[various?] Sprites losing transparency.

[Project Shadowcat]

If a lot of stuff is breaking at this moment, I'm still sticking to WAY back to revision 574. It's a nice stable revision for now...

[MDenham]

If a lot of stuff is breaking at this moment, I'm still sticking to WAY back to revision 574. It's a nice stable revision for now...

It's not so much that a lot of stuff is breaking so much as a lot of stuff is still in intermediate states between "old" and "new" functionality, and so it doesn't handle either one quite as well as one would hope.

It's not like they can just hide the current changes from us on the SVN server until everything's hashed out...

[Project Shadowcat]

This is very true. I've simply had that in mind, it's just that I'll stick with stability for now.

[Enjay]

Can you please *all* say which revision you are using?

Ooops, I thought I had mentioned somewhere that I am using GZdoom 1.0.29. I don't have any of the Zdoom SVN versions installed. So it may not be a Zdoom thing at all from my experience.

Anyway, for those who haven't seen it, here's a screenshot. Not all sprites are affected all the time. The beggars usually flash in and out of the effect as they walk. I think, during their walking cycle, it is the same frames that are affected/unaffected each time, but I'm not sure. In this pic, you can see add on sprites including bottle shards on the ground and the Doom tree all affected but some sprites working normally.

[MG_Man]

ZDoom Revision r658. GZDoom Version v1.0.24. I will update GZDoom to see if anything changes.

EDIT: Still no black boxes. But on ZDoom when I minimize this and bring it back, the entire screen is white until I close it. This is new and now happens to everything.
EDIT2: ZDoom whites out when un-minimizing with beggar, but with normal ZDoom it's completely yellow at the menu but with black boxes for everything graphical...

I think these problems are definately related.
EDIT3: New GZDoom yields no black boxes.

[Enjay]

Turn on Write Combining and put Hardware Acceleration to full. If it already is, try making it lower to see if this fixes it. Try every step on the bar.

OK, tried this. Hardware acceleration was already at full and write combining was on. I tried all hardware acceleration settings until it was so low that GZdoom ran in software mode and only then did the black boxes get fixed. I tried switching off write combining and it had no effect.

[edit] and updating to the latest nvidia drivers doesn't help either.[/edit]

[MG_Man]

Then at this point, I can't say it's a driver problem. Mabye Graf or Randy can fix this with a little more input. Besides, it might just be small quirks in the transition between Direct3D.

[MDenham]

But on ZDoom when I minimize this and bring it back, the entire screen is white until I close it.

This is, unfortunately, somewhat normal Direct3D behavior.

[Kate]

I found out what's causing this to occur: High-resolution sprite replacements. When there's a high-res sprite in view, it causes all sprites to lose transparency. But this only happens in GZDoom's OpenGL mode, so it can be closed here and moved over there instead.

[bagheadspidey]

I found out what's causing this to occur: High-resolution sprite replacements.

By high resolution, do you mean scaled? Some of the other noth sprites were already scaled before I added those bottles, and they didn't trigger the black squares bug. I'm pretty sure it's the partial transparency that causes the behavior.

[Kate]

I mean [wiki=HIRESTEX]replacements[/wiki].


The high-res replacement in the shot is that red powerup icon in the back, which is a 256x256 true-color PNG sprite. It's the only PNG in the entire scene, and walking so that the offending sprite is out of view (or picking it up so it's destroyed) causes the boxes to go away. Removing the high-res replacement also causes it to go away, despite the original sprite also being a PNG (paletted, 32x32).

And before anyone says anything, the tutti-fruity textures are entirely intentional.

...What makes it ironic is that this is a wad based around bugs, so stuff like this could pass as "normal behavior".

[bagheadspidey]

does the sprite have partial transparency?

[Kate]

Yes, it's supposed to have a black aura around it, which is made entirely invisible due to the entire alpha turning black. The low-res one doesn't, since obviously it's paletted and paletted PNGs can't contain a full 8-bit alpha.

...Actually I'll try making it 1-bit and see what happens.

Edit: Okay, I made it into a 1-bit alpha channel and it appears to work fine for what it's worth, so apparently you're right.

[Graf Zahl]

I found out what's causing this to occur: High-resolution sprite replacements. When there's a high-res sprite in view, it causes all sprites to lose transparency. But this only happens in GZDoom's OpenGL mode, so it can be closed here and moved over there instead.

Thanks for the info. Actually, it's not hires that causes the problem but an alpha channel with values other than 0 and 1. I think it's fixed now.