New Panzer video

I forgot to put this on youtube but, but oh well. What's so great about it? This video actually shows solid 3D ingame gfx of Panzer. The fullscreen quad still covers up the 3D scene from time to time, but at least you can see what's going on for a while. What's the difference between this build and other build featured in the old video? This video was taken in Release mode [from visual studio] rather than Debug. It turns out that Release builds are more stable and less buggy when running Panzer Dragoon ORTA and Robotech: Battlecry. Both games had similar problems. Speed is still an issue, and me and Defiance have tracked it down to the PushBuffer emulation (IDirect3DPushBuffer8, Xbox only). The problem is that it uses a combination of Indexed Geometry and Quad Lists (D3DPT_QUADLIST, Xbox only) and that appears not to have been perfected in push buffers.

Robotech: Battlecry, however, did not use push buffers but did use the same types of primitives using indexed geometry. Defiance fixed that (for the most part). Okay, getting slightly off-topic, but the two games are related though. I'll try to make a video of that soon. Fraps can't record it properly, so I'm using another tool to do so.

So while it's not really news, it's a slight improvement that I want you all to be aware of.

Shogun.

Taking a break for a while.

Ever since I started working on Panzer, it's been taking a lot of my energy. Right now, I'm completely burned out from working on Cxbx. We all get this way. Don't worry, I'll be back. Just remember, we all have lives outside of the scene. I feel good that I've gotten this far, but sometimes you just have to take a step back and get back to other things for a while because the excitement is just killing me (literally, in one way or another).

Also, it may not be to long until Caustik is back in action. I won't say much at this point, but I think it's going to happen rather soon.

Before I go, I just wanted to share something with you all (just in case you haven't seen it). I made a youtube video of Panzer Dragoon ORTA ingame if you're interested in seeing it right now. So far, only the NTSC version is compatible, PAL doesn't work yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i6fmVuFgvA

When I come back, I'll try to fix a few more issues with Panzer and get back to work on a few other games I started working on, like Robotech: Battlecry and Unreal Championship, okay?

Shogun.

The lastest on Shogun's branch.

Well, I'm really glad that I've managed to make it this far. I don't mean to sound... you know, but when I first saw the first screens of Panzer, I never dreamed that I would someday carry on sir Caustik's work and get it ingame, haha. Sometimes I miss being a noob! (Yes, that's right... "noob") :D

Anyway, here's the latest. I've managed to increase the stabilitiy of Panzer Dragoon ORTA for the most part except for a few but rare random crashes related to threads (not while in game luckily). So far, the framerates aren't very fast.

I think I have an idea about the overlapping quad covering the 3D scene. My guess is that it's really supposed to be transparent (Alpha Blended) to simulate fading in/out for 3D scenes. This reminds me of the time when I was working on Smashing Drive. The transparency overlay quad didn't work on my WinXP machine, but worked fine on my notebook PC running Vista. The problem may be related, but that can't be verified now because I don't have my WinXP desktop here in Washington (State), it's at my cousin's house still in Indiana.

I've added the Direct3D API IDirect3DDevice8::SetStipple (Xbox extension) and a missing texture state again (D3DTOP_BLENDFACTORALPHA, 15). So far, that appears to be the end of any missing Direct3D function calls. That's a big relief!

The main thing stopping our progress now is this missing low level DirectSound Buffer call to either CDirectSoundBuffer::Pause (as stated in my last update) or CDirectSoundBuffer::GetStatus because when looking at the dissassembly of them both, they look the same! I had the same problem with Robotech: Battlecry (XDK 4721), so fixing one will fix the other. Initially I was having trouble adding it because when Cxbx would locate my OOVPA for it, it would crash. This had me scratching my head for quite some time now. I discovered a few minutes ago that when I moved the XREF IDs higher up in the list, then they work fine. That's really strange, and I hope it doesn't cause any future problems because if it does, then we can forget about Metal Gear Solid 2 (and no I don't care about the fact there's a PC port, I still want to see it emulated)!

Before I conclude this blog update, I just want to address one more thing. This question/suggestion has come up on more than one occasion for a long time now (in fact, someone asked me about this today!)... can Cxbx use a more up-to-date API such as OpenGL or at least Direct3D9? If so, when? Good question. Right now, an OpenGL 2.1 implementation is looking much better. Direct3D9 would also be a major improvement. I'll show you the pros and cons of both.

1. Direct3D9
Good:

• Easiest to debug. More debugging tools (i.e. NVIDIA's PerfHUD).
• Requires less code wrapping/hacking.
• Easier to manage.

Bad:

• Still lacks many features native to NVIDIA's hardware.
• Less control over some settings (i.e. some games get CreateDevice failures when VSync is enabled).
• Not portable.

2. OpenGL
Good:

• Closer to the hardware we're emulating. Some Xbox Direct3D features are only exposed via OpenGL.
• VSync can be enabled/disabled without problems.
• Better texture support for those unusual formats (IIRC).
• Locking/updating resources are much faster.

Bad:

• Harder to manage (i.e. lots of extensions to deal with).
  
• Lots of data type converting can get annoying (i.e. DWORD dwARGB -> float4 fRGBA).
• No native support for YUV surfaces. Will have to convert YUV -> RGB manually which may increase overhead.

So far, OpenGL is looking better now. But then again, we can always use Wine's Direct3D -> OpenGL implementation as suggested by Caustik and Nisse (a glass of wine sounds pretty good right about now!), and add Xbox specific extensions ourselves.

That's what's happening with Cxbx today. Until next time.

Shogun.

More Panzer Dragoon ORTA stuff...

Yup, I'm still at it. This thing is getting way too addictive IMO, just can't stop working on Cxbx, especially when making significant progress such as this. Just a few minor additions and discoveries. Here's the latest... Rewrote my implementation of IDirect3DDevice8_GetTexture2@4. Since it kept causing a crash in there and IDirect3DResource8_Release, I had to write a dirty (and yet sloppy) hack to fix it. What I did:

• Get a copy of the currently active texture (without allocating any memory).
• Return the copy without increasing the reference count.
• Added a special flag in the X_D3DResource::Data field to represent that this texture is a clone.
• When IDirect3DResource8_Release is called, don't release the texture if it's a clone.

The code is really ugly, but at least it works (for now) without leaking memory like crazy.

Now that I've taken a closer look, it looks as if that 3D does work! The textures look buggy when viewing Pandora's Box. You can't see it in game because there's a black quad covering the entire scene. The above fix allows you to stay in game a little longer, but there's yet another missing Direct3D API. This time, I have no leads on what it is.

One last issue. Microsoft must have had Cxbx in mind when they released XDK 4721. That stupid and totally useless piece of crap IDirectSoundBuffer8_Pause function is giving me trouble (it's another problem on Robotech: BattleCry). I'll need a break to my brain can rest after putting so much energy into this... good night.

Shogun.