DescentBB

First of all, we from the DXX-Rebirth team wish all of you a merry Christmas and a Happy new year!

As a special gift we finally have v0.55 ready.
The most important changes are:

* Reworked Physics acting on fixed values to ensure similar collisions on various FPS-settings including more accurate Collision detections for non-Player objects as well.
* Introducing fixed Timesteps to compensate FPS-dependent game element executions.
* Improved several AI functions and removed Hacks to make bot moving a lot smoother and less error prone (fixing bot clusters for example).
* Improved dynamic lighting - smoother and more accurate.
* Seperated Sensitivity for horizontal and vertical movements.
* Removed some error checks in demo code so it better deals with mutated demos (like certain speedruns).
* Fixed bugs in IPX sockets and UDP Handshaking.
* Support for up to 8 Joysticks at the same time.
* Pre-defined Resolutions now also select correct aspect ratio automatically.
* Fonts will now also size in all resolutions instead of only scaling by 2x, 3x, 4x, etc. To make them look nicer in such cases, they will also use smooth if Texture Filtering is enabled.
* All HUD elements and fonts will now always keep their proportions in Widescreen resolutions (except the Cockpit itself for sure).
* Fixed the UNICODE text reading.
* Improved OpenGL Sprite rendering for clipping.
* Cleaned up Help screens and added them to Controls menu as well.
* Added Multi Message-command to blow up the reactor.
* More bug fixes and code improvements.

Have fun.

Additionally with this release I would like to present you Cubes Unlimited.
It is an area where I will present awesome levels or levelsets. It's not intended to be a complete database but more a collection of outstanding work of the Descent community.
If you have made an awesome level or levelset, contact me!
My first entry is \"The Enemy Within\" - a great Descent 2 levelset by the Team around DarkFlameWolf with more levels than the original D2: CounterStrike, new bots, new textures, new music, inspired and well thought level design and much more.
Check it out!

See http://www.dxx-rebirth.com for Downloads and more!

Wow!

Thanks Zico (and crew)and Merry Christmas!

zico wrote: * Support for up to 8 Joysticks at the same time.

O.o

Anyway, sounds interesting, I will let those I know who use Rebirth know of this...

Will the choppy video on integrated chipsets at resolutions higher than 640x480 problem be addressed in the future?

You know, I'm not sure whether that's a problem with Descent, or a problem with the chipsets. They are pretty bad.

I am not sure if it's related to the chipsets itself or more the drivers. However it's not in my hand. I strictly use general OpenGL code without any NVidia or ATI specific hacks or instructions.
I'd say - grab 10 bucks and buy a GeForce 3 or something like that. This should run DXX like butter.
Otherwise give me 10 bucks so I can BUY such an equipment so I can TRY to hack DXX so it runs much faster or donate even more so I do not have to go to work and I can work and optimize 24/7.

Sorry it's just a Hobby-project.

shaktazuki wrote:Will the choppy video on integrated chipsets at resolutions higher than 640x480 problem be addressed in the future?

Looking at the results there were some big changes in .54 compared to previous versions (more hardware rendering). Which versions run 'choppy'?

All of them. It appears particularly badly when a door opens or closes in view, and when more than one enemy is on screen. If you use dxxx and view any of the demos on my system, it stutters noticeably - and it's not framerate. The same effect is noticed during gameplay.

I am using the latest drivers. I don't notice this effect in commercial games, such as Doom 3, or Arx Fatalis. Is there perhaps some legacy code still involved with timing and such?

sounds more like your running Intel Video chipset with intel hotkeys active. drill down into your gfx card adv settings and disable them on your laptop

BUBBALOU wrote:sounds more like your running Intel Video chipset with intel hotkeys active. drill down into your gfx card adv settings and disable them on your laptop

ATI Radeon X1200 series. I went ahead and disabled hotkeys according to your directions but no change observed.

my game runs smooth as glass. The demo is a bit stuttery, but livable by a long ways. I played D1 (on line) at 30 fps and i play COD 4 at 20 fps a lot of the times. (the games normally have 50 or so players in them).
Sounds like your system Shakt.

shaktazuki wrote:All of them. It appears particularly badly when a door opens or closes in view, and when more than one enemy is on screen. If you use dxxx and view any of the demos on my system, it stutters noticeably - and it's not framerate. The same effect is noticed during gameplay.

I am using the latest drivers. I don't notice this effect in commercial games, such as Doom 3, or Arx Fatalis. Is there perhaps some legacy code still involved with timing and such?

Demos always *shutter* a little bit. The interpolation for demos itself is never really perfect. 0.54 also introduced new code to record in way lower FPS rates so the demos shutter a bit but will be WAY smaller in the end.

For gaming itself you need to look if you games use DirectX or OpenGL. DXX uses OpenGL while most Windows games normally will use DirectX. So most likely the OpenGL capabilities of your card/driver just are not enough.

Also I'd suggest to always look at the FPS rates itself. If the FPS are high (not in demos) but the game still does not run smooth, I'd recommend to use VSync. If FPS != Monitor Refresh --> choppy animation - is the case in EVERY game.

I had to revert back to 0.53, since upon using the cheat BUGGIN (Super-Speed), it`s impossible to rotate. It does go forward/backwards correctly, but rotating is completely messed up - i.e. it`s 100 times faster than it should be.

And since the regular descent gameplay is so slow, I`m already used to playing it on the super speed, so couldn`t check any of the new features, but I hope that you can fix it with one of later releases.


Still, it`s totally awesome how you can click the icon on the desktop and be playing the first level under 5 seconds. That`s just unbelievable compared to some other modifications

Well.. actually I was not so... motivated to fix those cheats, but if that's all that keeps you from playing I'll fix it...
It's good you report it, I was not aware of this problem.

I'm having problems with ATI's latest catalyst and drivers. If I enable antialiasing in Rebirth or in the drivers my framerates plummet. Didnt happen until I installed the latest set. This happens in D1 ,D2 and D3. Seems like ATI's facked up again =/

Yeah, that`s the fun of playing with some dead legacy code. You broke 2 additional things by fixing one thing

Actually, it`s my son who likes to watch me play with the super speed cheat.
Other than that, I have absolutely no problem with 0.53, so you don`t have to rush out to do a new build. Just keep it in mind when you`ll be playing with that part of code in future