A fairly annoying rendering bug...

[BZDraconian]

Is there any way to fix this? This bug has been present in versions 1.2 and 1.3, and to my knowledge, since the beginning of time.



Let me show you...


http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c47/JoeCapricorn/renderingbug.jpg

This same bug also exists when looking up at a tree and there is water above.

See the top of the tree? It doesn't seem to want to render correctly. Is there any way to fix this?

The background sky is actually a field generating object, if there is any way to keep that object transparent, but also allow the trees to render correctly, I'd like to know it.

[General BlackDragon]

what graphics card do you have?

[Steeveeo]

Is there any way to fix this? This bug has been present in versions 1.2 and 1.3, and to my knowledge, since the beginning of time.



Let me show you...


http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c47/JoeCapricorn/renderingbug.jpg

This same bug also exists when looking up at a tree and there is water above.

See the top of the tree? It doesn't seem to want to render correctly. Is there any way to fix this?

The background sky is actually a field generating object, if there is any way to keep that object transparent, but also allow the trees to render correctly, I'd like to know it.

BZ2 is crap when it comes to alpha transparency.

[OvermindDL1]

BZ2 does not handle transparencies correctly.  A normal renderer does back-to-front on opaque things and front-to-back on transparent things, BZ2 seems to do everything pretty random...

[Ego - Nikolas]

Time for hardware transform and lightning? 

[OvermindDL1]

Would still have that issue if the order in which things are drawn are still the same.

[bigbadbogie]

i have grown used to seeing that bug everywhere - it dont really matter to me much anymore - but since it is so important to you:

try editing the texture of the tree and make it a .PNG format - might help a bit

[Red Devil]

Try tweaking the darkPlants settings in your render.cfg file.  They get reset every time you do a reinstall.

Here's what I use:


[Render]
// Stencil shadows create very detailed shadows at run time.  Only
// some video cards support stencil buffers, and it does come with
// some performance costs.  Change the 1 to a 0 in order to disable
// stencil buffers (overrides menu selection)
Stencil       = 1
// Change the 1 to a 0 in order to disable stencil shadows (overrides
// menu selection)
StencilShadow = 0

// Controls use of DXT (compressed) textures. If this is -1 (default),
// BZ2 takes its best guess as to whether your hardware supports DXT.
// (DXT textures were part of the DirectX spec *before* BZ2 was
// released in December 1999, so if your hardware doesn't support it,
// please try and get a video card made this century).
// If this setting is 0, or the autodetermine thinks your system can't
// handle it, BZ2 will uncompress any DXT textures on load. If this is
// 1, both DXT and uncompressed textures are fair game.
UseDXT = -1

// SIS630 Compatability mode. Remove the semicolon to enable
// it. Setting this to 1 when you don't have a SIS630 may be
// problematic. You can also place "/sis630compat" on the commandline
// (without quotes) to achieve the same effect. This disables a check
// that the zbuffer pixel depth is <= the framebuffer pixel depth,
// something that's true on virtually all other cards. If you get a
// "Can't start hardware accelerated DirectX 8" message on startup,
// try removing the semicolon.
;SIS630Compatability = 1

// The game uses TripleBuffer in order to get the highest possible
// frame rate on most graphics cards. Changing the 1 to a 0 will force
// a double buffer. Double buffer will reduce delay between input &
// show-on-screen, which may help reduce lag in the controls. You may
// also want to disable tripple buffer if you do not have enough video
// memory left for textures. Set TripleBuffer to zero if you have less
// than 8mb of video memory, if your cursor lags too much, or you have
// Voodoo1/Rush By default, TripleBuffer is disabled (set to 0) on all
// 3dfx cards
TripleBuffer  = 1

// Enable bump mapping (Matrox G400)
Bumps = 1

// Extra check to force all vertices into screen size range (0-639 &
// 0-479) Set to 0 to make to code run faster
VtxCheck = 1

// Disable gamma control (brightness). Adjusting this setting may
// crash some cards that do not support gamma correction.  If your
// card does not support gamma, look in the settings for your graphics
// card to see if you can find an option there.
;Gamma = 0

// Disable half-texel correction (correction may blur text on some
// boards) this is on by default, disabled for ATI, S3-S540, Voodoo1,
// S3-S540 (This option may be different depending on depending on
// your drivers.)  Experiment until text is not blury.
;HalfTexel = 0

// This will automatically darken the ground under the trees
// Disable this if you want to edit and SAVE terrain!!!!!!!
// [bz2edit.exe always reads this value as 0]
darkPlants = 0

// Disable bilinear-filter on ground sprites. E.g. S3-s540 has a bug
// in blend mode, which makes the square pointer on the ground show
// extra pixels past the edge
FilterSprites=1

// If the card is not capable of ALPHA BLENDING and SPECULAR light on
// same vertex, then this flag should be set to 0 (used only on
// sky-dome lights at the bottom edge of the dome)
AlphaSpecular = 1

// Disable PIII new instruction use.  Use this if using Win95 on
// Pentium III.  Don't set it to 1 unless you know what you know what
// you are doing;
;xmm = 0

// Resolution of shell in pixels. Note: this MUST be a mode your
// graphics card and monitor can handle, or it probably won't start
// up. If you change this, be prepared to change all the shell config
// files.
;ShellWidth = 640 (DEFAULT)
;ShellHeight = 480 (DEFAULT)
// Color depth (bits per pixel) of shell. Possible options are:
//  -1   : Same depth as selected game resolution (DEFAULT)
//  16   : Always 16 bit
//  32   : Always 32 bit (assuming your graphics card supports that)
;ShellDepth = -1

[mrtwosheds]

That particular tree is a bit tricky, no matter how you look at it, you see 2 transparent frames overlaid on each other, bz2 does not like that. I find the way they dissolve into the distance fog is ugly too.