all I can think of is people are doing something, especialy with materials and shaders which iis giving undesired results.

i havn't seen any loss of usage of my.ambiant. I still don;t understand shader programming, but i have been using materials which can influance lighting of a model ( thats realy all the basic materials ( from the settings in the manual ) do is effect how the model is lit and emits light based on pixel colors/color ranges ( ambient light, not dynamic light.))

Maybe my computers (or me) are just smoking crack. When your engine is starting up, what does it rate your video card? Is it "Pure T&L Support" or something else?

Just to clarify: As long as you use A6 mode and don't use shaders, the lighting and the effect of ambient looks exactly the same with all 3D cards, no matter whether T&L or not and what your computer is smoking.

With entity.ambient, it's the same as with most other features: If you don't get it to work, you'll have to blame yourself - not the engine, not your computer, and, as of recently, not even the documentation. I'm afraid there's no excuse left...

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As long as you use A6 mode

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Yes, that's EXACTLY what I understand now. It works great in A6 mode, and it works great in A5 mode. But it works DIFFERENTLY in A6 mode than A5 mode. In A5 you don't need materials to control the ambient. In A6 you do. It's simple, and I like it. But it is different, and until recently was undocumented--hence the confusion.

And this is about the 3rd time I've said this, but many people don't even realize that ambient works differently in A6 because everytime they play their game, it' defaulting to A5 mode. Right? That's straight from the manual and that was the main thing throwing me off for a while when I tested my game on older systems:

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...bad device detected
A very old D3D accelerator was detected, which lacks essential 3D features. Images have no shadows and are lacking other effects. The engine only runs in A5 m ode , if at all.

...weak device detected
...slow device detected
An outdated 3D device was detected, like Voodoo/3dfx or and old ATI card. 'Slow' is better than 'weak'. Textures, sprites or model skins larger than 256x256 pixels won't be displayed. Rendering quality is bad. The engine only runs in A5 mode . Software drivers of weak or slow 3D cards are often buggy.

...good device detected
An old, but decent 3D device, capable of multitexture blending operations, was detected (like TNT2). Your application may still run with over 100 fps on a 1024x768 screen. Most effects are supported. A5 mode is activated by default , and is faster than A6 mode.

...T&L device detected
A recent 3D card with T&L capabilities was detected (like GeForce or Radeon). All effects are supported. A6 mode is activated by default and is normally faster than A5 mode.

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Bad, weak, and slow devices are not supported by DX9 anyway, so you don't have to worry about such startup messages. You'll never see them under DX9.

If you want to enforce A6 mode no matter what hardware you're using, just redefine d3d_transform at 1 -> see manual about d3d_transform.

you don't need materials to control ambiant in A6 either. but materials DO effect how an entity looks.

the only real differnace between A5 and A6 is software rendering vs DirectX and hardware rendering.

my.ambiance effects the entity globably in rendering intensity

materails you have much more control on the ambiance by targeting color RGB threshhholds.

the problem i think your having is that thinking the global ambienace setting should increase/decrease the overall intensity of the material, which it real doesn't ( not entirely true, but you have to push ambiance to the extreams to see any change when using a material )


I believe ( but only conitec devs can give insight into this) that the overall global ambiance is applied/processed in rendering BEFORE materials/shaders are handled and with the materials being more specific in effecting targeted RGB etc the mateiral will have greater impact on the visual rendering then the global settings will.

Ive never personally had trouble with the ambience in A6. So i have no idea really.Dont use shaders much if at all could possibly be why...

OT:

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what your computer is smoking

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lol,sorry just found that funny

yeah that gave me a good laugh.
I really dont see what the confusion is here.. my.ambient still works, without using any materials effects and so forth..