Neverwinter Nights problems with Parhelia

[Ryu Connor]

Frustrating or not, whining is not going to fix anything.
The card has only been shipping for a few weeks.
The game has not been available much longer than that.
People who think that issues with a new piece of hardware running a new piece of software can be solved with a snap of the fingers are delusional, and not solving a darn thing by crying about it.

We have already been informed that the problem has been fixed.
The drivers will be released when they are ready (soon).

There does appear to be some spacing in Matrox's development. It would appear that drivers under going QA are a few builds older than what they are currently working on.

A beta release of newer builds wouldn't be completely out of order. Those who are more patient could continue to obtain release builds as they complete QA.

Seems like a reasonable compromise to satisfy everyone. Albeit you'll probably still get whining. Just this time from the people who can't read the beta disclaimer, but I digress.

[xortam]

Yeah Matrox ... start leaking your nightly builds.

[Kruzin]

Originally posted by Ryu Connor
There does appear to be some spacing in Matrox's development. It would appear that drivers under going QA are a few builds older than what they are currently working on.

A beta release of newer builds wouldn't be completely out of order. Those who are more patient could continue to obtain release builds as they complete QA.

Seems like a reasonable compromise to satisfy everyone. Albeit you'll probably still get whining. Just this time from the people who can't read the beta disclaimer, but I digress.

Of course there is an overlap between what's being coded today, what's being SQA'd, and what's being beta tested. The drivers that fix this problem are already old to the BBz. We're at least 3 or 4 builds beyond the initial build that fixed the problem, and Matrox is several builds beyond that internally. In fact, when this problem was identified, it was fixed in a matter of days. But this is not the only issue that needs to be addressed, and most would agree that one driver release that fixes 10 things is better than 10 releases that only fix one each.

Just because this one issue was fixed does not mean the drivers are ready for the public. Matrox does not "leak" out a new driver every week for every single issue addressed. If they did, we'd have a ridiculous number of drivers out there (detonater anyone), which in most cases is counter productive.

Matrox is also not in the habit of releasing betas very often for the same reason. Counter productive. People don't understand the meaning of the words "beta" or "unsupported". If they released a beta driver now, their forums (and ours) would be filled with people complaining about this or that, and only getting more angry when they are told they cannot get any support for those drivers. So from a tech support standpoint, they are making the right choice.

Now, all the BS aside, just chill out everyone, and watch Matrox's drivers page over the next few days...you just might have something to do this weekend...

[Ryu Connor]

Product support is one of those items where your stance can take an extreme black, gray, or white stance. Then there are the people who can never be satisfied, but we won't get into that.

Matrox choice isn't a bad one, but it has the potential create lag that many people will not like. Buying a new application off the shelf and then having to wait days or weeks to receive an old QA driver build that may or may not work is sure to leave people frustrated. Some people have patience and some don't. What can compound the frustration is actually telling people that the issue is fixed and will be in a future sans timeframe driver build. Some can accept that and some can't. The stink that exist around it is due to selfish reasons. "I paid for the card, the application, and damn it I deserve working drivers," style mentality. I won't pass judgement on that opinion, you're entitled to your view upon it.

Each of the other graphics titans have a different approach to dealing with issues and some of those are more conducive to dealing with application issues in a quick manner, even if it does come with the risk of beta attached to it. Of course one could argue about the blur between final and beta and whether there really is a difference, but that's a little out of scope.

Point being when Jedi Knight 2 had a problem on ATI cards, there was a beta released to deal with the issue and then later a final with the same fixes. Obviously the span between builds is going to bring about more than just a single fix in one application, but that's not so much the point. It's more of a decision of balancing between solving the customers problem or trying to bring them a more stable release while they chafe a little under the wait. You are already going to get crackheads even without beta releases, so in the end you may not even create more work for yourself, but you might put a smile on quite a few faces.

Just my view of a difficult situation. It's not like what I'm saying would bring about a change any ways.

[leech]

Yeah, let's do CVS then all the windoze users can completely screw up their computers! Then they won't be able to log into MURC or Matrox's Tech forums and we won't have to worry about their whining anyhow! I do agree with Kruzin, I wouldn't want someone whining at me "I wantz to playz my gamez"

Though the point about people waiting a long time for this game is true. I had been waiting for it forever, played it for a while with that Radeon Piece I had, until my Parhelia arrived. Actually I can wait for it longer, 'cause I want to play it in linux anyhow. Then I won't have a reason to reboot into windows. So all I ask from Matrox is to release their TOTAL linux drivers so I can play it in linux, and they have time, because NWN isn't going to be finished for linux for a while yet. I truely miss running X. Hopefully after Sigraph, they'll release a beta for linux. (Linux users are used to using beta software anyhow. We understand that beta software can mess up.)

Leech

[Wienerschnitzl]

Well, i know it is not the easiest work to make good drivers.
but:
should i say "oh thank you Matrox that it´s not working, it would be so boring if everything would work..."


I am not blaming Matrox for anything, mistakes happen all the time and everywhere.
I still like Matrox and really love this card !
And i also know that at Matrox people are working so that we all get better drivers.

please don´t get me wrong:
if the engine of you car doesn´t work, then the factory tells you
"well you know how complicated engines nowadays are... we can´t tell you when we will fix it"
sounds strange to me

i hope i am making sense here
regards

[103er-Fan]

Click HERE for new Parhelia drivers which solves the NWN problem

[Wienerschnitzl]

Yessss

[103er-Fan]

Btw, I got the game today and just played a bit, some questions:
- Why I can't enable "Shiny Water" in the options?

- How can I get 16xFAA working? I set it to "always on" but it doesn't seem to work

- Sometimes this game is running pretty slow, though the situation doesn't look very stressful, might that be because I set shadows to full?

[leech]

The Shiny water can only be turned on if you have a Geforce (3+ if I recall correctly) It's using an OpenGL extension that is nVidia specific.

You're probably guessing right on the shadow part. Enjoy the game. Now I can finally PLAY!!!

Leech

[Rukes]

Originally posted by leech
The Shiny water can only be turned on if you have a Geforce (3+ if I recall correctly) It's using an OpenGL extension that is nVidia specific.

You're probably guessing right on the shadow part. Enjoy the game. Now I can finally PLAY!!!

Leech

The strange thing is, when I had a GeForce 3 Ti500 before this Parhelia, I couldn't enable Shiny Water either...

Also, yes, having Shadows at max causes slowdown. Turning them down means you just lose the "4 shadow effect" but you gain lots of frames

[leech]

Might have been a Geforce 4 thing. There was a posting on it in the NWN forums.

http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=110076&forum=42&highlight=shiny+water

From the readme file "Note: in order to enable Shiny water you must have a GeForce 3 or better video card."

Actually you'd think that if it's for the Geforce 4 it would work on the 3 as well, since it's just an OpenGL extension of nVidia's. But then again I'm FAR from an expert on these things. I've seen some screenshots of the shiny water and it does look very cool. Hey Matrox, why don't you do what nVidia does and bribe the developers by giving them free boards to play with so that they'll enable all the cool features just for our cards? ;-) That's exactly what happened with the Shiny water effect. Or wait, why not bribe the US army? So that you can have a HUGE Parhelia symbol pop up instead of that crappy nVidia one?

Leech

[Ryu Connor]

Hmm. According to that thread it uses a Pixel Shader to make the water shiny.

If true there's not particular reason why the Parhelia couldn't support it.

[R0M]

You are right it is using OpenGl extension which is Nvidia specific. We should hopefully patch the game later to support the Parhelia extension including vertex and pixel shader, stay tuned...

Regards,

[DukeP]

Nice one there, ROM!

No matter what some folks say; I belive that supporting individually the bigger games is VERY important!
~~DukeP~~