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Experimental Build

Started by Ultraken, November 16, 2009, 12:44:40 AM

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Ultraken

It's been a while since I last visited Battlezone Universe, and I mostly stayed in the BZ2 unofficial 1.3 patch forum when I was here.

Anyway, I have an experimental build of BZ1 with some bug fixes that I'd like people to test.  I switched over to Visual C++ 2008 and the latest DirectX SDK which required some major code changes, so I wouldn't be surprised if I broke something.  There were some truly scary things in there that VS 5.0 let slide...

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to fix the rendering problems in Vista and 7.  I suspect that I may have to rebuild the rendering system to fix those since D3D Execute Buffers don't seem well-supported these days.  I'm not exactly looking forwards to doing that...

I have no idea if it even works properly since it crashes on startup for me in Windows 7.

Grab it here if you're feeling brave.

Mirror

(Note: this is just a replacement bzone.exe, a sort of proto-patch I should have started years ago.)

Things to test: stability in the single-player campaign, visual quality, performance on older computers, compatibility with various operatings systems.

Update: I forgot to mention is that it needs the Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package if you don't have Visual C++ 2008 installed already.

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

TheJamsh



BZII Expansion Pack Development Leader. Coming Soon.

AHadley


General BlackDragon

#3
I love you ken.

At 640X480, the entire screen very rapidly flickers, like on an acid trip. or the pulterguist.

I have an NVIDIA Geforce 7600 GT

Also i had to set halftexel=1  in render.cfg.

Here's something I don't think i can fix in options though...



Moon dust is green and looks like it's tiled.

Also, i got a crash when i changed resolutions from 1024X768 to 640X480 and tried to return to game.

Also, when i blew up the test turrets in the training mission, the yellow flashes of the explosion didn't play. It was only the black smoke. I have Large Assets turned on. also the particle burst when you blow up a powerup, seemed to almost replay just before it dissapeared. Maybe look into how the renders are displayed to see if they tile or repeat when they're not supposed to.



*****General BlackDragon*****

Red Devil

What box???

Ultraken

Quote from: General BlackDragon on November 16, 2009, 10:15:36 AM
I love you ken.
Don't love me just yet since there's a long, long way to go before this turns into anything meaningful.   :-D

Many of the problems seem to originate from D3D, since modern drivers don't seem to test for things like this.

TheJamsh

Quote from: Mr. Spock on November 16, 2009, 11:15:18 AM
TJ, AH and RD, your posts were very helpful. Like always.  :roll:
As will my bans if you get cheeky again.

Back OT, i would try this out if i actually HAD BZ1. Anyone know any places it can be bought, when i finally get my job sorted i might have a few quid to spare.


BZII Expansion Pack Development Leader. Coming Soon.

AHadley

Quote from: Mr. Spock on November 16, 2009, 12:11:59 PM
TJ, grow up. I couldn't care less about your silly powers here. I will be nice to you only in respect to Ultraken.

Cool off, or I might get triggerhappy. I happen to have noticed you have made less useful posts in the past. You are also speaking down to some pretty important and high-flying people around here (GBD, TJ and RD more than myself).

And this is nothing to do with lack of respect to Ultraken. The man is a genius, you're just being cheeky.


Ultraken,

This really does look beautiful. BZ1 was riddled with problems when this rig was running XP, but since so many things now run much better I'm itching to give BZ1 a proper try.

Ultraken

Oh, I forgot to mention that it needs the Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package.  I'll update the first message with that link.

Ultraken

#9
Rumors of my awesomeness are greatly exaggerated... :-D

Anyway, I can't claim full credit for this build.  The big thing was porting the BZ v1.3 code I pulled from BZ2's source repository to VC++ 2008, which was a massive undertaking all by itself.  This revealed some scary problems in the shell (how did that ever work?) and a bunch of STL iterator problems.  I also fixed the half-alliance exploit (the result of a lot of AI and interface code asking "does this object think I'm a friend/enemy?" instead of "do I think this object is a friend/enemy?").  The high framerate and east/west fix were Tug's work (though I uncapped the framerate), and there's a smattering of fixes from Dx too (sliding on hills in particular).

bigbadbogie

Rumours of your godliness are certainly NOT exaggerated!!

I'll play through BZ today and see what I can find...
Others would merely say it was good humour.


My BZ2 mods:

QF2: Essence to a Thief - Development is underway.

Fleshstorm 2: The Harvest - Released on the 6th of November 2009. Got to www.bz2md.com for details.

QF Mod - My first mod, finished over a year ago. It can be found on BZ2MD.com

ZachTank

Ken, I love you.
Mac OS X Leopard(latest)
4 GB RAM
Nvidia 9400M
Intel core 2 duo P8600@ 2.40 GHZ

No problems at all.

I was going to be named ZachGrizzly but that sounded stupid.

Mr. Spock

#12
Quote from: Ultraken on November 16, 2009, 01:04:20 PM
Oh, I forgot to mention that it needs the Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package.  I'll update the first message with that link.

After installing Visual C++ I get the same DEP issue on both Vista and 7. Is there a way to force DEP off for bzone.exe? On this new exe is on by default and I can't turn it off, like I would normally do.

Ultraken

Not sure about the DEP thing.  If it's tripping the DEP, then somethings seriously amiss.

As for importance, I consider my position here to be something like a Guest of Honor at a convention.  Regardless of everyone's opinion, I'm still a guest here.   :-D

Red Devil

Noticed this msg in the log:

Couldn't find file "nk_1sun1.map"
What box???