Our ReVolt Pub

Posted: **09 Jan 2010, 22:46**

jigebren @ Jan 9 2010, 06:08 PM wrote: To uninstall, all you have to do is delete the patched file and rename the backuped file. Everything else is left untouched.

You will see badly resized textures, in the same way that if you put 512x512 textures in a unpatched revolt (see below).

ok, great, thanks.
so at the moment if i want any old custom tracks to look ok, i need to remake the textures manually? are you intending to make your resizer available for the public in the future?

Posted: **09 Jan 2010, 23:03**

human @ Jan 9 2010, 06:16 PM wrote:ok, great, thanks.
so at the moment if i want any old custom tracks to look ok, i need to remake the textures manually? are you intending to make your resizer available for the public in the future?

Yes, I think I will make it available.
<angry mode>
But to be honest, I'm currently getting so little feedback that it's not very encouraging me to continue. Developing these tools is quite time consuming (I think you as a track maker know what I mean), so I'm expecting people to take time to report feedback.
</angry mode>

Posted: **09 Jan 2010, 23:11**

i have "revolt512.exe" and a "revolt.exe" in the same revolt folder each with thier own shortcut on my desktop so i can choose between them whenever i want.

oops this post seems a bit random i didnt see those last ones above :S lol

Posted: **09 Jan 2010, 23:25**

Keep it up jigebren!
Sure, we all respect your time spending on this work, and we like that you came here to help us, track makers and cars makers, to make better tracks and cars. I can only say that you shouldn't stop with this and don't worry about that future problems. I really hope that this project will be a success. I haven't read all the posts but as far as I understood, track makers that make textures, just need to make for them more tiny things because we will see them. I wonder if 1024x1024 pixels would be possible. But this is just a thing

.
Anyway, thank you for this patch and let's hope you will get at last what you wish, and what we all wish

.

Posted: **09 Jan 2010, 23:29**

jigebren @ Jan 9 2010, 06:33 PM wrote: But to be honest, I'm currently getting so little feedback that it's not very encouraging me to continue. Developing these tools is quite time consuming (I think you as a track maker know what I mean), so I'm expecting people to take time to report feedback.

i know jiggie. if i told how many hours did i work on jailhouse, people would simply just not believe it. no one thinks that there are people who sacrifice that much time for something like a track. i know how much time things take. but this is a very small community, nobody really gets enough attention. actually i think your project is kind of in the center of today's revolt world, just look at the number of posts in this topic, i dont know if there is any other topic similarly busy. i certainly support you and there are other important members who are similarly interested in the project.
i have just downloaded your texture pack by the way

EDIT: i installed the texture pack and run the patch and everything is fine, runs smooth.

Posted: **10 Jan 2010, 00:53**

well i am really impressed with this work, and i appreciate the amount of work put in, this is unbeleiveable how much this has helped me with this track i am making, even though im only going to be using 256 textures.

limiting factors or zmodeler means i can only use 1 bmp, but thanks to this i have used 1 512 bmp with my abc and d textures on it then rvtexmapped them to each bmp, so really now i can get 4 bmps! this wouldnt have worked as well without this patch!

Keep up the good work! im sure many people appreciate it!

Posted: **10 Jan 2010, 01:33**

I am working on re-sizing and/or re-drawing my tracks' textures for your new patch, since I believe that's the future of Re-Volt. Everything looks so well, you can actually see the leaves on the hedge in Radioactive Garden now =)

Btw, did you notice how awkward the sun looks like in Museum 2?

Posted: **10 Jan 2010, 01:47**

Thanks for your support, guys, but don't worry too much, I'm not quitting

. I'm just feeling a bit disappointed, as I'm not asking for too much, but just a little statement like:

human wrote:EDIT: i installed the texture pack and run the patch and everything is fine, runs smooth.

from everybody that have downloaded my patch is just what I'm waiting for, to know if things go nice or wrong. Else I can't intuit what going on on other systems than mine.

I will take a look at my texture resizer, but adding png support to it will complicate things a bit.

urnemanden wrote: Btw, did you notice how awkward the sun looks like in Museum 2?

No, thanks. It seems there is some ANDing here, I will take a look.

Posted: **10 Jan 2010, 04:09**

Ok, I have located the sun issue (at least for the 1207 version). Thanks urnemanden for reporting this.

And I took advantage of diving again in the exe file to locate some other pending issues, so there will be soon an update of the patch.

I am wondering if I will separate the 1207 an the 0916 patch version, as doing upkeep of both at the same time is really boring me (sorry for 0916 users). So I could easily update the 1207, and when I got time, try to update the 0916.

Posted: **10 Jan 2010, 11:18**

I'm trying to get off my lazy bottom and test the patch during next week. This is a great and promising development so of course I also want it to work on my computer

.

I really appreciate the effort you're making and I know how much time trying to figure all that stuff takes. Probably the track makers (which I am not) realize the best how much this opens possibilities, but I do understand it has possibility to allow more glorious tracks for us simple racers too

.

Posted: **10 Jan 2010, 12:02**

awesome, everything seems to be working fine. great patch, keep it up

Posted: **10 Jan 2010, 15:36**

Good news! I just found out the reason to why the 512 patch is launching with other settings than normal. It is simply getting all the registry info from the DEV version of revolt which I also got installed.

And this gives me a huge advantage, when it comes to the screen resolution, because the DEV version doesn't have a limit (or has a higher limit) - right now I am able to run Re-Volt 512 in 1680x1050x32 (have a look)!

Thanks again for a great patch!

Posted: **11 Jan 2010, 02:14**

I've updated the 1207 version part, but not the 0916, but I don't know if I will release it in this half-done state, or if I wait to update it fully...
What was updated: some value related to the sun texture , the dragon, the water in toylite, some stuff related to font, loading and spru.bmp and others...

@urnemanden
good to see the issue is worked out.

urnemanden wrote:And this gives me a huge advantage, when it comes to the screen resolution, because the DEV version doesn't have a limit (or has a higher limit) - right now I am able to run Re-Volt 512 in 1680x1050x32 (have a look)! smile.gif

In fact, I don't think that revolt has any limit for the resolution value (but it has for the number of modes available). I thought that, but after trying to change it, I discovered it was due to the XP compatibility mode (I'm not sure it is already known).
So if you set the windows 98 compatibility mode for revolt, the max resolution available will be 1280x1024 (at least on my system). Without this comp. mode, you can set the resolution higher.

Posted: **11 Jan 2010, 04:09**

jiggie,
something different: i started to experiment with the patched exe and created a test track with 512 textures. when i tried to insert a light in makeitgood it didnt have any effect in the mesh, i saw the color only on the objects (car for example). the omni light was set to "word and objects" also, i inserted a pickup as well and that wouldnt glow either, the mesh was not lit by the pickup model.

do you think that this is because of the patched exe?

Posted: **11 Jan 2010, 04:48**

human @ Jan 10 2010, 11:39 PM wrote:jiggie,
something different: i started to experiment with the patched exe and created a test track with 512 textures. when i tried to insert a light in makeitgood it didnt have any effect in the mesh, i saw the color only on the objects (car for example). the omni light was set to "word and objects" also, i inserted a pickup as well and that wouldnt glow either, the mesh was not lit by the pickup model.

do you think that this is because of the patched exe?

That's realy a hard question, human.
Honestly, I can't see directly any link between this issue and the patched values, but why not. I can't completely exclude that it would be an unexpected outcome.
But I'm not experiemented enough (that is to say not experimented at all

) in maketigood mode to test by myself. I can try, but as I don't know the expected result...

Are you sure that doing exactly the same in exactly the same condition but in an unpatched revolt gives something different?

Posted: **11 Jan 2010, 08:00**

That's it. I have released an updated version of my patch.
I was bored by the idea of updating the 0916 version part, but as it was urnemanden that noticed me with the sun issue, and he is a 0916 user if I remember well, I was feeling obliged to do it

.

Also, I have double-checked all the other values. I think it was missing some values used only in some special cases. All is now corrected.
I removed the gallery images support for 512 texture (not useful I think) (and I can't understand why they didn't look weird (ANDed) with the previous patch as the bmp images were still 256x256).

Patch beta 0.5 changelog:
- added: The targeted revolt.exe filepath can now be specified on command line
- corrected: sun.bmp, dragon.bmp & water.bmp texture were not supported, and
there could be some issues with font.bmp, loading.bmp & spru.bmp.
- removed: gallery images support removed, as I don't think that was usefull.

You can find the updated patch on my webpage.

Posted: **11 Jan 2010, 08:02**

Looking good bud. I'm just waiting for a 100% bug-free patch both 0916 and 1207 so I can totally re-vamp the arctic blast mod I'm working on.

Keep it up!

@human, perhaps there is no vertex close enough to the light/pickup.

Posted: **11 Jan 2010, 08:20**

As long as nobody find a bug in it, it can be considered 100% bug-free

.
I'm joking a bit, but it's quite as simple as that, and that's why I insisted above on the necessity of feedback for a project like this.

EDIT: Just to say, zagames, that I would be glad if this patch can help the artic blast mod in any way.

For now, the only thing I'm really not sure about is the memory reservation (I don't know if the term is correct). I have no real knowledges about that, and I don't know if there is something that has to be adjusted about that in the exe file when changing the texture size. (Any help from people working with the available source would be welcome...)

Posted: **11 Jan 2010, 13:30**

jigebren @ Jan 11 2010, 03:30 AM wrote: I removed the gallery images support for 512 texture (not useful I think) (and I can't understand why they didn't look weird (ANDed) with the previous patch as the bmp images were still 256x256).

well, jailhouse has 256 textures and they look completely healthy in the patched game, i dont see any oddity or strange pixels.
great to hear about the next released version jiggie.

as for the light thing: can anybody please who has the patched exe try to insert a light source in makeitgood and report the results? thanks.

Posted: **11 Jan 2010, 13:43**

Same problem here as well peeps!!!
The car is effected by the lights but the polys are not.
I found this out last week but thought it was my pc.
The lights work while in the light edit mode but not once in non edit mode.

Posted: **11 Jan 2010, 18:40**

Jig wrote:That's it. I have released an updated version of my patch.
I was bored by the idea of updating the 0916 version part, but as it was urnemanden that noticed me with the sun issue, and he is a 0916 user if I remember well, I was feeling obliged to do it .

I am so glad to hear that! I'll download it now.

Just to report some other stuff, me and Crone tested out all stock tracks in almost any modes (normal, reversed and/or mirrored) and it seems like Nhood1 and Ghost town 2 is the only stock tracks crashing while loading the .fin file (as I talked about earlier). However, they appear to work just fine when driving them Reversed, mirrored or both.

Jig wrote:In fact, I don't think that revolt has any limit for the resolution value (but it has for the number of modes available). I thought that, but after trying to change it, I discovered it was due to the XP compatibility mode (I'm not sure it is already known).
So if you set the windows 98 compatibility mode for revolt, the max resolution available will be 1280x1024 (at least on my system). Without this comp. mode, you can set the resolution higher.

Hey, that's great news. I never really noticed because I always have Windows 98 compatibilty on, I will go test it out later myself. Does any value in Re-Volt tell about not saving the amount of cars in-game, btw?

Human wrote:well, jailhouse has 256 textures and they look completely healthy in the patched game, i dont see any oddity or strange pixels.
great to hear about the next released version jiggie.

as for the light thing: can anybody please who has the patched exe try to insert a light source in makeitgood and report the results? thanks.

Related to the 256 textures, I've run jailhouse myself on the 512patch too with no problems. I don't know if Jig mentioned this, but even though the pixels doesn't get directly strange colored, all your artwork will get a pixelated look, if they aren't re-sized up to 512. Here is an example below:

As for the lighting problem. I have JungleVolt running just fine with lightning and everything, so it is at least not a fault comming from the use 512 textures instead of 256. And I also don't experience the same problem when it comes to inserting the lights in a .lit file made in the original or in a totally new .lit file, created by the patched Re-Volt.

Please note that I tested it while I had the 0.4 version tho, if you are running 0.5 that might be the reason then.

I hope you get things working again soon, both of you =)

EDIT:

Hey Jig, I just checked out your new patch and everything seems fine at the moment. There is just one thing I need confirmation on.

Jig wrote:- added: The targeted revolt.exe filepath can now be specified on command line

Do you mean that you for example used a .bat file to run the patched revolt.exe with commandlines added (i.e. -sli), it will run fine too, as the original revolt.exe?

Posted: **11 Jan 2010, 19:37**

@human & @Skitch2
I will test that light bug. But like I said, I'm not very used to makeitgood mode editing for now.
If you can try to do some tests on your own, with/without patched version, it would help me a lot.

@urnemanden
Good job, urne (and crone too). For the Nhood1 and Ghost town 2 issue, I don't know what to do, as I think I'm not able to reproduce the bug on my system, it hard to see if it's linked to the patch (perhaps the reversed/mirrored mode could be a clue). If you have other info, don't hesitate... (if you take a look at the .log file in your %temp% directory, is the .fin file the last file loaded?)

Does any value in Re-Volt tell about not saving the amount of cars in-game, btw?

Yes, but it's more than a value. I had taken a look at that few weeks ago, and if I remember well, I believe it was just forgotten by the revolt developers (as other value like speed in km/h). The only way I think it could perhaps be corrected is by taking place of another value (it means that another less important value would not be saved), and I don't even know if it would be possible.

well, jailhouse has 256 textures and they look completely healthy in the patched game, i dont see any oddity or strange pixels.

The effect of ANDing can be only seen while blending two close pixels with quite different color. For exemple, ANDing rgb(0,255,15) with rgb(255,0,255) gives rgb(0,0,15).

Related to the 256 textures, I've run jailhouse myself on the 512patch too with no problems. I don't know if Jig mentioned this, but even though the pixels doesn't get directly strange colored, all your artwork will get a pixelated look, if they aren't re-sized up to 512.

That's because textures are first internally resized with no smooth filter. And then, when the smooth filter is applied during rendering, it can't be as efficient (because the pixels were already doubled).

Hey Jig, I just checked out your new patch and everything seems fine at the moment. There is just one thing I need confirmation on.

QUOTE (Jig)
- added: The targeted revolt.exe filepath can now be specified on command line

Do you mean that you for example used a .bat file to run the patched revolt.exe with commandlines added (i.e. -sli), it will run fine too, as the original revolt.exe?

No, it means that you can use something like:

Code: Select all

revolt_512_texture_patch.exe revolt0916_patched_04.exe

Is was designed to help keeping different versions of the exe (patched, non-patched, etc)

Posted: **12 Jan 2010, 01:22**

Jig wrote:@urnemanden
Good job, urne (and crone too). For the Nhood1 and Ghost town 2 issue, I don't know what to do, as I think I'm not able to reproduce the bug on my system, it hard to see if it's linked to the patch (perhaps the reversed/mirrored mode could be a clue). If you have other info, don't hesitate... (if you take a look at the .log file in your %temp% directory, is the .fin file the last file loaded?)

Thanks, I checked the revolt.log and there seems to be no problem with any of the 2 tracks. I even tried backup the 512 versions of nhood1 (wild_west2 aswell) and copy the nhood1 level from the unpatched version over - and that didn't work neither. So right now I am out of things that might could cause this crash, currently.

Posted: **12 Jan 2010, 01:31**

Does any value in Re-Volt tell about not saving the amount of cars in-game, btw?
Yes, but it's more than a value. I had taken a look at that few weeks ago, and if I remember well, I believe it was just forgotten by the revolt developers (as other value like speed in km/h). The only way I think it could perhaps be corrected is by taking place of another value (it means that another less important value would not be saved), and I don't even know if it would be possible.

This is true... The amount of cars is saved into registry. Unfortunately the Re-Volt developers forgot to include code that loads it also from registry. Fixing it directly in the source would be trivial. But to do a patch would be quite another matter as it would require inserting new code and not just modifying existing bits. Inserting new code is not trivial as it would require rewriting all the memory accessing beyond that point to take into account the offset.

Posted: **12 Jan 2010, 01:40**

Thanks, arto, I was too lazy too explain the difficulty of fixing it.
And thanks to make things clearer, as I let believe that the value was not saved, but in fact it is saved, but not read.

Posted: **12 Jan 2010, 01:49**

@urnemanden
If I remember well, the crash you talked about only happens if you launch a patched revolt with old 256x256 textures, with nhood1 and wild_west2 level (but not reversed nor mirrored). Does it happens every time the same, or is it randomly?
Does revolt quit after the crash?
Can you PM me your revolt.log content after a crash, just to have something to start from?

Posted: **12 Jan 2010, 02:09**

Well, it actually happens nomatter if I use 256x256 textures or 512x512 textures (at least now). It is quite rare that I somehow manage to make the loading bar go much further at both tracks, it's like 95% of all tries that fails. Re-Volt quits with the usual error message from Windows. It could have something to do with -sli, I will try launch Re-Volt using -window and see if it fixes things tomorrow. Oh, and I've PM'ed you the revolt.log. Thanks for the support on this! (:

Posted: **12 Jan 2010, 20:34**

jig,
do you think that you will have some time to have a look on that light thing? if you need makeitgood help just let us know. my programming knowledge is zero, i cant help in that part, but if you need testing or anything just give us a shout.

Posted: **12 Jan 2010, 20:51**

human @ Jan 12 2010, 04:04 PM wrote:jig,
do you think that you will have some time to have a look on that light thing? if you need makeitgood help just let us know. my programming knowledge is zero, i cant help in that part, but if you need testing or anything just give us a shout.

@human
I'm sorry I'm not concentrating on this bug for now, but I know I will have to do it.
I've tried quicly, and it seems that there is a light problem, but I don't have clearly compared a patched/unpatched version.
But, don't worry, you can help without any programming knowledge at all

.

Pehaps it could be a good idea to sart a new topic for this bug (I'm not sure at all, but it would prevent from mixing all info).

What you can do is:
- test with an unpatched version to see that all is good.
- test with a 512 patched version in exactly the same conditions, to see if the bug appear.
- make a clear report (what you have done, the revolt version, the patch version, the level used for testing, your OS, ...)

Posted: **13 Jan 2010, 01:48**

Hey jig, I just tested the patch512's skills to keep stable while racing online and everything seems to work perfectly! (no, I didn't try Nhood1 and Ghost Town 2 - it would ruin the fun if I crashed)

Posted: **13 Jan 2010, 02:03**

Good thing to hear that it works online, and good thing you tried that, urne, as I'm not used with online stuff...

Posted: **13 Jan 2010, 10:25**

I was examining some stuff in revolt and suddenly, a bug. What bug? I believe it's exactly the one that urnemanden was reporting, as it appears during the loading of the .fin file of nhood1 and it seems to appear after I applied my patch. And in fact, I already had this bug before, as I found a comment that I had left for future testing.

I have spend several hours to track this bug: now I can see clearly where it happens, but I still don't know why it happens and what to do to prevent it from happening.

I tried a quick trick to skip the bug, and the bug was skipped, but it deactivate the collision with all instances in the level.

It's clear it has to do with the loading of instances.

It seems that the bug is be triggered by the patch, but really, while examing it, I can't see any link with the patched values.

I tried to compare the disassembly I'm working on with the available source code, but while I'm sometime able to find some great similarities, this part (probably the LoadInstances() function) seem to have been changed a lot since this source code.

It's the end of test for today, as I really have to go to bed

.

EDIT: One more strange thing: while I can reproduce the bug every time with revolt running under my debugger, after I quit the debugger and lauch revolt, it worked without bug at all. Perhaps the way revolt is launched under vista (urnemanden's OS) has "something in common" with debugger, on the contrary to winXP (which I use).

Posted: **13 Jan 2010, 12:54**

I am glad (somehow) you found the bug yourself, so you might be able to test things out. Try eventually add "-sli" and see if it makes any difference? (so you can feel the bug yourself in the patched Re-Volt eventually)

If you need any assistance with this problem, just tell me =)

Posted: **13 Jan 2010, 22:39**

jigebren @ Jan 13 2010, 05:55 AM wrote: I tried to compare the disassembly I'm working on with the available source code, but while I'm sometime able to find some great similarities, this part (probably the LoadInstances() function) seem to have been changed a lot since this source code.

You're better off comparing to the Re-Volt sources of the XBox version, since that includes mostly the same code as the shipped Re-Volt version. The sources for PC version are from an incomplete pre-release version.

Posted: **14 Jan 2010, 03:40**

arto @ Jan 13 2010, 06:09 PM wrote: You're better off comparing to the Re-Volt sources of the XBox version, since that includes mostly the same code as the shipped Re-Volt version. The sources for PC version are from an incomplete pre-release version.

Thanks arto, I didn't specified it but that's what I already do.
I started first with the pc source, and just to see, I took a look at the xbox source (I remembered I heard that the xbox version could be more recent). And I could see that it's true, the xbox (uncommented) version is really more similar to the shipped Re-Volt version. So I switched to the xbox source.

But for the the LoadInstances() function, I can't find any similarities with the source code. But perhaps I mistake this function for another, as it' not really easy to identify them.

Posted: **14 Jan 2010, 06:23**

Some news about the 'nhood1 .fin loading bug' (that one reported by urnemanden).
When I my bed yesterday, it came to my mind that I didn't tried with an unpatched revolt version. It's done now, and if I'm not wrong, this bug is not related to the 512 patch at all.
So why urne thinks that it is? I can't be sure (urne can tell us), but perhaps while copying/patching the revolt.exe file, his compatibility mode setting has changed.

Below, a summary of my test:

Let's call the compatibility mode 'CpM' (note I'm running windows XP).

I launch revolt in a debugger, with CpM set to 'windows 98'
-> no bug
I launch revolt in a debugger, with no CpM set
-> there is an attempt to write in memory at offset 0 (no good)
I launch revolt from windows, with CpM set to 'windows 98'
-> no bug
I launch revolt from windows, with no CpM set
-> no bug !

I've made the test with version 0916 and 1207. Mainly windowed, but I tried some fullscreen too.
What I conclude from that is that the bug could be due an incompatibility between recent OS (XP, vista) and revolt, and that the CpM take care of this incompatibility.
I still don't fully understand why Vista seems to crash and not XP. Perhaps because XP is more 'flexible', or because the incompatibility has gone a step further with vista.

Testers crew needed:
I some of you can make the same tests (not with debugger but someting like XP vs. Vista), it would be nice. Just alternate the compatibility mode (none / windows98) and try to launch the level 'nhood1'. See if it crashes while loading file 'nhood1.fin'.

Our ReVolt Pub

Textures 512x512