Is it safe to come out?
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Is it safe to come out?
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| Is it safe to come out? Is he gone? (Peeping round the corner) Ok, Blitz people this is John Blackledge spread-eagled on the floor in obeisance and asking for forgiveness. Because I’ve been incredibly stupid. And I am SO embarrassed. About a year ago I had a complete rant about Windows 7 effects on my Blitz code. It started quite a flame-war, good and bad things were said on both sides, and I left the site (-felt like I was driven out, actually). Life got busy with other things, but recently I thought I should get it sorted out and emailed Mikhail of FastLibs about the problem. “Hey Mikhail, your FastExt_Example_TextureBlends.bb goes wrong in Windows 7.” I got a lovely answer back: “Once again would like to express respect for you! You made a big contribution to Blitz3D community. I was trained on your examples, thanks. About a problem - I don't observe it. I do not know as to reproduce, sorry :( p.p.s. Look the attached screenshot (Win7 Max, Radeon HD4850)” The attached screenshot showed his code working perfectly in Windows 7. But it was the last word in the message that made me go cold: Radeon. I couldn’t possibly have .... (I went cold.) Of course I bought an expensive Windows 7 machine. With lotsa memory. And lotsa speed. And they surely put a decent graphics card inside.... IT’S AN INTEGRATED GRAPHICS CHIP! AARRGGHH! (Now tell me that _you’ve_ never felt so stupid at least once in your life. No? I don’t believe you.) Quick trip to PC World for a graphics card. Nothing special. A £30 Radeon. Ok. Run the code again. OMG – it looks perfect! As far as I can see, the only ‘real’ Blitz problem (at least in my code) was the fact that sprites could not be created with a parent parameter, but had to have a second EntityParent line. But my code, FastLibs, BlitzSys, WinBlitz, works perfectly. Ok – throw the custard pies this way. I deserve them. - John Last edited 2012 |
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| Nothing else needs to be said other then it takes a big man to admit he wrong. But no doubt other will say something so that is the end of that! |
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| I remember when I was playing Anarchy Online a few years ago I'd get intermittent crashes. This bought up an error report dialog and I'd usually add a grumpy "Your silly game has crashed on me YET AGAIN!" type message. Then my video card finally failed all the way and I realized that that was what had actually been causing the crashes. I felt a bit silly. Sometimes it's easy to mistake issues with hardware and with your own system setup or code for a third party software problem, and blame the third party by mistake. |
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| Ok – throw the custard pies this way. I deserve them. No you don't. Intel do. Unless you like custard pies, anyway. Last edited 2012 |
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| That's kind, Yasha. When you spend nearly £1000 on a new PC and the salesman says it has this, and that, and quad-threading (or summat).... well, maybe he should have said (because I told him my priority was 3D) that it had a poxey little graphics chip that would never in a million years do the job... But it just goes to show that they really (rarely) understand the customer's needs. Or the customer's stupidity. Anyway - I'm back. Anybody need multilayered terrains? |
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| Then my video card finally failed all the way and I realized that that was what had actually been causing the crashes. I felt a bit silly. when my previous viudeocard started going out, it started to seemingly randomly malform polygons -- some of them would stretch to near infinity, so it looks like some models were being controlled and hanging from strings. |
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| No one should be using B3D's native sprites anyhow :S B3D and Windows 7 generally play nice now drivers are more mature but there can be issues out the box if the end user hasn't updated their videocard drivers, directx install, etc. :S The only outstanding issue that I know of other than making sure your using the correct user environment file paths (and I believe its due to the way windows 7 virtualises some stuff) is that writepixelfast can suffer massive slowdowns under some fairly random conditions. |
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| I really don't remember this flamewar, so... welcome back, I guess. Don't be embarassed, I've done worse. I.e ripping on religionists and atheists in one (removed) post which I personally found offensive at the time that I typed it... and it regarded some 2yr old posts. Act two, this steaming pile O'. Round here, at least I hope, people have pretty short memories. Leaky ones. Welcome, good sir.*mustachelaugh* |
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| wont adding card void your warranty? |
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| people don't check the GFX card of the PCs they buy? |
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| I already said "the salesman says it has this, and that, and quad-threading (or summat).... " and assured me that it was perfectly 3D capable.... This has been a major lesson learned. Always read the specs. In detail. |
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| Of course I bought an expensive Windows 7 machine. With lotsa memory. And lotsa speed. And they surely put a decent graphics card inside.... IT’S AN INTEGRATED GRAPHICS CHIP! AARRGGHH! FWIW, most Windows 7 systems sold were not capable of properly running Windows 7 itself. |
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| I already said "the salesman says it has this, and that, and quad-threading (or summat).... " and assured me that it was perfectly 3D capable.... Intel has done more to damage/hold back PC gaming than anyone else. It's not just the lousy specs of their onboard graphics, it's that many of their chips lie about their capabilities when queried which makes it much harder for game developers to work around those limitations. |
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| most of the problems, errors, difficulties in programming are in our minds, and having no clear justification of paradigms, we like, we love to find someone to blame, whether software, hardware or person. |
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| Soon as i hear Intel graphics i throw my phone out the window. |
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| I'd blame the salesman. |
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| Intel has done more to damage/hold back PC gaming than anyone else. It's not just the lousy specs of their onboard graphics, it's that many of their chips lie about their capabilities when queried which makes it much harder for game developers to work around those limitations. +1 I have encountered those problems a lot - Intel drivers lie about every aspect of their capabilities, specially regarding OpenGL. Intel graphics are horrible - and should be banned. Thank God the also horrible "Via" is gone (at least I never heard of their graphics anymore). I think Microsoft and Apple should demand a minimum level of features, otherwise just tell the user at each boot "you have a crappy card! get a decent one or you won't ever be able to play games on this pile of junk!!!!" |
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| Microsoft /did/ set a minimum level of features with Vista -- and then caved to pressure of the OEM's to relax those specs, otherwise a ton of computers wouldn't have been able to be sold as "vista ready" just before the christmas shopping season. That's what lead to a class-action lawsuit for misrepresentation, since the machines in question turned out to be incapable of dealing with Aero which was front and center in all the MS vista TV commercials. |
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| to be fair if you turn off all that visual acceleration that was front loaded into vista the OS worked much faster. But that is 1/100th of the overall problems i encountered using vista. they honestly should have never released that OS and simply waited and only released windows 7. Windows 8 took some getting used to. it seems like they tried to go tablet/desktop OS hybrid so its a tad weird. I like the direction Windows is going and to possibly many people's dismay i'd prefer if they just get rid of the desktop entirely and make windows apps compatible with the new interface. |
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| oops Last edited 2012 |
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