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Gln64 transparency error in Linux

Jorix

New member
I have a HP pavilion t3060.nl (HP site for specs) and Suse 10.0. I use Mupen64 0.5 with Gln64 0.4.1.
I´ve been playing some games for a while and I´ve noticed that some graphics appear incorrect. It all has to do with transparency as far as I can see, because some (not all) textures with transparent elements in them seem to either have the transparency channel mixed up. For example the trees in Zelda OoT´s hyrule field appear as their full polygons, but with holes in the places where the leaves should be. Also some type of fence has a similar effect while most other fences including a taller version of that same fence are fine. On the other hand (and this is more anoying) some textures than have tranparent elements are simply invisible (like most of the vines in the dungeons or the dirt paths of hyrule field or the bugs that you can catch in a bottle. While I could still cope with this a worse thing is that sometimes when a big overlay text comes on the screen, then there is no transparency at all, and thereby blocking all of the screen except that text (like in the ending of zelda or as happens with the intoduction text of castlevania, Quake 64 seems to fade to black in menus so I can´t even start a game). Super mario 64 works with no problem at all, except if I started castlevania in the same session of mupen64 before then the power meter is always showing empty (I guess this is the backround on which the pieces are overlayed)
I tried other gfx plugins, but they all either don´t work at a workable speed or not at all to even crash the system (glide).

Can someone help me with this, is it my pc/drivers or is it gln64?
 

Doomulation

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I'm guessing this is due to your integrated gfx card. Integrated cards are seldom (note seldom) good.
 
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Jorix

Jorix

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That is what I was afraid of. When I disable hardware acceleration gln64 crashes mupen64, but glide then works VERY slowly. The others still don´t work. So is there no alternative but buying a new one? (I wanted to do this sometime, but not because of 3D but because I wanted a tv out (preferbly 2 digital+analog dvi ports) for a tv I don´t have yet (if you don´t count this wooden box from centuries ago) So I guess I could combine these things.)
 
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Jorix

Jorix

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I tried tr64 opengl and it works but not always there too seem to be transparency problems although different and I don´t know how to change the resolution and there doesn´t seem to be a configuration window or script (Or is this unchangeable at all). I fixed the problem I had with Rice´s (¨Error setting video mode [insert any resolution I tried]: Couldn't find matching GLX visual¨ by setting it to 16 bit textures. Also I had to diable fog because everything was in one dark color) So I´ll use this for now. although it crashes sometimes whenever I press escape but my quicksaves are stored so that´s not the biggest problem, also it has some sort of flickering sometimes.
 
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Jorix

Jorix

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I tried some more and it gets more confusing. Rice´s plugin doesn´t work perfect either. I thought this was a software plugin, but it seems to have a similar problem with transparent textures, but just with OTHER transparent textures there are textures that work with Gln64 but not with Rice´s and vice versa. Luckily the most work on both and I have not yet seen any textures that don´t work on either one. So I have to choose between being able to see fire and beams and such effects or being able to see the arrows on the map at the bottom and being able to see (in majora´s mask) the notebook from the start menu). The only thing that doesn´t work on both is the ability of the system to take screenshots of itself (for use as a background in the menu of both zelda´s and taking pictures in the swamp tour thing). Isn´t there a fully software generated plugin or at least one that does transparent textures by itself instead of depending on my hardware?
 

Doomulation

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There IS no fully software plugin. That would mean the CPU renders everything which would extreme slowness. There was a software plugin here that ran slow even on the fastest systems, so no, there is not and probably will never be.
Your GFX Card affects everything - and I think it is a damn shame that manufacturers include Intel's stupid cards at all.

Each plugin uses their own way of rendering the graphics and are dependant on different capabilities of your GPU. That is why you may see some things work in some plugins and some not. In short, your GPU is too "low-end" to be of any real use. You'll either have to upgrade, somehow, or live with it.
 
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Jorix

Jorix

New member
Why do such cards even exist in the first place? If a program says that this area of this texture should be transparent and the others not, then why won´t it do just that? The only reason I could figure is that transparency is done using such an overly complex protocol with different types of alpha channels an modes, versions and stuff which is only partly supported, that it is too much effort/money to implent. But in my idea transparency is either a simple extra channel or just another index in a paletted texture and that shouldn´t be to hard if you implent it at all, and if you don´t then there should be no transparency at all, only indexed, or only a separate channel.
Other question: I tried to find the specifications for the plugins but could not find them. Only that someone named Zilmar made it and that there is an example version available (or is this all the specs there are).
 

Agozer

16-bit Corpse | Moderator
Intel's integrted graphics chips are cheap and provide good 2D graphics. hgowever, these chips are designed for workstations, not for gaming rigs. Intel really couldn't care less what gamers say about their chips, to them the chips are there to make money. It's the computer manufacturer's fault for selling desktop computers with Intel chips and calling them top-of-the-line.
 

Doomulation

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Jorix said:
Why do such cards even exist in the first place? If a program says that this area of this texture should be transparent and the others not, then why won´t it do just that? The only reason I could figure is that transparency is done using such an overly complex protocol with different types of alpha channels an modes, versions and stuff which is only partly supported, that it is too much effort/money to implent. But in my idea transparency is either a simple extra channel or just another index in a paletted texture and that shouldn´t be to hard if you implent it at all, and if you don´t then there should be no transparency at all, only indexed, or only a separate channel.
Other question: I tried to find the specifications for the plugins but could not find them. Only that someone named Zilmar made it and that there is an example version available (or is this all the specs there are).
Things are not black and white and 3D Graphics isn't easy. There are tons of ways to draw things because of the complexity of a 3D scene. There are a number of ways to do something and not all cards support all the way to do these. The reason PC Games work with integrated is that their programmers fall back to other methods if their primary fails. That is time consuming and not what individuals usually do. So I guess anyway.

Again, blame Intel for their pathetic cards. There's nothing wrong with Integrated. ATI & nVidia do good integrated cards, which are cheap, but few manufacturers use them over Intel's crap cards. The result is that today you really have to do research before purchasing something. Don't just purchase something out of the blue - ask questions like, will this computer run good games?
Never trust Intel cards.
 
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Jorix

Jorix

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I still don´t get it completely why would there be so many different ways to do one thing? Is that simply careless planning when making the protocols or is it somehow convenient that you can do one things in a zillion different ways?
What about the specs by the way.
 

Doomulation

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No, but think of it as this...
You have object in the 3D space. That object needs to be built. How? Using cubes, triangles or other mathematical objects? Once that's done, how do we make it look real? How do we apply a color to it? How to we add a "skin" to it? How do we make it look transparent?

There are a number of different ways of doing it. Like adding color, you can tell the GPU to take X and do Y to Z. You can blend colors. You can blend figures together. You can blend skins together. And the list goes on.
However, not all cards supports this. It's not simple to explain this. I'm not a 3D expert myself, but after messing around a little with 3D API and reading the doc, I can tell you - it isn't simple.

If you get into programming, maybe you would know more. Because everything you see in an application is built upon lots and lots and lots of code. Even for a simple GUI application. The same applies to 3D. Lots and lots of things to be done to create the end result. And lots and lots of ways to accomplish that result - many ways. But all GPUs does not support doing it all these ways.
Some ways may be simpler than others - but cards such as Intel does not support doing it that way.
Does that make sense?
 
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Jorix

Jorix

New member
Yes, it does. So the difference is in the technique, that makes most sense I guess.

I actually do have programming experience, but only visual/q basic and quake (1) c in practice and have read ´the art of assembly´ to understand how a computer works, but never made anything with that because the way it is viewed is impractical. I don´t know much of c or c++ because there are so many rules and types, and things to remember. Assembly is easier to learn but harder in practice I guess. I have ideas of making an easier way to view opcodes that makes it more clear, but have spent little time on actually making such thing (with me these things usually don´t come any further than creating ideas and file formats that I someday still want to put to use).

In the days I still used visual basic I made a rollercoaster tycoon (1) savegame/scenario 3D viewer that actually made real 3D output (the landscape, sticks for scenery and trees and cubes for ride pieces, but that language is so utterly slow it took an extremely long time to draw one frame (also because I only used default vb commands and as it doesn´t have any free triangle function I ended up making triangles by drawing thick lines next to each other to form a (nearly) opaque surface :) ). So the slowness was blamed on vb and my program for not using (or knowing) any opengl or something (even the rle decoding took forever on that thing).

But that was pretty long ago and since I read more about things, I did less programming.
But thanks for the explanation.
 
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