Thank you so much for that file! I was finally able to play the game like I could before. I appreciate it a lot!
Nice! Minor quibble because what else are replies even open here for except for nitpicking and grousing, but the dynamic lighting on the walls in the egg viper arena (e.g., flashing red when it takes a hit) hasn't been implemented.
That's implemented in the Dreamcast mod(s). It might be worth merging into this considering the other effects are there. Hm...
If you're talking about merging this with the DC mods, I'd rather that didn't happen. I personally prefer having the option to choose whether to use this mod with the DX environments or the DC ones.
He's talking about merging the Egg Viper arena effect, not the entire mod. Not that I'd personally mind. There's very little I don't consider better about the DC environments (I guess that red carpet at the end of twinkle park is nice? maybe we gotta figure out a nice blend between both).
Argh! I have the DC bosses mod active! Does that mean I need to have this mod loaded in before that one in the order?
Order matters. It always matters, I don't recall if the egg viper thing is currently in the latest version, but there's no way for the dreamcast mods to know that the lantern engine is present unless it is already loaded, and they need to know that it is loaded in order to use its features. Pretty straightforward. If they just brute forced it before the lantern engine was loaded, it would crash the whole game.
OK. I had been having the lantern engine after the DC mods because it still looked like it was working just fine, but I also may have been working from an earlier release of the DC mod than the most recent one.
Right, that's because the lighting doesn't require any special actions from other mods to just work. It's just the effects exposed by the API where the order loaded matters.
Oh. In that case carry on, Morph As for DC vs DX, DX added a few extra details to Station Square such as the Cybernet logo in one of the buildings, and made the Mystic Ruins jungle look less flat when seen from above (though the PC version rendered it incorrectly). Not that it matters, I don't think PkR or anyone is planning to merge the environments.
The Egg Viper effect should work regardless of whether DC_Bosses is loaded before or after Lantern Engine, maybe it was just an older version. As for merging the environments between SA1 and SADX, I don't have any plans to do that, but I'm tempted to start working on a less invasive SADX mod, something like an extension for SADXFE, with better quality textures from GC/DC, material color and model fixes, fog improvements, minor effect restorations etc. I just don't want it to steal time from the Dreamcast mods, so I'm holding off until I've implemented everything I consider doable (for the time being) in the DC mods. One thing that will happen for sure in the near future is palette selection adjustments for SADX models, which will improve the look of the lighting for people who don't use the DC mods.
Yeah, this seems to have been the case. Updating the mod did the trick. Loading order didn't seem to matter, as you say.
Hi, I'm completely new to all this (Not a PC gamer until "now" I suppose) but its pretty sexy stuff, from what I gather. Question: I've just bought the Steam version of the game. How do I implement these changes? I'd definitely like to do the lighting mod and maybe the DC mod if that will work with no issues.
To install these mods on the Steam version, you have to convert it into the 2004 version first. To do that, you can use my installer or BetterSADX.
Well, crap. The Dreamcast character models pack wasn't working (SADX wouldn't even boot), which I determined to be an older, out of date version of the Lantern Engine mod. Updated to the newest DLL, updated to the newest Lantern Engine mod, and now SADX crashes the moment it renders any 3D model. I'm pretty sure it's just this laptop's crummy old Intel onboard GPU, but it sucks primarily because the older version used to work (albeit with some framerate drops on stages like Red Mountain and Speed Highway). Now I just can't use Lantern Engine. :/
Just want to possibly reassure about the old GPU thing - I'm having the same issue with newer dedicated GPU desktop card, GTX 1070. I am able to use a much older version of the pallete lighting mod I have on hand (version 1.1), but updating to 1.3 causes it to crash as soon as anything 3D is rendered much like in that case there. Probably worth noting, I did grab the 1.5.0 d3d8to9 thing listed on the Lantern Engine download page, and have made doubly sure it's the version I've got in the SADX folder. Using Windows 10 64-bit if that matters to any degree. Game works pretty fine on the old mod and without mods (but with the loader), with the Lantern Engine always being first in load order when I try using either version (other mods limited to input fix and some of the rest of the stuff that comes with the latest Dreamcast Conversion installer). Here's the entire log file for the above thing: Spoiler Redirecting 'Direct3DCreate8(220)' ... > Passing on to 'Direct3DCreate9': Redirecting 'IDirect3D8::CreateDevice(03E51F98, 0, 1, 001C1BFE, 64, 03D0FDC0, 03D128B0)' ... Seems to stop at the redirection step. Apparently that's correct? It seems to be doing its job since it generates this exact thing when not using the mod as well. To verify, the older mod definitely works (with the newer d3d8to9 file, even): On, Off Just the newer one dies to death.
You're right, it is crashing with d3d8to9 v1.5. The latest dev build works fine with v1.5, but for the stable release I'd recommend using d3d8to9 version 1.4. Edit: in fact, let me just push this update...
Well, scratch that last post. I've just pushed Version 1.4 which should be a welcome update for those on older hardware. This version has two major performance improvements: Shader cache, which caches shaders on disk to improve startup time, and manually managed vertex/pixel shaders (no more D3DX Effects). The latter improved performance by as much as 50% on my system. D3DX Effects are amazingly aggressive with resource management, which is why it ran so poorly. For full release notes, see the link above. This should also work fine with d3d8to9 v1.5, as previously mentioned. :v: Edit: And by the way, I wanted to thank everyone who has been reporting bugs here and on the issue tracker on the repo. This is my only (somewhat-personal) project with so much community engagement, and the bug reports really really help. Thank you!
The day is saved, thank you For the record, my poor Intel laptop GPU gets maybe a 5 fps boost from the update :v:
