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Before people get too excited, I'm not much of a graphics programmer so the new renderer would be functionally equivalent to the old one.  The point of upgrading to DX9 is that it's well-tested and widely-supported.  Even the weakest of weaksauce integrated graphics processors can handle it these days.  

The reason I asked about this is the software renderer imposes a lot of constraints that are very difficult to work around.  Cutting it out would let me discard all the clipping, transformation, and lighting code, making my life a lot easier.

Wow, those BZ2 prices are totally unreasonable... 

I'm looking at several approaches to fixing the hardware rendering, and wanted to know if losing support for software rendering would be acceptable.  The answer to that question will decide how I go about this.

You can also security properties on the BZ folder to allow write access.  Vista and 7 set folders outside the user's home directory to read-only by default, which stymies applications that assume they can write to their install folder.

Definitely a good start!

I've gotten a report of markedly lower framerate on some machines, and I'm not sure why.  I'd need to do some profiling, but that's hard to do remotely. 

I changed the mouse pointer thing (for now) because I was tired of having to set my cursors back all the time.   

I'm baffled by some of the Windows 7 malfunctions, but that's life I guess.

And thanks for the b-day wishes everyone.  36 successful orbits around the sun!   

Good point.  The new executable is just a drop-in substitute and requires a fully-patched BZ install.  I probably should have mentioned that...

Wow, that's a big difference...

I see.  What do you get with your normal executable?

The fps cap is something i asked tug for in order to prevent another bug that occured in online play.  We decided on 100 to prevent tearing and not waste the cpu processing frames you would never see.  Slow pc's with highly fluctuating frame rates cause lag online.

Well, I just learned something...

I figured it was there for a reason, but I didn't know what.  I'll put it back, then.

The current build is fluctuating on colli from 48 to a bit over 100fps on my 2.4Ghz pc.

That's using the software renderer, I presume.

I tried out the new EXE on Windows XP SP2 and Nvidia video card with updated video drivers. I'll try it with Vista64 and 8800GTX video card next.

Everything seemed work fine, no issues so far, tried both SP and MP. I expect to have more issues with Vista64 though.

Good to know. 

You mentioned uncapping the framerate, mine is still running right at 60fps. Vsync?

Yes.  My fix was based on one Tug had done, but I just catch the zero time step case instead of restricting the frame rate to 100.  If unusually high frame rates introduce simulation or networking problems, I may need to reintroduce the cap.  BZ1 doesn't separate simulation from rendering the way BZ2 does.

For what it's worth, I can't get it to run on Windows 7 either.  It crashes immediately before even starting.  The similar "internal" build runs fine, and I can't tell what's different.  It seems to have something to do with the application compatibility layer.

Sorry to have to do this to you of all people Ken, but Mr Spock has been perma-banned for re-offending.

No need to apologize to me.  I had noticed that he skirted the line almost constantly, so I guess he crossed it once too many times...

I'm friends with a lot of Pandemic people on Facebook, and Pandemic's closure is unfortunately all too true.