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DgVoodoo 1 Discussion Thread

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Reply 60 of 341, by Dege

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Hi Zebius!

Actually I use it for TR1 (and TR1-UB) only , and after some problems with settings (this forum is very helpful) it's working perfectly now. It's not worse than Glidos and I even dare to say that in TR1 it works better
It runs very fast on my GF2MX card without any graphic problems (although 16-bit mode doesn't work at all, but who cares?).

I'm glad if it works fine for you, altough not working 16 bit mode is strange. What's the problem exactly with that?

1. please add link to this forum on your hungarian site, most of people don't know where to get help on using dgvoodoo (I wasted lot of time searching for useful info about dgv in net before I found this thread on Vogons forum)

Hmm, this is not a bad idea, I think I'll do it. 😀

2. could you write some more info about dgvoodoo and its settings in readme file, it should be also a note about VDMSound causing slowdown and how to fix it (I experienced that and for long time thought that was dgvoodoo's fault),

Well, VDMSound can indeed slow down the gameplay with dgv in cases when it "eats" many cpu time, I think this is due to the design and behavior of multithreading communication used in dgv for dos games. However I had problems only with Redguard so far, but setting the dma buffer size to a proper value solved the problem. I thought that this isn't a general problem.

and also list of supported games and how do they work with dgv and what are recommended settings for them...

It's said that dgv is difficult to use because it has to be tweaked before using it. But I think it should work for most people with the default settings. Indeed there are some "almost critical" points where some options should be modified such as disabling lfb read in SC2 (in 32 bit mode), using alpha based colorkeying to get nicer rendering in some games, or using 16 bit textures on ATI cards with games that continuously refreshes palettes of paletted textures during the gameplay, but roughly that's all. But if it is claimed, I could make some "recommended" settings for particular games as config can be loaded into setup since 1.31.

By the way, are you still thinking about adding High-res textures support for TR? It would be faaaaaantaaaaaaastic!!!!!

Sorry, no, in fact I never planned supporting any kind of high res textures (altough indeed it would be fantastic). 😐 Changing textures was Paul's idea for Glidos, not mine. 😐

Anyway, thanks for your tips! 😀

Reply 61 of 341, by Zebius

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Hi Dege! Thanks for your answer!

In 16-bit mode (screen depth and textures in dgv settings) game crashes and exits to Windows just after trying to load main menu. It's not a problem for me 'cause I use 32-bit only.

I use dgv1.31 in VDD mode on my system and cannot run server at all. When I tried to use compatibility mode for server, after selecting glide version following message appeared:
dgvoodoo ServerProc initialization error
unable to load dgvoodoo.vxd

TR Retextering Project is developing very slowly, its author finished first level so far, so maybe I'll try Glidos to run it.

Yesterday I borrowed Blood from my friend, and after long setting options for dgv/VDMSound and lots of crushes, I finally managed to run it, but it's painfully slow, looks like it's a VDMSound's fault. Do you have any clues how to get it work better?

Reply 62 of 341, by Dege

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In 16-bit mode (screen depth and textures in dgv settings) game crashes and exits to Windows just after trying to load main menu. It's not a problem for me 'cause I use 32-bit only.

Try out the logger version. What's in the log file?

When I tried to use compatibility mode for server, after selecting glide version following message appeared:
dgvoodoo ServerProc initialization error
unable to load dgvoodoo.vxd

Don't use the server in compatibility mode!! It confuses the operating system detection and the server thinks it's running under win9x/me! 😀

Yesterday I borrowed Blood from my friend, and after long setting options for dgv/VDMSound and lots of crushes, I finally managed to run it, but it's painfully slow, looks like it's a VDMSound's fault. Do you have any clues how to get it work better?

Well, you should use NOLFB, and CLI2NOP is also recommended (theoretically you don't need to use it under xp if you utilize xp-ntvdm fix for CLI/NOP, but I could never get it to work).
For more, see http://www.deathmask.net/buildxp/ there are a lot of useful things there.
BTW, what results do you get without sound?

Reply 63 of 341, by Zebius

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Hi Dege!

The logger version (1.31) doesn't work at all with TR1 on my computer.
In 32-bits - I can see black screen with few textures of inventory and Lara.
In 16-bits - game crushes the same way like with normal version of glide2.dll.
The log file for 16-bit mode is in attachment.

Server mode still doesn't run (I can hear error sound only).

Blood - I tried your suggestions and... YES, it works much better now - cli2nop solved the problem. The game works with similar framerate as Glidos, but Glidos has better texture filtering (according to Paul: Glidos has special algorithms built in especially for Blood that will give bilinear interpolation).

Thanks for your help. I'll keep in touch.

Attachments

  • Filename
    dgVoodoo.log
    File size
    2.06 KiB
    Downloads
    722 downloads
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 64 of 341, by VirtuaIceMan

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Dege wrote:

Well, VDMSound can indeed slow down the gameplay with dgv in cases when it "eats" many cpu time...

Screamer2/Screamer Rally both ran extremely slowly using dgVoodoo and VDMSound... until I set the options in VDMSound's Advanced -> Performance tab to "Try to reduce CPU usage:" (check) and set the slider to Low usage. Now it runs faster!

Ice

Reply 65 of 341, by Zebius

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Dege wrote:

Well, you should use NOLFB, and CLI2NOP is also recommended (theoretically you don't need to use it under xp if you utilize xp-ntvdm fix for CLI/NOP, but I could never get it to work).

As I already informed I used Cli2nop for Blood and it helped. In Windows XP - DOS command line I patched both blood.exe and 3dfx.exe:

cli2nop -p blood.exe
cli2nop -p 3dfx.exe

In first case it found 54 occurences, in second: 60 or something like that.
I placed a path to Nolfb.com in DOS Environment/Autoexec.bat section of VDMSound properties. And now this game works fine with dgvoodoo!

Dege, I submitted dgvoodoo at www.voodoofiles.com
I hope you don't mind.

Regards

Reply 66 of 341, by barev

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Thank GOD I finally got dgVooDoo v1.31 running on my win98se machine! And it runs as hell! Carmageddon Splatpack has never looked better! I should say dege has done a great job in this new release and I really can't find the proper words to thank him about his great contribution to the gaming comunity. I would also like to appologise for being a little too harsh about the crashes that the previous version did on a win98 machine. It looks like the problem is not with dgVooDoo itself but the fucking stupid nVidia Detonator drivers. Looks like the crashes are caused by the latest version of the win98/me nVidia detonators and I also presume that this has something to do with the internet explorer too. But I really do not get what is the connection between the video drivers and that stupid MS shit. Anyways I just tried running the 3dfx version of Carmageddon Splatpack on my win98se which I installed using 98lite (removing all the shitty crap including the IE) using the 56.64 detonator drivers (this is very important as the newer version still causes crashes and blue screens) and it runs absolutely flawless. Even the small screen window when viewing the map displays fine. I am so pleased!!! Gonna try Blood and Shadow warrior tomorrow. I should also say that dgVooDoo seem to run a lot faster than Glidos for Carmageddon. Dege keep up the good work!

Reply 67 of 341, by Zebius

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Hi! Is this thread dead?

I'd like to inform that Formula 1 demo (by Psygnosis) runs very well with
dgvoodoo, Subculture - french demo runs almost perfectly but there is a unnecessary cursor visible in the middle of the screen.
Gex: Enter the Gecko demo crushes at start-up with following message:
main: reopen grSstOpen failed!
(Zeckensack's wrapper works with Gex).

I could also play Pandemonium 2 demo, but it didn't look nice so I had to use 'force bilinear filtering' feature, but it was side-effect - black lines between textures and fonts were uglier.

I use Windows XP SP1 and GF2MX card.

Reply 68 of 341, by Dege

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I'm just curious but not optimistic: I wrote some emails to ATI devrel about BSOD problem a month or two or so ago, and yesterday I got reply, in which they are writing that I should try the latest 5.3 Catalyst (isn't 5.4 out there?? 😕 ), blabla. So, does 5.3 work properly? I won't be surprised if not.
They also wrote that if I still have problems, they need a reproducer application for debugging purposes. I think I'm going to cogitate about what my reproducer "package" will contain, hehe.
Who knows, maybe they will deal about that, and fabricate something. 😁

Reply 69 of 341, by CraigG

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Dege,
Don't try 5.3 Cats. I found that they are possibly ATI's WORST driver set in months.
They totally fucked up my system, and I lost WinXP Themes, Large Icon support, and Large text support. NONE of them worked.
So I removed them the usual way, ( ATI's uninstall, Reboot, Safe mode, Driver Cleaner, etc..) and put on 5.4. Now back to normal.

Thank god, I have the ATI card in my Emulation PC, and NOT in my main PC.

Athlon 64 3000+ stock
MSI NForce 4 K8N Neo Platinum
2Gb RAM
nVidia Geforce 6800GT stock clocks
SBLive! Platinum + Audigy ZS2 Drivers
WinXP Pro SP2

Reply 72 of 341, by VirtuaIceMan

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Dege, I have some great news for you! For some reason but Screamer2 and Screamer Rally now work again using Catalyst 5.4 and your wrapper! I had to change the Screen Bit Depth in the wrapper's DOS settings to 16bit to make the frame rate perfect but otherwise it's fine again!

Sometimes however the wrapper will fail to initialise, but try the game shortcut again 1 or 2 times and it works! Please note I use a slightly weird combo of VDMSound and dgVoodoo and get now perfect (slightly too fast!) video and audio.

HOWEVER... there's a downside for me... I have the game Richard Burns Rally and Catalyst 5.4 causes the game to become unplayably jerky after about a minute of gameplay, then becoming smooth and jerky again on and off. I switched back to Catalyst 5.1 again and the game's perfect... but dgVoodoo blue screens... argh!

I suppose I better go and harrass ATI some more about Richard Burns Rally...

Ice

Reply 73 of 341, by Dege

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Sorry for the late respond, I was off.

Well, it's good news. 😀 Maybe ATI have finally fixed this bug?? 😀 But, I think we can only be sure about it if we got a lot of feedback reporting everything ok. Very reassuring, tough!

I had to change the Screen Bit Depth in the wrapper's DOS settings to 16bit to make the frame rate perfect but otherwise it's fine again!

Yes, LFB reading should be disabled for SC2 in 32 bit mode, otherwise the game/framerate turns into comic strips.

Sometimes however the wrapper will fail to initialise, but try the game shortcut again 1 or 2 times and it works! Please note I use a slightly weird combo of VDMSound and dgVoodoo and get now perfect (slightly too fast!) video and audio.

This failing thing would worth some more testing, I think. I'm going to claim a PC with ATI card (at my workplace) for home use, so I hope I can test those things myself soon.
As for the too high speed: the wrapper slightly boosts DOS games by additional timer interrupts to compensate the rendering overhead, so the gameplay may slightly faster than normal. Don't know what to do with that. 😖

HOWEVER... there's a downside for me... I have the game Richard Burns Rally and Catalyst 5.4 causes the game to become unplayably jerky after about a minute of gameplay, then becoming smooth and jerky again on and off.

Yes, nothing is perfect. My personal experience is that newer and newer drivers aren't very suitable for older cards. I'm not fully satisfied with nVidia too, when the latest driver comes out, I usually install it. But, there is always something annoying thing (slightly improved OpenGl rendering speed vs. slower D3D, minor incompatibility problems, and so on), so I fall back to using the old driver. 🙁

Reply 74 of 341, by xlDooM

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Hi, can someone please tell me if the default settings are supposed to work for carmageddon 1 on winxp (nvidia card)? I get a "don't send" error on VDTM.exe. By making random picks in the setup options I either keep getting this error or the game will start and work fine until the actual race starts, then it will hang on the grid screen with depressed button and need a hard reboot (I only get a cursor when I ctrl alt del it, and it's kinda hard to shut it down blindly).

I am using dgvoodoo 1.31 and detonator 6.14.10.6693

Reply 75 of 341, by VirtuaIceMan

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A new update! Catalyst 5.5 work both in dgVoodoo (well Screamer2 at least) without blue screen AND crucially the stutter in Richard Burns Rally (I had on Radeon 9800XT) is also gone! Good times for me!

My PC spec: Win10 64bit, i7-4970K (not overclocked), KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Reply 76 of 341, by Flint Eastwood

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Hi dege.

I've got some problems with dgvoodoo(1.31 and 1.40b)

I have tested "GTA" but only HUD is showing. When I change resolution ingame then all graphics are drawn. Also I tryed "Schleichfahrt"("Archimedean Dynasty" is the same game) but here is also only the HUD drawn. "Tomb Raider 1" works very well and WinGlide-Games too(Ignition, WingCommanderProphecyDemo).

I tested this on 2 PC's and got the same Problems:

1. AthlonXP-M3000+,512MB DDR,ATI Radeon9700Mobility,WinXPHomeSP1
2. AthlonXP-2000+,512MB DDR,GeForce3Ti500,WinXPProSP1

I tested all settings of dgvoodooo but nothing worked. Some settings caused freezing the system, for example vdd-mode didn't work.

I would be glad about each useful advice.

If somebody wants to test "Archimedean Dynasty", you can download it at the-underdogs.org so I think. You need then an Exe-Patch to v1.20 and the 3dfx-Patch which you can find at http://www.massive.de/english/games_sf_download_eng.html

Reply 77 of 341, by Zebius

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I've just noticed that version 1.40beta is available for download (thanks to your post Flint). I tried it with Tomb Raider, but in that game 1.40b seems to be less stable than 1.31 (it crushed my computer totally once), and there is a problem with W-buffering so Lara is invisible (I've got NVidia 6600GT, and Windows XP). Dege removed setting of depth buffering from this version, so I can't change it. In 1.31 I just had to toggle 'Emulate W-buffering' on to solve that problem.
I hope the final version will improve it. Keep up the good work Dege! 😎

@Flint
Use search button for Archimedean Dynasty, some folks managed to run it, but they met many problems, so it seems to be unplayable for the time being.

I can play GTA 3dfx demo (DOS version) with dgvoodoo 1.31 with no graphical problems, but VDMSound is necessary.
I don't know about full version 'cause I never played it. Recently Rockstar released GTA as a freeware. According to them: 'This version of Grand Theft Auto is modified from its original version to enable support for modern PC's and current Microsoft Windows platforms.' Maybe try this freeware version. It's available HERE.

EDIT: I tried 1.40beta with GTA demo and I have the same symptoms as you Flint - HUD is visible, the rest is black 🙁

Last edited by Zebius on 2005-06-27, 08:00. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 78 of 341, by INGA-KX

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Questions on dgVoodoo v1.40 Beta:

1. How do I get rid of the white fog in all of the Carmageddon levels where there shouldn't be any?.

2. What happened to the bilinear filtering for sprites?, I'd like to make'em look blurry as usual, not edgy.

3. I noticed an enormous framerate boost....no question here, just a big THANK YOU 😁

I'm on XP with Geforce FX 5200 and everything up to date.

Reply 79 of 341, by Zebius

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INGA-KX wrote:

Questions on dgVoodoo v1.40 Beta:
2. What happened to the bilinear filtering for sprites?, I'd like to make'em look blurry as usual, not edgy.

Did you try to check 'Force bilinear filtering' in dgvoodoosetup (Glide tab)?