Disappearing Terrain

Wed, 04/11/2007 - 22:47 — d.mounce

I just downloaded .95 release --the binary, considering I haven't Visual Studio 2003- and ran it using sylphis.exe -map maptest.cmap. Everything loaded just fine, but if I'm not pointing the camera in exactly the right direction (just a tad past 90 degrees to the right from the initial orientation), the terrain isn't visible. It's only a small (45 degrees or so) field of view where the terrain is visible. Looking down too far causes the terrain to disappear as well.

Also, I believe hopping down off the building causes the terrain to disappear, regardless of how the camera is turned. I say "I believe" because I can't tell for sure; the bloom turns solid white so nothing is all that terribly visible.

I'm running WindowsXP (SP2 I think) with an nVidia 7900GS. The drivers are less that a week old, so I'm pretty sure they're the latest. ;)

Anything come to mind as to what this problem might be? Thanks!

-=Derek

Bug Reports

Thu, 04/12/2007 - 00:11 — harkal

I will look into it first

I will look into it first thing in the morning! I must get to bed right now! Its been a long day!

Thu, 04/12/2007 - 02:05 — d.mounce

Solved

Well, I found the problem. Yay! But, to keep with the wandering-around-the-point style of my blog posts, I'll explain how I found it first. ;)

Just for the heck of it, thinking that possibly some minor file was missing from the .95 release, I installed the .92 SDK, then installed the .95 SDK on top of it, replacing all the existing files with the new ones. I ran the new "custom" Sylphis with the same "sylphis.exe -map maptest.cmap," and the terrain problem was gone. Yay!

Eventually, comparing the files in the two directories, I narrowed down the problem to the base1.col pack file from the .92 installation. Funny thing was, when I took all the files from base1.col and placed them straight into the file system, then got rid of the original base1.col, the problem came back. "Huh?" me did think to myself.

Out of pure "what-the-heckedness," I got rid of the files extracted from base1.col and created a new base1.col with nothing but a text file in it. And, what do you know, the problem was again gone. (Another "Yay!")

So, the fix is a simple one: add a base1.col file into the base\ directory, and add to it some small file --a copy of the license, perhaps. I'm not even sure that this is a bug, depending on how Sylphis is supposed to work.

Might merit a .951 release though, just with the added base1.col.

-=Derek

Fri, 04/13/2007 - 08:39 — RbE

huh?

I've added a file named "base1.col" to the /base directory, and filled it with the content of the license....still looks the same - no terrain. Sun rises, but terrain and building are plain black.

Fri, 04/13/2007 - 17:25 — harkal

I think we are going to need

I think we are going to need a good bug tracking tool!!!! These things you report are realy weird!

Fri, 04/13/2007 - 14:29 — alankligman

Application failed to initialize

I'm having a different problem entirely. When I run "sylphis.exe -map maptest.cmap" Windows complains that the application failed to initialize properly. I'm not terribly familiar with Windows, do you have any thoughts about what might be causing this?

Incidentally, Linux is listed as a supported platform on the sourceforge page, but only Windows is listed on the product page (www.sylphis3d.com).

Fri, 04/13/2007 - 23:29 — d.mounce

Yipes! I just reformatted

Yipes! I just reformatted Windows, installed all my various drivers, then immediately installed .95. Now I'm getting the same problem.

I'm going to create a new thread though, for this bug. I'll detail it more there.

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