Black Dragon 64x - Alpha 3 "Bit Dragon"

So after 3 failed and missed upload attempts i'm just uploading update 3 instead. Have fun, tiny changes, most important for you is the fixed named of the executable. Other change is i removed the internal texture/scene memory limits, you can go beyond 1992m now but only in debug settings for those that want to test it out. If you do so please keep a VERY CLOSE look at your framerate and report if it has any impact on your framerate. Thanks.

Black Dragon 64x - Alpha 2 "Bit Dragon"

So this is it.

The final update before i vanish forever into the depths of Divinity: Original Sin 2 which is about to release today. My last words are:

This update disabled HTTP Pipelining until LL figures out how to not make it blow up the Viewer and it also includes some improvements to shadows in hopefully every possible situation but most importantly on high altitudes. Shadows should flicker less if at all and they should be almost as precise as on the ground now while the ground shadows should be slightly more precise on distance too, yay for less disconnected shadows!

I hope you value this improvement as much as i do.

I think the following two comparison pictures of a theater on 1800m altitude speak for themselves.

Last update

This update

Note these are 4k shots with 6k and 4k shadow resolution to show the effect even more. They do a big improvement on normal 2k shadow resolution too. Don't believe me? Normal 1080p shot with default shadow resolution below.

Last update

This update

Much better isn't it? All those ugly free floating totally disconnected shadows. I know this is still not perfect but its basically 10 times better than anything we've ever had in SL so far and probably close to what advanced shadowing technologies would achieve.

I realize that these snapshots are partly extreme tests, i think most of you have probably seen what happens when you set a sunset/sunrise (long shadow) like preset, right your shadows will go super nuts, disconnect, vanish completely (on LL Viewer sunset basically has no shadows whatsoever), its absolutely crazy how they break in these conditions and as you can see they perform absolutely fine now.

Have fun.

Also, sadly still no launcher... still trying to figure this monster out.

Black Dragon goes 64bitssssss

After painstaking 5 days, compiling the Viewer up and down, back and forth and trying to find the issue, i finally, randomly stumbled upon the solution by "trying something really stupid". Needless to say stupid sadly wins. I managed to compile the Viewer as 64bit executable, with sound and texture decoding intact.

You can download the 64bit version on the usual downloads page of bitbucket. Please not that this 64bit version is absolutely the same as the 32bit version except that it is now obviously 64bit. From my tests so far however i can tell you that it runs a lot faster (for me) than the 32bit version ever did. I'm talking about 20+ more fps on the above picture's place and 10-20 more fps in the place on the picture below.

This is a drastic improvement, make sure that texture loading is done before comparing your fps, while textures where still downloading i got roughly the same low 10 fps but when they were done loading i went up to rock solid 25-30 fps. That's with deferred, shadows and SSAO on.

This build also rips out the updater system which allows the Viewer to start up faster, login a bit faster and eliminates the freeze whenever you open Dragon - Help - About Black Dragon. However, this build doesn't come with the launcher nor updater, i'll have to reconfigure them for Black Dragon soon so they'll keep it updated, so you'll have to update it manually for the time being until i can get the launcher working and can verify that its updating the Viewer properly.

For now however i'll need some rest. A lot of rest. 5 days nonstop headache trying to fix this mess just so it turns out it's a "stupid thing" that fixed it. Ugh. Oz. Get your goddamn documentation together. If you had like written one single sentence, one simple "note that 64bit libs are named after their 32bit counterparts while the dll's are named 64 as usual" all this mess could have been skipped. Or at least give us some sort of insight into your building process for the libraries like fmodex because as you may know OR NOT, we can't look into them because we cannot get them, we have to build them ourselves, which if there is no documentation on how to actually build them, is a bit hard, you know.

Thanks to everyone who tried to help me solving this shit. Specifically Whirly, Nicky, Henri and Cinder. You might not have actually helped but at least you tried, that's what counts. Also thanks to my dad who installed all this crap to look into it just to fail as i did, he did a good job at mentally and morally supporting me with his failed attempts.