-check to make sure that you aren't accidentally putting the driver in an undefined state (requesting MIP mapping and not uploading all MIP levels, for example).

Sometimes drivers handle this type of application bug gracefully, and other times the application just crashes.

Yeah, I know, I had such a bug some time ago with my winamp plugin Spectragon. It didn't work with non-square textures on nVidia cards. I sent a mail to nVidia and they found a bug in my code, for square textures I'd upload all mipmap levels down to 1x1, but with a non-square texture such as 512x256 I'd upload all mipmaps down to 2x1 and forget the last 1x1 mipmap, thus i got nothing but white. However, I don't think it's that this time since I've reused the code for my latest texture handling library, but it can of course be something similar. Anyway, I have sent nVidia an email this evening, I hope to get a reply soon and see if they can help me.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Humus on 2002-02-15 04:25 ]</font>

 

[Humus]

On 2002-02-14 20:59, Galilee wrote:
So the demo works on GF2 cards?

Nope, it currently requires 3d textures.

 

[Humus]

On 2002-02-14 20:59, Joe DeFuria wrote:
Maybe I can sum up all of the points being made in a way that doesn't offend anyone.

1) There's nothing wrong with using a Radeon 8500 as the primary development platform. In fact, it can be a good thing as Humus is likely pushing the envelope as far as technology goes, driving the industry forward.

2) If Humus' app is eventually inteded to be an actual game engine, then at some point "proper" support for GeForce3 class hardware should be implemented. "Proper" doesn't mean "dumbing" the engine down to the "common denominator". It does mean trying to implement all of the effects as the "Radeon" engine. It may or may not mean comprimises in quality or features of the "GeForce" engine need to be made for performance purposes, or for purposes of development time.

Hmmm....did that work? :smile:

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Joe DeFuria on 2002-02-14 21:10 ]</font>

You said it all :smile:
I do whatever I find reasonable in order to support a wide range of cards. Sometimes for small demos I post on rage3d I don't see any need to support other cards than for instance Radeon 8500, for this one which is a little larger project I find supporting mroe cards reasonable. For my winamp plugin I wrote some time and got posted at winamp.com which can be downloaded by just about anyone I implemented dot3 bumpmapping, but had a (ugly) fallback using nothing but core OpenGL calls.

This project is mostly a hobbyist thing, not intended to get into something commercial. Now if someone out there finds it looking nice and offers me a job I'd be happy of course, nappe1 is for instance trying to marry me to Bitboys . I'm going to have to do my master thesis this fall, so I need to get some contact with the industry anyway, so perhaps showing this demo may perhaps raise some companys interest. So if I'm going to use it for something like that I'd of course try to make it work on a GF3 too, and even if I'm not going to use it for something like that I'd try to make it work on a GF3, but it's kinda hard without a card.

Anyway, I'm seriously considering making a real game of it, but it's most likely getting freeware. I'm thinking about maybe resurrecting an old classic in 3d, like Bubble Bobble so similar :smile:

 

[Humus]

On 2002-02-15 02:36, Althornin wrote:
Keep it up, when i get one of those 128MB r8500's, i'll send you my gf3 to dev. with.

Really? That would be really cool :smile:

 

[Doomtrooper]

On 2002-02-15 03:16, Reverend wrote:
Doomtrooper, you are clinging to a simplistic view. You want "the best" and, really, so do I, but the reality of the situation is that we'll both never get it 99% of the time. My comments thus far is more of a question to Humus more than anything else - is he doing what he's doing more as a hobby or does he hope to impress someone enough to get a career with a company or does he hope to start out completely on his own? The first two is fine going by this engine of his but tell me if he'll be in it for the long run on his own if he keeps using this engine of his.

Let's quit with this OT diatribe. I know enough people that makes game/graphics engine that consistently tells me that "compatibility" is at the forefront of their design. Hell, read JC's plan properly... even he is making such "sacrifices". Many enthusiasts here will hate this, so do I, but facts are facts.

Of course, if Humus has two, three or four different cards to play with during his development of this engine and he plans to make money off this engine of his, this stupid discussion will not have appeared... he'd probably ensure it runs on a GF3 as well, perhaps not as pretty, but it should run and we'd all (Kyro2 owners, GF3 owners, Radeon owners, etc) be saying nice things to him. But that's just my assumption/guess about Humus.

I think you're completely missing my point, Doomtrooper. As for Humus, if he'll shoot me an email, I can put him in touch with some folks I know... I've (gladly) done such things before.

[edit]Just saw a comment you made about favoring one vendor over another... to all developers aiming to make a living, this is not the case. It's about favoring their *game*. About the only vendor (actually, cards, not vendor) most developers don't care about right now is 3dfx. One further point - I'm assuming you, Doomtrooper, don't have a website, and is actually paying for a video card... I can only imagine your reaction if you have, say, a Kyro2 or a GF2 or a GF3, and *only* those vid cards, in your machine right now, in the context of this thread. Heck, you may not even *have* a reaction, other than a post that would say something like "Bummer, crashed on my xxx machine".[/edit]
_________________
Reverend
Beyond3D
3DPulpit

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Reverend on 2002-02-15 03:25 ]</font>

I owned a computer store up until 2 months ago.

Yes I have a website but is for my old UT clan :smile:

Rev I respect you, your comments came over way to harsh IMO. I don't want to get into a dirt slinging contest with you, the progression of graphics needs to move forward. There is nobody that can Deny a game has forced a upgrade. I ran a Canopus Pure 3D on a Pentium 233 MMX when Quake 2 was released, although playable..bareley..so off I went skipping down to the local shop for a new VOODOO 2...yehaa..then Unreal was released..off I went skipping down to get another Voodoo 2...SLI..then Quake 3 came along out came the Voodoo 3500 and in went a GTS.

I see nothing stopping this same sort of progression, the reason why I upgraded..I

1) Either saw it running on a faster card and wanted the speed
2) There were features turned on in the other card that I couldn't.

Peace



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Doomtrooper on 2002-02-15 04:28 ]</font>

 

[Martillo1]

I'm not getting an 8500 just to see the demo so please Mr. Humus make it work on Gf3 please please please

BTW I returned an 8500 just to get a Ti200

(Martillo ducking for cover)

 

[tobbe]

Althorin is right.
Concerning Humus' app, its not about the app not supporting gf3 (that it, if they exist, uses extensions that aren't available on gf3 is another matter), it just happens to be a bug that makes it not work, be it in drivers or the app.

Concerning (the OT =) topic of hardware support for commercial apps, not supporting gf3 is objectively a bad decision. Giving *special* support for particular hardware, like nv2x or 8500 is a more complex decision, with many variables such as installed base, what benefits it gives to the particular app, development time, development platform(s) etc, so theres no simple answer.

 

[ben6]

Humus are you in the US? If you are I MIGHT be inclined to send a "package your way" . As to Geforce2/3 marketshare versus Radeon marketshare, I would point out that currently Nvidia made 500 million in revenue last quarter and the latest NPD Intellect research points to a 66% marketshare for their cards in that market segment and a 38% total marketshare (including intel integrated)

 

[Entropy]

Actually, Humus lives in the northernmost part of Sweden (&lt;- lies in Europe), polar circle latitude.

But Ben, it is just as easy to mail something to Sweden. You just omit the State code, and add "Sweden" below the adress.

Postage is slightly higher, I think I have a couple of dollars lying in a drawer still that I would happily contribute to this worthy cause. :smile: Humus makes utilities and demos available to anyone for free. If such can be encouraged without too large a sacrifice, I would. I drew the line at sending him my 8500 though, before he got his own.

Entropy

 

[Humus]

Yup, that's right, I'm in northern Sweden, living in a city called Luleå. My address is:

Emil Persson
Professorsvägen 27
97751 Luleå
Sweden

Feel free to send as many cards/money/beautyful women as you like
(Guess I'll be receiving mailbombs from angry GF3 owners now ... )

 

[pascal]

...beautyful women...

Then you will not have time to develop anymore

 

[Tompa]

Hey Pascal....whattabout some of Your "hot" Brazilian Beauty Queens to warm Humus up abit...it is almost always darn cold where he lives



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Tompa on 2002-02-15 15:50 ]</font>

 

[Bjorn]

"it is almost always darn cold where he lives"

Yep, and there's polar bears running around in the streets also :smile:

 

[pascal]

Ok, for the Sweden folks who like to play soccer, click on the girls below

http://www.cidadeinternet.com.br/br/portales/esportes/fanaticas/home/

 

[Tompa]

On 2002-02-15 16:10, pascal wrote:
Ok, for the Sweden folks who like to play soccer, click on the girls below

http://www.cidadeinternet.com.br/br/portales/esportes/fanaticas/home/

They will do fine.....