From the error messages you posted, it seems like it's trying to use Direct3D 9. Does the GOG release use a Glide Wrapper like dgVoodoo or nGlide to run the 3dfx version of the game?

Garrett W wrote on 2020-01-24, 16:30:

From the error messages you posted, it seems like it's trying to use Direct3D 9. Does the GOG release use a Glide Wrapper like dgVoodoo or nGlide to run the 3dfx version of the game?

Yes, it uses nGlide. I tried deleting it and also glide.dll, but didn´t make any difference... 🙁

Games from this era often include an ISO image of the game, sometimes with a different extension. Try looking for a rather big file in the installation package (if you can decompress it) or folder..

Can you show us the folder structure? I don't have the GOG version. You should also see where the shortcut points to, it might be pointing to an executable that tries to call nGlide. Also, GOG might have messed with the executables in a way that makes it impossible to run it under Win9x. Appiah4's suggestion is also true.

Just do a windiff between old and new versions and then update your version with the changes. Windows 98 supports D3D9, Do you have it installed? I thought joyGetPosEx was in winmm.dll?

Garrett W wrote on 2020-01-24, 22:48:

Can you show us the folder structure? I don't have the GOG version. You should also see where the shortcut points to, it might be pointing to an executable that tries to call nGlide. Also, GOG might have messed with the executables in a way that makes it impossible to run it under Win9x. Appiah4's suggestion is also true.

Here´s a screenshot

DosFreak wrote on 2020-01-24, 23:11:

Just do a windiff between old and new versions and then update your version with the changes. Windows 98 supports D3D9, Do you have it installed? I thought joyGetPosEx was in winmm.dll?

Does D3D9 mean DX9? Because it doesn´t go well with my GF2 Ultra and and it crashes all games that uses Quake 3 engine...

Geforce FX (5) was first to support dx9.

Run dependency walker against the game executable if you want to see what's missing.

I bet they modified the exe to point to that win32.dll file instead of winmm.dll. You can either modify the exe with xvi32 and replace all instances of win32.dll and WIN32.dll with winmm.dll and WINMM.dll or replace the win32.dll with a renamed winmm.dll. I'm just assuming since I don't have the GOG version of that game.

IIRC nglide wraps to D3D9 which Windows 98 supports and nglide does work on Windows 98 but you need DirectX 9 installed, video card and driver that supports D3D9 unless you use emulate it using something like swiftshader which I don't recommend.

In this situation you'd probably be better off replacing the files with the original versions or playing the original game.

Windows 98 does not officially support DirectX9. You can either play the game on WinXP~Win7 or replace the nGlide with dgVoodoo1 that supports DirectX7 backend on Win98. Since this is a GoG release, then it should able to run on modern Windows.

kjliew wrote on 2020-01-25, 03:12:

Windows 98 does not officially support DirectX9.

This is false, Windows 98 does support early DX9.

Anyway, since you have a GeForce2, I would suggest trying to run Pandy.exe, that should run the software rendered version of the game I believe. Pandy3.exe should be the 3dfx version, which you can't run without a Glide Wrapper or 3Dfx card, perhaps you should try that on a newer system.

DosFreak wrote on 2020-01-25, 01:14:

Run dependency walker against the game executable if you want to see what's missing. […]
Show full quote

Run dependency walker against the game executable if you want to see what's missing.

I bet they modified the exe to point to that win32.dll file instead of winmm.dll. You can either modify the exe with xvi32 and replace all instances of win32.dll and WIN32.dll with winmm.dll and WINMM.dll or replace the win32.dll with a renamed winmm.dll. I'm just assuming since I don't have the GOG version of that game.

IIRC nglide wraps to D3D9 which Windows 98 supports and nglide does work on Windows 98 but you need DirectX 9 installed, video card and driver that supports D3D9 unless you use emulate it using something like swiftshader which I don't recommend.

In this situation you'd probably be better off replacing the files with the original versions or playing the original game.

I ran Dependency Walker against Pandy.exe like you said, here´s picture of two combined screenshots:

I also tried replacing the win32.dll file with winmm.dll but it didn´t really do nothing. Is there a specific sort of winmm.dll that I should use?

I feel like an idiot... I just had to copy the winmm.dll from c:\windows\system\ and paste it to Pandemonium folder and rename it to win32.dll. So it runs! Now, I still have two problems:
1. No music. Is there a way to get the music going?
2. The game looks like this:

Are there any D3D or OpenGL patches for this game? I tried to look but couldn´t find any...

Hey, glad you managed to get it running!

1. The music's probably in CD-Audio format on the original PC release and I'm guessing GOG is running it through some other means (.ogg or .mp3 files maybe?). I can see a "MUSIC" folder in there, but I have no idea how it plays it.

2. Looks to be running at low-res and interlaced, I'm sure there's an option to at least get rid of interlaced, and I'm fairly certain you can run the game at 640x480 as well. If you can't find them inside the game, perhaps they're tucked in the "setup.exe". Unfortunately, there's no D3D or oGL patch, there's only the 3Dfx version for accelerated 3D, "Pandy3.exe".

I just took a look at one of your other threads with a Tualatin + GF2 Ultra build, is that the system you're running the game on? Pretty sweet build you got there! You may be able to run the 3Dfx version of the game without a 3Dfx card, by using a Glide wrapper, a program that essentially intercepts all the calls that the Glide API makes to the system and translates them to another API that your system can use. This is a very rough approximation of what it does (please don't whack me in head more knowledgeable people!), so it will allow you to play the game using that version (it's pretty much what GOG's doing). Unfortunately, as other people noted, nGlide uses DirectX 9, specifically D3D 9.0 to pull this off, and the other more advanced wrapper, dgVoodoo2, uses D3D 11.0, so both are no go with your current hardware.
Instead, you may try the original dgVoodoo, which hasn't been updated since 2007 and uses DX 7 and/or DX 9. I've had success in the past using this, perhaps it will work fine in your case as well! There were some other wrappers before this, but from my limited testing many many years ago, they seemed inferior and probably aren't worth the hassle nowadays.

In any case, software mode might look just as good as 3Dfx when run at high res, a lot of games at the time used 3D cards for offloading the CPU and running at high res + bilinear filtering (which looks pretty bad to my eyes now) and usually didn't apply any new effects (perhaps some transparencies, sometimes) compared to the software renderer (sometimes they even removed features 😉 ). Pandemonium, being a PS1 original game, might actually look a lot better without any texture filtering and run at 640x480 than it does with Glide. Again, I haven't played it in ages (I should!) and haven't seen them side by side in many years as well.
Funnily enough, the sequel, which I happen to own in its big box release but have never played unfortunately, actually demanded a 3Dfx card and did not feature a software renderer or any other 3D API support! One of the few games that I know of that did this, along with Gex 2 and perhaps one more title that eludes me at this moment.

Garrett W wrote on 2020-01-25, 19:10:

Hey, glad you managed to get it running! […]
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Hey, glad you managed to get it running!

1. The music's probably in CD-Audio format on the original PC release and I'm guessing GOG is running it through some other means (.ogg or .mp3 files maybe?). I can see a "MUSIC" folder in there, but I have no idea how it plays it.

2. Looks to be running at low-res and interlaced, I'm sure there's an option to at least get rid of interlaced, and I'm fairly certain you can run the game at 640x480 as well. If you can't find them inside the game, perhaps they're tucked in the "setup.exe". Unfortunately, there's no D3D or oGL patch, there's only the 3Dfx version for accelerated 3D, "Pandy3.exe".

I just took a look at one of your other threads with a Tualatin + GF2 Ultra build, is that the system you're running the game on? Pretty sweet build you got there! You may be able to run the 3Dfx version of the game without a 3Dfx card, by using a Glide wrapper, a program that essentially intercepts all the calls that the Glide API makes to the system and translates them to another API that your system can use. This is a very rough approximation of what it does (please don't whack me in head more knowledgeable people!), so it will allow you to play the game using that version (it's pretty much what GOG's doing). Unfortunately, as other people noted, nGlide uses DirectX 9, specifically D3D 9.0 to pull this off, and the other more advanced wrapper, dgVoodoo2, uses D3D 11.0, so both are no go with your current hardware.
Instead, you may try the original dgVoodoo, which hasn't been updated since 2007 and uses DX 7 and/or DX 9. I've had success in the past using this, perhaps it will work fine in your case as well! There were some other wrappers before this, but from my limited testing many many years ago, they seemed inferior and probably aren't worth the hassle nowadays.

In any case, software mode might look just as good as 3Dfx when run at high res, a lot of games at the time used 3D cards for offloading the CPU and running at high res + bilinear filtering (which looks pretty bad to my eyes now) and usually didn't apply any new effects (perhaps some transparencies, sometimes) compared to the software renderer (sometimes they even removed features 😉 ). Pandemonium, being a PS1 original game, might actually look a lot better without any texture filtering and run at 640x480 than it does with Glide. Again, I haven't played it in ages (I should!) and haven't seen them side by side in many years as well.
Funnily enough, the sequel, which I happen to own in its big box release but have never played unfortunately, actually demanded a 3Dfx card and did not feature a software renderer or any other 3D API support! One of the few games that I know of that did this, along with Gex 2 and perhaps one more title that eludes me at this moment.

Yep, that´s my little bundle of joy 😁 I have DX8 in use and that´s as new as I´m willing to go. It´s a version that still works fine with my GPU but if I install DX9 even to test something out, it messes my system. Quake 3 based games don´t work anymore and even a rollback won´t help, I have to format my computer and start over in order to get rid of the problems caused by DX9.

I tried out the latest Win9X supported dgVoodoo and it seems to work at least in some capacity. I can now run Pandy3.exe and it has a little higher resolution and interlacing is gone. However, it runs too fast, it´s basically unplayable. My settings in dgVoodooSetup are probably not right, I just have to test. Also, the game is not 3D accelerated but that doesn´t really bother me, higher resolution and decent performance are the most important factors here.

Music in this GOG version is in *.ogg form.

Yeah, DX9 is problematic with Win9X, but doable for later hardware. I usually don't go above DX7 but that's besides the point. I think you may have run into one of those games that are speed sensitive as well, looks like you can't catch a break 🙁.