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MesaFX rebuilding

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First post, by vbdasc

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Hello. I'm not sure if this is the right place for posting this question, and I apologize if it isn't . Has anyone tried rebuilding MesaFX (Mesa3D for 3dfx Glide) from source (say, version 6.2.0.2 or any other contemporary one)? I downloaded Mesa3D version 6.2 source code, which includes support for Glide, and several different versions of MinGW (2.95, 4.12 and 5.1) and tried compiling it by following the included instructions (README.3DFX) to the point. Unfortunately, I never managed to produce a working MesaFX. I had to make some minimal modification to the source for it even to build, and what did build crashes in my tests, where the binary 6.2.0.2 version doesn't crash. Does anyone has any experience doing it or some suggestions? Thanks.

Reply 1 of 14, by BEEN_Nath_58

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Since Glide is unsupported, people coming to this thread will keep knowledge on new tech. I think it's better if move this to Marvin

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058

Reply 2 of 14, by vbdasc

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kjliew wrote on 2020-03-02, 02:52:

MESA 3DfxGL 6.4.2

Sorry for bothering you again, but how do you obtain that? By compiling official Mesa3D 6.4.2 sources for Glide?

Reply 4 of 14, by vbdasc

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kjliew wrote on 2020-08-30, 08:14:
vbdasc wrote on 2020-08-30, 07:35:

By compiling official Mesa3D 6.4.2 sources for Glide?

Yes.

Please, give some info, what compiler did you use to build it? I tried with MinGW 4.1.2 and 5.1, and they both failed to compile MesaFX 6.4.2, notwithstanding the fact that I followed the included instructions for building 3dfx Mesa to the point. Also, did you make any changes to the official Mesa source code? I used the last Glide3 library and headers from the Glide3 Sourceforge project, was this okay? Again, I apologize to you for the bother and to everyone else for the offtopic. Thanks in advance.

Reply 5 of 14, by Stiletto

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vbdasc - I have collected some builds of MesaFX (primarily built by author Daniel Borca himself) here:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/wrappers/files/O … L/Glide/MesaFx/

Discrete_BOB_058 wrote on 2020-08-28, 16:11:

Since Glide is unsupported, people coming to this thread will keep knowledge on new tech. I think it's better if move this to Marvin

It's (currently) in Windows, broadly speaking which is the place for Windows game hackery.

Last edited by Stiletto on 2020-08-31, 21:57. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 6 of 14, by Presbytier

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What is MesaFX I can't seem to find much info online?

"Never pay more than 20 dollars for a computer game" - Guybrush Threepwood

Reply 8 of 14, by vbdasc

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Presbytier wrote on 2020-09-01, 13:56:

What is MesaFX I can't seem to find much info online?

If you know what is Mesa3D (there is a Wikipedia page on it) - MesaFX a.k.a. fxMesa is basically Mesa3D configured to use a 3dfx Glide backend. Essentially, it is a OpenGL to Glide 3 wrapper (it seems that early versions of MesaFX used Glide 2 though). It provides decent compatibility with OpenGL versions up to 1.3, and can be used to play games like Quake 3 Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and even Doom 3 / Quake 4 on a Voodoo card. Some versions of MesaFX in binary form can be found at https://3dfxarchive.com/mesafx.htm .

Reply 9 of 14, by Stiletto

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vbdasc wrote on 2020-09-01, 14:56:
Stiletto wrote on 2020-08-31, 21:46:

vbdasc - I have collected some builds of MesaFX (primarily built by author Daniel Borca himself) here:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/wrappers/files/O … L/Glide/MesaFx/

Thank you. I will study this carefully.

Sorry that directory is in the state it is in, I should probably do something about that, looks like it might be in need of some deduping...

If you manage to do something cool with all this, please let us know. 😀

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

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Reply 10 of 14, by leileilol

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What i'd like to see is a Wine-based take on the D3D HAL with a new driver to do some cap fakery/emulation (hopefully not using the OpenGL wrappery part) to get some pesky newer (visually appropriate - not UT2003/HL2/Farcry) games to work on V2+....

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Reply 11 of 14, by vbdasc

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Stiletto wrote on 2020-09-01, 17:04:

Sorry that directory is in the state it is in, I should probably do something about that, looks like it might be in need of some deduping...

This is not a problem, thanks 😀

Stiletto wrote on 2020-09-01, 17:04:

If you manage to do something cool with all this, please let us know. 😀

But I'm not trying to do anything cool 😀 I'm just trying to rebuild MesaFX so I can try some of its cool compile-time settings like logging Glide calls, nothing more... Sadly, now it seems to me that it will be a real PITA. At least version 6.4.2 of Mesa coupled with the Glide driver contains some obvious bugs than will require debugging and hacking the code to produce something that even builds, let alone working. It's a shame that Dborca didn't provide better instructions for building MesaFX, while describing in the readme some goodies that can only be activated by rebuilding... Perhaps he was trolling us all? 😀 Thankfully, now I have some free time due to the corona and might be able to resolve this in two nights or three.

Reply 12 of 14, by Stiletto

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I think there's other ways to log Glide calls incidentally. I wanna say dgVoodoo2's verbose debug build will do that? And I think I stumbled across some purpose-built thing once before. But feel free to have fun! 😀

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 13 of 14, by vbdasc

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After a healthy dose of debugging and head-scratching, I finally managed to compile from source a MesaFX library that works with nGlide. Some observations about the process (which hopefully, one day help someone who tries to do the same thing).

1. My biggest mistake was that I downloaded and used a MinGW import library for GLIDE3X.DLL from the Glide 3 Sourceforge page. This library proved inadequate for my purposes. To succeed, I had to build my own import library from a custom tailored .DEF file. The correct import library eliminated the crashes that plagued me.

2. The newest Mesa version for which the build is straightforward is 6.2.1 . Versions newer than that cannot be used to build MesaFX without non-trivial and non-documented modifications of the source code (which are unknown to me at this point).

Thanks everyone for giving this rant your attention.

Reply 14 of 14, by Dolenc

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Before I dive into it, worth asking 😀

Does anyone have an updated glide backend for mesa 6.4.2?