Sphere478 wrote on 2021-01-19, 18:38:

I’m going to try and play it on a glide wrapper under 98 on my socket 7 build and ser if that works. But I have never owned a 3dfx card so despite probably being one of this games greatest fans I’ve never seen it in full settings on high res I don’t think.

The game doesn't support Glide and I imagine the Direct3D rendering would have run poorly on a 3DFX card.

Also Direct3D rendering is resolution locked to 640x480. Obviously on a modern computer you can force higher with dgVoodoo:

But there's probably some issues with that. I found one very quickly (cursor trailing in menus).

ZellSF wrote on 2021-01-20, 12:00:

Also Direct3D rendering is resolution locked to 640x480. Obviously on a modern computer you can force higher with dgVoodoo:
strat 2021-01-20 12-13-03-23.jpg
But there's probably some issues with that. I found one very quickly (cursor trailing in menus).

On a old computer I managed to get it to 1024 768 I believe

🤔 are you sure it’s not glide? Huh... well, that totally eliminates any need I might have for a voodoo card then 🤣

Is there a specific direct 3d version that I should use?

What software and hardware is best for this game?

Dude that pic looks like max detail settings, now if only you could set a higher res..
What hardware/software is behind that image. Is it your image?

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-01-20, 15:47:

On a old computer I managed to get it to 1024 768 I believe

The software render supports 1024x768.

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-01-20, 15:47:

What hardware/software is behind that image. Is it your image?

Just a standard modern computer, Windows 10 and dgVoodoo.

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-01-20, 15:47:

Dude that pic looks like max detail settings, now if only you could set a higher res..

You can try searching strat.exe with a hex editor for:
00 89 3D A0 4E 54 00 EB 4C C7 05 A8 49 57 00 80 02 00 00 C7 05 AC 49 57 00 E0 01 00 00 EB 2A C7
and replacing it with:
00 89 3D A0 4E 54 00 EB 4C C7 05 A8 49 57 00 00 04 00 00 C7 05 AC 49 57 00 00 03 00 00 EB 2A C7
Not a lot of point if you're using dgVoodoo though, all it does it make the UI smaller and filled with unused space:

What is the hex doing? Keeping 640x480 but making the interface smaller?

No it's probably setting 1024x768 as rendering resolution too. It's just not very relevant if you're forcing resolution anyway. And who knows why 1024x768 is disabled for the Direct3D render. Could be that it doesn't actually work well, or they decided to not make it available for performance reasons. I'm guessing the later.

Oh I love that game. I'll have to get my CD out and install it I've been a long time since I've played it last

Asked one of the people who worked on the game what graphics cards the game was designed on. (Maybe the game would run really good on them?)

This was what they said.

“Hmm. Voodoo and Intergraph likely. It has been a long time

3dfx and Rendition were the companies

I don't know if powerVR had come out yet, but maybe

Yeah, powervr did exist”

I busted out the game again today.

got it running pretty well on my tyan s1564d

Here is what I did:

k6-3+ at 400mhz
radeon 7500 with 6.2? drivers
512mb 60ns edo
windows ME
central tweaking unit with all boxes checked

I still have NEVER been able to the the game to look as good as the above screen shots. those are amazing. I haven't tried the hex edit thing. any chance you can just upload that exe?

I mean obviously you can't get anywhere near as good looking as a 4K when you're on 2001 hardware.

And no I can't upload the exe, it's literally just search and replace... I use HxD, remember to set data type to hex values.

IIRC, I got this game in a bundle with my Orchid Righteous 3D along with a copy of Scorched Planet in 1997. I seem to remember that a soccer game was also included.

I intend to play both games someday. In the meantime, I played Project Nomads to completion in 2018, which was quite good and fun despite its numerous flaws.

Edit: I fished out my old original box from the Orchid Righteous 3D and found the following titles:
Descent II Quartzon 3D Demo
Hellbender Demo
Scorched Planet Demo
VR Soccer Demo
Whiplash 3D Demo
MechWarrior 2 3DFX

I believe that Stratosphere and MechWarrior 2 3DFX were the only full-version titles included. However, I cannot confirm that with 100% certainty.