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dgVoodoo 1 announcement thread

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Reply 46 of 206, by batracio

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Well, after some problems with Dege's server and corrupted version 1.15 (not to mention the "Operation sex" funny icon in some of the screenshots), last night I was finally able to play Tomb raider with dgVoodoo 1.14, and... Impressive. This is just what Glidos should have been: a fully compatible emulator, with support for all kind of 3D hardware via Direct3D 7 (some old cards still have buggy OpenGL ICDs), high performance on low-end CPUs, no serious glitches, and free.

Paul, don't try to compete with this guy; please join efforts.

Last edited by batracio on 2003-11-13, 17:47. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 47 of 206, by Glidos

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Yeh you're right. Two years ago now, why didn't I make Glidos just like dgVoodoo? And the steam engine? Do you understand that one? Why did they bother with the steam engine? Why didn't they go straight for the car? Its much faster. Inventers hey: its all a big mystery.

And yeh it should have been free. I mean, I have no right to get any income from my work do I. I ought to live in a cardboard box in the street, and borrow time on computers from friends.

Reply 48 of 206, by batracio

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Hey, don't get upset. I'm not telling you how to do your work. Just commenting that dgVoodoo is a more suitable emulator for low-end machines than Glidos, that's all. I've followed Glidos development for these two years and I've never been able to get it working fine with any pre-GeForce 3D card (Matrox G200, S3 Savage4, 3dfx Voodoo4). Sure it rocks when solid OpenGL 1.2/1.3/1.4 support is available, but some people are still stuck with OpenGL 1.1 cards... I've advertised Glidos in other forums, and everyone thinks it's a great idea, but when you tell them that it costs 10$... well, the enthusiasm decays suddenly.

Today I've tested Unreal Tournament with Voodoo4's native Glide and with dgVoodoo. All settings high, both in Glide and Direct3d (except DynamicLights off, Decals off, Gore low and HighDetailActors off). Got 31 FPS in Wicked400 demo with native Glide, 22 FPS with dgVoodoo. Less than 30% performance loss. Actual game was totally playable (Wicked400 is a hard test), almost no graphical glitches, some textures looked even sharper in emulation mode. Amazing, and best of all, free. You are not forced to do it for free, but people will always prefer free stuff.

Last edited by batracio on 2003-11-14, 01:14. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 49 of 206, by Glidos

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Yeh, okay, I agree with most of that. I'm really impressed with dgVoodoo too. Its the "what Glidos should have been" comment that pissed me off. Two years ago no one had any idea how to go about this. There were articles on the net saying you couldn't have a Glide wrapper that works for DOS games. Now that second has been developed, I'd hope that it has some advantages over the first, otherwise it would be a bit of a waste of time.

And I get so sick of complaints about the $10. Such people want these tools developed; they want developers like me working away weekends and evenings doing this stuff; but they don't want to pay a measley $10 towards supporting it. Especially annoying when there's so many others who are glad to support the project. I've given copies away, and then had people say they still want to pay to show their support.

I've never had a problem with the "it isn't worth $10 to me" comment. But the "I want it; I don't want to pay; it should be free" is getting very old.

BTW, in a way Glidos is free for Windows games. When you run Windows games, all you need is the Glide2x.dll file, which isn't really part of Glidos. It is OpenGLide (in fact, far far more the work of Fabio Barros than of me). That's free and open source.

I haven't tried OpenGLide with Unreal Tournament, but I have tried it with the original Unreal, and I seem to get better quality than in Direct 3D or OpenGL. Also I get very high frame rates (although my computer is fairly fast).

Reply 52 of 206, by Carrera

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Maybe maybe not.
You are free to make your own opinion.
You should however be aware of what you say and how it works.
Words are like bullets, once they're shot off they don't come back and can do harm.
I personally feel Paul's is the surperior product.
That's my opinion.

Reply 53 of 206, by batracio

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Originally posted by Carrera You are free to make your own opinion. You should however be aware of what you say and how it work […]
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Originally posted by Carrera
You are free to make your own opinion.
You should however be aware of what you say and how it works.
Words are like bullets, once they're shot off they don't come back and can do harm.
I personally feel Paul's is the surperior product.
That's my opinion.



Aye aye sir. I won't shoot any more harmful words.

But I only gave my personal opinion, just like you. Don't mind whether Paul's is the superior product or not. The inferior one performs better on ancient hardware, and it's free, so I wish I had found it two years ago, when Glidos was still in its early stages and playing TR at high-res was a dream. Does it sound so annoying?

OK, I must admit I didn't choose the politest way to express myself when wrote "this is what Glidos should have been". My apologies.

Reply 54 of 206, by Kaminari

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Paul has summed it up pretty well. Steam engine vs diesel cars. Where was dgVoodoo when you needed it most two years ago? Perhaps it wouldn't even have existed if Glidos had not started to fill the gap; perhaps folks would have simply waited for DosBox to support Glide apps if not for Glidos.

D3D vs OGL: moot topic if you ask me. I would have certainly agreed with you a couple years ago when I was stuck with my Rage 128 Fury and its über-crappy OpenGL driver. Today it's quite the opposite, OpenGL is very well supported by nVidia on its most basic cards (ATI has always been at a loss with OGL) and usually sports same perfs as Direct3D.

dgVoodoo is a sleek and great approach at supporting Glide programs. It really has the potential to take on the world some day. Problem is: it's not even remotely compatible with us poor NT geeks, and it doesn't seem it will be any time soon. So for now it's Glidos for me and it has been worth every pound I poured in it so far. I wish more peeps would realize that and not bitch at the small shareware fee.

Oh btw, what do you mean by "serious glitches" 😕

Reply 55 of 206, by batracio

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Actually I agree with you. This controversy is caused by different points of view, but objectively speaking, Glidos and dgVoodo are complementary products: OpenGL vs Direct3D, Windows 95/98/Me vs Windows NT/2000/XP... dgVoodoo is ideal for me because I'm on Windows 98 and stuck with OpenGL 1.1, but if I were on XP and Nvidia, I'd have to go with Glidos, no doubt.

About the "serious glitches": hard to explain, I'll try to take some screenshots.

Reply 56 of 206, by Glidos

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From a potential flame fest, this has turned into quite a useful thread for people to read. Those are the issues, as I see it. Although I imagine Dege will sort out NT/2000/XP when he gets back.

People wishing to use Glidos with only OpenGL 1.1 support can try putting OpenGLide v007b5 in the Glidos folder. There's a link to it from the "Red Baron" page of the Glidos web site.

Reply 58 of 206, by Targaff

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I don't know whether Dege reuploaded or whether it's just been a problem generally with the server all along - I'm guessing the latter, because I had the worst trouble downloading it - but the 1.15 file that's there seems to be complete. Copy attached for easy access.

Here's what's in the readme:

What's news in v1.15
--------------------
In fact, nothing interesting news. This version is released only because
the developing is going to be suspended for about 6 months, and I wanted
this version to reflect the current state.

- LFB-access: fast write for unmatching formats
- Texture handling: 3Dfx texture formats yiq422 and ayiq8422 are supported
Paletted textures (without alpha) are utilized if
your videocard supports them (not tested)
- DOS: mouse focus can be released by Ctrl-Alt
- Bugfixing

(At the back of my mind I think I've done something else too, but
I can't recall now.)

Attachments

  • Filename
    dgvoodoo1.15.zip
    File size
    861.88 KiB
    Downloads
    723 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 59 of 206, by Targaff

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While I'm here, there may be a second copy of that hanging around on the server somewhere, which can be removed; it got uploaded when I previewed my post and then wasn't attached when I submitted the post, so I had to upload it all over again. Any chance that could be seen to? (i.e. *not* upload during preview, *do* maintain upload instructions in the attached file box). Or is it an issue with the forum software itself rather than the settings?

Cheers!