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Sep 28, 2001, 10:43am

If you're using an old 2D card (such as my Tseng Labs ET6000 from the Dark
Ages), can you select Direct 3D or OpenGL and not bugger things up? The 3.2
browser set itself to software renderer on my comp as it was installed, and
the results are bad -- backgrounds are ruined, signs blurry, I shudder to
think what else is wrong. I can't afford a better card or faster CPU, let
alone the bigger hard drive to handle the weird .ras files.

Whatever happened to the .jpg and .bmp graphics? I designed the textures
for an entire world with the old graphics files, often inspired by ones I'd
downloaded from visited worlds. I can't get any of my graphics programs to
recognise these so-called ".ras" files, so haven't a clue what the files in
my cache are.

At this point I feel like wiping AW from my system and asking for my
just-renewed citizenship $ back (no small amount for us Aussies -- the
"19.95 US" ends up $50 Aus, which buys as much here as 50 US does in the
US). After 4 1/2 yrs as part of AW, I feel bad about this turn of events
and sad to think I've got no way out of the problem this time. Someone said
new objects called "skyboxes" can solve the backdrop problem -- but apart
from no skyboxes being available (besides one Moff Piett has kindly made
available to try), it sounds like they can be put in place only by world
owners, leaving visitors to worlds where this isn't done still stuck with
disgusting looking backdrops. Still, the skybox sounds like a patch on a
broken version.

Does anyone know if there's ANY way to get back into AW using 2.2?

Thanks.

Ruff

Sep 28, 2001, 6:55pm

Changing the .ras extension to anything else results in an invalid file
format message and failure to open. Any other suggestions? How do these
..ras files differ from the older Sun/.ras files recognised by many graphics
programs (which also don't recognise these as "valid" .ras files)?

Ruff

Oct 1, 2001, 6:56pm

I'm a texture creator, mainly for our world, Sirocco, and in past have used
textures from all over to develop our own exotic mixes. It still seems to
be the case that you need to upload world textures as .jpg files (and bdrops
are still .bmp even if everything else in the Textures folder is .ras), but
I assume the changing happens on the AW end automatically.

Ruff

Sep 28, 2001, 7:05pm

I've got an ooooollllddddd card [no upgrading to another card possible at
present], and display mgr info is this:
Tseng Labs ET6000 / ET6100 PCI,
hardware version 048
4-23-1999
drivers vmm32.vxd

An attempt to upgrade the driver got the message that the best driver
available is already installed.

I'm using DX 7.0 (will have to wait til next month to dload 8, as am over
my ISP's monthly dload limit already, thanks to the AW upgrade).

I've changed the video tab setting in AW to Direct3d (from the software
renderer original setting), and that has improved the backdrops. Am now
checking on other problems.

Thanks for your help!

Ruff

Oct 2, 2001, 8:01am

Am experiencing the same general probs on my old system (tho haven't
experimented with sound performance under the different modes as I'm minus a
sound card). Because the bdrops look so bad in software mode, I'm staying
in Direct 3D -- stuff looks OK so far, but movement is impossible -- barely
an understatement, as it's so slow I can't even get the buttons to work to
select anything. It's not worth trying to build in Direct 3D -- but it's
sure no pleasure visually to be in the worlds in software mode. After
hearing of the probs in Open GL, I'm not going to try that sans a 3D card
and faster CPU either. Like many, I can't upgrade my system. So where does
that leave all of us cits in this situation? Is there any hope on the
horizon for a decent solution from AW soon?

Ruff

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