Bad News on the Computational Front

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Bad News on the Computational Front

Post by Rex Claussen »

Refer to my general news post and to this post on the ZDooM forums. This is going to badly affect my progress on the development of Parallax (or terminate it completely). I do have an older mini-tower that might be able to run GZDooM, and I'm off to give it a whirl. I'll report back when I know the results.

The disadvantage of using that computer is that I will need to be at my desk for all development and testing. In other words, I would not be able to do any GZDooM work during my travels, which is when I tend to make most progress.

This is a serious blow to my morale, as I did quite enjoy tinkering with a map editor in my free time.
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Re: Bad News on the Computational Front

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I know that you don't want to spend money on a new machine (fair enough) or even too much to prop up your current machine (also fair enough), but is there capacity in your machine to upgrade the graphics card (i.e. a suitable spare slot)? Older generation graphics cards that are good enough to get GZDoom running can be picked up for not much money at all. You'd have to get advice as to eactly which cards are suitable, because I'm not sure, but there are a bunch of low-end nVidia cards on ebay for less than £20.
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Re: Bad News on the Computational Front

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Enjay wrote: Sun Sep 19, 2021 18:19... is there capacity in your machine to upgrade the graphics card (i.e. a suitable spare slot)?
The machine in question is a laptop with a graphics chip built into the system board (integrated chip), so there is no option to swap out a graphics card, or even an expansion slot for a new card. And because its an older generation card (intel HD 3000 SandyBridge) it is no longer supported by intel, and lacks OpenGL 3.3 support.
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Re: Bad News on the Computational Front

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Ah, a laptop. I did wonder if that might be the case when you said that using the other one would mean you'd have to be at your desk.
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Re: Bad News on the Computational Front

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Rex Claussen wrote: Sun Sep 19, 2021 17:33I do have an older mini-tower that might be able to run GZDooM, and I'm off to give it a whirl. I'll report back when I know the results.
And, guess what ...... the keyboard on my mini-tower wasn't working yesterday, so I wasn't able to sign in to the computer. This morning I swapped out the keyboard, but still no joy. In that process, the mouse also stopped working. So, basically, the computer appears to be dead in the water.

I will reboot the computer to see if that fixes the keyboard/mouse problem. But all indications point to me being shit out of luck with my GZDooM options.

(Incidentally, my hopes were momentarily buoyed when Graf pointed me to a GZDooM version with GLES support. I gave it a shot, but, alas! it didn't pan out.)
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Re: Bad News on the Computational Front

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That's frustrating. I haven't followed all your attempts to use drivers. I take it that the older drivers are simply not compatible with newer Windows?

I understand your reasoning for not wanting to spend money on a machine that would primarily be used to allow you to edit Doom and, of course, that's absolutely your choice. For my personal needs, however, doing Doom stuff (and and other gaming related stuff) is one of my main year-round hobbies. So, I probably do spend a bit more on my computers, and upgrading them a bit during their lifetime too, but when I compare that to how much a keen golfer, for example, pays on club and course fees, as well as buying their equipment (and all those brand-name jumpers) and travelling to and from courses, my hobby is dirt cheap. The fact that I get to spend a bit of fun "me time" almost every day on my computer makes it worth the cost, for me anyway.
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Re: Bad News on the Computational Front

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Enjay wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 19:37I take it that the older drivers are simply not compatible with newer Windows?
In March last year, after I "upgraded" to Win 10 and my computer made it virtually impossible to play GZDooM, drfrag had created a branch of GZDooM that allowed me to play it. Subsequently, further upgrades to Win 10 resulted in the same problem and drfrag recommended I use older intel drivers. That worked for almost a year, until some additional Win 10 updates last week. Now, using the older drivers doesn't solve the problem any more.

And then Graf suggested I try out the GLES fork of GZDooM. I tried it, but GZDooM does not even start. I get the dreaded "R_OPENGL: OpenGL driver not accelerated!" error. Curiously, the GLES version works for someone else with even older hardware than me.

About spending money for a worthwhile hobby, I completely agree with you. But I'm a miser at heart and I can't help gripping my money tightly in my tiny grubby fist :wink:
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Re: Bad News on the Computational Front

Post by Enjay »

Being a miser could also be a hobby - and a much more cash efficient one than golfing or gaming. ;)

In the past, I've had no end of problems with intel graphics. I'm never entirely sure whether it's down to the hardware or the drivers but so often getting the card to do what it is meant to be doing, and claims to be able to do (especially where OpenGL is concerned) is just far too difficult, if not impossible.

Sometimes a driver update helps, sometimes you need to roll back. It seems utterly random and the intel support and clarity over driver downloads is abysmal. I find it hard to believe that they are still able to sell machines with those awful graphics cards, with their awful reputations but then, I guess, most machines with them are sold as work machines where a cheap and functional-enough graphics chip is all you need to run Windows and MS Office. Even then, intel chips so often simply don't seem to actually be able to do what they tell the system they are capable of.

We have several computers in the house (a function of "children" who are old enough to leave home but who steadfastly refuse to do so, and almost everyone in the house reluctant to throw out old machines until they are really past their sell-by date, my son literally nearly broke his toe two nights ago as he wandered across his bedroom in the dark and collided with the corner of a 15 year old PC that hasn't bee switched on for years) but only one of the ones that are actively used has an intel chip that I have managed to get a decent driver setup for which works with Win10 - and then just not touched the driver since (to be fair, it's really just an "emails and letters" machine, but it can play games). The only other machine with an intel chip that sometimes gets used is a very old laptop that sits in the garage for the sole purpose of playing music when I'm working on a car (and it often fails to boot because the CMOS battery is all but dead, and sealed in in such a way as to make it near impossible to replace).

For a long time now, we have always just gone for nVidia. My experience with their cards has always been positive and even if very rare minor problems have occurred, a driver update has fixed them. Sometimes it is a little hard to find a laptop with an nVidia card without spending too much money, especially if you are just buying off the shelf, but I have managed to get a good price from online companies that allow you to tailor the spec of a machine and thereby get a reasonably priced machine with an nVidia graphics chip.

None of which, of course, helps your current situation. :(
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Re: Bad News on the Computational Front

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So maybe the news isn't as dire as I believed. After messing with trying to run various versions of GZDooM that support GLES and not succeeding, I deiced to try something different, as follows:

1. I reverted to the version of the intel graphics drivers that support Win 8.1
2. When asked if I want to restart my computer to make the changes effective, I selected "not now"
3. At this point I tried drfrag's custom version of GZDooM that he developed for me in March 2020, and which worked fine since then (except for the starts and stops created by Win 10 updates). GZDooM did not run
4. I went into the computer's Settings and paused updates for a week
5. I restarted my computer to make the rollback to the older version of the graphics drivers effective
6. I tried running drfrag's custom version. Et voila! It ran fine and all is well with the world again
7. GZDooM with GLES support (v4.7.0) still does not work

F*ckin Microsoft. F*ckin' intel.
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