Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-25, 15:55:

At the very start, when you're exiting the first room through the ventilation shaft with the green fog, there's a junction where the pipes on the ceiling are leaking gas in two spots. Under Glide, the leaky gas is animated in both spots. In contrast, under the stock Direct3D and OpenGL renderers, only one leaky spot is animated, while the other one is visibly frozen in place (completely static). EDIT - added screenshot.

XOpenGL (3.x) in 227k/228
2560x1440 / FoV 100 / MSAA 4x / AF 16x etc etc etc (all maxed out but with standard assets from 226f / Steam version)

Both animated 😉

lowenz wrote on 2023-07-31, 13:40:

XOpenGL (3.x) in 227k/228
2560x1440 / FoV 100 / MSAA 4x / AF 16x etc etc etc (all maxed out but with standard assets from 226f / Steam version)

Both animated 😉

Yup, that was the first thing that I checked when I initially tried OldUnreal (227i). Worked great for me too, no graphical glitches during my entire playthrough.

And yeah, being able to run the game smoothly in higher resolutions while also cranking up AA and AF is why I like using OldUnreal. Even with a Voodoo 5, you can't get those kind of settings at 1600x1200 while maintaining 60+ FPS on real hardware.

Just wait for this 😁

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKHER1H7lac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtnnppOeqP8

As you mentioned it, on Mac on the first corner is one animated, on second two. Mac renders with rave on r128., colors are VIBRANT!

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-25, 15:55:

only one leaky spot is animated, while the other one is visibly frozen in place (completely static). EDIT - added screenshot.

I wanted to comment on this, I don't get that happening with the stock OpenGLDrv in 225. But, there is indeed a weird issue with Fire.dll textures not animating when something is using one and then suddenly the engine is confused and thinks that texture is not in view and puts the texture into a sort of "stasis" where it nolonger generates new frames.

I've had this same bug happen even if I'm using UTGLR with UT 436 or Deus Ex, or Unreal Gold when you manage to compile the UTGLR source against the 226 public headers.

DracoNihil wrote on 2023-07-31, 15:35:

I wanted to comment on this, I don't get that happening with the stock OpenGLDrv in 225. But, there is indeed a weird issue with Fire.dll textures not animating when something is using one and then suddenly the engine is confused and thinks that texture is not in view and puts the texture into a sort of "stasis" where it nolonger generates new frames.

I think it mainly happens under the stock Direct3D renderer. If I recall correctly, the stock OpenGL renderer was considered "beta" by the developers and had other, unrelated graphical issues. Not sure what exactly though.

Also, it been a while since I tested this, but I think the S3 Metal renderer handles these effects correctly, just like Glide. My Savage4 card is currently in storage, so I can't re-check right now, but I seem to remember that it was working properly there.

Well, my curiosity got the better of me, so I took my Savage4 card out of storage, put it in my Celeron test rig and fired up Unreal Gold under Win98. It seems that my memory is on target, and S3 Metal does indeed render those gas leaks correctly.

BTW, if anyone's curious how to enable the S3 Metal renderer with Unreal Gold, you first need to start the game using software rendering and then quit after it successfully launches for the first time. After that, edit Unreal.ini and change this line:

1GameRenderDevice=SoftDrv.SoftwareRenderDevice

to this:

1GameRenderDevice=MetalDrv.MetalRenderDevice

Now re-launch the game and it will start in S3 Metal mode. Obviously, you need an S3 Savage card for this to work. Note that I have only tested this with Unreal Gold. Not sure if it can be done with the original release of Unreal.

S3 support is present since release: S3 Savage MeTal API 3D Accelerated Games List

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-31, 16:00:

If I recall correctly, the stock OpenGL renderer was considered "beta" by the developers and had other, unrelated graphical issues. Not sure what exactly though.

in UT99, the immediately obvious issue is that parts of the first-person redeemer model are missing.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-31, 16:00:

I think it mainly happens under the stock Direct3D renderer. If I recall correctly, the stock OpenGL renderer was considered "beta" by the developers and had other, unrelated graphical issues. Not sure what exactly though.

The only thing broken about the stock OpenGLDrv is that DetailTextures is completely commented out in the code, and the blending when MultiTexture is enabled is extremely messed up. Though, most of the maps in Unreal 1 don't look as intended if you have the alternate blending enabled with MultiTexture anyways.

Oh and if you set the resolution high enough you get a bogus General Protection Fault related to BSP, I have to wonder if that can be hackily fixed with a hex edit like the tickrate issue can be fixed by removing the "clamp" being put on DeltaTime that doesn't do what someone thought it was supposed to do.

The stock OpenGLDrv can also only be safely used by drivers that don't report a very long GL_EXTENSIONS string, otherwise it buffer overflows and immediately crashes the game. So far the only way I've ever gotten this to work is under Linux with MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=1.2 and MESA_EXTENSION_MAX_YEAR=1997 environment variables being set prior to launch. (Obviously this is only going to work under open source drivers provided by the Mesa project)

auron wrote on 2023-07-31, 23:31:

in UT99, the immediately obvious issue is that parts of the first-person redeemer model are missing.

Ah yes, I do remember that now that you've mentioned it. That and the "beta" comment from the developers made me stay away from the stock OpenGL driver back in the day.

That said, I was mostly playing UT and not Unreal at that time.

DracoNihil wrote on 2023-08-01, 00:16:

The only thing broken about the stock OpenGLDrv is that DetailTextures is completely commented out in the code, and the blending when MultiTexture is enabled is extremely messed up. Though, most of the maps in Unreal 1 don't look as intended if you have the alternate blending enabled with MultiTexture anyways.

Interesting, I wonder why they chose to disable Detailed Textures with OpenGL. They do work fine under the S3 Metal renderer.

Oh and, in case anyone's curious, here's a video of someone playing through Unreal on a Savage card using the S3 Metal renderer.

detail textures != "detailed textures"

IIRC the Metal renderer doesn't do detail textures as it prefers those s3tc textures to render with instead. Detail textures aren't as texel dense as those compressed textures so it'd provide no benefit to render upon an oversized new texture.

The original OpenGLDrv had no means to use these new S3 textures, and detail textures was a missing feature that was present on GlideDrv and D3DDrv.

leileilol wrote on 2023-08-01, 06:02:

detail textures != "detailed textures"

No worries, I know the difference between detail textures and compressed textures (S3TC). I'm not confusing the two here.

IIRC the Metal renderer doesn't do detail textures as it prefers those s3tc textures to render with instead. Detail textures aren't as texel dense as those compressed textures so it'd provide no benefit to render upon an oversized new texture.

The original Unreal patched to 226f does support detail textures under S3 Metal, I just tested it. Relevant screenshots:

However, UT99 doesn't seem to support this, even if Detail Textures is set to True. I think they may have disabled it there due to some minor visual glitches that appear on distant objects when detail textures are turned on with S3 Metal.

leileilol wrote on 2023-08-01, 06:02:

The original OpenGLDrv had no means to use these new S3 textures, and detail textures was a missing feature that was present on GlideDrv and D3DDrv.

I think the reason why DetailTextures was commented out in OpenGLDrv was perhaps the card(s) this was specifically targeting had severely bad performance trying to render these at all? VolumetricLighting works just fine, but the moment you try to use MultiTexture the level lightmaps look very messed up.

Also something I want to point out to the OP; if you can't find any multiplayer servers on your retro machine, it's because you need to change the URL to the master sever list in Unreal.ini:

1[UBrowserAll]
2ListFactories[0]=UBrowser.UBrowserGSpyFact,MasterServerAddress=master.333networks.com,MasterServerTCPPort=28900,Region=0,GameName=unreal

Alternatively add the IP address that resolves to "master.333networks.com" to your HOSTS file as the IP address for "master0.gamespy.com".
(This primarily is the only way you can even use 333networks for games that have the GameSpy address hardcoded)

Unreal has three texture options:
- Standard (nothing special set)
- DetailTextures=True
- S3TC=True

If I remember that correctly.

btw:
- Mac/Rave Version has no S3TC and no DetailTextures

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-29, 09:50:

IMO, you don't really lose much by playing OldUnreal instead of using real hardware.

Well, it's more of a feasibility study and because I want to try out my new old rig. The Oldunreal version runs perfectly fine on my modern computer.