Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[VelcroMagnet]

I have seen the technical descriptions for the differences but I dont understand what they mean what do the different print mode types do in simpler terms e.g performance or how they make the game look

[jecowa]

• "2D" mode uses SDL for printing graphics to the screen. This is the default mode, and is said to be the most compatible. This mode is required if you want to use "TTF" (TrueType font). The "NEAREST" scaling does not work in "2D" mode, though.
• "STANDARD" uses OpenGL directly for printing graphics, which makes it a little faster. "NEAREST" works in this mode, but "TTF" doesn't.
• "TWBT" uses the Text Will Be Text plugin for DFHack. This mode allows graphics packs to use more tiles without messing up text. TWBT mode is similar to STANDARD mode in that "NEAREST" works with it, but "TTF" doesn't. TWBT mode required DFHack.
• "TEXT" prints the display as plain ASCII characters. This is probably the fastest mode, but it might not look the best. This mode might allow players to play over SSH or something. This mode doesn't work in the Windows version, though.

[Dirst]

That matches my understanding, though realize that the game doesn't actually have a TWBT mode.  The game will interpret any unknown mode as STANDARD, so the game behaves exactly as it would in standard mode.  The Text Will Be Text plugin only works in STANDARD mode, and mifki decided to use the mode string as the means to enable his plugin.

[milo christiansen]

Keep in mind that STANDARD (and by extension TWBT) has trouble (eg the game locks up) with the following:

* Resizing or moving the window.
* Using the hotkey to switch between windowed and fullscreen modes.

Alt+Tab works, so if you want to use TWBT or STANDARD you will probably want to use full screen as well.

[lethosor]

I've never seen the game lock up when moving or resizing the window, and I've been using STANDARD for years.

[milo christiansen]

Weird, I have seen it on every Windows computer I cared to test, and I have had several bug reports about that very problem for my Underhive Settlement mod (which bundles TWBT).

[lethosor]

I haven't seen it on Windows, and nobody has reported it on the bug tracker. It seems like something as simple as moving the window causing the game to freeze would be the sort of thing people would have reported at least once in the past 6 years. Are you sure it's not just TWBT that's the issue?

Edit: I suppose it could be related to this report, but that appears to be an issue with an old/buggy driver that didn't affect many people.

[darklord92]

• "TEXT" prints the display as plain ASCII characters. This is probably the fastest mode, but it might not look the best. This mode might allow players to play over SSH or something. This mode doesn't work in the Windows version, though.

Can confirm this will work over SSH, it requires a little fiddling that I can't remember specifically ( due to weird characters. ) Ran a weird little "succession" fortress between several friends and one ssh server as an experiment.

[milo christiansen]

It seems like something as simple as moving the window causing the game to freeze would be the sort of thing people would have reported at least once in the past 6 years.

Just moving the window often works OK (for me), but resizing or changing from windowed to fullscreen results in an instant lockup. All that stuff works fine with the default print mode (2D), but not STANDARD or TWBT. When I first discovered this TWBT wasn't even a thing yet... The referenced bug report seems to describe the situation except for one detail: It never worked for me even with different graphics cards/drivers.

I seem to remember there being complaints about rendermax back when it was popular, some about TTF not working, and some about fullscreen/windowed toggling causing lockups (rendermax used print mode STANDARD), but it has been a long time so I may not be remembering correctly.

Anyway, it is certainly not just me, as witnessed by the (several) bug reports related to this I have received for Underhive Settlement.

[Shonai_Dweller]

You received several bug reports yourself but never thought to actually file a report officially? That's helpful...

--edit
Trying to reproduce this myself right now. Can't seem to make the game crash though. I'm on Standard, playing in windowed. Resizing, switching to full screen. Is there anything specific I need to do to make this happen?

I guess it's a mod thing (probably TWBT which causes all sorts of crashes) or it only effects certain hardware.

[lethosor]

I wonder if it could be caused by something else in that mod (maybe something besides TwbT). Have you or other users of your mod been able to reproduce the issue with STANDARD in vanilla DF?

[milo christiansen]

Yes, just yesterday I tested it with several DF versions from 34.11 forward. No DFHack, no TWBT, strictly vanilla.

These tests duplicated some (much less formal) tests I did on my previous computer (which ran Windows 7, on a Nvidia GT 620? (I think), and an AMD FX 4100), results were the same. I now run Windows 10 on a  AMD FX 6300, and a more powerful Nvidia card that I forget the name of...

Basically I set print mode to STANDARD and set the game to open in windowed mode, then started the game and tried several actions.

Results are as follows:

* Move window - All OK
* Resize window - DF stops refreshing the screen, game continues to run fine, you just can't see it.
* Toggle fullscreen with F11 - DF stops refreshing the screen, game continues to run fine, you just can't see it.

Are all of the people reporting that it works fine on AMD cards? I don't have anything but Nvidia cards in my Windows PCs, so I can't test if it is just an Nvidia problem... I am certainly not the only person with this problem, which is why I assumed that it had already been reported on the bug tracker. (I distinctly remember some discussion about this in the 34.11 Rendermax days)

[Shonai_Dweller]

Playing 43.05 64 bit here with a laptop running some kind of Intel integrated wannabe "graphics". Resizing works, swapping windows works, switching to full screen works.

[milo christiansen]

So maybe it's just an Nvidia problem? Hmmmm...

[Valience]

Using the LNP for 43.03 with TWBT produces the same results that milo is describing. Worked fine when I was using 2D mode on 43.05. I'm using a GTX 780.