Hi

I am purely calling these bugs because they ran well in A6.60
but the EXACT same stuff when run on A7.05 causes errors.
Here are they :-

1.My player entity(isometric Diablo style view) that used to be visible at all times,got invisible at certain places AND at certain camera angles.On checking,I found that its CLIPPED flag is set,so its being somehow removed by the culling process.
Increasing the camera.clip_far solved the problem but the exact same stuff
used to work in A6.60 and I would definetly not want to increase the clip_far value like this.

2.A call to video_switch throws an engine error message " Engine Malfunction W1246
D3D driver failure : D3DERR_INVALIDCALL"

On pressing OK the same popup is shown again and on again pressing OK,
it gets back to the game with the new changed resolution.
Although I can try updating my drivers but it never happened in A6.60

Thanks and regards
zazang

Different engines react differently on issues such as entities outside the clip range, or video driver failures. For instance, A7 uses an ABT algorithm for clipping away entities that are out of the clip range, causing a more precise clipping. - I'm moving this to the right forum where you can discuss engine issues, please hold on.

JCL,I should have been more informative.The clipping appears
like a bug because clearly I can see entities which are farther
than the player and yet they are visible,but the player is clipped
away.Btw,my level is entirely composed of models and there are no
blocks or skycube.Could it be because of this somehow ?.Are there
any migration setttings for levels from A6.60 to A7.05 ?
(The C- script code though ran flawless on migration!)

I even tried playing with the tree_range value but it fixes at some
points in the level but causes problem at other points in the level.

regards
zazang

Yes, it's theoretically possible that closer entities are clipped and further away entities are still visible. The reason is that an engine frustrum is a truncated cone, rather than a sphere segment. Still, this should be an extremely rare case and have no affect on real games.

I suggest that you measure the distance to the player and compare it with clip_far. If the distance is smaller, the player should be visible. Also check if the player is not set to the view.genius, or something like that. If you can't find a reason for the clipping, please sent your level, or preferably a stripped down version, to the support. I'll look into it.

AHHHH!!! I have the exact(EXACT)same problems...I've been trying to figure this out for more than a week now. I'll have an object clip that is easily over the clip_near thresh-hold and under the clip_far....usually setting the fog and clip distance ridiculously high fixes most of it, but that causes other issues(frame rate) and I still get the random clipping. I can't figure it out, it seems semi random...usually rotating the camera on it's tilt and pan a little brings the model back into view, but it clips again once player movement begins...this also happens to the player, wich is about 200-800 quants from the camera.???????
I get the d3d error as well when doing a video switch(not f5, but using the script command).
-thanks jcl, I know you guys will be able to get a handle on this...I'm running an Nvidia 7600 GS(with current drivers and Aug 2007 DirctX 9.0c)

Ok its good that there is a confirmation of this bug from another user.
I have sent across a test level for evaluation.Lets hope the naughty
error is resolved soon.Btw I have a ATI radeon 9600 xt card and DX 9.0c

regards
zazang

That's why I stated "AHHHH", it was meant more like eureka! I've triedmessing with the tree range as well...no luck,...this is such an odd thing...I thought the engine was mad at me for not upgrading sooner...

I had the same issue before with a beta(pre 6.6), but upon the release it was gone....so, I had no worries...
I wonder if this is something we could figure out without having to bug jcl and wladimir(sorry if I misspelled his name).

I'll go over some things in my scripts..

1) I'm not using a single piece of template code.

2) I've commented all my d3d and engine variables...like tree_range, video depth, trilinear filtering etc...d3d_autotransparency is the only one still set.

3) I'm using shaders with my models(like improved overlay from the wiki)..but this is affecting models that also have no shader applied.

4) there are one or two models that are not affected by this, I've gone over the differences between the models repeatedly to find a "difference" in them...no luck.

5) 9/10 of the time...if a model is unaffected by this, I can copy it (ctrl+d) in wed and the new model will be fine...this is not every time though..??

6) I'm using wdl not lite-c.

Is anything here familiar to you guys?...just looking for similarities, so we may figure this out.

Ok here are my inputs :-

* the model gets invisible and its my.clipped flag is on
* am only using c-script codes
* I havent compiled the levels in A7 WED.Its directly the levels that used
to run in A6.60
* for certain values of tree_range the model gets visible and so definetely
this is the most important clue here !

regards
zazang