Recent content by autodidacticphd

Latest tests.

Using only the texture fix we found in the earliest posts, I've been able to play most of the game without serious issue. While the custom tourneys seem to work most of the time, I get the best results by going into the menu and switching to the native arenas instead.

I did download the Briton DLC, and that does crash frequently, but the base game plus Floris seems about as stable as I could ask for at this point.

An important note, I recently upgraded my MB, CPU, and RAM. Though, I'm skeptical of that being the issue, as the game ran fine with that hardware on Windows before I switched to Linux.

Update

So, the Linux port is out of beta. Due to hard drive issues I had to do a fresh install of everything, OS, Steam, MnB, and Floris. For giggles I just installed it and started it up, and to my surprise, most (but not all, specifically some skyboxes) of the texture bugs that plagued us before are no longer a problem. However, several new bugs seem to have sprung up. Disabling the special tournaments now sends you to an open field of that region type to fight, and transitions to and from town menus now seems to have a high chance to crash the game entirely, etc. Honestly, I just wish there was a version of the mod that was even more stripped down than Gameplay... I like the character creation, most of the shop tweeks, the landowner/moneylender, and a few other such "Floris specific" mods in the pack... but half of the changes, and almost all of the graphical tinkering I could do without. But every time I open up the DevTools to try and cobble together a stable pack I just get lost.

And even worse, I'm finding out that a lot of the alternatives like Silverstag use the WSE, which just plain won't work in Linux.

*sigh*

Yeah, I do like those better. Will give that solution a try eventually (I got distracted trying to get various non-linux steam titles to work in WINE... oy veh). Anyway, as Hanakoganei says, Floris is a mod pack, not just one mod. The ground textures issue, I believe, comes from a mod that specifically concentrated on that, so it should be easy to track down... though, I'm not sure how much info that might bag you. The character skins are (again, this is just my understanding) another mod, but I don't know which one or if it does other things too. And, by now I'm sure you're aware that the sky is also an issue in native, though, it's entirely possible that it too is modded and won't be fixed when native is. The Wikia for Floris does a pretty good job of breaking the mods down, if you haven't looked there yet.

Hehe, is that your first look at our troubles Hana? You should see a completely unrepaired desert combat. Black dunes on black backgrounds on black sky... all you can see are the horses, the characters, and the dust they kick up. It's like a dogfight out of Star Wars only with cavalry instead of Xwings, pretty trippy really. And it makes it surprisingly hard to judge distance or speed.

Huh. I'm using an nvidia card too. It may just be clashing with one of my dirty hacks... like I say, I should probably do a clean install before making too much of a fuss. But, just out of curiosity, did you decide to use Kleiner's files or Hana's tut? I know you didn't sound all that enthused about them. Or did you go with the other suggestion you brought up? Or neither? Or something else? It may be part of what's making the difference.

Also, I haven't had the loading=>talking crash/bug (and thus not had to run around towns to avoid it) you mention... though the tournament crashes are still a problem last I checked.

zolstarym said:

How do you get the update if you only have the steam version? It seems like it is a beta only update, and steam wants a password to enable beta updates.

Click to expand...

I think the beta update was automatic for Steam... I use the Steam version myself, I noticed the news about it only because I saw my MBWB was highlighted with "update queued" next to it right before it downloaded.

(edit: The Steam version has a beta join password (which is something obvious and given in the Steam forum post I believe) but once joined the updates are automatic.)

Beta update just release, contains "an ugly hack" according to the devs, including some graphical fixes for mods... I'm now getting stuttering in towns and it seems to have broken our ugly hack in the process. Not quite up to doing a clean install right this minute, but was wondering how it's playing for anyone else (in case it's just my specific drivers or some such that don't like the changes).

Hanakoganei, I may have mentioned before, but I think it's because of a difference between how directX and OpenGL handle shaders. If someone set up their textures using shaders that were already in the game, then (and this is just a guess) those textures are benefiting from Taleworld's work in moving the game across platforms. It's only people who wanted to add graphical content *that went above and beyond* which are having problems. So, the stuff that replaces ground textures etc... In any case, the key thing is that DirectX is proprietary Windows content. Also, as I've mentioned before, the game and mod run fine (though a little bit slower) on Linux via WINE where you do still use DirectX, it's just when you try to break away from it that things start to go screwy. The texture format isn't a problem for OpenGL per se, it's just that you have to set them up differently. It can be done, and for someone who knows their way around the mods and OpenGL the job is probably even trivial... just tedious. Whatever the case, the game's devs said at the outset that any mods which changed the shaders *specifically* would be broken and would have to be changed by the mod authors.

Also, I did check Tevarin/Belani (which I forgot is all one map, just with invisible walls keeping you either in town or in the castle) and it renders just fine... in fact, now that I'm thinking about it, it's just possible that the sky on that map rendered properly too... I should go back and double check that.

Weird, I could swear I did some of that when I was mucking around on my own. Must have missed something, pulled textures from the wrong file, or tried two things at once that messed it up.

Hanakoganei, oddly enough, most of the the new items (and all but one of the new menu screens if I recall correctly) don't have this texture bug. It's mostly stuff that replaces vanilla textures and about half of the added banners. Not quite sure why, presumably the mods that added new content just set up the textures so they would look right next to the vanilla textures, whereas the modder that concentrated on making vanilla snazzier changed those textures to include some element that is not translating well, neh?

...it also occurs to me that I never checked the castles/villages that were completely new, like Tevarin/Belani to the West of Praven. At a guess, either the ground textures there should work without edit, or the village/castle buildings should be broken too, as all of it is new content within a single mod, unlike the ground textures mod which left the buildings and armours alone. Checking might provide some interesting info... alas, I have to be somewhere soon. Maybe later this weekend.

Sorry, zolstraym, I was perhaps more snarky than called for. I just assumed that the following would be obvious...

Floris is a modpack. It has many authors and coordinators, including (I believe) Windyplains, who stickied this topic and so presumably they know about the issues.

It's also an old mod pack. Many of the devs may well have moved on to other projects. Just because the studio that actually makes money on the game decided to expand, doesn't mean the modders have any reason to drop their new projects and come back to bughunting these.

Since it is a collection, getting everything fixed is going to be a big task, possibly involving many people. It will at least take time, but ultimately the original authors don't really have much reason to do the work unless they happen to be big supporters of OpenGL gaming.

The above posts already included links to discussions of why the graphics bugs exist and the best efforts to work around them in the form of a fairly detailed tutorial and someone's hard work using that tut. And those efforts are only a few weeks old. Presumably further progress or fixes will either appear here or in one of the other main threads, assuming anyone is motivated enough to do all the work.

This is fan made content; when it comes to support pick two (at best) of fast (usually do it yourself), easy (wait for the devs to find the time), effective (just go vanilla and preferably on a system that is factory spec)... If I had the time and was familiar with MBWB modding I'd have already taken a weekend to fully edit all the textures and submitted it as a sub-mod. But to me, the mod w/Kleiner's files is playable enough that I'd rather play for twelve hours than script and code. Or just wait and see if someone else has the time and motivation.

And of course, there's always WINE. I've set MBWB with Floris up on WINE before and it works ok and isn't that hard. I just started this little endeavour because I believe in getting away from DirectX and wanted to give this game's move to OpenGL a little more exposure. I honestly don't know if this mod will ever be adapted. It would be neat if it was, but honestly, I'm grateful for what effort and interest has already been shown.

Zolstarym, I believe I have a solution to your problem... try reading an entire thread before commenting.

Kleiner, yeah, I get that black box too... not sure what it is. It's all good, though. Mostly just trying to work out which bugs are bugs and which are just me breaking things while I try to figure out what everything does.

Hanakoganei: Well, I did add the line, which I would assume is why most everything else is working... my guess is that since Kleiner isn't getting it, then it is probably residue from my earlier tinkering. Some file or another that I moved around and didn't put back in the right spot. I guess I didn't notice that it was the mouse icon since mine is displaying as your typical desktop wedge. I figure I'm probably going to go back and do a fresh instal... maybe in a few weeks once I'm done messing around. Also, give the both the studio and mod devs time to patch things.

Oh, and the dark textures and shaders are only really a problem in Floris. Whoever the studio has answering questions over at steam has mentioned a few times that modded or imported shaders are going to be broken until they are specifically reset for whatever open GL voodoo they did in the Linux conversion.

So, Kleiner, I have to ask, are you also getting a spear head pattern as your ground texture for battles in the Khergit Steppes? Hehe. No big deal. It actually showed up as one of the map textures I got when I was tinkiering around blind, before Hanakoganei posted the tutorial. Overall your brfs are working great. Thanks to both of you for the work so far. I've linked this in the Linux thread which is stickied, so it should keep being easy to find, even if this thread gets buried.

Oooo, yeah, I'm reading through it now. It is so going to have to wait until I've slept. Though, most of it doesn't look too outrageous as I've done some of my own modeling, texturing, and tinkering with modded objects (like the nif files) in Bethesda games, and a lot of this looks like the same general process, just different different format... just tedious, as you say. Anyway, I'll give it a shot. If it works I'll bump that thread and link it in the Floris and Linux thread too. And thanks for all the effort.

(edit, BTW, you say you hope it's worth it... have you seen what Floris looks like on Linux? A lot of the map and ground textures come out flat black, making the mod almost unplayable in spots. It could really be the difference between people on linux playing the mod or not. I'll try to remember to take some screenies of it before I get to work trying your fix tomorrow.)

Expanded 2.55 Testing

I've been doing more or less the same working through menus and tracking down features as my previous reports. So far I haven't noticed any differences from 2.54, so I won't post every little thing I try or think of. If it's posted above, just assume I've tried it again and got the same results. If I do run into any new bugs, fixes, or previously untested features, I'll add them in an edit to this post as long as it's the most recent one.

(edit 1
*****Big News******
It seems that Hanakoganei and Kleiner have made a lot of progress on a workaround for the textures bug. I'll be testing it out today, but here is a link http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,306814.0.html to the thread containing Hanakoganei's  tutorial on how to do it and a link to the files edited by Kleiner. Tremendous thanks to both of them.
end edit 1)

(edit 2
The afore mentioned texture workaround seems to do a pretty solid job for what it does cover. There are still some missing textures, but then, fixing every little thing is always way more work than getting the one or two big things. I'd say the mod is comfortably playable at this point. And I think I've confirmed that everything from my previous reports is as true for 2.55 as for 2.54
I've got other things coming up though... so I may not be adding anything else to this for a while. I'll check in every now and then and test things out if asked though. Please, if you check this thread out and see something I left out that needs mentioning, go ahead and pitch in. The more info and interest we show in getting things working smoothly on Linux, the more likely it is to happen. And so much the happier we'll all be, yeah?
end edit 2)

Thanks for the support Windyplains, glad my instincts were at least on the right path.