I mean, my goal is really just to say:
I ran Half-Life 2
On a Voodoo 2
With a Pentium 2
Honestly, playability and functionality I'm throwing all out the window, and I know the reasons why this shouldn't work, but I want to believe. Maybe there is some trick, some method, to get it running... at 2 hours per frame, but still running. It's to see if I can do it at all.

kjliew wrote on 2020-09-19, 02:16:

Well, I bet crazy ideas are everywhere nowadays :b, including this one: HL2ep1.png However, it was a WinXP VM at least, for the […]
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darry wrote on 2020-09-19, 00:32:

The fundamental question for the OP is :

What is your objective ?

A AAA title from 2004 on hardware from 1998 : a CPU one third the clock of minimum requirements and an underspecced video card with too little VRAM will not lead to great results .

Well, I bet crazy ideas are everywhere nowadays 😜, including this one:
HL2ep1.png
However, it was a WinXP VM at least, for the sake of DX9 renderer code path, delivering much better IQ and FPS that a real Voodoo2 could ever achieve ...... without a Voodoo2.

Running games in a VM does not sound like a crazy idea to me, especially if you can get 3D acceleration to work (whether through PCI passthrough or other means) . If anything, this is what the future will look like .

Attempting to run Quake 2 in software rendering mode on a 386 +387 combo, for example, is closer to being a crazy idea, IMHO . Though even that that has some hope of running without quality degradation, albeit EXTREMELY SLOWLY .

What the OP is trying to do will not only be slow, it will be ugly, if it "works" at all .

Yes, Half-Life 2 does work on Win98SE VM on QEMU, even on DX9 renderer code path, thanks to WineD3D.
I checked it, version 1.0.1.0 Source Engine 6 (build 2187).

CrazyCritic89 wrote on 2020-09-19, 02:25:

I mean, my goal is really just to say: I ran Half-Life 2 On a Voodoo 2 With a Pentium 2 Honestly, playability and functionality […]
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I mean, my goal is really just to say:
I ran Half-Life 2
On a Voodoo 2
With a Pentium 2
Honestly, playability and functionality I'm throwing all out the window, and I know the reasons why this shouldn't work, but I want to believe. Maybe there is some trick, some method, to get it running... at 2 hours per frame, but still running. It's to see if I can do it at all.

Thanks for clarifying. Specifying this from the beginning would have likely saved you from the "troll" label .

"Can it be done" type quests can be fun . Once you get over the Windows 9x issue, I suggest you look into 3D Analyze, if needed, in order to try to force it to run on the Voodoo 2 .

Best bet would be verifying the game works on a modern machine before copying over to Windows 98. If you are using the revemu steam.dll then newer versions may be incompatible with 9x and also if some of the HL2 files are corrupted then you'll experience those kinds of errors. Once you've verified the game isn't corrupted then you can focus your troubleshooting elsewhere. If the graphics card is incompatible with HL2 then you can try swiftshader but you wouldn't then be using the Voodoo 2 except for 2D.

kjliew wrote on 2020-09-19, 02:56:

Yes, Half-Life 2 does work on Win98SE VM on QEMU, even on DX9 renderer code path, thanks to WineD3D.
I checked it, version 1.0.1.0 Source Engine 6 (build 2187).

I thought WineD3D only worked from Vista and newer (latest versions) and Win2k and newer (old version) ?

Bruninho wrote on 2020-09-19, 03:20:

I thought WineD3D only worked from Vista and newer (latest versions) and Win2k and newer (old version) ?

Officially, yes, you're right. But Wine is also open-sourced, so it is just a matter of time and effort. It may even be possible to bring DX10 to Win98SE with WineD3D.

The build of Half-Life 2 I have runs just fine, there's no problems with it at all. I just click on start.bat, which contains, "hl2.exe -steam" if you're wondering, and it works just fine on my main system.

I recently thought of another idea though, if I can get an Direct3D to OpenGL wrapper working with MesaFX, then what if I just don't use Windows 98 in the first place and go to XP? Of course, I see problems here already, one of them is that I probably won't be able to get this working this way at all. You see, unless it uses the OpenGL32.dll in the game's folder, then it's gonna try to use the one in the System folder. Now what I did to run Minecraft on the Voodoo 2 on Windows 98 was just replace it, and it worked, but for Windows XP, you can't replace it, if you do it just places back the original one. I'm basically relying on luck here, and I bet there's gonna be someone here saying it won't work, and I'd believe them. This entire thing I just thought up is, well, to say the least, absolutely psychopathic.

Voodoo2 can't drive Direct3D in XP, and it's unlikely you'll get a WineD3D going for a V2 through MesaFX on it anyway. That'd also be a hell of a lot of cpu overhead on top as well.

Why do you think I said, "Direct3D to OpenGL wrapper?"

Aye man, I'd rather try and fail.

CrazyCritic89 wrote on 2020-09-19, 03:35:

I recently thought of another idea though, if I can get an Direct3D to OpenGL wrapper working with MesaFX, then what if I just don't use Windows 98 in the first place and go to XP? Of course, I see problems here already, one of them is that I probably won't be able to get this working this way at all. You see, unless it uses the OpenGL32.dll in the game's folder, then it's gonna try to use the one in the System folder.

You problem is not the DLL search path. It is MesaFX, it's already dead. All Windows applications are able to use the local DLLs before going for the copies in System folder. This is the whole point of how dgVoodoo2 DirectX APIs wrapping and QEMU MESAGL/WineD3D work.

You won't get very far with MesaFX, even it supports downscaling textures to make some games work for Voodoo2. It is going to be slow and ugly. There is no reason to keep it today. If the price is good, sell it, you may even get yourself a refurbished desktop/laptop that works better than a real Voodoo2 with QEMU KVM on Linux.

Selling it? But that's not as cool, and that'd be kinda insulting to my Grandpa, the one who gave me the computer. I always wanted to mess around with a Voodoo 2 for some reason, and I'm not selling it just so I can some random junk modern computer, not to say that it would be slow, but it just wouldn't feel right to me. The Voodoo 2 has been awesome to mess around with, and I definitely want to keep it.

If you don't want to sell it, then you need to lower your goals, play a different game from the same genre. For example, I am a simracer. I was used to playing AAA racing titles till I got fed up of buying new GPUs every year for them. I resorted to retro gaming and "downgraded" to some of my old favorite racing games, like the MicroProse Grand Prix series (GP1, GP2, GP3...), IndyCar Racing 2, NASCAR RACING, Monster Truck Madness, which were playable in older computers like yours. The same fun I'd have with modern AAA games, but in a very economic way.

IMO it's better to play period-correct games for that machine. With a 1998 computer running Windows 98 SE, I'd want to play Counter Strike (1999), which was based on HL1, or Quake.

For example, you want HL2. Why not play a different first person shooter game from the same era as that 1998 computer, instead of a 2004 game? It's just my 2 cents.

I have played Quake 1, 2, and 3 on it already, along with Half-Life 1. I even found a Doom engine which doesn't really run that good but it works with the Voodoo 2 and it's enjoyable. I probably would play these games more than the newer games I could run, but for right now, I just want to see what newer games I can run. It's not as if I'm not trying to use this computer for old games, I'm just seeing what I can do with it for right now and play all the old games I want later. Also, on that note, for some reason I couldn't get RCT2 working. I couldn't find a reliable ISO to burn, and with the one I did find, it gave me a, "no disc inserted," error.

You could use Dependency Walker to try and see what exactly fails about loading that dll. It could be missing a required dll or a function in an existing one. Maybe KernelEx will help.
I don't know if a modern-enough video card will be compatible with a P2's AGP slot but it's worth trying to get it to work without the V2's first.

Problem is that I don't really own any other video cards, and also, I think my computer's motherboard doesn't have AGP.

Welp, the intro loads, then after I get the error:
"Failed to set video mode - resetting to defaults.

Game will now restart with the new game settings."
Click OK, same thing happens.

The other problem, is that it's not going to the Voodoo 2.

CrazyCritic89 wrote on 2020-09-19, 07:07:

The other problem, is that it's not going to the Voodoo 2.

What is your primary video card ?

EDIT : If your primary video card says it supports DIRECT3D and Half Life 2 , attempts to use it, you can try forcing application to use the Voodoo 2's Direct3d capabilities using 3DCC . See link : http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=807&menustate=0