1) That doesn't sound too bad to put up with, considering it was a free copy I gave you. Glad you appreciated it so much!

2) I have no choice but to tie it to the system: it is this way or give it away free. You know that. You are shouting at the wrong person. Shout at all those on the net that just steal software at every opportunity, and make stupid schemes like my unlock system essential.

3) You are unusual in the way you change your system so often.
You can't expect me to change to a way that allows Glidos to be pirated just because of you. Anyway, last time you unlocked I replied 1 and 3/4 hours later. And I'm hoping to make the unlock web based eventually, and hence immediate.

4) The lost keyboard input sounds like a bug I've introduced. Sorry about that. I do my best. Actually you are being totally unreasonable when you say it is buggy. What you have noticed is probably a problem with Glidos, but that's just one problem and you didn't report it. How am I supposed to fix it, if I don't know about it. The fact that nobody else has reported it, suggests that may be specific to your setup. It is the sodding video drivers mostly where the bugs lie. Only half of what Glidos does is to do with Glide emulation. The other half is work arounds for bugs in XP's DOS emulation and in Graphics cards VESA emualtion, and mouse emulation... Glidos is antibuggy.

Well, since the last key, the only thing I can think that I changed was my Nvidia drivers. Why on Earth should that break Glidos?

Tying the keys to the system is one thing, but I really think you have tied it way too tightly. It's rendered it useless to me and anyone who tinkers with PC's at all, and I dare say that would be just about anyone trying to run Tomb Raider on an NT based PC.

Free copy? I paid $10. You probably should give it away free anyway. It's the only program of this nature I've ever seen that someone actually charged money for. People do a heck of a lot more for free for games they like......mods, total conversions, all kinds of stuff. Heck, Glidos costs more than Tomb Raider does (if you can even find it)! How do you justify that?

Originally posted by AntiSnipe It's rendered it useless to me and anyone who tinkers with PC's at all, and I dare say that would be just about anyone trying to run Tomb Raider on an NT based PC.

An exaggeration. It just makes it an annoyance as you have to contact Paul for a replacement code each time.

You probably should give it away free anyway. It's the only program of this nature I've ever seen that someone actually charged money for. People do a heck of a lot more for free for games they like......mods, total conversions, all kinds of stuff.

Eh? You're missing a major point here. There are no other DOS Glide emulators available...free or otherwise. Your examples like mods don't wash as they were obviously done for fun and don't require much (if anything) in the way of tech support. GliDOS is the only way of running these old titles with 3dfx enhancements outside of an original Voodoo setup (even Voodoo 2/3/4/5 owners can't run some of them...).

Heck, Glidos costs more than Tomb Raider does (if you can even find it)! How do you justify that?

I think it's called "work". If it were so easy to emulate DOS-Glide titles, you would have seen multiple programs doing so by now.

At least part of the reason you haven't seem them would have to be that people don't want to pour that much effort into something for free, then be inundated with emails for every bug, glitch, or hardware compatibility issue for every possible combination of PC hardware.

Glidos wrote:

Shout at all those on the net that just steal software at every opportunity, and make stupid schemes like my unlock system essential.

Protection schemes like this that break software they paid for.......is EXACTLY why people like me go looking to "steal" it. It's catch 22 isn't it? The only way I will be able to use Glidos when I want to use it is to crack it.

Listen to me, you ungrateful ass. I will not put up with people like you coming around and bullying my software developers. Paul has worked extremely hard for very little money. US$10 is next to nothing, anyway -- doubly so for him, since he lives in the UK where the exchange rate is about 64 pence per one US dollar. Nobody else has complained like you have. If it was such a large problem, why aren't there be many, many more people having problems with it? Paul's change detection algorithms are not nearly as touchy as you make them seem, and to say that his program is bugged because of it is complete crap. Now, if you'd like to submit a proper bug report, instead of acting like a two-year-old that just lost a bet, I guarantee you that Paul will do everything in his power to fix any problems you're having RELATED TO GLIDOS. All this pissing and moaning about having to re-request codes is just stupid.

"Your software developers"? Paul is your employee now?

Yes, others have complained. Why there aren't more complaints is because there aren't that many people that even use Glidos. Many who won't buy it because of the things I complain about.

Yes the change detection algorythms ARE EXACTLY that sensitive, and I did not say it was bugged because of that. I said it was bugged because of the lost keyboard input, for one (IE: renders the game completely unplayable) Glidos breaks with EVERY change I make to my PC, be it a sound card, network card, hard drive, ANYTHING. When I first used Glidos, just turning on or off a completely unrelated and different PC that was connected to the second network card in my PC broke Glidos!!! That's pretty damned sensitive!

Yes Paul is great about support, and seems like a really nice and fair guy and I have sent him many customers in the past. I'm not trying to insult him. Just voicing what I feel is a very vallid complaint......prick.

PS: I DID send a bug report on the keyboard thing. It was included in a new v1.19 unlock key request that has NEVER been responded to. The second v1.20 request, sent later was responed to.

Confirmed. Glidos is still "in your network". Experiment: Go disable your network card, you don't even have to remove it or change it out with another one. Glidos breaks.

More bugs that do not occur running without Glidos:

Causes loss of keyboard input. Worse in newer versions.

Causes game to start with menu ring up instead of down and controlling Lara. New in newer versions.

Causes game to be either way too dark and dull or way to washed out....and dull. Worse in newer versions.

Causes game to run too fast sometimes (Lara runs around in fast motion) Never noticed this in older versions either.

Crashes in the first cinematic sometimes. Worse if you Escape out of them.

Conclusion: Glidos was great about version 1.10 or 1.11. Since then it is getting more buggy every time. Is there anywhere to get the older versions that work better?

Originally posted by AntiSnipe "Your software developers"? Paul is your employee now?

I believe he means "one of the software developers that's using this board as a base for support and troubleshooting".

Yes, others have complained. Why there aren't more complaints is because there aren't that many people that even use Glidos. Many who won't buy it because of the things I complain about.

Don't go overboard on presumption. Some have it and simply don't have major issues with it.

Glidos breaks with EVERY change I make to my PC, be it a sound card, network card, hard drive, ANYTHING.

Snipe, FWIW, I also have found the protection system to also be "overly-sensitive", but you're treating this like affront to you personally. I end up breaking my code all the time, but that's because I use my PC for a lot of troubleshooting.

I'm not trying to insult him. Just voicing what I feel is a very vallid complaint......

Well then, could you try to leave out things like asking Paul to "justify" the cost or "You don't charge money for sh** like that". It's hard to interpret things like that as anything other than being personally hostile.

...p**ck.

Ok, everyone feel the warmth. Let's all take a deep breath and pause before we post... Flaming each other won't fix anything.

PS: I DID send a bug report on the keyboard thing. It was included in a new v1.19 unlock key request that has NEVER been responded to. The second v1.20 request, sent later was responed to.

If you don't get a response, send it in again. Honestly, do you think Paul was deliberately just blowing you off? Probably got accidentally deleted with a group of spam mail...

As for the keyboard issue, you're the second person that I've heard of with a keyboard issue, although the symptoms were different. I would guess that its probably a particular combination of hardware and software. That's not saying a whole lot...except that it's not a common occurrence.

AntiSnipe wrote:

Well, since the last key, the only thing I can think that I changed was my Nvidia drivers. Why on Earth should that break Glidos?

That wouldn't. You must have changed something else

Tying the keys to the system is one thing, but I really think you have tied it way too tightly. It's rendered it useless to me and anyone who tinkers with PC's at all, and I dare say that would be just about anyone trying to run Tomb Raider on an NT based PC.

To you I believe, but I've had very few complaints about this from others (which surprises me). I've had a lot of people complaining that "lots of things like this are free, and hence all things like this should be free, and basically I want it and I don't want to pay for it" - not suggesting that you are such a person.

Free copy? I paid .

And then you reported how your twin NICs caused all sorts of problems and you helped me fix it by running a little test program of mine, so I refunded your money. So, okay it wasn't free really, it was traded for help.

You probably should give it away free anyway. It's the only program of this nature I've ever seen that someone actually charged money for. People do a heck of a lot more for free for games they like......mods, total conversions, all kinds of stuff. Heck,

Yeh I do a lot of free stuff too. I don't know what your job is, but there may be some people that do that for nothing, but its up to the individual isn't it. Glidos is my work; I think I should be able to do what I liek with it.

Glidos costs more than Tomb Raider does (if you can even find it)! How do you justify that?

That's silly. There's just too many replies to this; I don't know where to start.

1) Glidos costs a lot less than TR when it first game out.

2) Glidos lets you play several games.

3) TR sold millions, Glidos only hundreds. You always have to spend more on special interest software. In fact, I know what my time is worth (because I get paid for contracting), and Glidos does not pay its way. I'd have to charge about $200 to get a return that makes business sense.

Snover wrote:

Listen to me, you ungrateful ass.

Ooh! Ow! I appreciate the support, but that's a bit too vicious.

Originally posted by AntiSnipe
[BPS: I DID send a bug report on the keyboard thing. It was included in a new v1.19 unlock key request that has NEVER been responded to.

Oops. Sorry about that. I don't think that happens very often.

AntiSnipe wrote:

Confirmed. Glidos is still "in your network". Experiment: Go disable your network card, you don't even have to remove it or change it out with another one. Glidos breaks.

For most people this isn't a big problem. Most people have no need to disable their network card.

More bugs that do not occur running without Glidos: Causes loss of keyboard input. Worse in newer versions. […]
Show full quote

More bugs that do not occur running without Glidos:

Causes loss of keyboard input. Worse in newer versions.

I've not seen this myself, but I can imagine that might happen in some circumstances. Ever since I put mouse support in, I've had to make Glidos's window the foreground window, which means keybaord messages don't naturally go to the game. So I have to capture those messages and route them to the games DOS-box window. My way of finding out which window the game is running in is a bit primitive and might be fooled if you have something else running at the same time, especially if this other thing running is capable of popping up windows.

Causes game to start with menu ring up instead of down and controlling Lara. New in newer versions.

I used to have that happen ages ago, but it doesn't for me anymore. No idea what is happening: must be a stray <Enter> getting sent to the game. The trouble is this is unchartered ground. There is generally no cause to write a program that runs a Windows and DOS session simultaneouly and makes interactions with one look like interactions with the other.

Causes game to be either way too dark and dull or way to washed out....and dull. Worse in newer versions.

It was too dark in the old version, because there was no support for Glide's Gamma setting function. Now that is implemented you should get exactly the colors intended. I find it looks a bit washed out on a TFT monitor, but I've provided gamma adjustment, so you can get it how you want it.

Glidos reproduces colors faithfully; there is no bug there.

Causes game to run too fast sometimes (Lara runs around in fast motion) Never noticed this in older versions either.

Yes, that's right: one of the many ways that DOS emulation is broken in Windows NT/2000/XP. I've put months of work into trying to work around this bug. TR isn't so badly affected by this. Its Descent II that was most hit by it. In gettting Descent II to run reasonably I think I did make TR run a bit fast.

Anyway, that's all fixed now. v1.22 (to be released in a few days) make games run exactly to time.

Crashes in the first cinematic sometimes. Worse if you Escape out of them.

Maybe the VESA support I put in doesn't work well for you. You can try deleting the line that says "VesaSupport: Yes" from the Glidos.ini file. I had to put VESA support in because many Graphics cards have buggy VESA support.

Conclusion: Glidos was great about version 1.10 or 1.11. Since then it is getting more buggy every time. Is there anywhere to get the older versions that work better?

Most versions are on the web site, but not linked, so just take the url of the latest version and edit it, and that will probably work. Ah, only goes back to v1.12, but I could put up 1.10 or 1.11

The Vesa support is great, even if it what causes the one problem, because it's not real common and usually works.

If you remember the problem I had even installing TR1 on my new PC because of, I assume, the broken VESA support on my machine? Glidos was the ONLY way I could run TR1 at that point because of the VESA support. I had to install it manually, then run it with Glidos.

FYI, here is the conclusion of that problem for future reference/troubleshooting:

I have an Asus P4S533-E Mainboard with a SIS (645DX? from my bad memory) chipset. If I install the AGP driver (all versions I found) for this motherboard, Tomb Raider is broken and Glidos is REQUIRED to run it. If I do not install the AGP driver, all is fine and I notice no ill side effects even in other games, including new, demanding ones like Unreal 2.

Conclusion: If you have a SIS chipset, don't use their AGP driver, let Windows defaults handle it.....scary, I know.

I guess my only real complaint here is the system dependant keys. If only there was some other way or less restrictive way to secure your interest. Maybe just tie it to the mainboard and O/S? Leave out the sound card, network card, video card(?), hard drive, kitchen sink.........

I know you are great and usually very quick about supplying new keys, but try to see it from my point of view:

1. I have 1 - 2 hours free time I was planning on playing TR.
2. I fire it up with Glidos only to find it is not working........again. I may have changed a hard drive or a sound card, odds are I can't even remember what unless I just did it.
3. I fire off an unlock email.........the reply comes quickly about 2 - 12 hours later. That's nice and all, but my "Tomb Raider Time" is long gone.
4. Two days later, I install the keys and test real quick. Yep, Glidos is working again.

5. Two weeks or so later............*see line 1.*

I very rarely change my mainboard, could it be tied just to that? Or that and the OS even?

.......and while I've got you here, I notice your Windows 2K/XP installation instructions on the main page are the same as always. I'm surprised you don't hear a lot of WTF's about this.

E:
cd \
dosdrv
install.exe

I'm not sure what the deal is, but this won't install anything with the 2 versions of Tomb Raider 1 CD's I have. There is no install.exe on them, and typing cd\ must be followed by a directory to change to. Anyway, those instructions will not install Tomb Raider from my CDs.

Both my CD's have an installt.exe that will cause TR to install, but it doesn't run the game after. If I use install.bat it will install and then run. Like this (assuming E: is the first CDROM drive):

Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.

C:\>E:

E:\>dosdrv
VDMSound DOS loader, version 2.01 (Aug 04 2001)
Copyright (C) 2000-2001 Vlad ROMASCANU.

VDMSound is covered by the GNU Public License (GPL), version 2 or later, as
published by the Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Loading 'VDDLoader.dll'...
Successfully loaded & initialized (hVDD = 0x01).

E:\>install

Then to run it without Glidos:

C:\>cd\tombraid

C:\TOMBRAID>dosdrv

C:\TOMBRAID>tomb

AntiSnipe wrote:

.......and while I've got you here, I notice your Windows 2K/XP installation instructions on the main page are the same as always. I'm surprised you don't hear a lot of WTF's about this.

I hadn't twigged. So I just need to change "Install.exe" to "Install" and it will work for all versions. That's handy.

AntiSnipe wrote:

The Vesa support is great, even if it what causes the one problem, because it's not real common and usually works.

If you remember the problem I had even installing TR1 on my new PC because of, I assume, the broken VESA support on my machine? Glidos was the ONLY way I could run TR1 at that point because of the VESA support. I had to install it manually, then run it with Glidos.

Oh yeh, I'd forgotten that. Since then I've written an installer, so that you can install on machines without VESA support, so that might be useful if you need to do that again. Still worrying that it sometimes crashes. Could easily be drivers though; so difficult to tell.

FYI, here is the conclusion of that problem for future reference/troubleshooting: I have an Asus P4S533-E Mainboard with a SIS […]
Show full quote

FYI, here is the conclusion of that problem for future reference/troubleshooting:

I have an Asus P4S533-E Mainboard with a SIS (645DX? from my bad memory) chipset. If I install the AGP driver (all versions I found) for this motherboard, Tomb Raider is broken and Glidos is REQUIRED to run it. If I do not install the AGP driver, all is fine and I notice no ill side effects even in other games, including new, demanding ones like Unreal 2.

Conclusion: If you have a SIS chipset, don't use their AGP driver, let Windows defaults handle it.....scary, I know.

I heard of a lot of problems with SIS chipsets. So this info could be handy.

I guess my only real complaint here is the system dependant keys. If only there was some other way or less restrictive way to secure your interest. Maybe just tie it to the mainboard and O/S? Leave out the sound card, network card, video card(?), hard drive, kitchen sink.........

I think you've been unlucky; its not tied to the sound card, video card, or the kitchen sink- or the mainboard come to think of it.

I know you are great and usually very quick about supplying new keys, but try to see it from my point of view: 1. I have 1 - 2 […]
Show full quote

I know you are great and usually very quick about supplying new keys, but try to see it from my point of view:

1. I have 1 - 2 hours free time I was planning on playing TR.
2. I fire it up with Glidos only to find it is not working........again. I may have changed a hard drive or a sound card, odds are I can't even remember what unless I just did it.
3. I fire off an unlock email.........the reply comes quickly about 2 - 12 hours later. That's nice and all, but my "Tomb Raider Time" is long gone.
4. Two days later, I install the keys and test real quick. Yep, Glidos is working again.

5. Two weeks or so later............*see line 1.*

I do see your point of view. I just don't see anything I can do. Out of the things I tie the ID to now, I don't know which are easy to fake, so I daren't remove one.

Paul, you must have Elephant skin, mate 😉

Look how he stayed soo calm throughout that ordeal.

What a nice chap. 😉 😀

BTW, mate. I now have my nice shiny new NForce2 based Athlon Barton 2.8, up and running. Any chance of a new key ?

Oh lastly, I got a nice Glide game called Dethkartz. Not quite working well in Openglide, but you are more than welcome to, Ahem, <coughs> test it for me. 😉

PM me, Paul.

CraigG wrote:

Paul, you must have Elephant skin, mate 😉

Look how he stayed soo calm throughout that ordeal.

What a nice chap. 😉 😀

Quite the opposite actually. Its just that at times I blow up and say all sorts of things in far more an aggresive way than I intend. knowing how I feel when that happens, I guess I'm understanding of others. Anyway I know Clayton from old. He's been going around recommending Glidos to people for years. I knew part of this was him having a bad day.

BTW, mate. I now have my nice shiny new NForce2 based Athlon Barton 2.8, up and running. Any chance of a new key ?

New keys always not a problem. NForce2 hey, I've always been tempted by those. Are you using the onboard graphics?

Oh lastly, I got a nice Glide game called Dethkartz. Not quite working well in Openglide, but you are more than welcome to, Ahe […]
Show full quote

Oh lastly, I got a nice Glide game called Dethkartz. Not quite working well in Openglide, but you are more than welcome to, Ahem, <coughs> test it for me. 😉

PM me, Paul.

Hmmm, might be time to look at a new game.

*Oh SH**......He knows my name!*
*He knows what I've been doing!*
*Wonder if he knows my address too!?!?!?*
*Could he be..............Santa?!?!?!*
*Runs under front porch to hide*

Look Ma, no pixels!

Amazing....isn't it?