Try the suggestion for using a non Voodoo1 card in this thread. Voodoo (2) Graphics driver for Grand Theft Auto

FYI for the 512x384 bug, you can get into the game, press F11 to ‘show’ available resolutions, press the down key and enter to go into the next resolution. This also allows the Voodoo3 to work with the game at least.

darry wrote on 2024-07-14, 22:28:

Try the suggestion for using a non Voodoo1 card in this thread. Voodoo (2) Graphics driver for Grand Theft Auto

Wow it actually worked! Cleaned out all the copies of glide on the system except for the ones installed with the drivers from 3dfxarchive and added the path in autoexec. GTA UK 3dfx isn't working/black screen but I can live with it and figure it out later. Thanks!

RichB93 wrote on 2024-07-14, 22:57:

FYI for the 512x384 bug, you can get into the game, press F11 to ‘show’ available resolutions, press the down key and enter to go into the next resolution. This also allows the Voodoo3 to work with the game at least.

Seemed to not be the issue for my system but always handy. A few times with ATI cards the screen goes black but you can hear the game running and hit 11 and cursor around and hit enter to get the screen back on.

That actually reminds me the game has 15 bit modes for ATI cards some of them look and run pretty good. Whether they are actually 15 bit or some compatibility hack I don't know but getting the game smooth isn't easy.

i have to wonder, is this game actually supposed to look better with glide? i was never able to see any benefit from the 3dfx version, or even the 24-bit version. as a consequence i just stuck with the windows version for its sidewinder support. the game is light on the requirements so along with shadow warrior, the 3dfx version never quite made sense to me.

the problem with this game for me wasn't with the graphics, it's that it seems ever so slightly too fast even with the frame limiter on. the game is probably designed for 25 FPS like the sequel, but i haven't looked into what the limiter exactly does. if it's actually 30 in this game, that would explain it...

The 3DFX version has filtered textures but that’s about it.

auron wrote on 2024-07-15, 02:23:

i have to wonder, is this game actually supposed to look better with glide? i was never able to see any benefit from the 3dfx version, or even the 24-bit version. as a consequence i just stuck with the windows version for its sidewinder support. the game is light on the requirements so along with shadow warrior, the 3dfx version never quite made sense to me.

the problem with this game for me wasn't with the graphics, it's that it seems ever so slightly too fast even with the frame limiter on. the game is probably designed for 25 FPS like the sequel, but i haven't looked into what the limiter exactly does. if it's actually 30 in this game, that would explain it...

IMO the glide version is a bit more shimmery looking and pleasing to the eye.

But I don't think it actually plays better... in fact I think it plays worse. I can get pretty heavy motion sickness from the game so more important is how smooth the constant zooming in and out is. Thought it was maybe a LCD latency issue but my current 19" CRT makes the motion worse with no latency ( played on an offbrand 15" way back when). Never gotten in from GTA2.

Hardware wise In its day I played GTA1 on either a win95 Thinkpad or a pcchips machine with a SIS chipset... software rendering for both cases they ran fine no issues. I think the game is meant to feel fast to a degree but is too fast with 3d acceleration like 3dfx. I think the game internally ran fast like this to maybe make up for clock speeds and slow CPUs because a wide range of eras and hardware is supported.

Best overall experience I've had was the free XP remake that Rockstar put out on a windows 7 laptop with an Intel GMA3000 going into the same 19" CRT I have now and the output mode went to 1600x1200 if I'm not mistaken. Close 2nd under win98 was the original Radeon 64mb.

Now that I know there's a dx8.1 version of GTA that works under win98 I'll probably use that with a Radeon 9250 and keep the Banshee for a pure dos build. It is a bit more terrible than I'd like as a desktop gpu.