To the creators of EDGE

[DaniJ]

Sprite based games look like shit rendered in openGL, unless for visual consistancy you also have 3d models for monsters/items/decorations.

To get pixelated sprites - its just a simple matter of changing an option in most gl ports.

For example here is a Comparison shot showing some of the different drawing options in Doomsday...

[Chrono_T]

Ya know, there is graphical options in edge if someone doesn't like a certain graphical feature. :\

[TheDarkArchon]

DaniJ said:

For example here is a Comparison shot showing some of the different drawing options in Doomsday...

Question: What is hq2x?

[Graf Zahl]

It's a graphics scaling algorithm that produces nice results for comic graphics.

For something like Doom the results are more questionable though. It eats a lot of resources for minimum (at most) improvement of quality.

ZDoomGL also offers it (along with HQ3X and HQ4X)

[TheDarkArchon]

The performance cost shows in DaniJ's shots (A ~40 FPS hit). But so does the quality: The imp in paticular looks sharper than the default settings.

[Graf Zahl]

TheDarkArchon said:

The performance cost shows in DaniJ's shots (A ~40 FPS hit). But so does the quality: The imp in paticular looks sharper than the default settings.

Sharper doesn't mean better. As compensation for the sharpness you get really ugly artifacts. I only tried this in ZDoomGL so far but I didn't like the results. The Cyberdemon in particular was suffering from them.

[TheDarkArchon]

I can't see the ugly artifacts in the shots DaniJ posted. The revenants don't look any different, OTOH.

[Joe]

I've been having a rather annoying problem with edge lately, i wonder if you could shed some light on it. Whenever i use edge (with iwads on their own and any mod i try and even on different resolutions and bit depths) it crashes for seemingly no reason at seemingly random times. Even more annoyingly, it causes my whole system to freeze up so i have to switch off by the plug and whatever (this has caused a few problems and killed zonealarm for a while). The problem persisted even through a change in video card drivers (i was using the latest nvidia but am now using omega drivers but to no avail). I have no idea why this happens and i can't remember it happening with any other games. This is with edge RC 2 and 3 definitely, but i can't be sure about previous ones.

My system (if that helps any, heh):
AMD Athlon XP 2100 (1.8ghz)
Nvidia Geforce FX 5500
1 gig of no-name ram
Windows 2000 SP4

Edit : Forgot edge version.

[TheDarkArchon]

I get that as well, albeit not too often and only with RC #3.

System Specs.

AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.2 Ghz
GeForce 2 MX, 64 Mb
256 Mb RAM
Win XP SP 2

[Lobo]

I too have had quite a few problems running the last couple of EDGE 1.29 RCs(random crashes, screen res problems etc.), but since I seemed to be alone in this the rest of the team where starting to think it might just be something wrong on my PC: if more people report that they are having problems then it will help proove that I'm not (completely) nuts :)

As usual I would urge anyone who has a problem running EDGE to please report it to us (at the EDGE site preferably, or if not you can email me directly).

The DarkArchon:
I got your debug logs when you were having trouble with RC2 but I thought that installing the latest drivers for your graphics card sorted the problem?

Joe:
Feel like a scratched CD here :) but copy and paste time....

"As usual we're very interested in hearing about any bugs you come across (especially if it crashes on exiting).

If you do get any bugs we would be greatful if you could send us:"

1. dxdiag.txt
-----------
this is generated by going to Start->Run and typing "dxdiag". When the screen finishes loading then hit that "save information" button and save the dxdiag.txt file somewhere.

2. edge.log
------------
In the directory where you have unzipped EDGE you will have an "edge.log": send us that too.

3. enhanced edge.log (optional)
---------------------
If you're up for it, you could also call EDGE using the command "-DEBUGFILE C:\RC3Debug.txt" and then send us the file. This has more info than the normal EDGE-LOG file, and in your case it will be more useful to us.

4. description of bug
-----------------------
with as much detail as possible about how to cause it, what exactly happens etc.


We'd be really grateful if you could take a few minutes to send us this info. My email is firstgen-AT-gmail.com (replacing "-AT-" with "@")

[TheDarkArchon]

Lobo: RC #2 ran fine.

[DaniJ]

The performance cost shows in DaniJ's shots (A ~40 FPS hit). But so does the quality: The imp in paticular looks sharper than the default settings.

I knew I should have disabled the FPS counter...

Pay ZERO attention to the FPS counter, the values shown do NOT correlate to FPS as I took those shots using a development version of Doomsday. In the current version I have been using the counter to show something completely different.

Besides, it makes no logical sense for any of those different modes to affect the FPS in any dramatic way (at a guess ~1.2FPS at most) (even hq2x doesn't affect the FPS as the images are resampled once only, when first cached).

What artifacts?
Doomsday uses a version of hq2x that Skyjake has customised so maybe it works better than ZdoomGL's? I don't know as I've never tested that in ZdoomGL.

[Graf Zahl]

DaniJ said:

What artifacts?

In several spots the algorithm didn't properly smooth the graphics and just preserved the original blockiness - and due to the reduced effect of the texture filtering those really stood out.

[Joe]

Lobo : Sent logs and stuff. Edge 1.28b works fine, by the way.

[Lobo]

Thanks Joe: I've sent you an email and I'll forward your data on to the rest of the team.

TheDarkArchon: glad to hear that.

[andrewj]

@Joe: please try running EDGE with the sound disabled, and see if it still crashes. You do that by opening a console window and typing:

C:\EDGELOC\gledge32.exe -nosound

(replacing EDGELOCwith the actual folder that EDGE is in).

[Joe]

Ajapted said:

@Joe: please try running EDGE with the sound disabled, and see if it still crashes. You do that by opening a console window and typing:

C:\EDGELOC\gledge32.exe -nosound

(replacing EDGELOCwith the actual folder that EDGE is in).

Hmm, tried even with -nosound and it still bombed. Any ideas?

[andrewj]

Theoretically that would rule out a sound problem, but I'm not sure our code handles -nosound properly, so I can't rule it out. We (Darkknight in particular) are still working on finding the problem.