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DgVoodoo 1 Discussion Thread

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Reply 240 of 341, by Zebius

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Dege, did you try playing Pandemonium with your wrapper?
I downloaded the game from the Underdogs, but it runs extremely fast with dgvoodoo, so it's unplayable. I tried changing options of dgvoodoo with no effect (the game uses glide.dll). Other versions of dgvoodoo behave the same way.

Strange, because the demo workes fine for me.

Reply 241 of 341, by Dege

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Excuse my being late... I'm going to give a multi-answer: 😀

@daljaxon:

Have you seen this before and do you know of the setting to fix this. May be setting on my graphics software?

Yes, it's a (typical) Win2K issue. TR1 (even the Glide version) uses VESA 640x480 for Eidos logo and movies. If setting a VESA mode at the startup fails, TR1 falls back to 320x200 screen size (all the 3d-transformations are scaled to that size) but drives the voodoo-card in 640x480 (it's the lowest resolution in Glide, if I remember correctly). It must be some kind of bug inherited from the software version which uses true 320x200 paletted VGA-mode instead in that case. Win2K can't emulate VESA modes, only the standard VGA. Try to enable built-in VESA support in dgvoodoo, it should solve this problem.

@Kolya:
It's good to hear that something can utilize dgvesa in practice. 😀 😀

I've just tried your System Shock Portable Installer (good work!), and indeed, the game works perfectly for me with dgv 1.40+. Even with 1.50beta (opposed to some guys complaining about it in the forum 😀). Of course, I agree to include it in the installer until it's not modified in any way (andsoonusualblabla 😀), except for the preconfiguration. 😀

@Zebius:

I downloaded the game from the Underdogs, but it runs extremely fast with dgvoodoo, so it's unplayable. I tried changing options of dgvoodoo with no effect (the game uses glide.dll). Other versions of dgvoodoo behave the same way.

Yes, I remember. Sometimes the game speed was just too high and then lowered into slowmotion, and it just repeated. It simply wasn't constant. As far as I remember I used the 'monitor freq is the closest supported freq' to make sure of using the refresh freq requested by the game (it can be important if it synchronizes itself to it. The truth is, I always keep that option enabled. If a game wants refresh freq of n+1 Hz, then let it use n+1 Hz if possible. 😀 ). Then I also had to play with the compatibility mode of pandy3.exe. Finally I succeeded in fixing the speed. 😀

Reply 242 of 341, by daljaxon

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Try to enable built-in VESA support in dgvoodoo, it should solve this problem.

Hi Dege,

I enabled VESA and it didn't make a difference. In using ver 1.4 and using the disable VDD mode and the VDD mode, I tried different settings including using the built-in VESA, but there were no difference.

You can view what I attempted here...

http://www.tombraiderforums.com/showthread.ph … ?t=76097&page=3

...if you have the time to check it out.
If it would make it easier, I can display the degevoodoo settings here for your review. Let me know.

Thanks,
daljaxon

Last edited by daljaxon on 2006-11-12, 23:49. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 244 of 341, by daljaxon

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Hi Dege,

Forgive me, I am not knowledgeable in the visual settings and what each part does and relates, but I will tell you what I tried and you can let me know if I am doing something wrong or what to try and maybe I can learn in the process (I'd like that)...

What happens when you use built-in vesa & glide together in windowed mode?

There is no difference between windowed mode and non-windowed mode.

Did you launch dgvesa before starting tr1? (from the same dos prompt)

I used the TR1 installer from www.tombraiderchronicles.com, using the dgvoodoosetup.exe. I set the dos mode with vesa enabled and using the shortcut on my desktop installed by the installer to start the game. Any other settings I set at the dgvoodoosetup before starting the game. As far as I knew the dgvesa started before the tr1 did. I knew no other way in doing this.

In thinking about what you wrote, I found the dgvesa in the folder and right clicked and selected "Run With VDMS." After doing so, the dgvesa incorporated with vdmsound and I chose the option to leave a shortcut on my desk top. I thought, maybe this will work all the time from here on out, but I decided to try to click on the shortcut each time before activating the game, leaving the dos prompt window open in the background, in thinking this activates the dgvesa with vdmsound, before starting the tr1. Then using the shortcut on the desktop, I activated the game.

I am using dgvoodoo 1.4. I tried both the regular mode and the novdd mode. There were no difference in the blacked out areas in everything I tried. I am using WinXP Media Edition. My PC has a 2.8 Dual Processor with 1Gb ram.

You asked me if I launched dgvesa before launching the game. Is there another way of doing so?

Any other options?

Thanks,
daljaxon

Reply 245 of 341, by TomB

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Is there any way to get dgVoodoo to work on Vista?

I want to play carmageddon 3dfx on Vista.. but vista wont let DOS games go fullscreen. DGVoodoo runs under windows so the renderer is fullscreen not the DOS game.

Is this possible?

Or is there a way to use the DGVoodoo files in DosBox?

Reply 246 of 341, by Turbo

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Hi Dege,

I'm trying to find a Glide wrapper that will run Mig29. Most just crash out with errors. Zeckensack's will actually get into the game but I only see the upper half of the screen. I tried dgVoodoo 1.5 and received the message:

"In order to use your 3D hardware, this app requires you to install a newer version of GLIDE."

"Select OK to proceed without 3D hardware support."

I tried enabling and disabling all the settings from the Setup GUI but to no avail.

Has anyone else tried Mig29?

I would appreciate any assists with it.

I also tried running it with European Air War and it started the game but I saw a black sky and dotted lines everywhere.

Thanks

Reply 248 of 341, by Dege

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Hi all again, sorry for intensive inactivity, but it isn't going to change much in the future too.
I would like to share my latest experiences. I read a lot of rumours, complains about Vista's ntvdm in several forums. Thanks to those I thought MS have let ntvdm get screwed up totally in Vista thinking it's not so important as Dos compatibility will break sooner or later for good and all, because of 64 bit environments. So, why don't be it sooner?
Yesterday I decided to install Vista 32 bit at home too. I also remembered I developed a glide wrapper a long time ago, so let's try it with Dos programs, namely with TR1. I installed VDMSound, but when I tried to launch it in dos prompt with 'dosdrv' it complained that it can't find 'vddloader.dll'. Hmm... My dgVesa did the same, saying 'glide2x.dll not found'. Then I thought, yes MS had dropped compatibility, since as I debugged my own code in dgVesa, everything was ok on the application side, but ntvdm simply didn't allow to load any VDD. But searching on some dev forums I read that ntvdm allows VDDs only from Windows\System32. Ok, then let's copy 'vddloader.dll' from ProgFiles\VDMSound and 'glide2x.dll' there. And woah, vdmsound and dgvesa began to work. Other important ntvdm issue is that it can't go into full screen in any way. Just for a simple 'Alt-Enter' in text mode it bombed me messages like 'this system does'nt support full screen mode'. And all other graphic modes from standard VGA modes up to VESA modes simply can't be emulated. Yes, searching a little bit again, I realized that Vista's new Windows Display Driver Model (which is needed for Aero lookandfeel and DWM) simply doesn't support any full screen functionality, except via DirectX of course. In XP, ntvdm catches all int10 bios calls and forwards them to the video driver. In Vista, there is no any thing to forward them to, so it just pops up that annoying message box. But using dgVesa, which catches int10 calls too and redirects it to DirectX, it works. I tried it with some old Dos-VESA prgs, and they worked, even in full screen, just like as if I run them under XP. The point of all that is I was managed to run TR1 via ntvdm, and it worked as usual under XP, see my screenshot (tried only dgVoodoo 1.50b). One thing, sapucdex didn't work, dunno why, maybe the volume on my CD-drive was set to zero or sg like that, hadn't time to check it out. Third issue related to vesa emu: my videodriver doesn't allow any resolution below 640x480 in DirectX, so dgVesa cannot emulate standard 320x200 VGA in fullscreen. I got a silent fail, the prg run but nothing could be seen. 😀

So doing some improvements dgVoodoo could be made Vista-compliant:

1. Glide2x.dll should be always copied to Windows\System32, and dgvoodoosetup should take that location into account too (now it searches in the current dir, and Windows\ folder). Don't know if this behavior of ntvdm could be controlled or disabled in Vista, but would be nice to.

2. dgVesa should be always used since there is no other way (ok, any other vesa emulator like SolVBE will make it 😁 😁 ), improving it by detecting supported resolutions in full screen. If a VGA/VESA-resolution is not supported in DX, it could choose another and scale the image. Also, it could catch all int10 graphic mode settings calls optionally to avoid annoying message boxes. (Now you can ignore them and let the prg go).

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Reply 250 of 341, by Dege

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Do you think this (especially dgVesa and SolVBE) has any
chance on 64bit systems?

Unfortunately, not. Since a 64 bit processor can't execute any code in virtual x86 mode (from 'long' mode, due to * ** AMD 😠 ), I guess there isnt even any kind of ntvdm included in 64 bit windows. Must use DosBox there, or some kind of PC emulator having installed 32 bit Windows as guest operating system. 🙁

Reply 252 of 341, by Dege

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Well i thought even in long mode temporarily switching to that
compatibility mode is possible

I think theoretically it could be implemented in two steps: first switching from long mode to 'normal' mode, and then switching to v86 mode. Nevertheless it would cause too much performance overhead, would be very hard to implement too, since the first step would pull down the whole operating system (including kernel) into pure 32 bit with 4GB adressing limit. So some kind of 32 bit 'stub kernel' would be needed that manages things for that time slice including setting up 32 bit versions of interrupt tables, etc. Would it be stable and safe? I think it's simply impossible in practice.

Reply 254 of 341, by gidierre

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Dege wrote:

Other important ntvdm issue is that it can't go into full screen in any way. Just for a simple 'Alt-Enter' in text mode it bombed me messages like 'this system does'nt support full screen mode'. And all other graphic modes from standard VGA modes up to VESA modes simply can't be emulated. Yes, searching a little bit again, I realized that Vista's new Windows Display Driver Model (which is needed for Aero lookandfeel and DWM) simply doesn't support any full screen functionality

I confess I have no direct experience with Vista but I think I read somewhere (where, I just can't recall) that
if you use the WinXP video drivers for your graphics card in Vista 32 bit it can resume full screen capability.
Could it be true then ? Would downgrading of the drivers be safe anyway, aside from effectiveness ?

Last edited by gidierre on 2007-01-04, 16:12. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 255 of 341, by DosFreak

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I've had stability issues using the XP drivers for my Radeon X800 in Windows Vista but I think that's just the usual ATI bugginess. I'm using a Dell Latitude D510 for Vista testing and it only supports XDDM drivers (XP Drivers) and it's VERY stable.

Yes, the XP drivers in Vista do allow fullscreen command prompt and int10 passthru but if your going to use Vista you should really be using the WDDM (Vista) drivers. If your going to use the XP drivers then you may as well just use XP.

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Reply 256 of 341, by Dege

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if you use the WinXP video drivers for your graphics card in Vista 32 bit it can resume full screen capability.
Could it be true then ? Would downgrading of the drivers be safe anyway, aside from effectiveness ?

Yes, it's right, Vista can work with old XPDM-class drivers too, but you don't have DWM (Desktop Window Manager, which composes the desktop via DirectX with those fancy transparent frames 😀 😀 ), DX10 in that case. Everything works in exactly the same way as under XP. So I could ask, what's the point to upgrade to Vista then? 😀 Ok, I'm just joking. Even any application using DX7 or earlier makes DWM shut down and set the graphic system back into XP-compatibility mode while it runs(so use the DX9 renderer in dgVoodoo...) because DX7 apps accesses the front buffer directly and DWM doesn't like and cannot handle that at all, after all 'he' composes the final front buffer (there are many compatibility issues in even GDI in this respect...). And, I didn't try but I bet DWM can be disabled manually somewhere in display settings.

Reply 257 of 341, by DosFreak

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Yeah, you can revert back to Classic even if you are using the WDDM drivers but the games still won't work. 🙁

The reverting back to classic if a very common occurence if your using Aero and it's very jarring. Only reason I can think MS made it perform this behavior is to get people to subconsciously dislike these programs that "don't work right and mess up their desktop". Smart move too because it will work.

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Reply 258 of 341, by TomB

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Dege, you rock!

dgVoodoo1.5 works great with carmageddon on Vista 😁

A very minor issue is that any part of the taskbar which updates (e.g if a tray icon changes) shows through carmageddon in dgv when carmageddon is in a video or menu, but this is incredibly minor and not really a problem 😀 Though I believe if you were to disable Aero before running the game it wouldn't happen.

Reply 259 of 341, by Dege

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A very minor issue is that any part of the taskbar which updates (e.g if a tray icon changes) shows through carmageddon in dgv when carmageddon is in a video or menu, but this is incredibly minor and not really a problem Though I believe if you were to disable Aero before running the game it wouldn't happen.

It's an issue under plain XP too, only with DX9 renderer I think. Any window that is in front of dgvoodoo window in Z-order can draw onto the screen even in fullscreen using GDI (don't know why, docs advertised that GDI is shut down in exclusive mode... at least in DX7 era). It means any topmost window meets the criteria like taskbar (or taskmanager if it set to be topmost..). Maybe setting the dgvoodoo window itself to be topmost would help, but the taskbar would still be in front of it. I'd better ask MS itself. 😁