Dark Circlet

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

I've been posting screenshots around the various Halo communities, and I figured I may as well make a topic for this.

 

Here's a mini-FAQ to answer a few of your questions:

 

What is Dark Circlet?

Dark Circlet is a program that can render Halo Custom Edition cache files via OpenGL. While I do have far more plans than just simply rendering maps, more information will be made available as Dark Circlet is developed.

 

When was Dark Circlet started?

End of December 2018

 

Who is developing Dark Circlet?

Only me (Kavawuvi)

 

Will Dark Circlet be open source (and under what license)?

If it is released, then yes. If so, it will be open source under the GNU GPL version 3.

 

What is Dark Circlet written in?

C++, GLSL

 

What graphics API does Dark Circlet use?

OpenGL 4.3

 

What system requirements will Dark Circlet have?

Here are the current, tentative system requirements.

 

CPU: x86-64 with SSE4.1 - Penryn [Intel], K10 [AMD]*

RAM: 4 GB**

GPU: OpenGL 4.3 - ATI Radeon HD 5000 series [AMD] | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 400 series [Nvidia] | Don't [Intel]

OS: Windows 7 or newer (64-bit); Ubuntu 18.04 (64-bit)***

 

* If you don't meet the CPU requirement, you may still be able to compile it for your own system.

** While 4 GB technically isn't required to open Dark Circlet, Dark Circlet may allocate over 1 GB of RAM with some maps. If you don't have enough RAM, your system will be starved for resources.

*** Dark Circlet is not limited to Ubuntu as the only compatible Linux distribution; it is being developed on Arch Linux. Also, if you don't meet the OS requirement, you may still be able to compile it for your own system.

 

As Dark Circlet is developed (and possibly optimized), these may change. However, do not be surprised if an older PC that could run Halo Custom Edition cannot run Dark Circlet. Supporting hardware from a decade ago may be difficult or impossible for me to do by myself.

 

Screenshots

Spoiler

Simple depth shader

 

Two viewports

 

Textures

 

Environment shaders

 

Lightmaps

 

Wireframe mode

 

Transparent shaders

 

 

[Takka 13,377]

Wonderfully accurate rendering! True to the original.

 

Excited to see this progress.

[EmmanuelCD 57]

Open source? nice, im ready to rip

[ShikuTeshi 1,299]

Oh, so that's what those were all about. I was just seeing random Halo pictures and didn't really know what they were besides obviously being rendered differently.

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

I've updated the post with some more screenshots. This time it's with transparent shaders.

 

 

 

 

 

These maps use the original Xbox shader_transparent_generic tags. As for some trivia, did you notice that Hang 'em High was changed when it was ported to the PC?

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

Added some (tentative) system requirements if anyone wants any idea on how (or even if) it runs. These are subject to change and very likely will be changed.

 

Quote

What system requirements will Dark Circlet have?

There is no way to know for certain, as much of the functionality that is planned for it is still not present. Therefore, these are tentative and may be adjusted in the future. This is based on Dark Circlet's current state. Obviously, I do not have any of these parts, so I have no idea exactly how well it will actually perform on these. Instead, I'm using their supported OpenGL versions as well as specifications and benchmarks.

 

CPU: AMD FX 6100 [AMD] | Intel Core i5-3330 [Intel]

RAM: 4 GB

GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5750 [AMD] | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 [Nvidia]

 

As Dark Circlet is developed (and possibly optimized), these may (and probably will) change. However, do not be surprised if an older PC that could run Halo Custom Edition cannot run Dark Circlet. Supporting hardware from a decade ago may be difficult or impossible for me to do by myself. For example, 4000 series ATI/AMD cards, NVIDIA cards before Fermi (300 series and older), and Intel integrated GPUs prior to Haswell (3rd generation Intel and older) do not support OpenGL 4.3 and will not easily run this without modification.

 

The requirements are a little exaggerated, but that's because it's a huge guess due to how early development is, and it's far better to overestimate than underestimate. Odds are that a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 or an AMD Phenom II X4 955 will be able to handle this, though GPUs older than 9 years probably won't simply due to OpenGL support.

 

However, Dark Circlet will only be 64-bit, and it will not be released for macOS. Sorry.

[ShikuTeshi 1,299]

So are you just taking the assets from Halo and rebuilding it in your own engine? Compared to Open Sauce which I believe just gives access to, or the ability to add onto the engine code?
Or is this just a different kind of renderer that goes on top of everything else?

Edited January 15, 2019 by ShikuTeshi

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

It's my own rendering engine, but it can open Halo Custom Edition cache files.

 

That isn't to say putting it on top of everything would be impossible, though not relying on the original binaries may be more useful in the long run.

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

If anyone wants to, I have a quick survey to find out what people are using. The only information I ask for is your operating system, CPU, GPU, as well as the amount of RAM you have. Please note that the operating systems listed are for the latest versions of those operating systems (with Ubuntu having two latest versions if you count the LTS).

 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1wOue0QIzyHFeRGbbcVhekF1z1Vc36HwPhNqUupJQu-0/

 

I'm going to be looking at the results in a couple days to make a decision on what I'll be supporting with Dark Circlet.

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

The survey closed a few days ago. Here are the results:

 

Operating System
 

 

Most people who responded were on Windows, most of which were on Windows 10. No surprise.

 

11% of people who responded were on Linux, with Arch Linux and Ubuntu being the most popular distributions.

 

No Mac users were recorded. This was not very surprising.

 

 

RAM

 

 

Most people who responded had at least 8 GB of RAM, with most people using 16 GB or more RAM. This did surprise me a bit, though I imagine if there was a larger sample size, the results would be different.

 

Dark Circlet requires 4 GB of RAM. It can and will use more memory than Halo, but this will make it faster (faster loading times). In most cases, people who had less than 4 GB of RAM did not meet the required OpenGL version. I'm fairly confident this is a safe assumption for most users with less than 4 GB of RAM.

 

Here's another graph to show you supported vs. unsupported:

 

 

 

OpenGL version

 

Dark Circlet requires OpenGL 4.3, and most people exceeded this. Most people who were on OpenGL 4.3 as a maximum were on Haswell Intel graphics, and nearly everyone who was on a discrete GPU met the requirements. People who were on 3.3 or older were on either old integrated graphics, 4000 series Radeon HD, or old Nvidia cards such as the 8 series.

 

 

 

Thanks for responding. This has helped me in finding what people use.