Alpha Naught is done! Yaay!
@p
Well, it is entering compatability testing. Actually, I am sort of thinking, it may be useful to add support for ATI at this point. Kind of crazy because what I *really* need to is add monsters, but, I want people to get a bit of test on this alpha so I can get a nice list of suggestions/implementation ideas from everybody. And ATI is getting really popular now.
@p
The crosscompile was hell! As usual! Well, not really the crosscompile, the only real "compile" issue I had was with isnan() not existing, or so I thought, in mingw32. But actually I just had to #include and it was there as _isnan(). Mental note made!
@p
What was a pain in the ass was, as usual, the autotools. Autotools sound like they are a relic from CCCP for a reason; they are totalitarian, positively unwieldy, cryptic, outdated, monolitic and as a result almost totally unhackable. So even when I understand what the problem is (not a simple task by any stretch of the imagination) inventing some way of fixing it normally requires adopting unhealthy attitudes about life.
@p
Well ahem! Back on ATI! What I need to do, is support two extensions: crossbar, and VBO. Crossbar replaces combine4_nv, and it works almost exactly the same, and it's supported on my card, so like, I think I just have to change a few lines in some of my material modules.
@p
VBO is more involved, but fortunately, VAR is actually what is so hard to use, I wish VBO had been supported when I implemented VAR because VAR was really pretty hard to implement properly. And confusing. And a little bit strange.
@p
So, if I can get crossbar and VBO working in place of combine4 and VAR, the thing should run on ATI just the same as it does on NV. And then Arcubalis, xNichG, and some other people can join the ranks of testers.
2004-02-28