New renderer - testers wanted

[robn]

Thanks to Luomu, we now have a new set of rendering classes. All drawing operations are now channeled through these classes rather then being spread through the code as they were before. This is one of the pieces we need if we're ever to port Pioneer to non-traditional-GL platforms, like mobile phones or XBox :)Here's a link to the latest nightly build that includes these changes: 's needed right now is testing on all the different platforms we have out there, particularly on platforms that don't have support for shaders. If it all goes well you shouldn't notice any real difference.Please report your experiences via this thread or the issue tracker. Thanks!

[Luomu]

This was a large chunk of work but not a very user-visible one - what you should be on the lookout for are visual artifacts or performance problems compared to the previous releases.Another good thing about this besides better portability (I want to see this thing on my phone!) is that the two rendering modes (OpenGL 1.5 and 2.0 or "shaderless" and "with shaders") are now easier to maintain and there is less pressure for dropping the legacy mode.

[Geraldine]

Tried it. All going well until I decided to jump from my starting location Sol. Then the game crashed reporting a runtime error. I did jump without asking permission for take off if that makes any difference?

[Brianetta]

Geraldine wrote:
Tried it. All going well until I decided to jump from my starting location Sol. Then the game crashed reporting a runtime error. I did jump without asking permission for take off if that makes any difference?
Jumping while docked will result in a crash. From the Lua console, I can do this by typing in:
Code:
Game.player:HyperspaceTo(SystemPath.New(-1,-1,0,0))
which will jump to Barnard's Star. I have to ask, though, since both F7 and the hyperspace button are disabled, how you managed to jump without asking for permission to launch first?

[robn]

Geraldine wrote:
Tried it. All going well until I decided to jump from my starting location Sol. Then the game crashed reporting a runtime error. I did jump without asking permission for take off if that makes any difference?
Steps to reproduce and exact error text, if you please (and btw, there's no such thing as "asking for permission to launch". Yet )

[Zordey]

Hi I will test later on my crappy old laptop with no shader support.Is there anything in particular to try / look for?

[robn]

Zordey wrote:
Hi I will test later on my crappy old laptop with no shader support.
If issue #1002 is anything to go by, it'll probably crash before it starts. It'd be good to confirm it though. Fixing it will be a priority (as soon as Luomu or I get chance to look at it).
Quote:
Is there anything in particular to try / look for?
Generally just stuff that doesn't look right. For example, the first glitch of its kind was noticed and solved this afternoon - the "buy ship" display had no text

[Guest]

Quote:
What's needed right now is testing on all the different platforms we have out there, particularly on platforms that don't have support for shaders. If it all goes well you shouldn't notice any real difference.
I've done a quick fly around on OSX, so far so good..

[leksimus]

I'd love to get on board with this game and help out (testing designing whatever...) but I have yet to be able to d/l it. Every time i try I the d/l stops after a few megs and says the d/l is complete and i end up with a small, corrupted zip files... Leks

[Geraldine]

robn wrote:
Steps to reproduce and exact error text, if you please
To Quote "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library - This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way"The crash happens when just about 50% to go before emerging from the jump from both start positions. I have also set the shaders to both on and off with no effect.You can take off without requesting launch by pressing F5.Otherwise, intra system travel is fine Alpha 19 runs just fine by the way.

[Brianetta]

Geraldine wrote:
You can take off without requesting launch by pressing F5.
When we were talking about you on IRC ( ) Rob figured out that was probably what you meant.Despite what the station view button says, and despite how Frontier worked, launching from the station view and launching from the pad with F5 do exactly the same thing. There's no such thing as a launch without permission in Pioneer. Yet.

[Zordey]

Just tried on my old laptop... Wont load again, same issue as last time by the looks of it, happens just as the menu screen should appear:ShipType: 30 ships with tag 'ship'ShipType: 2 ships with tag 'static_ship'ShipType: 4 ships with tag 'missile'Segmentation fault (core dumped)

[Luomu]

Zordey wrote:
Just tried on my old laptop... Wont load again, same issue as last time by the looks of it, happens just as the menu screen should appear:ShipType: 30 ships with tag 'ship'ShipType: 2 ships with tag 'static_ship'ShipType: 4 ships with tag 'missile'Segmentation fault (core dumped)
The changes done under issue #1002 will probably fix this.

[Zordey]

Checked out the latest version from git and now it just quits with no error message at this same point.

[Brianetta]

Zordey wrote:
Checked out the latest version from git and now it just quits with no error message at this same point.
Please try this:
Code:
git remote add Luomu git@github.com:Luomu/pioneer.gitgit checkout -b legacy-crash-1002 Luomu/legacy-crash-1002
then rebuild Pioneer. If that fixes the problem, let us know!

[robn]

Fix has been merged to master, and a new build will be available in a few minutes. This should at least run without crashing on shader-deficient systems, allowing further testing. Thanks!

[Zordey]

Hi,I am now able to start the game but it has 'randomly' crashed a couple of times now with the segmentation error. I will let you know if I can find a trigger for the crash.PS. the frame rate seems lower than it was before...

[Zordey]

I can recreate the crash now.Start on Earth, take off and fire a shot and the game crashes. The shots from my craft don't crash the game (when you are in space you can fire as much as you want), it seems to be the volume of shots coming from the police craft.Dump from terminal:

[Brianetta]

I can't reproduce this. I just get about eight police ships spawning in my position, doing a lot of damage and accusing me of more crimes. No crash.In your gdb session, after the crash, please type bt and let us have the stack trace that gets displayed. Then I'll get this onto the issue tracker (if it's not there, it didn't happen) and we'll see what it is.

[Marcel]

I tried it with my Radeon 9550. Previously the shader button would appear on but would appear off again when I pressed esc. Unfortunately there's no noticeable change in the graphics. I can still see the building's basements through the ground and I can't see the shadows of Saturn's rings.