First post, by Rekrul
I've been running some old DOS games and sometimes some of the screens come up corrupt (flickers and looks like someone sliced it into sections and stretched them down the screen). From the searches I've done, I think this is a VESA problem and it seems relatively common, but so far I haven't found a clearcut solution. Unfortunately, I don't have that much experience with Intel systems, so I have no idea how to fix this.
Recently I installed Descent 1.5. It works fine in the default low-res (no music though), but the mouse is unusable and it looks terrible. If I use hi-res (640x480), the intro screens, menus and game all work fine, but when I press the key for the map screen, I get a corrupted version of the game screen rather than the map. If I press the key again, it goes right back to the game, so it's not crashing, the screen is just messed up. The same thing happens if I press ESC to abort the game. The Quit prompt and main menu are all messed up (but still functional).
Following a suggestion in an old post here, I tried pressing Alt-Enter on the messed up display to minimize it to a window, the graphics are fine and when I restore it to fullscreen, they're still perfect and the map functions normally (as do the menus). However, the next time I enter the map screen, they'll be messed up again and I'll have to minimize/restore it to fix them. I tried the nolfb.com program mentioned in old posts, but it didn't help.
I had the same thing happen with Tomb Raider. The opening animations and FMVs worked fine, but when the game started it was messed up. I could hear my footsteps, but couldn't see anything. I didn't know about the minimize trick then, so I can't say if that would have fixed it (and I haven't had the ambition to re-install it). What did work was pressing F1 to switch between VGA/SVGA. I'm not sure which mode is the default, but switching to the other one worked perfectly.
Up to this point, I've been playing Descent with D1X, which looks great when it's working properly, but it's buggy as h*ll. I can only play for about 30 minutes before it starts slowing down while shooting, to the point that it becomes unplayable. Then I have to reboot. Also, the briefing screens don't work properly and it often goes off into limbo for several seconds when starting a level or restoring a saved game.
My system is as follows; Intel motherboard, P4 1.8Ghz CPU, 512MB RAM, GeForce4 MMX440 8X AGP 64MB graphics card, onboard sound (Soundblaster compatible), Windows 98SE, XFXForce 56.64 drivers (newers gave me problems).
Does anyone know how to fix this?
