Graphical Issues Still Exist in GZDoom 4.8.2

[dpJudas]

Okay so this problem does not manifest itself with the latest drivers and on a supported OS. I'm sorry but I'm not going to look for a workaround for stuff AMD and Microsoft no longer supports. The changes to the vulkan backend in 4.8 are required for the upcoming lightmap feature - I won't undo it just because AMD stopped supporting your platform and ended the support with broken drivers.

[Graf Zahl]

Same here. So essentially this means we have to take the combination of Win7 / AMD off the support roster. Nothing that worries me, actually.
In the latest survey this combination makes up roughly 2.2% of our users.

[Rachael]

Let's just deprecate Win7 entirely - it has been off of Microsoft support officially for over 2 and a half years now.

[Graf Zahl]

NVidia drivers still seem to work well on Windows 7. This shit always and only happens with AMD.

I'd agree on other grounds, though. I think many of those who use GZDoom commercially have no clue whatsoever what liability they are taking on when declaring support for ancient systems just because GZDoom can do it. If you declare support for Win 7 on Steam and some user experiences the same things as here, you'd be in trouble.

[Rachael]

If it works it works - but I don't want to be recommending people stick with an OS that no longer even gets security updates.

I liked 7 don't get me wrong - I liked XP too - but they're old, they're dead, and what I liked about them wasn't what was under the hood - it was the stuff that can be easily recreated in modern OS's.

[Graf Zahl]

For the record, I run Windows 11 with both StartAllBack and OpenShell and this gives me a great UX. I got the start menu I like and a fully functional task bar with all the nice effects from Win 7.

[Rachael]

Same here - except I removed OpenShell, I just use StartAllBack, that is enough of a rollback to the fucked up interface of Windows 11 that I need, and my UX experience as a result has been great as well.

[Graf Zahl]

I use OpenShell for the Win95 style start menu which StartAllBack does not have.

The main reason why I am hesistant to deprecate Win 7 is that we still have 10% of our user base on it. That's a bit too much for leaving behind.

[Rachael]

Understood. Those numbers won't last long, though - Windows 8 brought a lot of API's that more and more applications are starting to depend on, and it won't be long until Visual Studio will be providing that as a compatibility package like they did with XP, rather than compiling for it natively like it currently does.

[Graf Zahl]

We'll see with the next survey. I think that's due in 4.9.0. It's really important to see how the numbers developed due to the increasing problems with Windows 7.
At least it is declining a lot faster than XP.

[Redneckerz]

I use OpenShell for the Win95 style start menu which StartAllBack does not have.

The main reason why I am hesistant to deprecate Win 7 is that we still have 10% of our user base on it. That's a bit too much for leaving behind.

Stands to reason, but its the same situation with XP - People stayed on that for the longest time because it just worked - 7 is currently in the same boat. It just works, and it just does not fuck with your UI like 10 does.

Having said that, whilst AMD's has that finewine in their drivers (Seriously, a 2012 7870 outperforms Nvidia's Fermi on the same era games by quite some margin), they still keep finnicky on maintaining support for anything other than the latest OSes. In the case of 7 that's just particularly damning.

Its not like AMD isn't releasing a lot of drivers either. They release more drivers a year than Nvidia. Difference: Nvidia releases WHQL drivers alongside everything else on release day. AMD? You get a beta driver, and a WHQL follows weeks later.

Its strange that their support efforts are not on the same page as Nvidia's. If you are either on bleeding edge or have some care on legacy OS support, AMD is fine for the middle of the road, but nothing more. Pity.

[Graf Zahl]

7 is currently in the same boat. It just works,

Here's the problem: It *doesn't* just work. It gets increasingly unsupported by software updates - and better forget about running modern games on it.
Also, a little reminder about the biggest nail in Win7's coffin: UTF-8.

This is what will ultimately kill it. In Windows 10 Microsoft added an important change to repurpose their entire A(NSI) API to support UTF-8. Once important software starts using it, have fun running it on Win 7 and 8.1. GZDoom already made the first step in that direction by making the system console output conform to the new way of doing things. This will already mean a sub-par support for Win 7, but it's a rarely used feature.

I can outright tell you that I won't drag 7 along until it's at 0.1% like XP when it was dropped. This will come earlier.

[Guest]

Just giving yawl a heads up it's my understanding that Windows 7 is still under extended security updates till January 10th, 2023 then I guess Windows 7 is officially dead then not sure, but that's my guess. I'm not sure if that's a paid support or not though. I stopped updates for Windows 7 in March of 2019 because they kept crashing my PC over and over causing me to restore a backup image I had at least 4 or 5 times after that I gave up on Windows 7 Updates so my PC has not been updated with updates since March 2019. As far as upgrading my PC since I'm just a simple shakerboarder not making much and also just spent alot on my car and inflation I don't have the money to upgrade my PC right now. Anyway my motherboard is now officially 9 years old and got another 14 years at best if kept cool cause they said it can last up to 23 years due to Solid State capacitors. CPU is 6 years old. Memory 5 years old. SSD's 4 years old. Power supply 3 years old. Video card 5 years old. Sound card ancient. DVD ROM & DVD Writer 9 years old. Monitor 1 year old. Anyway there's alot of people probably in my situation as well who are stuck with older PC's and can't do anything. I wouldn't give up on them if you can help it especially people with Windows 7 at least till the extended security update period is over in January of 2023. Also honestly there are some people such as myself who don't like Windows 10 or even 11 and refuse to upgrade beyond Windows 7 because of things they either heard or seen on Windows 10 and 11. But yea I wouldn't give up just yet on people with Windows 7 at least until the extended security updates are done on January 10th, 2023.

[dasho]

You've sorta solved your own problem. You said you stopped updating your PC because Windows Updates were causing problems. You should approach GZDoom the same way.

[Rachael]

You've sorta solved your own problem. You said you stopped updating your PC because Windows Updates were causing problems. You should approach GZDoom the same way.

Dasho is right.

Just don't come to us when shit breaks.