Fullscreen anti-aliasing

[Gez]

I love the attention spans here.

What's your problem? Nightmare doesn't want AA, therefore it wasn't to him I was responding...

There's a lot of people who are going with requests like "true color in ZDoom" or "anti-aliasing in ZDoom" or "brightmaps in ZDoom" or "GZDoom skyboxes in ZDoom" or "3D floors in ZDoom" or all of these things, and ultimately I can't help but wonder why they're not simply using OpenGL version of the port if they want such features...

[Ryan Cordell]

One of the reasons: Software renderer purists.
Another reason: Some of the problems GZDoom tends to exhibit for some people (take in note SnowKate, Enjay. . .)

And so on.

[NiGHTMARE]

Why would "software renderer purists" want such things as true color, anti-aliasing, or brightmaps in the software renderer, when such things would (in their opinion ) detract from the purity of the software renderer?

[Graf Zahl]

One of the reasons: Software renderer purists.
Another reason: Some of the problems GZDoom tends to exhibit for some people (take in note SnowKate, Enjay. . .)

And so on.

Most of the problems are related to features that can be disabled, mostly shaders. I'm sorry but shaders seem to exhibit more problems than one might expect so they are off by default. And if they cause problems, leave them off. It's not that many features that depend on them. It's really only warped textures, brightmaps and colormaps.

There's fallbacks for warped textures and colormaps so the most critical thing is the brightmaps.

And obviously, software renderer purists don't want these features to begin with.

[HotWax]

Any statement that includes one or more positive or negative adjectives (e.g. "horrible"), adverbs, or verbs is clearly an opinion, with certain exceptions (a fact-based discussion of such things doesn't count, for example ). Prefixing such statements with terms such as "in my opinion" is therefore redundant and unnecessary (note: a lame attempt at ironic humour was used in this sentence). The only time such a qualifying phrase needs to be used is when it isn't obvious whether something is being presented opinion or fact, such as when it isn't clear what definition is being used for a particular word. For example, "you're full of crap" could be opinion or it could be fact, depending on what definition of "crap" is being used.

I would also like to point out that by your own logic you're equally guilty, because "Nightmare is writing bullshit" is simply your opinion, yet it is presented as fact.

In my opinion, I agree with Nightmare that we can't all go around writing our text into legaleze . In my opinion, doing so would just add unnecessary bulk and make us sound stupid and pompous. In my opinion, both of your opinions on the subject have been made known and you should just stop bickering.

[esselfortium]

It is my opinion that HotWax has spoken an opinion which I agree with.

[Ryan Cordell]

Why would "software renderer purists" want such things as true color, anti-aliasing, or brightmaps in the software renderer, when such things would (in their opinion ) detract from the purity of the software renderer?

Well true-color can go stick itself elsewhere, anti-aliasing not so, but I don't see how brightmaps are an exclusive 32-bit feature if anything, they just make a part of the sprite bright and you're done.

[Project Shadowcat]

[Totally Off-Topic]

What's your problem?

I've got a whole book of problems with me. Want it?
(Yes, I was an ass, and I apologise)

[Wagi]

In my opinion, the term "Software Purists" is kind of ignorant. This assumes that all computers are capable of properly displaying OpenGL mode (or even at all), and that all people who use the Software renderer prefer it over OpenGL. I'm telling you, if my crappy(In my opinion) laptop had a decent Graphics Card, and didn't get a BSoD when trying to display OpenGL, I would switch to it without a second thought. Unfortunately, the world is not a perfect place (In my opinion) and not everybody has a desirable computer.

[Ryan Cordell]

I just use it to refer to people, which I KNOW aren't the whole user base, who tend to prefer the software render over the other forms of rendering.

[Graf Zahl]

Why would "software renderer purists" want such things as true color, anti-aliasing, or brightmaps in the software renderer, when such things would (in their opinion ) detract from the purity of the software renderer?

Well true-color can go stick itself elsewhere, anti-aliasing not so, but I don't see how brightmaps are an exclusive 32-bit feature if anything, they just make a part of the sprite bright and you're done.

You have no idea how this 'just' works. The problem is not that it can't be done. It's more that it can't be done efficiently with a software renderer that has to optimize each pixel processing operation.

Right now the software renderer steps through the bitmap data without ever wasting any thought on it, just doing simplistic opertations based on precalculated tables. But now a second data source comes into play and all the simple stuff wouldn't work anymore.

[Wagi]

Well true-color can go stick itself elsewhere, anti-aliasing not so, but I don't see how brightmaps are an exclusive 32-bit feature if anything, they just make a part of the sprite bright and you're done.

I actually asked this and Graf Zahl gave me an explanation that was (In my opinion) more than acceptable. In my opinion, it's not that simple. The software renderer lacks any type of intelligence regarding lighting. Once a surface is darkened, it's no longer possible to tell what the original color was, and it can't be reverted back to bright. Perhaps it would be possible to tell which pixels should be brightened by the brightmap before drawing it, but (In my opinion) it would be too much work to do.

[NiGHTMARE]

Pretty much every graphics card made since the mid 90's is capable of running openGL; for example, the last Nvidia card incapable of running OpenGL was the NV1 / STG-2000, released way back in 1995, and the last Radeon card incapable of OpenGL was the Rage II, released in 1996. So that really shouldn't be an issue.

The only real problem is inbuilt graphics chipsets. If you have a dedicated graphics card, hardware rendering should increase your framerate as there's less for the CPU to do; however using an inbuilt chipset often seems to lead to a decrease in your framerate when using hardware rendering. I can say for a fact (yes, a fact damnit! ) that GZDoom runs faster in OpenGL mode even with a crappy (not a fact) Radeon 7000 mobility.

[Wagi]

Maybe it is my Graphics card, maybe it isn't. Nevertheless, there is something (In my opinon)shitty about my computer and because of that I am unable to use OpenGL rendering (at least in GzDoom/Skulltag, and I won't even bother with that ZdoomGL garbage).

[Nash]

they just make a part of the sprite bright and you're done

There's that "just" word again!