What about 2D (not the 3dfx version) with VDMSound? Does it do the same thing?

Also, system specs, please.

Thank you for your reply. I'm not exactly sure what you meant by "2D". Here are my system specs:

-Dell Dimension 4600
-Dell proprietary motherboard
-Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz
-512 MB DDR SDRAM at 333 MHz
-ATI Radeon 128 MB 9800 Pro
-SoundBlaster Live! with 5.1 support
-Windows XP Home Edition

That's pretty much the basics. I'm beginning to wonder what's the issue, Glidos or VDMS. I tried playing the game without Glidos, and it appeared that the sound effects still had issues (although not the exact same issues as observed with Glidos). I've read the readme file, and looked on the VDMS board, but I haven't come across someone with the same exact problem as mine (unless I missed it). The problems most people seem to be having is with no sound at all (either sound effects or atmospheric sounds or both). I don't have enough experience to really understand what all the VDMS tweaks can do. I noticed that when I performed the install with the tr advanced installer I got crackly audio (without using Glidos), however when I performed the install using the game's auto install the sound seemed better. But I still encountered skipped audio sequences (again without Glidos). I've tried different MIDI music playback settings in the "audio" tab under the sounds and audio device properties control menu. At this point I'm at a loss for things to try. Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

Patrick Murphy

Stiletto is suggesting running TR without Glidos, but still with VDM Sound, which is a good idea.

Glidos wrote:

Stiletto is suggesting running TR without Glidos, but still with VDM Sound, which is a good idea.

Sorry, thought what I said would have been common sense in troubleshooting. If VDMSound + Glidos causes lag, then try w/o Glidos. If it's still there, it's gotta be VDMS settings. If not - then I'm not sure, and you'll have to rely on Paul here. So remove Glidos from the equation.

I tried running TR1 without Glidos, and I still have sound problems. I'm having problems with both versions of VDMS (see my initial post). I read the ini file regarding the different VDMS tweaks, and I've experimented with several ini configurations. Nothing seems to help. Sorry Paul about initially suggesting that Glidos was the issue (I thought you might be the most experienced person to ask). It looks as though I should post in the VDMS board, although I don't know if there's a solution to the problem. I could see if the problem existed right from the start. Then it would most likely be a VDMS configuration problem. However since the problem develops after a period of time, I wonder if simply changing a parameter in the VDMS ini file would make a difference. I've got the latest ATI and SoundBlaster drivers installed. Thanks.

Just wanted to give an update. I combed through all 37 pages of the VDMSound forum, and looked for any posts that might have something to do with my problem. Based on information found there, I performed the following things (not all at once of course):

- Turned off the "Forced Texture Smoothing" option in Glidos
- Tried using the most basic SoundBlaster option (1.05) in the VDM ini
- Decreased DMA polling periods to 1/3 and 2/5 in the VDM ini
- Changed from DirectSound to WaveOut in VDM ini
- Changed the buffer setting from 75 to both 25 and 100 in VDM ini
- Changed the device from -1 to 0 and 1 in VDM ini

None of these helped. All of the above have been tried with version 2.0.4 of VDMSound while running Glidos (at this point it seems taking Glidos out of the equation may not matter), and I believe I tried most of the above changes with version 2[1].1 as well (at this point all the trials have started to run together). I also tried to follow Nich Sehr Gut's "Guide to VDMSound v.2.10. I'm afraid with my limited background I may not be able to fix this problem. People keep talking about a VDMSound launcher, and although I can see a dll file with that name in the VDMSound folder, I'm not sure how to activate this launcher.

Again I appologize for going on with this in the Glidos section of the forum. I don't know if the experts who reside here look at all the various sections. I'm completely new to this forum, so I appologize if I'm not following etiquette with my posts. I just bought TR1 for the pc last weekend. If I don't hear back from anyone in this forum, I'll re-post in the VDMSound forum. Thanks again for any advice you can give.

Pat

Try running c:\tombraid\setup.exe, by right-clicking and selecting "Run with VDMS", and downgrade to a simpler SoundBlaster than the SB16.

I installed TR1 exactily as described by Paul at glidos.net. I then right-clicked on setup.exe and ran it with VDMSound. I configured the sound card as follows: SoundBlaster, Port 220, DMA 1, IRQ 7. I saved these settings. I then started the game using the command prompt. I got sound effects throughout the first level. When I went back to configure setup.exe with the other two SoundBlaster options (Pro and 16), I had sound problems. I then went ahead and tried using Glidos to run TR1 (after installing the voodoo rush tomb.exe file). I encountered the same problem as described in my original post. I configured setup.exe with all three SoundBlaster options and tried running with Glidos after each configuration change. Still the same result - perfect sound at the beginning of the level, only to get choppy as the level progressed. The aforementioned tests were performed using VDMSound version 2.0.4.

I uninstalled this version of VDMSound and installed version 2[1].1.0. I restarted my computer, and after re-installing TR1 as described in Glidos.net, I went through all of the aforementioned tests I had done with VDMSound ver. 2.0.4. I got the exact same results with ver. 2[1].1.0. Would this confirm that the sound problems I'm experiencing are with how my system is interacting with Glidos?

A couple of additional items:
- When installing TR1 using Paul's recommendations from glidos.net, a file entitled "Tombpath.BAT" was installed outside of the Tombraid folder in the C directory. Don't know if that is an issue when using Glidos.
-I noticed that if I didn't delete the settings.BAT file from the Tombraid folder prior to start-up, I experienced some weird sound issues (along with the FMV's playing abnormally fast). Is it customary to have to delete this file prior to starting TR?
-Does changing the sound card in the VDMS.ini file have any impact? I noticed that when I used Paul's steps for reconfiguring the sound card using the setup.exe file, the information in the VDMS.ini file remained unchanged.
-When starting the game with Glidos (after the FMV sequences were finished), I started with a view of Lara from above and then was immediately sent to the options menu. Don't know if that means anything. I usually "escaped" past the FMV sequences to get to the game.

That's all I have at the moment. I was encouraged to see that I could at least play TR with the sound effects (minus glidos 🙁 ). Even when not using Glidos I still had some very minor sound hiccups (double footsteps, garbled gunshot sounds), but it only last a second and I was never missing sounds altogether. Thanks again for any input you can provide.

Pat

All very strange. Maybe you have something running in the background eating up CPU resources.

BTW, changing TR's audio settings with setup.exe shouldn't be expected to alter vdms.ini. setup.exe determines what sort of DOS sound card TR thinks it is driving. VDMS creates a pretend DOS sound card, and channels the sound to your true sound card. As default, VDMS can pretend to be a SoundBlaster, a SoundBlaster Pro or a SoundBlaster 16 without messing with configuration.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will keep trying different things (so long as my patience holds out). One thing I did notice was that using customized settings for my graphics card did have an impact on the audio. For instance, if I enabled anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering in the advanced settings tab, I got rushed FMV sequences with crackly audio. My audio was fine when I allowed the application to control these items by unselecting the custom settings feature. Something to keep in mind for others experiencing audio issues (I'm using the Catalyst 4.2 drivers with a 9800 pro card - purchased specifically to play the original Tomb Raider 😁 ).

I have a question regarding the 3D patches included on the TR Gold disc. In the readme file, it says that if you want to use your graphics card, you should select the appropriate tomb.exe file and replace it with the existing one. My question is what kind of improvement could I expect to see when using one of these alternate tomb.exe files without Glidos? Would there be an improvement over using the default tomb.exe file? If yes, what would be the appropriate tomb.exe file to chose for my card? Thanks again for all the suggestions.

Pat

All the special versions of tomb.exe are for driving grapics cards that don't exist any more. Glidos works by in effect by making your DOS enviroment think that it has one of these old cards (a voodoo I or II card). In addition Glidos interprets graphics commands at a higher resolution than intended so you get to see TR upto 1600x1200, although TR thinks it is running at 640x480. And you get to use the more detailed textures from http://www.resonantedge.com/trx/

I finally figured out what was causing my sound problems. I actually found the solution by troubleshooting problems I was having with a different game. I was trying to play Need for Speed Porsche Unleased, and as I was racing the screen would randomly stutter for a period of time during the race (worse than observed with typical slowdown). I went to Electronic Arts' support page for Need for Speed, and they recommended ending all processes in the Task Manager (except for explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe) that are listed under your personal User Name (and any other personal User Name that may be associated with your pc). I'm using XP, so I don't know how the Task Manager lists processes in other versions of Windows. They said you shouldn't end any processes associated with SYSTEM, LOCAL SERVICE, OR NETWORK SERVICE. I did as they instructed on the support page, and Need for Speed ran smoothly throughout the race. I then tried TR1 with Glidos, and I no longer had sound effects cutting out on me while playing.

I appologize if ending unnecessary processes is common knowledge with everyone on these boards. Those who responded to my posts may have assumed that I had already done this as part of a logical sequence of troubleshooting. I knew about processes running in the background on my pc, however I never knew which ones were O.K. to end. At least it's working now. Thank you for all the suggestions along the way.

Pat

Brilliant! How do you get Task Manager to show you just the processes under your user name?

Ctrl-Alt-Del, click on Processes tab. At the tob of the list is a row of column headings ("Image Name", "User Name", "CPU", "Mem Usage"). Click on "User Name" once or twice, it will sort by "User" ("Local Service", "Network Service", "System", Account name).

What's weirder: Double-click on the blank space right under the tabs. You will end up viewing Task Manager in a way called "tiny footprint mode". It has existed since NT4.0, and really scared me in a bad way the other day when I saw it for the first time. I thought a virus had got loose in my system and had messed with taskmgr.exe!!!

While you're in the Processes tab of the Task Manager, you should see four columns (this is for XP): Image Name, User Name, CPU, and Mem Usage. Just left-click on User Name, and the processes will now be organized by the User Name the process is running under. It makes locating and ending processes running under a given User Name that much easier. Again, the EA support page recommended ending all processes (with the exception of explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe) running under your user name (and any other user names if you have multiple users using the same pc).

I've been very interested in trying to learn about which processes can be safetly ended to enhance gaming performance, but the best I could find was a program that looked at all your running processes and highlighted the non-critical ones that could be shut down to give a performance boost. I never downloaded the program, because I didn't like the idea of giving control over to a program without having a better understanding of what was happening. I also recall reading something associated with this program which indicated a certain level of risk in shutting down certain processes (made me a little nervous). I guess the suggestion given on the EA support page seemed simple enough with a low level of risk.

Pat

I have tweaked my XP by turning off lot's of useless processes/services. As a result i see blank column under User Name in Task Manager 😉

I have no "User Name" column, and no choice to add it... ah, but I'm using Windows 2000.

And in any case, I have no rougue processes eating CPU cycles. But its useful to have some advice to pass on to others, thanks.

Paul, I just purchased Glidos today, and I'm very happy with how well it works. I want to thank you for your support while I was having issues with my system (and thank you to everyone else who responded to my posts as well). I also wanted to let everyone know that I think you offer better support for Glidos than big software companies offer for their commercial software, and this was support offered to someone who hadn't even purchased Glidos at the time. You did a great job with Glidos! It's great to know that people still care about the original Tomb Raider, because the Eidos support page simply states that TR Gold can't be run using Win XP. Thanks again for everything.

Pat

Thanks for the thanks. Its a rewarding project because its a game that a lot of people still care about.