Newer GZDoom SVNs require Open GL 1.4?

[vict]

I can't seem to run the latest 2 SVNs of GZDoom because it tells me I need Open GL 1.4.

If I run a previous version it tells me I have 1.3.1072, but still runs. Is this a recent change?

Windows XP SP2
Radeon 9250SE 128mb (Catalyst 6.11)
768mb RAM
1.9gz Pentium 4 Processor


This card hasn't seen a driver update since 2006, so there isn't much I can do. :/

[Gez]

I can't seem to run the latest 2 SVNs of GZDoom because it tells me I need Open GL 1.4.

If I run a previous version it tells me I have 1.3.1072, but still runs. Is this a recent change?

Yes. From 13 days ago as of this post. Here's when the change took place.

I'm afraid you will have to stay with the last version that works, newer versions of GZDoom will no longer run on your computer from now on.

[Graf Zahl]

You were lucky. While doing some code cleanup I realized that I was using several 1.4 features without ever checking their availability.
So it was necessary to change the minimum required version?

What graphics card still in use doesn't have 1.4? I thought they had died out long, long ago...
I'm a bit puzzled about yours, though. I thought the Radeon 9xxx series was good enough to support GL 2.x

[vict]

I checked online and it seems the 9500 to X1950 can support GL 2.X

Anything before that however (9000, 9200, 9250, etc) only support 1.3.

[Graf Zahl]

Yes, pathetic.

I still got an old machine lying around with a Geforce 5500 and no problem running it with a decent GL version, and I think that's the same age.
Does GZDoom even run at acceptable performance on such an old system?

[vict]

I think the 5500 is a newer card, or at least a proper gaming card. This is not, it's a low end budget card that was outdated even when it was new. Then again it may just be the difference in Nvidia and ATI drivers here, I think ATI just decided to drop support in 2006 instead of update the drivers.

Yeah it runs fine, dynamic lighting causes some frame dips but it's perfect outside of that.

EDIT: What 1.4 features was it using? I keep a lot of the optional stuff off, just curious.

[Blue Shadow]

Heh, my Intel chip's driver is from 2005. Its GL version is 1.4.0, thankfully! So I'm still good for GZDoom on this machine... for the time being, at least.

[Graf Zahl]

The main reason for the bump were the texture combiners which were added in 1.3. There's a few other, smaller things that are 1.4 only but I guess I could do something about them and lower the requirement to 1.3 again.

Going back to 1.2 is not an option, though, because the combiners are a requirement for the engine to work.

[vict]

Yeah, 1.2 is too low I agree. Although ancient I don't think the 9x series of Radeon cards are still all that uncommon. I wouldn't mind having the new SVNs just for compatibility with newer .wads built around them, even if I can't use a lot of the fancy features that are added in the future.

Is it possible to have the program scale what it uses depending on the Open GL version detected? Sort of like how brightmaps aren't even an option if your video card doesn't support them. That way the minimum will be 1.3 but the people who have 1.4+ support can still use the new features and people who don't will just have it revert to what it used prior, or if they are optional skip over them entirely? That may not be possible though, it's just an idea.

[Graf Zahl]

It's getting increasingly harder to keep support for old versions. The amount of support code for that is incredible. Unfortunately 1.4 is the absolutely highest I found feasible because if I go higher I lose support for almost all Intel chips that are 3 years and older.

And this is really annoying because if I could set 2.0 as limit I could seriously clean up the code. Even worse, with the requirement to support these old versions GZDoom can't be upgraded to modern rendering methods because most old hardware has no or only poor support for them and some newer hardware works increasingly bad with the old way (mostly AMD, of course. NVidia seems to be more capable of keeping 1.x efficient.)

As I said, I have to see what feature in particular made me declare 1.4 the limit. In general 1.3 should work but before going down one version again I need to know what needs to be changed.

[Graf Zahl]

Update: I did some digging around and there seems to be only one 1.4 feature that's a requirement and that's automatic mipmap generation.
But since that's only promoted from an older extension which is supposedly present on all cards of that generation I see no problem lowering the minimum version to 1.3

Just don't complain if some texture filtering modes don't work.

I consider everything lower than 2.0 essentially unsupported and won't fix any bugs caused by such old OpenGL versions.

[vict]

Alright, cool. Thanks.

I like maintaining that classic pixel-y goodness of no texture filtering myself.