Transcendence OpenGL builds

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
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Heliogenesis
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Many of you who frequent the Transcendence Discord server probably already know of this very well by now, but...for those who don't...

I've been working on an OpenGL-compatible build of Transcendence for a bit over a year now, and I've got to the point where just about everything worth accelerating via GPU has been implemented in GPU. This was originally meant to make my total-conversion mod, Starborne Memory (sometimes known as IA - don't ask why) work, due to how graphics-heavy that mod is, and because of the potential for new special effects that using GPU has.

Note that certain old "legacy" effects, like `starBurst` are not implemented in GPU; only <Orb>, <Particle> and <Ray> (and <Image>) are.

With George's blessing, I've put precompiled binaries of OpenGL Transcendence on my Github at https://github.com/exinfinitum/Transcen ... mpiled.zip, filesize around 130 MB
after downloading, need to extract to a folder, then you will need to download this https://sourceforge.net/projects/glew/f ... p/download and extract glew-2.1.0\bin\Release\Win32\glew32.dll into Transcendence/Game, then go to Transcendence/Game, run CompileCore.bat, then run Transcendence.exe. No C++ compilation should be necessary.

Additional downloads are not necessary for the latest OpenGL build.

Coupled with most decent modern-day discrete GPUs, this should dramatically accelerate rendering when there's lots of objects on the screen, or with very large ships, to the point where CPU becomes the bottleneck. I will be updating this build regularly with the latest changes from George's Github, as well as my changes to the Transcendence OpenGL code.

Edit: spelling
Edit: latest OpenGL build no longer requires download of glew32.dll
Last edited by Heliogenesis on Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:04 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Ferdinand
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Very interesting.

Any chance of going really modern en make a Vulcan based port?
Heliogenesis
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Ferdinand wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 9:17 pm
Very interesting.

Any chance of going really modern en make a Vulcan based port?
Unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable enough about Vulkan to implement a Transcendence port in Vulkan, also this would require reworking the majority of OpenGL Transcendence code since OpenGL is not compatible with Vulkan, and the OpenGL port is already at the MVP stage (most improvements will involve taking advantage of OpenGL to implement features impossible in vanilla Transcendence, like real-time zooming, new effects, and dynamic PBR/Phong lighting).
"In this world, there exists a balance between those who are creators, and those who are users. [...] I vow to dedicate myself to the side of creation. The labour involved becomes joy when I know there are those who will enjoy my work to the fullest."
-Hermit Gunsmith, Cave Story
Ferdinand
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In any case, OpenGL creates a better opportunity to make Transcendence cross platform.
Even if still relying on Wine to run Transcendence on Linux, it will be more performant because what Wine does is taking the DirectX code and transcoding it to OpenGL. That step is no longer necessary.
Heliogenesis
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Note: Latest OpenGL builds do NOT require any other additional downloads, since glew32 is now statically linked.
"In this world, there exists a balance between those who are creators, and those who are users. [...] I vow to dedicate myself to the side of creation. The labour involved becomes joy when I know there are those who will enjoy my work to the fullest."
-Hermit Gunsmith, Cave Story
Heliogenesis
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The latest OpenGL builds should support AMD GPUs.
"In this world, there exists a balance between those who are creators, and those who are users. [...] I vow to dedicate myself to the side of creation. The labour involved becomes joy when I know there are those who will enjoy my work to the fullest."
-Hermit Gunsmith, Cave Story
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