Unreal patch 227H released!

HD Translator. Fixes for the sound and OpenGL bugs in 227g. The 'Unreal' skin for UMenu. Dispersion Pistol decal. Original font for RTNP intro scene. Lots of fixes for the Linux client.

Anyone,

I installed Patch 227h in both Unreal an in NaPali. The procedure went well with no issues during the installations.

I have only one issue. In Unreal, I'm missing some dexture detail. The following screenshot shows the effect. In Patch 227g this person (draped over the rail) had texture. Now, the person is all balck. Click pic to view larger image.

I suppose I need to make some adjustment in the .ini file. Anyone know which one to adjust (OpenGL Rendering)?

I'd assume that this is because of lighting, not textures. Does shooting DP at it reveal the texture?

GreatEmerald,

Yea, when shooting the pistol I can make out some faint texture, but not much. Texture was much more obvious previously, just with him hanging there like you see it. I wonder what changed?

I wonder whether using D3D9 would make a difference. I'll try it later. It looks as though I don't have a texture problem, as you say.

Freddie

Yes I can confirm this problem, I see it at the same spot. It is again the lighting striking. During 227g testing I had it happen in one of my UPSX map conversions. I had to rebuild the map fully again to have it disapear, but it didn't normally happen at the official versions.

Imo the lighting system should never have changed, this just looks crap. Okay I could tolerate it in the unofficial maps or in cevelopement maps where it can be changed, but when this happens at vortex2, that's bad.

I ran D3D9 to test whether that setting makes a difference on the above lighting issue. It didn't. Results were the same. Back to OpenGL.

Freddie

It's a lighting problem, but its not really a lighting issue, its caused because the origin of the body is insight the world geometry .
Basically its a map issue which could have been easily avoided. 227g/h is just a bit more sensitive to such mistakes as it handles many things more accurate (in this case ighting visibility was changed center of render bounding box rather than actor location).

That's very sad for old maps, but fortunately this happens only in very rare situations. So new maps can benefit from it with "little losses".

Besides, lighting itself wasn't changed, except specularity, which made meshes unlit partially even if there was no light source at all. Now the lighting is there more accurate too as it only displays light which is actually really there.

Of course this can be taken as disadvantage or even "bug" if you wish, but there are a few things in which we suffer from "the sins of the past" just for fixing bugs, like this one above.

OK, smirftch, now that I know that, I can confess I don't understand everything I know.

Freddie

LOL, sorry, didn't mean to confuse anyone.

Basically it's that we tried to keep any compatibility, any small detail intact, but in order to fix one thing it happens sometimes that another thing breaks.
Unfortunately its impossible to prevent that from happening, nearly anything depends on something else. Still the number of these issues is very small and in most cases not even noticeable, because we tried to work around and cover it.

Then there are fixes which seem to cause "bugs" now because there were real and accepted bugs in the past. The maps and mods which were made in the past simply ignored those or even depend on the fact that it was not working or implementing workarounds and now its working correctly they fail.
Making sense?
Example: The Environment flag was never functional, but in some RTNP maps this flag is set by accident. Now that this flag is working, some of the surfaces in some maps look very weird, because its set but not with the the required settings and surely not on the right place. If it would have been working the mapper would have seen it and removed this flag.

No need to mention that if most of these things would have been working from the beginning (or at least with 224,225,226), a lot of these problems wouldn't be existing- like the problem described above, but that's just not the case.

To really fix some bugs, in some cases the map should or must be fixed, but that's no real option, you know.

Besides, if you have a look what the official patches indeed broke but what fixes and how many fixes they provided in return, then I really have to say that I don't understand some of the complains we get.
Maybe it's just because that although authorized this patch is "inofficial". But the truth is, the official patches had to be accepted just the way they were (or are), there was not much of a chance to change things, especially for 226 there was no way at all. It was just made by a big company with the statement: "That's it!" and that only after a huge petition.
For 227 we tried to make the best out of any report we got, because that was the idea when I got the code from Epic to maintain it. But that's obviously not enough sometimes.

What does the environment flag do? I never got it. The enviroment flag worked in 97 beta it showed the other backdrop, lower sky. But further from that I am not aware of it working. So what does it do in 227?

Leo(T.C.K.) said:

What does the environment flag do? I never got it. The enviroment flag worked in 97 beta it showed the other backdrop, lower sky. But further from that I am not aware of it working. So what does it do in 227?

Click to expand...

Sounds like you only tried it with Software. Indeed it does not work with Software, but if you change the render device you will see it immediately:

Leo(T.C.K.) said:

What does the environment flag do? I never got it. The enviroment flag worked in 97 beta it showed the other backdrop, lower sky. But further from that I am not aware of it working. So what does it do in 227?

Click to expand...

Out of the release notes:
Added: functionality for surface flag "Environment" on BSP surfaces to add an environment mapped texture overlay on the surface

The idea is to have an overlay effect, somewhat like the backdrop you mentioned, just that you can do it with a specific texture now
Without specifying anything it looks just messed, but if you use it correctly, you can do nice things, like a surface which seems to reflect the sky, f.e., but without the need to make it a mirror directly.

Smirftsch said:

To really fix some bugs, in some cases the map should or must be fixed, but that's no real option, you know.

Click to expand...

Diehard said:

Its a situation that can only be solved by redoing the maps, and as Smirftsch says; but that's no real option, you know.

Click to expand...

*cough*Unreal-EnhancedEdition*cough*

If the problems aren't that many code a companion mod that tracks these "mistakes" and alters the flags/problems on the fly as the map loads. It's not a huge deal to

I did this when I messed about with running a NaPali server and I was able to change things at will in the maps without affecting redirects (IIRC it was a mine cart that crashed certain renderers that caused me to mess with this). OFC you can't do certain things like change pathing but you can easily set flags and other settings. As the Unreal version improves simply keep upgrading the companion mod and you can keep your maps unchanged. The bonus is it's easy to upgrade your companion mod as these problems are reported.

Edit: Completely forgot I released this a while back:
http://gopostals.com/tweakerd.php
It has the source in it and shows you how easy it would be to do this. Is it hacky? Yup, but it fixes the problems without creating new ones.

Credits to GF-Rex for explaining this to me so long ago.

that's of course a possibility, we have something like this for RTNP coop (UPakFix by Dots) included already.
Fortunately there are not that many things like this and the problems are unlike RTNP not vital, I guess this "lighting" problem is already the most obvious.

But indeed, it would be hacky and it could make things more complicated again for those who just want to use it without knowing all stuff about Unreal (yeah, even to load Unreal with a mutator/mod - and to make it automatically again would require even more hacks, additional switches etc..
On the other hand, if I remember and compare what some modders did in the past to make things work, this is a rather easy task, but still a lot of work again to go in detail through all maps figuring out any needed values and still "only a workaround".

So no doubt, the cleanest way would be to fix the maps to avoid those hacks , but your method would be the only way to fix such remaining problems without losing compatibility.

I mean, if someone would make such a mod it would be surely appreciated and I would surely add it on the page or even into the patch, but I personally need a break now

Smirftsch said:

Out of the release notes:
Added: functionality for surface flag "Environment" on BSP surfaces to add an environment mapped texture overlay on the surface

The idea is to have an overlay effect, somewhat like the backdrop you mentioned, just that you can do it with a specific texture now
Without specifying anything it looks just messed, but if you use it correctly, you can do nice things, like a surface which seems to reflect the sky, f.e., but without the need to make it a mirror directly.

Click to expand...

In the 97 beta demo you can specifiy the texture too, at a levelinfo or zoneinfo iirc. How is it done here? But it's not what I meant, the environment is simply a flipped fake backdrop effect, for lower sky. As the 97 beta demo didn't have skyboxes, the skyboxes were rendered at realtime so all the things, textures etc, needed to be specified.
Look here, in the test map I did:
[M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s4KujrHvpg[/M]

The lower sky you see there is done through the environment flag.

EDIT:
As for the map fixing stuff, I also wanted to remind that there is a bug in Dig.unr, in earlier versions of Unreal, without UnrealShare, there are special events at the cave where you need to shoot tarydium barrels to blow your way out. Those special events play skaarj roaring sounds in original unpatched version, again this is the same problem as there used to be with the passage.unr pool.

Smirftsch said:

I mean, if someone would make such a mod it would be surely appreciated and I would surely add it on the page or even into the patch, but I personally need a break now

Click to expand...

If this ever becomes a project with you guys, look me up and I'll help.

BTW, thanks for your continued work. There isn't a single atta-boy in this whole thread, sorry for that oversite.