Compileable version of Alien Breed 3D II - The Killing Grounds

[abu_the_monkey]

yes the wall texture vertical scale or horizon seems to show an issue, if you look up at where the wall meets the ceiling and move away from said wall more of the wall texture gets reviled. its subtle but not right.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

yes the wall texture vertical scale or horizon seems to show an issue, if you look up at where the wall meets the ceiling and move away from said wall more of the wall texture gets reviled. its subtle but not right.

Yes, this is it. However it's hard to know if the wall texture is wrong or the floor/object perspective is wrong. Like a man with two watches trying to figure out the time.

[abu_the_monkey]

@karlos

if i change FS_HEIGHT in hirers.s from 232 to 240 it renders correct but over draws the bottom status bar, i can only imagine the small screen top offset is still applied for full screen? or something

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

@karlos

if i change FS_HEIGHT in hirers.s from 232 to 240 it renders correct but over draws the bottom status bar, i can only imagine the small screen top offset is still applied for full screen? or something

I'll try to have a look into this later. In any event, I still need to fix the coordinate transformation for bitmap objects. I am starting to wonder if 288 was chosen specifically because it allowed for very simple integer scaling compared to the 3/5 stuff we have at 320 wide.

[pipper]

My guess is that 2/3 scaling was applied to both, X and Y coordinates. But with 320 resolution we’d need to apply separate scaling for x and y?

(PS: 1005 posts! That escalated fast )

[Karlos]

I'd rather apply 3/5 universally and increase the height if needed than start applying different scale factors. It will get messy at some point, for sure.

The messages that we are missing should probably be rendered closed caption style on the main screen.

[Karlos]

The other day I played with the vertical size adjustment and noticed the background border bars are drawn in the exposed area. Does that mean we're drawing and then overdrawing the back panel every frame? If so, there's an easy performance win.

[pipper]

The other idea to counter the uneven scale would be to scale evenly but use the existing “letterbox” mechanism to shrink down to 232 lines.

[pipper]

Originally Posted by Karlos

The other day I played with the vertical size adjustment and noticed the background border bars are drawn in the exposed area. Does that mean we're drawing and then overdrawing the back panel every frame? If so, there's an easy performance win.

No, what happens is that the background will be redrawn just once when you change the vertical size. In fact, it’ll be unpacked from LHA, that’s why it’s a bit slow. Increasing the vertical size does not redraw the frame.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by pipper

The other idea to counter the uneven scale would be to scale evenly but use the existing “letterbox” mechanism to shrink down to 232 lines.

Aiming for 240 height would be better for RTG going forwards.

In any case maybe the status display could be reworked into an on-screen HUD.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by pipper

No, what happens is that the background will be redrawn just once when you change the vertical size. In fact, it’ll be unpacked from LHA, that’s why it’s a bit slow. Increasing the vertical size does not redraw the frame.

Wow, really? I thought it was just decompressed on load to a buffer somewhere.

[pipper]

It was easier to implement decompressing each time

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by pipper

It was easier to implement decompressing each time

Said no one, ever.

[Karlos]

PS: 1005 posts! That escalated fast

Brick killed a guy.

[Karlos]

@pipper as per the PR feedback, I'm looking at a diff of the double width branch compared to main but I'm not seeing the wood for the trees on the billboard scaling. Could just be post COVID brainfog.

[Karlos]

No wait, I'm being thick. Pretty sure BitMapObj is the place to start lol

[Karlos]

@pipper

In the end, the only way I could get polygon and billboard objects to work in fullscreen was a bit fugly. The object rotation code continues with the existing depth scale of 1.5, but when we enter a bitmap drawing path, we have to rescale the depth of the bitmap by 0.9 (this is the end result of dividing the old scale by the new one). This depth correction then causes all bitmap objects to scale and rotate correctly.

I've pushed it all to the PR but part of exploring the drawing code and making sense of it resulted in more "style updates" as well.

[pipper]

Cool! I appreciate you muddling through all of this!

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by pipper

Cool! I appreciate you muddling through all of this!

I can't quite fathom why fixing it in the rotation code both breaks the polygon rendering and simultaneously has no impact on billboards either. I spent some time trying to "do it right" but, well, here we are. It works.

[Karlos]

@pipper - Am I OK to squash and merge?