That's some pretty good research!


I was thinking the DirectX run-time distributions were backward compatible for DD but your explanation makes more sense for the problem with EECH.

I like your theory about the horizon covering everything. As I understand DD is 2D and D3D is as it sounds and everything DD can be done with D3D, it's just a little more work for the programmer. So, I was thinking the only thing I can think of that could be 2D would be the sky and the GUI's. That didn't wash because they say the buildings are gone too. I didn't think the sky may be on top!

What if you substitute totally transparent textures for the sky?

Another thing is this folder: C:\Razorworks\cohokum\3ddata\horizon. In it are bin files used for the horizon. The sky textures may only be for clouds, lightning, etc. I made new bin files for mars, to be red all the time, and the way I did it was I removed all the bin files and substituted TGA files of the same name. I'm pretty sure it was TGA files. When EECH runs, after the change, it generates bin files from the TGA files. I don't know, but if TGA files can have some sort of transparency channel they could be made 100% transparent and that might help to prove/disprove your theory.



I would say there's at least half a dozen people working with the source code.
Go here: http://www.eechcentral.com/wiki/index.php?title=Development
C-language wouldn't be hard with your experience and the source is well written to be easy to read.

This is what i found today on Rage3d forums:



Since EECH has similar problems in both brands of newer cards as well, I think the problem could very well be the same here and it could worth a shot to try and 'port' the fix to EECH -if doing that is possible that is.

Is this still accurate?

http://www.eechcentral.com/wiki/index.php?title=Help:Contents

Yes.

I'm willing to take a shot at this. I did just find the original source on the Razorworks site. I have just installed Watcom 1.7a and I'm downloading DirectX SDK from Microsoft.

I have sent a message for the code access but will the above environment work for testing purposed for this bug?

OK - I have everything setup but I seem to be missing some libraries. I think it is because the SDK is too new. It is looking for dd3d.h, d3dcaps.h, and 3dtypes.h and I all got with the SDK was d3d9*.h. There is also no dplay.h file in the SDK so I am getting the "INTERFACE" symbol as undefined.

If someone with a working build environment wants to take a shot - this is line 201 in MODULES\GRAPHICS\ZBUFFER.C:

d3drval = IDirectDrawSurface7_Blt ( ddraw.lpZBuffer, NULL, NULL, NULL, DDBLT_DEPTHFILL, &fx );

Here is the original post: http://xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9625&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

If someone has a recipe for a build environment, I will continue to play.

You should get the community source code. Pretty sure some compile fixes were made to make it compile with openwatcom.

no reply from "eech-dev-subscribe@bollocks.net.nz" ...

You'll get an automatic reply immediatly that you have to reply to subscribe the actual list. Check that it's not in your spam folder...

I checked, no reply and no spam.

Oh Bodhammer, may the gods help you with your task!
We are all with you on this.

One thing I forgot, if anyone wants to try and eliminate the horizon for a test, is that there is a second copy of the horizon.bin files in "C:\Razorworks\common\3ddata\horizon" and you have to eliminate both sets before eech will generate new bin files from the tga's.

I'm extremelly happy to see someone working on this issue! I hope that the result will be great in the end (and that this issue gets fixed).

Good luck with your work Bodhammer. I might get to fly the Hind yet!

FYI - no repsonse to my request to access the current source code base. No response to my request for build help or my library link problems.

Don't anyone hold their breath waiting on me...

Did you write Lukas directly?



Well, since no one is using the original razorworks source anymore it's hard to know exactly why that doesn't compile...

Yes I did, no response.

Hrmm strange I did not get an email. Check your PMs.

I doubt the horizon is covering the 3D, since in the side/helo selection screen you can't even see the aircraft rotating.

If a mod is not found in the next year, it might be worth just scrapping EECH and attempting to port everything in EE1 over to EE2. I don't have the new one, but they do have a modern graphics engine, without these types of glitches, and with terrain that actually has variable z-coordinates. It would be a shame to see all the improvements in EE1 lost or only useable on older hardware. EE1 never really ran fast enough on that hardware to fully make use of increased visiblity and rendering around cities, for instance. Just too much slowdown with old hardware. To use Enemy Engaged with all that running on a modern card would be a real treat.

Believe it or not I've been wondering the same.

I believe that it would be an excelent to port all this work done in EE1 to EE2 and to make or applying all the new work directly in EE2. I guess that this shouldn't be that hard to do since EE2 is in essence the same game as EE1 (but with improved graphics).