dgvoodoo allows you to force higher resolutions modes.

DGvoodoo is your only bet for 3dfx in carmageddon without a real 3dfx card. Unfortunately it crashes the game once you hit anything with physics (try hitting the posts on the snow level with the red lines on em and it'll crash right away). You can work around this issue by editing the physics in one of the game files if you don't mind changing the physics for objects in the game but then there is still other crash issues. There is a 3dfx patch that doesn't have this crash problem but then you get graphics corruption and the missing rear view mirror (and other special fx) and random crashes elsewhere so either way it's a paradox! 😲 😵

The only way I've found acceptable to play it is under virtual pc. Virtual PC 2007 is free and you can just install dos 7.10 http://ms-dos7.hit.bg/ . Just set up the sound blaster variable along with the cdrom (mscdex) and you're good to go in hires mode! (Or any mode for that matter!). It's very fast on modern systems (too fast!) and you may find the steering to respond pretty fast on keyboard similar to an analog controller! Virtual PC emulates a sb16 for it's main sound processing so yeah...

Dosbox is awesome and the best thing for pretty much any dos game but you're gonna need at least 4ghz of processing juice to get acceptable framerates in hires mode carmageddon! The only downside in virtual pc is the dreaded sound latency... You don't really notice it in carmageddon which is fine but in build engine games especially in Blood the sound is like almost 2 seconds behind!!. It's even worse if you install windows 98/me and run dos games in dos boxes (there are many issues with that especially if you install additions for added performance... Yeah right!). This is why I never use virtual pc for anything other than Carmageddon. I swear virtual pc is made only for carmageddon!

Carmageddon is probly the most demanding dos game (I can't believe this game isn't mentioned in the "Most demanding dos games thread"). I hear it does "funky things" with floating point operations and it never ran well on any hardware in hires mode until you got a 400Mhz G4 Macintosh or 800mhz+ x86 processor (probly 1ghz actually...) which wasn't even around when this game first came out!

im sure it ran fine on my p90 with a voodoo1

The "Max Pack" never had software support for hi-res. It only supported low-res and used 3DFX Glide for hi-res. The original Carmageddon and the "Splat Pack" have support for hi-res mode (in software).

Here is a bit from the readme file which you can find on the game CD:

HIRES
-----
Because of the 3DFX version there is no Hi-res support in the Max Pack.

Carma always runs 640x480 even on real 3dfx hardware. Even Carma2 doesn't go higher.

Amazingly Carma1 with the Voodoo2 patch runs on Voodoo5. 😀 Can't get higher refresh rate or anti-aliasing out of it though. It does run extremely smooth w/ Voodoo5 and a P3-1400 behind it!

I got tired of watching my Phenom II run Carma1 only mostly smoothly w/ DOSBOX and dgvoodoo and so went in a mission with real hardware to turn that game into creamy smooth.

Carmageddon only runs in 640x480 if you use the "-hires" line after the .exe and that is the best you can get without using a 3DFX card. If you want hi-res in the Max Pack then you will be needing a 3DFX card as SCI removed hi-res software support.

I've also have the max pack version of carmageddon, and the game crashes after the second loading screen if I use the "-hires" switch, this is because of wht you guys wrote about the removed software support, or because of an issue with the dosbox.conf? Also I've installed the "3DfxCarm.exe" patch in dosbox and doesn't work... Is it completly hopeless to make the a "-hires" switch operational for the max pack version like how it works in Splat Pack?
I get this error message during the second loading screen when I try to use the -hires switch: "Failure: DatafileStack type mismatch, wanted 2, got 2" Please help me with this, if it is possible.

Just got the Max Pack yesterday... awesome game, but there are some technical issues.

The game looks okay in low res, but I'd love to see it in hires or 3DFX mode. Unfortunately, I also get the "Failure: DatafileStack type mismatch, wanted 2, got 2" error when I try to start a race in Hires mode in either Carmageddon or the Splat Pack. Oh, I do have the Max Pack, but don't see anything in the readme about there not being a hires mode; it just says that you can access the hires mode by typing 'hires.bat' in the folder, not that there isn't one. That doesn't imply to me that this version is missing the hi-res mode... hires.bat exists in the carma folder, etc.

Also, the first time I won a race in the Splat Pack, the screen went black and stayed that way, and I had to just close DOSBox. Either the disc is scratched or something or something weird is wrong... that doesn't happen with the original game, I've finished several races in that game without that problem.

And of course I don't know of any way of using the 3DFX mode in Vista... the one version of DOSBox I have with Glide support seems to just crash with the game, and software emulators would need display drivers that support fullscreen DOS mode, right? Vista (or is it just NVidia's drivers?) of course doesn't allow that.

If you install Windows XP video drivers then you'll have fullscreen mode for DOS programs using NTVDM.

You'll lose out on WDDM benefits tho, Aero, DX10+, stability, etc.

swaaye wrote:

Amazingly Carma1 with the Voodoo2 patch runs on Voodoo5. 😀 Can't get higher refresh rate or anti-aliasing out of it though.

Have you tried SSTH3_SLI_AA_CONFIGURATION=4 in your environment variables?

By the way, some years ago a nice and helpful guy named Daniel Borca gave me the complete possible values:

1SSTH3_SLI_AA_CONFIGURATION
2    OS: all
3    HW: VSA100-based cards
4    Desc: SLI/AA setup
5    Note: (*) (!) works only at Glide-level?
6    Value:
7        1, 2, 4 chip cards
8        "0" - SLI & AA disable
9        "1" - SLI disabled, 2 sample AA enabled
10        2, 4 chip cards
11        "2" - 2-way SLI enabled, AA disabled
12        "3" - 2-way SLI enabled, 2 sample AA enabled
13        "4" - SLI disabled, 4 sample AA enabled
14        4 chip cards
15        "5" - 4-way SLI enabled, AA disabled
16        "6" - 4-way SLI enabled, 2 sample AA enabled
17        "7" - 2-way SLI enabled, 4 sample AA enabled
18        "8" - SLI disabled, 8 sample AA enabled

I will say it again...The original "Max Pack" version does not support the -hires line! It will only run in 640x480 (hires) if you have a 3DFX card installed. The original Carmageddon and Splat Pack work fine on my old PIII system in hires mode using both software and 3DFX Glide.

It does mention in the Max Pack readme file that there is no hires software support... its 3DFX only for hires im afraid 😒

Hi all,

I'm trying to play Carmageddon Max pack in 3dfx glide mode. Software mode in real DOS and windows 98 works. Glide mode does not. I have a voodoo 5 5500 agp videocard and the game worked fine with my older voodoo 3 3500 tv video card.

Since I read that some of you got it working my question is, how?

I've already tried the voodo2c.exe and the -vrush line, different drivers etc. I now use amigamerlin's drivers.

ps: Carmageddon 2 (Windows game) works fine with 3dfx glide.

Thanks in advance,

Justin.

PowerPie5000 wrote:

I will say it again...The original "Max Pack" version does not support the -hires line! It will only run in 640x480 (hires) if you have a 3DFX card installed. The original Carmageddon and Splat Pack work fine on my old PIII system in hires mode using both software and 3DFX Glide.

It does mention in the Max Pack readme file that there is no hires software support... its 3DFX only for hires im afraid 😒

1. My Max Pack does support -hires in software mode (using the regular non-3dfx executable) and it's clearly specified in the official readme. Yet another limitation in the UK version I wasn't aware of 😒

2. You could try the 3dfx executable with -novoodoo -hires , that gives me hires in software mode here, but keep in mind that the 3dfx patch (which I believe comes pre-installed in certain versions) triggers several (albeit subtle) graphical abnormalities in non-3dfx modes.

Vogons wrote:

1. My Max Pack does support -hires in software mode (using the regular non-3dfx executable) and it's clearly specified in the official readme. Yet another limitation in the UK version I wasn't aware of :disapproving

Maybe different revisions were released? The UK version shouldn't be any worse than other versions considering it was developed in the UK (Stainless Software aka Stainless Games). What other limitations are there as i've not come across any 😕

I will dig out the Max Pack later and double check the readme files.

ahhh , now this is starting to make sence . . . i got an 'unlisted to date' max pack version , typical 🤣

i have the 'max pack' also and the best i have got out of it is the -hires , a significant improvement over non hires

i cant seem to get any of the 4 patches to run it with 3dfx on the voodoo2 cards i got. might have to start my own thread for that tho

Girus wrote on 2011-10-10, 05:26:

ahhh , now this is starting to make sence . . . i got an 'unlisted to date' max pack version , typical 🤣

i have the 'max pack' also and the best i have got out of it is the -hires , a significant improvement over non hires

i cant seem to get any of the 4 patches to run it with 3dfx on the voodoo2 cards i got. might have to start my own thread for that tho

If you do not have a Vooddoo card installed and you are wanting to run the game in the software high resolution mode (640-480) in the stand alone Splat Pack version (not Max pack) you need to make sure the command line in the MS-DOS shortcut properties reads like this: C:\INTERPLAY\CARSPLAT\CARMAV.EXE -hires -novoodoo

The Working path statement in the MS-DOS shortcut properties should be: C:\INTERPLAY\CARSPLAT

I'm running this game with the Splat Pack CD in the tray on a late 1990's PC with a Pentium 3 1000mhz socket 370, Intel 810 chipset motherboard, Geforce 2 400MX (44.03 driver) SBLive CT0060 (SEF chipset) , 256 megs of ram using Windows 98SE and it works great for playing the entire Carmageddon series including TDR2000.