******************************************************************************
|   Descent 1 3Dfx Voodoo patch    | WWW: http://www.descent2.com/patches/   |
|      Code by Stefan Wiegand      |                                         |
|Published in 98 by Descent Network| eMail: HHSoft@descent2.com              |
|----------------------------------|                                         |
|           Documentation          | Heiko Herrmann                          |
|  Post-Alpha 2 - Issues & Status  | Descent Network Team                    |
******************************************************************************


                                                        Last Updated: 08/29/98


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LEGEND:
~~~~~~~

R:    Reproducable on HH's system.
V:    Reproducable on others system, HH viewed it.
Ix:   Importance 1-6, 6 meaning highest.
?:    Problem not reproducable here or not understood what the reporter meant.
      Further investigation needed...
test: To be (re)tested for reproduction.

FIXED:     Problem was fixed.
UNCHANGED: Problem was unproducable, minor or is yet open to be fixed.
IMPROVED:  Improvement should fix or reduce problem.

STATUS:    Detailed status notes of the problem from Stefan.
HH:        Notes from HH.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


---
(3) ? - IMPROVED

The FOV (field of view) is WAY too low.  It feels like it's about 50,
when it should be about 70 or 80.  It's an easy thing to change in
Glide, so maybe make it a slider just to see how people like it.  

STATUS: That's right. FOV is too small, but it can't be solved by glide, which I
	use as a triangle renderer only. Made a little bit wider...
---
(4) V I4 - UNCHANGED

One tester got Kernal32.dll faults as well as "out of system resources" when
ending the game, and needs to reboot.

STATUS: Not reproducable.
---
(6) R I3 - UNCHANGED

Briefing text at the first screen has underlines in it.

(HH: D2_3Dfx has this partially too, so it isn't critical).

STATUS: This is annoying, but not worth a (not easy) fix...
        (HH: Seems to be fixed in the current version!?!?)
---
(7) R I3 - UNCHANGED

(7a) Briefing music cuts out and becomes just drums at second loop and beyond.

(7b) Exit-sequence music should only play once.  It loops, and sounds funny
after the first time.

STATUS: Open.
---
(10) R I4 - UNCHANGED

Framerate cut in half when looking at shield orbs, energy centers and
through some windows.

(HH: Looking through red door in L1 drops from constant 60 to constant 30).

STATUS: Not reproducable in the current version (an earlier build definitly
        had this problem). Remember: if more objects are displayed, the
        framerate may drop. On computers with AMD CPUs, the framerate may drop
        significantly, because the floating point unit isn't really fast, and
        there is much more floating point stuff than in original D1 now...
        (HH: This seems to be as in (12). Look status there!)
---
(11) ? - UNCHANGED

Explosions, weapon impacts and player hits (bots' weapons hitting you)
display either completely or partially with single lines as opposed to
filled blocks for bitmap pixels.  Particularly around edges.

When any such object is displayed, game takes a SEVERE framerate hit.
Saw framerate drop from 75 FPS to as low as 15 FPS.  (Translucency
option toggle makes no difference here.)

STATUS: If the bitmaps have to be uploaded to the hardware first, then you'll
        get a framerate hit. The second time the display of such an object
        shouldn't cause a framerate drop... Perhaps I'll give these textures a
        higher cache priority.
---
(12) ? - UNCHANGED

Level 2: After passing through main room at 800x600, entire game slowed
down to 1/2 max framerate.  (For me, that's 75 FPS, so it was at 37.5).
Sped back up when I switched back to 640x480.

STATUS: If vsync is on, then the framerate drops to 37.5 from 75 when the
        framerate actually goes down to 74fps, because the game missed a vsync
        it waits for the next...
---
(13) R I1 - IMPROVED

Exit-sequence went fine up to when Pyro exits the mine and you can see
the planet's terrain.  Then framerate slowed to around 18 FPS.

(HH: even on a P2-400 with V1 FPS go down to 18).

STATUS: Speeded up terrain (exit sequence).
---
(14) ? I4 - UNCHANGED

Sound effects (firing, countdown, etc) have a tendency to repeat at
random intervals.  Sound handling apparently is getting a directive to
play and LOOP the sound effects, and to stop them again at a later time.
If framerate causes hit-and-miss with sound-effect processing, the "stop
sound-effect" call might not be getting processed at times.

STATUS: Not reproducable.
        (HH: maybe a sound card/driver problem? Maybe no DX5 drivers?)
---
(19) R I3 - UNCHANGED

Sometimes the polymodels (missiles, robots, etc) have mixed lighting. Some of
the polygons of something will be fully lit while the rest will only be
partially lit. It's annoying although I'm sure most people could live with it
until a later version.

Example: Top and bottom of flare objects appear black or dark.

STATUS: Open.
---
(20) R I2 - UNCHANGED

If you're in a dark room, transparent/translucent objects are difficult
to see - particularly Class 1 drone shots and shield orbs.

STATUS: One can disable Translucency in Rendering Options
---
(21) ? - UNCHANGED

Demo playback is extremely jerky and seems artificially slow, compared
to playback in original exe.

STATUS: Not reproducable.
---
(22) ? - UNCHANGED

Polygons on bots jump around quite a bit. Perspective correction and
assurance of proper polygon orientation are needed to fix this problem.

STATUS: Open.
---
(25) V I4 - UNCHANGED

If REAR VIEW is assigned to a joystick button -> endless toggle between rear
and normal view while the button is pressed.

(HH: works on me, but I seen it on alpha-testers computer - Voodoo 2)

STATUS: Did he have AutoFire on his joystick enabled?
---
(26) V I3 - UNCHANGED

REAR VIEW is on bottom of the screen, even when statusbar mode is used.

STATUS: Open.
---
(29) ? - UNCHANGED

When switching to 800x600, the first several seconds there where no 
textures loaded. (flat shaded mine) Looked kinda cool at first, but 
once they did load, the frame rate fell by about 60% Still it did 
work, I was surprised to see that at all.

(HH: Not reproducable here)

STATUS: Not reproducable, but mode switching may be buggy.
---
(30) ? - UNCHANGED

First, and most noticeable, is the small sound separation threshold. 
Basically the center channel is either not playing, or is mixed 
too low. The problem is most noticeable when firing just off center, 
in either corner. Seems there's little roll-off factor between center 
and hard-panned channels. Am I making sense??

STATUS: yes, that's to be fixed
---
(31) V I4 - UNCHANGED

Two systems (V1) crashed each time the game should start (after the
briefings) with a GPF.

D1_3DFX caused an invalid page fault in
module <unknown> at 0000:00000001.
Registers:
EAX=00000054 CS=0137 EIP=00000001 EFLGS=00010202
EBX=0081f338 SS=013f ESP=0081f320 EBP=0081f37c
ECX=00000000 DS=013f ESI=00000003 FS=4607
EDX=00000001 ES=013f EDI=0000000a GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
01 00 00 00 00 00 00 16 00 f3 08 65 04 70 00 65 
Stack dump:
00000000 00000000 00000002 00000000 00000000 00000000 0000000a 0000ffff
00007800 00000000 000000

(HH: Some of the versions from the days before the Alpha 2-release didn't work
either. However Alpha 1 runs fine.)

STATUS: Not reproducable. Level?
        (HH: all, e.g. beginning from L1 of standard mission)
---
(33) R I4 - UNCHANGED

When played in 800x600x60 Hz, 640x480 mode does not use 60 Hz anymore, until
reboot!?

STATUS: Open.
---
(35) I4 - UNCHANGED

Proximitry Bombs should not be transparent.

STATUS: Are they transparent ?
        (HH: yes :) ).
---
(36) test I3 - UNCHANGED

The first time I tried it on Kali, I could see network games on the 
various sockets, but when I went to start one on socket +5, my 
partner could not see my game (he was using DDR_D1). Later when I 
tried it after a reboot I couldn't see any network games at all. So 
there's something flaky going on there.

STATUS: Hopefully fixed this one.
---
(37) test I4 - UNCHANGED

I tried a few of them, and I plan to get to several more this 
weekend. Some work great. Others, well.... Twice I tried to start up 
Spaz's 'Nysa' (I can hear you groaning ;) and my computer just froze 
up hard. I should add that I've never had a problem with any of 
Spaz's levels; and I play them all the time (except Minerva ;))) So I 
don't know what this could be. I do know that he uses DMB for every 
single level he's ever made though, and that's quite a stable app.

A different alpha tester said:
"I could get Nysa to run, but it did the same thing as the previously mentioned
level (see (45)), crashed on abort."

STATUS: Open.
---
(40) test I3 - UNCHANGED

I loaded up a level with both my computers in anarchy mode.
One was running descentr.exe and the other was running d1_3dfx.exe.
I think there is a problem with the cloak stuff, the cloak amount
varies a little on the d1_3dfx as it is cloaked.  also, the cloak
doesn't turn off rght away, it seemed to take about 5 sec to return to
normal.  Last, the ship came back with blue textures, then switched to
the correct red ones.

STATUS: Open.
---
(43) I3 - UNCHANGED

Playing "descent.dem" I noticed that if the player has 100 shields, behind
the ship/shield display will flash 

STATUS: Open.
---
(45) I4 - UNCHANGED

On one of my levels (d1 destruction comes- made with dmb2) upon aborting
the level (with ESC), the game crashes.

(HH: The level is available on http://www.descent2.com/sickone).

STATUS: Open.
---
(46) I2 - UNCHANGED

In Nysa, when the reactor would fire at me, it seemed to not recognize the
transparent color for a second, and it would show a black background.

STATUS: Open.
---
(47) I3 - UNCHANGED

When I defeated the reactor in destruction comes, the timer would not go
down, it would remain at 35 seconds
The timer did go down in a normal descent game, but if you abort during
this time, the game will crash.

STATUS: Open.
---
(48) ? - UNCHANGED

Framerates stay pretty constant at the cap, until you kill an enemy, in
which case it will drop dramatically.. could this be because of the
framerate cap? I wish you would get rid of that anyway...

STATUS: Not reproducable.
---
(49) I4 - UNCHANGED

Voodoo Rush cards show the mouse cursor within the game.

STATUS: Open.
---
(50) - UNCHANGED

One user with a Voodoo Rush card (Intense 3D) has problems in the list menus,
which includes the Select-Player, Select-Mission and Select-Demo2Play screens.
Some items are not displayed or only flickering at the beginning and then invi-
sible. Seems to be a problem with ZOrder or something like that. GLIDE version
is V2.45, downloaded from the Intense-website.

STATUS: Open.
---
(51) R I5 - ?

When a new player is created, and JOYSTICK is selected as controller the old
(non-working) calibrate dialogs come up.

(HH: I don't know if this was already fixed in the new version).
---
(52) I4 - UNCHANGED

On one testers' Voodoo Rush graphic card list dialog boxes, like the player,
mission and demo selection lists, some list items are just missing.
---
(53) BY DESIGN

Missions with briefing pictures will not show the right ones.

(HH: Special 640x480 pictures need to be provided now in missions with custom
     briefing pictures. The most important one, Orion Nebula Project by Bradley
     Schneider & Team, will be re-released in a new version V1.02 with the
     release of D1_3Dfx Public Beta 1.)
---
(55) R I4

Fading in ending pictures flickers.
---
(56) R I4

Pressing RETURN in endings to immediatly view full text does not work
correctly.
---
(57) R I4

If ending the game while being hit the menu also is red lighted. Same with
Fusion charging and pink/yellow menu etc.
---
(58) R I4

ENDGUY.BBM file is not correctly displayed in the ending. Instead the
"ENDGUY.BBM" filename is displayed as briefing text.
---
(60) R I4

Cloaked ship does now show as a black box in the status bar.
---
(61) R I1

Exit door stuck open in briefing and wrong colors on that screen (both exit
door and the text gets blue).
---
(62) R I1

Robots in briefing partially overlap new Hi-Res briefing picture.
---
(63) R I4

Brightness slider should be set to 0 at first startup. Actually it IS at the
lowest position looking at the screen but the slider states medium.
---
(64) test I4
Producers is triggered only once.
---
(65) test I4

The first time I started a mission in d1_3dfx, my ship was turning
wildly around. Problem disappeared when I choose keyboard as
controller in the option menu. Probably the problem was that I had
keyboard+mouse as control setup before.
---
(66) test I4

The image (preview) in the load game menu is to large, so its
overlap the list of saved games.
---
(67) I4
The mission list and the player list has an empty line between each
entry. Causing the mission list to be larger than the actual box.

(HH: This happens on some systems. I have heard it now from one Voodoo Rush
     user and one Voodoo 1 user.)
---
(68) R I4

On my system Alpha 04 crashes e.g. in the most right room in Level 1 (the room
after the hostages) as soon as you want to look into the left corridor (on the
other side of the energy center). This however only happens under NT4, not
under Win98.

My NT4 has no sound card and that seems to be the problem here: If I start
D1_3Dfx under NT4 with the -nosound switch everything works fine.

This also didn't happen with earlier Alpha versions.

(HH: Deja-vu of FreeSpace Demo 1.0...)
---
(69) R I4

Switching game modes while playing misplaces the HUD controls. (since Alpha 4)
---
(70) R I4

When switching to Windows and back to D1_3Dfx you are still firing/flying in
that direction as you did before unless you press a key to release it.
---
