New PC

[prince lyle]

I have been seeing on some SOM games this issue of transparent object.I realize my pc is E-Machine with intergrated graphics card and shared memory.So I dont expect very much out of it yet on Trismegistus,Diadem of Maunstraut both work perfect.I have no visual problems,no framerate issues,no black areas or bleed thru.not even an issue with the memory just a quick flicker at beginning.I have been drawn in as others to start working with SOM and my project has now just run into this issue.I had seen no sign of transpareancy till adding the sky after this no matter the settings (even option ie resolution,texture mode) no change.I have change every setting in map mode also alters appearance not situation any help here?Now to my question i realize if I wish to continue I will need a new PC I have gaming machine.i do not wish to put this on that to many hour of play time!So what would be the best set up for this ie:video card,memory. I be thankful for any help would really like to dig into SOM

[Holy_Diver]

Can you post a picture of your problem? It's hard to tell what trouble you are having from your explanation.

It might be a bug in Som related to mipmapping. If you can force mipmapping on/off in your video card options that might help. I maintain Sword of Moonlight Ex which pretty much fixes all of the technical bugs Som is riddled with, especially in the graphics dept. If you are intending to author a game you definitely need to be familiar with SomEx or people won't be able to play your game for just this kind of reason. Maybe 2/3 people will have trouble with Som games and it will just get worse as time marches on (but no more thanks to Ex)

[Holy_Diver]

Also I want to horn in and add. Afaik many of you are not using Ex for anything or even personal use. There are a lot of things Som does which are just totally abusive to your (and your audiences) computer. Like in the load/save screens Som creates/closes 99 file handles about 30 or 60 times a second (for every frame of animation) until you leave the save/load screen. If you try to save/load to a USB drive you'll notice your computer grinding to a halt. Som also creates a new font either every time it opens the menu or maybe even for every frame of animation in the menus, which is not how font resources are supposed to be used. With Ex there are a couple settings that correct this behavior. There are probably other verging on criminal examples.

I'd like to know if you have something personal against myself/Ex or if you're just lazy/luddites. There should be a culture of making sure everyone is using Ex as soon as they express an interest in Som. I also pity you all for being stuck fussing with DirectX7 and fullscreen modes... especially developers. Why subject yourself to such torment

[prince lyle]

Hello Holy Diver, Thanks for quick answer my graphics card very limited.That is why i asked about general specs for a PC to run SOM.I have attached picture as you suggested hope this helps.Notice how the wall disappears, house is transparent in areas, ground is dark.Thank you again for any help mean time will look at bitmapping ‎  ‎  ‎  ‎  ‎  ‎  ‎  ‎  ‎  ‎ 

[Holy_Diver]

I don't know what to do with a .wps file. Wikipedia suggests maybe it's a Microsoft Works format.

It sounds like probably the mipmapping bug. If so it's really not a hardware thing. It happens I think because Som asks for mipmaps even though it doesn't have them, and sometimes drivers give Som mipmaps even though it did not request them when creating the texture. For the graphics Som has mipmaps for (very few) they will look ok, but the others will appear invisible if they are not pretty close to the player.

Also you might be in "RGB Emulation" mode, which can cause things to look ugly, but disappearing walls I'd think not.


I suggest trying to find a mipmaps option in your graphics card control panel (display settings->advanced->your display adapter) and if you're convinced you can't do that look in Ex. If you want to make games you definitely want to work with Ex. Ex will let you open Som in a window if you want and on a Vista/7 computer it won't screw things up every time you run/test a Som game. Unfortunately I can't afford to help everyone with Ex. Todd mentioned writing a tutorial (for dummies) to me not long ago. You might ask him to make good on that if he pops in. Otherwise search for Ex maybe. I will answer specific questions if they're not too complicated.

Here (https://www.swordofmoonlight.com/DarkDes...y%20Ex.zip) is a patch for Dark Destiny. I suggest trying to apply it if you have that game downloaded. I will help you setup Ex to work with som_db.exe (eg. the map editor test option) if you get that far.

PS: Turning forcing mipmaps off/on should also fix the graphical problems in the editors. Especially for XP. Vista/7 have other issues as well. Atm if you want to develop a game with Vista you're going to need a "Virtual Machine" setup afaik.

[prince lyle]

Holy Diver, Thank you for the download and all the help.I will get on it and hope for the best ‎ 

[Holy_Diver]

^If you get things working, in order to fix the mipmaps bug you also need to download the SomEx.dll here (https://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/ind...368.0.html)

Edited: don't forget to replace the old SomEx.dll in EX\SYSTEM with that one.

And add the following to the options section of the Ex.ini file, ie. [Options].

do_pause = yes
do_cursor = yes
do_mipmaps = yes
do_alphafog = yes
do_rangefog = yes

Do_mipmaps (of course) works around the mipmap bugs.

Also if you replace Dark Destiny.exe with the som_ex.exe file (name it back) then Som's "window" will be hidden until the real window is ready.

PS: With do_mipmaps enabled (and in D3D9 mode) a number of the plant objects will have phantom pixels floating in midair when seen from a distance. These objects will ultimately need to be reworked. If you're making a new game you should be careful not to use any of the problematic plants... because they are generally not good objects anyway. I may start work on a texture recognition database so the problem textures can be recognized and have some of their parameters changed (amongst other things)