As news appears slowly on all amiga sites (sure, Xmas time), there is another XMAS present!
This time from our Daniel, who takes GL4ES and makes a set of wrapper-MiniGL libs over it, so Polaris users can use those old MiniGL apps right now.
Check os4depot's upload query !
There is an original text from Daniel's Facebook:
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Merry Xmas and a happy new year 2020 to all the AmigaOS4 crowd around the globe :)
For all the poor souls with a Polaris card and thus without full 3D support this little gift might come handy, now available on os4depot:
*** MiniGL4GL4ES *** a set of MiniGL and GLUT replacement libraries that are built on top of GL4ES and therefore allow you to play (many of) those old school MiniGL games for AmigaOS4 with Polaris.
Why aren't MiniGL games running on Polaris in the first place? That's because the original MiniGL sits on top of the old school Warp3D driver which hasn't been implemented for Polaris.
However, in the meantime, ptitSeb and kas1e ported ptitSeb's GL4ES to AmigaOS4. Just like MiniGL it's a desktop OpenGL implementation. But in contrast to MiniGL it doesn't sit on top of the unsupported Warp3D driver but instead works on top of my OpenGLES2 (hence 4ES), which sits on top of W3DNova for which Hans provided support for Polaris.
So I sat down and hacked together those libraries here. Unfortunately, GL4ES has not been designed to be used as a shared library, which is why there are certain issues. I was able to mod GL4ES to behave pretty well inside the lib - as long as you
DON'T TRY TO RUN MULTIPLE MINIGL APPLICATIONS AT ONCE!
Other than that, have fun! As always many thanks to Kasie Kasovich "kas1e" for testing and moral support :)
Cheers and happy new year, Daytona675x
As Daniel says currently you can't run multiple MiniGL-replacement application at one time.
Also, take in mind it's not final, and just a first version. The noticeable issues there are:
1). Shogo crashes (it doing some dirty tricks with minigl.library)
2). Some games have no benefits over old MiniGL at all. That means they hit the same barrier in MiniGL as in GL4ES called "no DMA". So games that use a lot of draw calls with a bit of triangle hit the transfer speed, which without DMA reduced in factors.
3). "ENVS" of GL4eS there didn't work at the moment, so you can't let's say do "setenv LIBGL_FPS 1", to see fps, or to play with other settings which are can be necessary.
4). probably something else, but so far I tested those MiniGL ones and which works:
Quake3 both SDL1/SDL2 versions Jedi Outcast old NeverBall/Neverputt (that one also give big speedup in comparison with pure MiniGL variant) Lodepaint ChromiumBSU TheGoonies BTanks Teewords RTCW Bloboats BrainParty I Have No Tomatoes Warzone2100
In other words, almost all more or less interesting things work. Some have to speed up, some not. Some may suffer from some issues which to be fixed.
Hi kas1e and Happy New Year 2020 (Even if we are still in 2019 here at Paris) Is there any davantage to use this minigl wrapper against Wazp3d 57 with nova rendering ? I mean both solutions allows 3d cards with only a nova driver to run minigl apps...
1). All works. With Wazp3d most of the things crashes renders wrong, or very-very slow (very very) slow.
2). No cryptic settings. You just run games, and it just runs. Same as old MiniGL. No need for any settings, no need for special settings for every game, everything the same as it was and as should be with a library: it just works, a user has no needs to worry about anything.
3). Speed the same, or faster than original MiniGL on the same hardware (i.e. I have Warp3D SI on my RadeonHD/x5000, so I can use original minigl, and now i can compare it with new gl4es's minigl : it faster in some games, in some the same, but not slower and no-render-bugs as with wazp3d-over-nova which unpossible to use for real in current state).
In other words, it's of course much better than Wazp3d with nova rendering which in general never works (see comments from Mufa, and his tests on amigaone.pl).
Now only need DMA for Polaris, or tool to setup powermanamgnet levels, because of the only disadvantage now, its still slower than RadeonHD in most 3D thigs.
Also for non-Polaris, but for RadeonHD users its good too: because some things will be faster for them too now. Like, old NeverBall for example, which on original minigl are 20 fps at some level, and 80 fps in the same level over minigl4gl4es.
It is also a good stress case and for gl4es, and for nova, so we can see where we have bottlenecks, where we hit limits and because of what.
So it's not only for Polaris but also good and for RadeonHD owners too. Its all need still some careful checking, improvements, and fixes (in all fronts, including Warp3dnova, adding DMA, improve CompileShaders() from Nova, etc ,etc).
if I understand this correctly it's a hack that uses "some" of the new GL4ES methods to make Warp3D available on Polaris cards.
Nope, its new minigl.library, which instead of working over old warp3d works over warp3dnova (through gl4es & ogles2). GL4ES there is like another realization of MiniGL with better GL support. What Daniel there do, is wrapper library (that what he called "hack"), which recent all GL functions of MiniGL to gl4es, and implement all MiniGL specific only functions (such as MGL_CreateContext, etc) so to make it all works.
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What is the benefit of non-Polaris card users?
In some games faster speed. Examples are old NeverBall 1.5.4, Torcs, SpeedDreams and probably some others, we just have no time to recheck everything, probably soon can make a normal list of how all current MiniGL apps behave.
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I take it, this is meant as a snapshot release to show off some development, but not meant for everyday use?
It's ok for everyday use already, just as all first version may contain other bugs and things which need to be fixed, so:
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Given the flaws and crash-prone cases, it lists I better stay away and keep using the latest available MiniGL with my Radeon HD...
Yes, if you on RadeonHD, and everything from the MiniGL side satisfy you enough, then no point to use that MiniGL version. Its probably will be of more interest to Polaris users, but also to those ones who want better speed in some games.
@samo79 No, this isn't the MiniGL Reloaded I was working on. This thing here I hacked together in the last 2,5 days (ab)using GL4ES, *really* quick and really dirty It's good enough for many game playing use cases for now, no more no less. Better than nothing, for Polaris owners, when it comes to old school MiniGL support.
@Raziel Personally I'd only use it if I was a Polaris user for now
Why would you use Warp3D SI instead of MiniGL4GL4ES ?
At the moment because mgl4gl4es have some issues which you didn't have when using warp3dsi with old MiniGL. Issues with the current mgl4gl4es are:
1). you can't run more than one MiniGL app at one time. 2). some things crash 3). some things may have no benefits at all. 4). some things don't work as expected 5). some things can be faster than old MiniGL (NeverBall, Torcs, Speed Dreams, some things can be slower, like LodePaint).
While almost everything can be fixed, the most problematic part is the inability to run many MiniGL apps at the same time, which can be issue why for example Blender didn't work as expected (it didn't have Menus).
So for the time being, for end-users, Warp3D SI, of course, will be better.
@sinisrus Can you plz upload somewhere an archive with simple test case, which fails for you with mgl4gl4es, and works fine on old MiniGL ? That will help for sure.
@sinisrus Thanks for reporting! This is a GLGalore bug, I just reported it to Andreas. GLGalore fails if the GL_VERSION is not 1.3 :P For now I changed MiniGL4GL4ES to report 1.3 too, until now it reported 3.2 Here was a quick download for you (will not stay there for tooo long - EDIT gone, check os4depot for an official update).
@Spectre660 Hm, only idea that pops to my mind is the shitty temporary WaitBOVP call inside. Replaced it by a WaitTOF in that test-lib above, maybe that makes a difference.
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It's good enough for many game playing use cases for now, no more no less. Better than nothing, for Polaris owners, when it comes to old school MiniGL support.
