Slowdown on certain videocards

[Speeeder]

hhmm... In fullscreen, if I set 16 bit mode, the transparency craps up on a couple of places... :\ Guess it'll stay 24 window, 32 fullscreen then

[czar]

DelphiX works best in 16 bit colour. Avoid 24bit colour at all costs and newer cards tend to work best in 32 bit colour.

I use fuschia as a transparent colour.

Quite easy to convert full colour pictures to 8 bit colour in photoshop without any pink edges.

[Speeeder]

I use that as transparent as well and tell the crapped up transparency how that DelphiX works best in 16, not me 16 + FullScreen = nice fuchsia screen ^^

And no... I'm not THAT much of a lamer to blur the fuchsia into the images... btw, I'm using 256 paletted Length Encoded bitmaps mostly, they are so very good for all these transparented pics... Some are smaller than JPGs

[Speeeder]

Talkin about all this bit depth thing... Could anyone tell me how the heck 16 and 32bit work exactly? I would think with an unknowing mind that 24bit would be RGB 1-1-1 bytes, but if that IS the fact, then how do 16 and 32 store the colours? Or is it 16/24/32 Bit per pixel? If so, then why is 16bit be a little edgy without dithering? (Or was it only cuz some older games were written crappily? )

[czar]

One pixel requires 3 bytes of info for 24bit and 4 bytes for 32 bit i.e., RGB and one byte for alpha channel.

16 bit mode, 2 bytes are used to store the RGB values i.e. 5,5 and 6 bits for each colour. I think green takes 6 bits, someone else can fill that in if it ain't right.


@speeder

When you convert to 8 bit pallete do you force primary colours?

If you do not the fuschia may not infact not be fuschia in which case it won't function as the transparent colour. I used photoshop and when I convert to 256 colour mode I ensure the primary colours are present. I also only "paint" the fuschia into my graphic after I convert to 8 bit colour.

[Speeeder]

ermm... I told you it works in 32bit mode, so errrmm... I guess that the pic is pretty good
Btw, Paint Shop Pro has a VERY good bitdepth decrementor filter thingy... It can do WONDERS in 256 colours and it preserves the colour of everything that takes quite much space in the pic... In oher words, it nicely dithers the slight colour gradients, but preserves the bigger parts perfectly... Give it a try one maybe
An thanks about that thingy with bitdepths... Even tho I wonder that if what you said about 32bit mode then you could as well make the primary surface transparent? (well, if it has an alpha channel.... )

[czar]

@speeder

That is my whole point, your picture is not pretty good - it can be fine in 32bit but not fine in 16 bit. Unless the fuschia that you think is there is exactly the right RGB value.

Do a get pixel of a fuschia area while in 16bit colour and my guess would be it will not be $ff00ff.

I have implemented hundreds of different delphix programs across a huge array of hardware for over 7 years now. My suggestion is that you need to look for your problems in your own workings rather than trying to fault delphix.

[Speeeder]

oohhh, I'm not faulting DelphiX, I never did... I think it's a very nice lil thing and I like it like hell! And well... How will a 256colour paletted bitmap with FF00FF get not FF00FF in 16bit? o_o Anyway, let's check...

[Speeeder]

Did a pretty thorough test on a rig with Gef3 Ti 200 in it...
Tried in all combination of these modes:
16bit, 24bit, windowed, fullscreen, high quality (DrawAdds, DrawAlphas, DrawAlphaCols) and low quality (Draw and StretchDraw only).
The game displayed kindof normally, but the cpu usage went up, up, up!
The game could ran at around 16FPS
The video drivers were from march, so I guess those were pretty much new enough ^^
Aaaand yes I'm pretty sure it's something about the videocards I would think it's the stretchdraw part, buuut dunno what I messed up in my way of doing it so the Gef3 and older cards hate my prog such a bad way... :\
Ahhh, well, I guess I'll get a few ****you mails from Gef2MX users after I release the game
Oh, Czar, and I have to add, that the game more or less did the same way in windowed; fullscreen and 16bit; 32bit mode on the Gef3 and only got somewhat slower in "highquality" mode, so I guess why not 32bit in that case (Nicer blending hopefully ^^ Too bad my monitor is so crappy I can't really see the diff )

[czar]

After using DelphiX for many years we have stepped over to Omega and DanJetX.

All those things you want to do can be done so much more easily with newer component sets. And more besides.

DelphiX has had its day.