And the vsync option in the table options does not work right - it's always turned on no matter if I use 0 or 1. It can only be turned off here when setting it to 0 in the video options of VP...
Hm, I thought toxie fixed it, but it's probably a very minor bug.
I just ran VP8 and they do not render as black.
Best Regards,
Todd.
So this means they are invisible then?
Ok, here are my conclusions to the 'black' issues and the ramp bug...
The apron image used for WCS (and I would assume Airborne as well) are actually using pure black (which should result in being transparent)... with that being said, I think I have figured out which circumstances allow for this behavior. If the image is used on a 'Wall', pure black is transparent (as well as any color assigned in the image manager) but if 'side visible' is checked with no image assigned, then any transparent sections (whether from pure black or set color from image manager) are then filled in with pure black... assign a side image or uncheck 'side visible' then the pure black and set colors from the image manager are then transparent again.
EDIT: Correction... it seems with messing around a little bit more that only the set color from the image manager is used for the TOPS of walls... I was testing with a solid color image in the previous tests which behaved as desribed, but with an actual image, black was still black regardless.
About the ramp bug... This seems to be a layering order issue. I can achieve the same visual result on the dx7 builds by sending the ramp with the 'wcsramplip' image to the back causing the edges where it intersects the other alpha ramps to become visibly transparent because it is higher 'physically' but ordered lower.
I understand the black=transparent issue now (thanks to mfuegemann who sent me a test table which clarified the issues immensely). Basically, pure black in VP9 is transparent on any object which is "rendered dynamically". It does not matter whether it gets there via object color or through the texture, and it doesn't depend on the transparency color set for the texture. So this means, it's not transparent on static walls, but it IS transparent on walls with the "Droppable" flag set.
Then in addition, most table elements support the transparency color set from the image manager, so you can end up with two different transparent colors (black and another one) in some cases. The visual quality is much higher using a true transparency color however.
(The exact definition of "rendered dynamically" here is "is rendered using sprite blitting in VP9", so excludes alpha ramps and primitives.)
And yes, the ramp issue comes from depth ordering. Haven't looked into it deeper yet though.
Tested with VP9_DX9_test5a. Defender playfield, plastics and apron fixed. Light inserts get blacked out dynamically depending on whats happening on table. This table has basic lighting. Individual light Insert toggle between a dim insert image and a lit insert image, but I also have a light called PFGI which covers the entire playfield. It toggles between dim playfield, pf, and lit playfield, pf_on - in both of these images pure black is used where all the individual lights insert objects are located. NOTE: In the image manager, pf and pf_on have that neon green color specified as transparent, not black
When games starts, PFGI is changed to state on, so playfield is bright. That causes all the inserts to be pure black. As table is played, light inserts are turned on and off, so the inserts replace the black, until i change the PFGI light state and black inserts shown again.
So it appears, that for light objects, pure black(0,0,0) was always transparent. I guess the remaining question would be what other object have this rule also...
I have a pretty good idea what causes that. Unfortunately, since those textures don't have black set as their transparency, I probably can't fix it. You might try to change that and see if it helps.
I always thought the pure black being transparent in the old VP was a bug more than a feature 
In any case it was an "abused feature"
It's weird for sure, it doesn't seem like it's documented anywhere, but people did rely on it in many cases. It's rather tricky to work around now... I can't promise compatibility for all cases.
Had time to test a few tables yesterday with the new 5abeta.
Most of them played and looked great.
Only noticed two things so far.
Scared Stiff still has the black insert problems unless they are lit. (Sorry don't know what version as I renamed it ages ago, but it is probably the latest)
The tube on Xenon looks like Spiderman made it with his web shooter. (Maybe it looked like that before DX9 but I don't think so.)
I played several rounds of SS today (VP91x_1.4.4FS) and noticed no issues. Is that your version?
Edited by mukuste, 23 February 2014 - 06:29 PM.
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