P96 3.0.0 (and later) news and support

[hexaae]

Installed new P96 and found many problems with mouse pointer sprite and crashes with WB games like Colonization AGA.
Rolled back to previous version and everything runs fine. Can someone please test Colonization AGA (crash/freeze at launch) or open the Manual tool of the game "The Final Odyssey" (invisible pointer) before I open a ticket issue at icomp?

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

And here we go, thanks for waiting:

iComp released today the 3.2.1 "hotfix" of the 3.2.0 release, which fixes the compatibility issue with older intuition versions that has been reported here.

There are a couple of other very minor changes:
- In some cases, when blitting between non-compatible aperatures, the aperture-switch
can be avoided because the source, as viewed through the aperture of the destination,
is identical to the destination format.
- Picasso96Mode now also auto-generates double-scanned modes for each regular VESA
mode which then generate the classical Amiga Hires 1:2 aspect ratio.
- In case a mode is changed with the right-hand side gadgets of Picasso96Mode, the
mode information in the mode window above is now updated immediately and not only
after the mode changes have been accepted. This is much less confusing.
- If in case of a mode change the maximum pixel frequency is exceeded, Picasso96Mode
forgot to update the pixel frequency slider to the maximum possible pixel frequency.
Now the proper information is reprinted.
- The bitmap allocation function did not allow intuition v40 (Os 3.9 or below) to
allocate native bitmaps anymore. This has been fixed. Allocation of RTG bitmaps
through intuition continued to work. There was no problem with Os 3.1.4 or above.
- The maximum screen width of the S3 trio and S3 virge chip drivers were limited to
4096 bytes, even though the current algorithm of deriving the value of the row-
scan register would allow up to 8184 bytes per row. Thus, the maximum row width was
extended, enabling some additional screen modes such as 1024x768 32-bit BGRA.

I'll probably explain more of that in another post, along with the still missing improvements of the 3.2.0 release (there are really plenty).

Ooops missed this. Re-downloaded and it actually fixed all of the above mentioned issues.

[Solskogen]

Any chance to have both lha and adf as download options?

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Solskogen

Any chance to have both lha and adf as download options?

You'd better check with Jens in the iComp forum. I am delivering an lha to him, simply because this is what the build system generates.

[hexaae]

Hi Thomas,
instability issues vs PPaint 7.1+ (I've rolled back testing even 6.4... but I use 7.3c) when importing Clipboard and PPaint has to import+dither a clip obtained through Multiview Copy/Mark function... I've opened a thread on iComp forum. Might be just a PPaint issue handling 24+bit clips anyway...

[Solskogen]

Perhaps I should post this in a separate thread, but I'll try here first.
On amiberry (and perhaps WinUAE, I haven't tried) using 3.2.1 roms together with P96, I cannot use higher resolutions. Only PAL resolutions shows up in Screen Mode.
I'm not having issues with 3.2 roms, only 3.2.1. Not sure if this is a bug in the 3.2.1 roms, P96 or amiberry.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by hexaae

Hi Thomas,
instability issues vs PPaint 7.1+ (I've rolled back testing even 6.4... but I use 7.3c) when importing Clipboard and PPaint has to import+dither a clip obtained through Multiview Copy/Mark function... I've opened a thread on iComp forum. Might be just a PPaint issue handling 24+bit clips anyway...

Unfortunately, I can only offer PPaint 7.1c, as Jens refuses to buy the 7.3 version. The "import from clipboard" (paste, essentially) function in PPaint is broken, unrelated to PP96, I have seen this as well. The problem is that the low-level functions apparently expect something like a file name, which of course is not present. This has to go through the PPaint authors.



The "import and dither", I afraid, I do not yet understand well enough from your report. Could you please provide a more detailed bug report.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Solskogen

Perhaps I should post this in a separate thread, but I'll try here first.
On amiberry (and perhaps WinUAE, I haven't tried) using 3.2.1 roms together with P96, I cannot use higher resolutions. Only PAL resolutions shows up in Screen Mode.
I'm not having issues with 3.2 roms, only 3.2.1. Not sure if this is a bug in the 3.2.1 roms, P96 or amiberry.

There is one known issue in the 3.2.1. graphics library. Please roll back the graphics.library to the one supplied with 3.2, and try again.

[hexaae]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Unfortunately, I can only offer PPaint 7.1c, as Jens refuses to buy the 7.3 version. The "import from clipboard" (paste, essentially) function in PPaint is broken, unrelated to PP96, I have seen this as well. The problem is that the low-level functions apparently expect something like a file name, which of course is not present. This has to go through the PPaint authors.



The "import and dither", I afraid, I do not yet understand well enough from your report. Could you please provide a more detailed bug report.

Uhm... I'm afraid you're right: tested in the meanwhile even disabling emulated gfx board and was still able to reproduce winuaenforcer hits and mem corruption... PPaint seems to have serious issues importing clipboard (Brush > Clipboard: Read Brush), but it's ok loading pics.

[bubbob42]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

There is one known issue in the 3.2.1. graphics library. Please roll back the graphics.library to the one supplied with 3.2, and try again.

You keep repeating this, but we still don’t have a verified test case for this issue. Lots of „it works fine“ instead.

Maybe this will be the first ?

[Solskogen]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

There is one known issue in the 3.2.1. graphics library. Please roll back the graphics.library to the one supplied with 3.2, and try again.

I've found the culprit, and it's not about the graphics.library.

3.2.1 roms doesn't seem to like having 1GB of memory. Reducing it to 512M seems to work.

[PeterK]

Try WinUAE Z3 RAM in "UAE mode" mapping:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...48#post1525148

[Thomas Richter]

Hi folks,

last weekend, the 3.2.2 version of P96 has been released and is available for registered customers for download. Maybe later on the detalis, but this is what we have in the release notes:

Changes in release 3.2.2:
- Some programs provide a custom planar bitmap for screens that have a chunky pixel
format. In such a case, P96 already created a chunky side bitmap into which such
programs are then silently rendering instead. Unfortunately, BltBitMap() did not
correctly derive the type of this side bitmap, and instead used the type of the
original bitmap instead.
- Mode coercion could have returned a mode ID that does not exist, thus confusing
intuition. The new code is now more careful creating a useful modeID from coercion.
- Sprite colors are now switched if the sprite travels from one screen to another in
a split-screen environment. This does not depend on any particular hardware feature,
but is provided for all graphic cards.
- Fixed passing in the wrong modulo value for the planar BltMaskBitMap() function if
the source bitmap is interleaved. This broke only masked blitting on bitmaps with
the Native driver.
- In case a screen switch to a planar screen with bit depth 3 or less was made, and
a soft-sprite was used on the target mode, P96 might have forgotten to initialize
the sprite colors correctly.
- The rtg.library did not inform the card special feature hooks in case the screen
split position was updated.
- As result of the above fix, the PicassoIV memory and video windows no longer need
to be deactivated if screen splitting become active. They pan now together with the
front screen. Note that P96 currently does not support video or memory windows on
the back screen.

[Thomas Richter]

Maybe some details on the fixes. One of the problems was with ADescent which for reasons unclear to me created a chunky RTG graphics screen, but provides a custom planar bitmap P96 should place the screen in. This is of course not going to work, and P96 now detects this case and ignores the custom bitmap of the wrong type.

Another bug I addressed was blitting through a mask on a planar bitmap with an interleaved planar source. This broke the palette preference editor of the system. More on further improvements later.

[coldacid]

Amazing pace on all these updates recently!

[gdonner]

Originally Posted by coldacid

Amazing pace on all these updates recently!

Yes, and much appreciated! IME, P96 is once again very stable/solid on both my A3000 and A4000.

[Swe_Kryten2x4b]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Maybe some details on the fixes. One of the problems was with ADescent which for reasons unclear to me created a chunky RTG graphics screen, but provides a custom planar bitmap P96 should place the screen in. This is of course not going to work, and P96 now detects this case and ignores the custom bitmap of the wrong type.

Another bug I addressed was blitting through a mask on a planar bitmap with an interleaved planar source. This broke the palette preference editor of the system. More on further improvements later.

Much appreciated. Just wanted to confirm that ADescent works as it should now.

And Myst runs as it should again. To be fair, I'm not sure if it was one of the earlier P96 updates that caused it but I just got a black screen after the initial logo. Now it works again.

[hexaae]

3.2.2 fixed some issues I had with datatypes and Multiview fullscreen. Previous 3.2.1 caused crashes and corrupt memory with freezed (= not refreshing and mouse apparently stuck) fullscreen.

[Thomas Richter]

There are two new minor features in 3.2.2.

One is that for the PicassoIV, an overlay window/PIP window is now dragged along with the screen. Previous releases disabled the overlay. Thus, if you run the PIP demo from Aminet on the P-IV, it behaves quite natural.

The PIP window can unfortunately not be shown on the background screen, that's currently a limitation of P96. For the S3Virge, i.e. the CVision3D, the PIP window cannot be shown at all while screen dragging is active; that's a hardware limitation because the split-screen display is generated in a completely different way than the screen with overlays. The S3 chip has actually two methods of how ot generate the video, and the driver switches dynamically between them.

The second new feature in 3.2.2 is that the driver now adjusts the mouse pointer/sprite colors according to the screen the mouse pointer is on. That is, if the background screen has installed its own custom sprite colors, P96 now adjusts now the colors when the mouse moves into it. This does not require any specific hardware and works for any board.

Actually, this change should have been made for 3.2.0 already, along with the palette switch support for the ZZ9000, but I forgot this adjustment. Now it's finally there.

[wiz12]

I'm getting corrupt mouse pointer graphics on the latest 3.2.2 version on all RTG screen resolutions only, the mouse pointer at native PAL resolutions through my Indivision mk3 are fine. This is a clean installation of p96. I didn't have this problem on the previous P96 releases. I'm using a Radeon 9200 on a Mediator 1200TX setup if that helps.

[Thomas Richter]

The radeon driver is not maintained by me. So what was the last version this worked? As a workaround, you can use the softsprite (SOFTSPRITE=Yes in the tool type of the monitor).