Why don't some early glide games run correctly on later Voodoo cards? I remember reading about problems with some early games that Voodoo 1 and 2 could render correctly but 3 and up had problems with. What is the cause of that? Did the Glide specification change between V2 and V3?
because the early games did not use glide, the communicated directly with the card
Guardian of the Sacred Five Terabyte's of Gaming Goodness
Actually they used glide, but it was embedded in the executable (statically linked).
Yes the hardware changed, so Glide was updated to support new hardware. Most games were made so that they loaded external glide dll and getting support for a new generation of cards required only having a glide2x dll that supported it. Older titles were unfortunately left unworking since you could not update glide with the new hardware support...
My guess is you'd have to find a patch for each older glide game you intend to run on a newer glide card. It's what I had to do to get Unreal running on my Voodoo 3.
Strangely Unreal also wouldn't run on my Monster Fusion made by Diamond (basically a 16MB voodoo2 + 2D in 1 card) so I replaced it with a Voodoo 2.
Unreal ran great on my K6-3-400 + Voodoo 2 except it would have noticable slowdowns in very few areas while my Celeron 800 + Voodoo 3 ran Unreal just perfectly, except that the fire and water effects seemed to run too fast.
wrote:Monster Fusion made by Diamond (basically a 16MB voodoo2 + 2D in 1 card)
That's a 3dfx Voodoo Banshee. They're not quite a Voodoo2 (one TMU) but they still allow hi and low res, it's more like a crippled early Voodoo3 😀
Also Unreal worked on my banshee, though Unreal isn't exactly an "early" glide game. We're talking 1996 here
Yeah the early Glide games are more like Mechwarrior 2 3DFX edition and Fatal Racing / Whiplash 3D.
I did Unreal on a Voodoo1. And Klingon Honor Guard (more Unreal engine).
I remember Tomb Raider 1 on the PC. I believe you needed to patch the standard version of the game, and then it would work on the 3DFX Voodoo and it looked fantastic.
If memory serves me right, it was run from pure DOS and there wasn't any need for a driver.
A few other games where similar, but I can't remember any of them. Tomb Raider 1 was the most memorable to me...
Archmedian Dynasty, Battle Arena Toshinden and Scorched Planet also had 1996 3dfx patches
Ah yes, it was a Banshee! Couldn't remember what it was called and was too lazy to google it 😁
You wouldn't believe how many browser windows I have open at any given time!
I remember having tried Interstate76 but it wouldn't run in glide...or maybe it just wouldn't run under XP, can't remember.
wrote:Archmedian Dynasty, Battle Arena Toshinden and Scorched Planet also had 1996 3dfx patches
Just tried S Planet 3dfx on my V5....didn't work..just crashed so it must be hard coded for early Voodoo cards
My retro computer stuff: https://lychee.jjserver.net/#16136303902327
