Backwards Compatibility with F3DEX2

Backwards Compatibility with F3DEX2

C GBI Compatibility

F3DEX3 is backwards compatible with F3DEX2 at the C GBI level for all features and commands except:

• The viewport Y scale has been negated, and G_MAXZ has been renamed as its value has changed. See the comment near G_MAXZ in the GBI.
• For the same reason, in BrZ configuration, any Z threshold values in SPBranchLessZ* which are hard-coded into display lists (not based on G_MAXZ) must be multiplied by 0x20.
• The G_SPECIAL_* command IDs have been removed. G_SPECIAL_2 and G_SPECIAL_3 were no-ops in F3DEX2, and G_SPECIAL_1 was a trigger to recalculate the MVP matrix. There is no MVP matrix in F3DEX3 so this is useless.
• G_LINE3D (and Gfx.line) has been removed. This command did not actually work in F3DEX2 (it behaved as a no-op).
• G_MW_CLIP has been removed, and SPClipRatio has been converted into a no-op. Clipping is handled differently in F3DEX3 and the clip ratio cannot be changed from 2.
• G_MV_MATRIX, G_MW_MATRIX, and G_MW_FORCEMTX have been removed, and SPForceMatrix has been converted into a no-op. This is because there is no MVP matrix in F3DEX3.
• G_MV_POINT has been removed. This was not used in any command; it would have likely been used for debugging to copy vertices from DMEM to examine them. This does not affect SPModifyVertex, which is still supported.
• G_MW_PERSPNORM has been removed; SPPerspNormalize is still supported but is encoded differently, no longer using this define.
• G_MVO_LOOKATX and G_MVO_LOOKATY have been removed, and SPLookAtX and SPLookAtY are deprecated. SPLookAtX has been changed to set both directions and SPLookAtY has been converted to a no-op. To set the lookat directions, use SPLookAt. The lookat directions are now in one 8-byte DMA word, so they must always be set at the same time as each other. Most of the non-functional fields (e.g. color) of LookAt and its sub-types have been removed, so code which accesses these fields needs to change. Code which only accesses lookat directions should be compatible with no changes.
• As discussed above, the pad1 field of Light_t is renamed to type and must be set to zero.
• If you do not raise the maximum number of lights from 7 to 9, the lighting GBI commands are backwards compatible. However, if you do raise the number of lights, you must use SPAmbient to write the ambient light, as discussed above. Note that you can now load all your lights with one command, SPSetLights, so it is not usually necessary to use SPLight and SPAmbient at all.

Binary Display List Compatibility

F3DEX3 is generally binary backwards compatible with OoT-style display lists for objects, scenes, etc. It is not compatible at the binary level with SM64-style display lists which encode object colors as light colors, as all the command encodings related to lighting have changed. Of course, if you recompile these display lists with the new gbi.h, it can run them.

The deprecated commands mentioned above in the C GBI section have had their encodings changed (the original encodings will do bad things / crash). In addition, all lighting-related commands–e.g. gdSPDefLights*, SPNumLights, SPLight, SPLightColor, SPLookAt–have had their encodings changed, making them binary incompatible. The lighting data structures, e.g. Light_t, PosLight_t, LookAt_t, Lightsn, Lights*, PosLights*, etc., have also changed–generally only slightly, so most code is compatible with no changes.

SPSegment has been given a different command id (G_RELSEGMENT vs. G_MOVEWORD) to facilitate relative segmented address translation. The original binary encoding is still valid, but does not support relative translation like the new encoding. However, recompiling with the C GBI will always use the new encoding.