The "Tomb" Title on your command prompt Box is just cosmetic and can be easily fixed (It's a holdover from when GliDos was just for Tomb Raider). Doesn't have any effect on the game.

Try this version of PollPipe.dll

For my main and second PCs did the following:

1. replaced pollpipe.dll in the blood and Glidos directories with the one you supplied and re-tested Blood - no improvement

2. uninstalled VDM and re-installed with no updates. Re-tested Blood (still using new pollpipe) - no improvement

No improvement means:

MainPC: "frozen" Blood menu screen

SecondPC: Blood only runs at 320x200 w/o Glidos. Running with Glidos, Blood goes through all its initialization, and then the DOS window is killed returning to windows (never get to the Blood menu screen). The last message displayed by Blood initialization seems to be echoing the configured Blood VESA resolution (640x480) in these tests. I am launching Blood via Glidos with blood.bat which contains nolfb.com, 3dfx.exe.

As for CLI2NOP, if Blood runs on SecondPC in 320x200 mode, does this indicate its not needed (if it was, I guess Blood wouldn't run at all)?

Any chance of getting Glidos/openglide to spit out a log file of what its doing? While this may significantly slow down glide emulation, for debugging game startup problems the performance hit won't matter much, but the extra information could!

And thanks for the clarification about the TOMB heading. Suspected it was cosmetic, but let you know in case it was not and could have led to a new line of investigation

Otipher

If your running VDMSound without the updates then your likely running into the CLI problem. I was thinking that you had disabled Sound when using GliDOS which would mean that the CLI problem wouldn't take effect....but it seems that you are not disabling sound.

Okay. Let's just forget about GLidos. Completely and totally. Let's just get Blood working.

First with sound disabled and video mode set to 320 then Blood SHOULD work fine....if it's not then it's either a corrupt Blood installation or some system monitoring program.

Assuming that you do get Blood working with 320 and no sound then next it's time to get sound working. For that read this thread and do what it say's:
showthread.php?s=&threadid=1226

SFX only works in Windows XP.

Now run Blood in 320 and with sound configured properly for VDMSOUND (IRQ 7!!!!) and see if it works.

Ok once you get sound working then next work on the video. Simply set Blood to run at 640X480. Run NOLFB.COM. Now execute Blood.

Once you get all of that working...now you can try Blood with GliDos.

Sounds like very good advice: I don't know of anyone who has Blood working with Glidos, who could not also make it work in VESA mode with NOLFB.

The advice is sound, but the results unsatisfying.

I assumed when I posted here that others would already have experienced these types of problems with Blood and could help, but now I'm starting to believe that the problems are unique to my machines.

My second machine runs Blood at 320x200 with or w/o sound (the test you suggest), but will not run Blood with nolfb and vesa modes. So the problem is not Glidos.

My first machine won't even run blood at 320x200 w/o sound. So again not a glidos problem.

I'm ruling out Blood installation issues as I've installed several times on both machines (with and w/o patches to v1.1 and/or 3dfx versions). I have the retail version.

I'm stumped!

Otipher

otipher wrote:

My second machine runs Blood at 320x200 with or w/o sound (the test you suggest), but will not run Blood with nolfb and vesa modes. So the problem is not Glidos.

Strange, does blood just exit without an error like you previously said or not?
Also try starting blood with nolfb in 320x200 resolution and change the resolutions (in-game) to see which resolutions can work (I have get different resolutions to work in-game myself, and even then there all distorted!)

otipher wrote:

My first machine won't even run blood at 320x200 w/o sound. So again not a glidos problem.

and this is with/without nolfb? or both?

Duffman wrote:

Strange, does blood just exit without an error like you previously said or not?
Also try starting blood with nolfb in 320x200 resolution and change the resolutions (in-game) to see which resolutions can work (I have get different resolutions to work in-game myself, and even then there all distorted!)

and this is with/without nolfb? or both?

Second machine: configured Blood to run at 320x200 VESA (and verified screen mode is 1 in blood.cfg). Blood runs fine (as tho I selected 320x200 non-VESA) - when I go to video mode options in the game menu, the only option shown is 320x200 (default). It is not showing me other VESA modes. I tried this with and w/o nolfb, and it made no difference.

Sidebar: noticed that when you use blood setup to configure a VESA mode, it warns you that it needs a good VESA driver and recommends Scitech 5.1. Downloaded 6.3 version of that driver and installed, but it didn't help. It also doesn't explicitly support NVidia chipsets, and when it configures itself thinks I have a "WinBond" chipset and adapter. So I don't think Scitech will take me anywhere productive.

First machine: Blood exits like I originally said. Blood configured for 320x200 (tried with and w/o nolfb, VESA and non-VESA blood cfg) - after Blood initialization messages the whole screen goes blank/black . Now here is something interesting - according to my monitor at that point with the blank screen the display is configured for 720x400 ! This is not a resolution I use (desktop is 1024x768) so this must have been programmed during Blood initialization (why?)

[ EDIT ] - Just discovered that opening any Command (DOS) window in Windows, then using ALT-ENTER to full-screen it results in the monitor reporting 720x400. This must be some kind of windows default resolution for command windows? Is this consistent with your own machines? Wonder if there is a way to force this to something more conventional (e.g. 640x480), but don't know whether this will help.

Otipher

How much fiddling with your video drivers have you tried? nVidea do fiddle about with VESA support in their drivers. They had one set of drivers where setting a DOS box to full screen immediately reset the system. Sometimes going back a version can help.

Dropped back to the Gainward Nvidia drivers that came with my 4200 (v28.32).

Same problems/symptoms.

However, looking around the web for video diagnostic tools, I found a simple VGA test utility VGACHALL and ran it on both my machines with interesting results.

VGACHALL can be downloaded from http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/51854.html

Second machine (ATI) - passes all VGA tests (this machine can run blood in non-VESA 320x200 just fine)

Main machine (GF4) - passes text mode tests, but fails at first graphics mode test (320x200 4 color). Moreover, the utility invites me to press a key to continue, but does not respond at this point. Similarities to the "frozen" Blood menu screen when I try and run in this mode!

I am beginning to suspect that there is a basic VGA compatibility problem with my Gainward 4200 card (probably its BIOS?).

Meantime, for others it looks like VGACHALL may be a useful utility for identifying some basic VGA problems in legacy games with certain graphics adapters/versions etc.

Otipher

I'm not sure this would be any help but have you tried repairing your windows installation (it probably wont help, but it doesnt hurt to try) It does NOT re-format

Thanks for the XP installation repair suggestion, but after trying it, it didn't improve the situation.

I tried vgachall and blood after the initial repair, after applying SP1, and after applying all the other critical updates - no change.

It still looks to me like a VGA modes problem stemming from a specific implementation for my Gainward GeForce4 graphics card (BIOS). I have mailed Gainward a potential bug report (with the vgachall test utility) but I don't hold out much hope of getting an acknowledgement or their analysis.

Any other readers of this thread with GeForce4 cards care to comment on results with Blood or the vgachall utility?
Comparative data would be interesting.

Otipher