Re: Half-Life 2, what copy should I buy

Posted on 2019-03-21, 19:46

by

by silikone

in Windows

in Windows

I vaguely remember a reasonably trustworthy source claim that they used a tool to install the game directly from the disc instead of grabbing it off the internet. I really wish I knew more about it.

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Re: I don't understand all the hate for the Nvidia FX series

Posted on 2019-02-15, 09:23

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Didn't the FX have a few things going for it that while underwhelming in practice, could hypothetically deliver results that would confidently kick its competition off the throne? Ati going all in with SM 2.0 turned out to be the right choice, as developers understandably had an aversion to …

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Re: AMD K6 Quake2 and Quake 3, aiming for stars.

Posted on 2019-02-08, 13:12

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

leileilol wrote: How new are your Geforce drivers? Detonator 12.41 at least should be faster for compiled vertex arrays. It was slower in older driver versions If not the drivers, it could have something to do with Quake 2 using glArrayElement instead of glDrawArrays/glDrawElements.

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Re: DX7 gpu conumdrum

Posted on 2019-02-08, 13:03

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Other than its triple texturing, not many applications made use of Ati's unique features in comparison to Nvidia's. I'd pick the GTS over the MX, since there is a larger array of appropriate driver versions to play around with.

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Re: AMD K6 Quake2 and Quake 3, aiming for stars.

Posted on 2019-02-03, 01:55

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Try enabling gl_vertex_arrays in Quake 2, it may or may not provide a boost.

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Re: Found the vintage PC motherlode...

Posted on 2019-02-02, 20:22

by

by silikone

in Milliways

in Milliways

Full mast.

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Re: ATI Radeon 9700Pro vs 9800Pro

Posted on 2019-01-31, 11:33

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

tpowell.ca wrote: More to the point, is there anything at all the 9700 does better than the 9800 ? Yes, it's better at leaving lasting impressions among gamers and serving as rhetorical fuel for modern debates.

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Re: Why 4K isn't a gimmick -- or why it really is.

Posted on 2019-01-29, 00:54

by

by silikone

in Milliways

in Milliways

Is it my imagination or is this shimmering somewhat new to the last generation or two? I always remember having jaggies without AA but I don't remember the screen dancing even as I was standing still -- what the hell? Do you by any chance enable FXAA? These intraframe post-process AA solutions do …

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Re: NVIDIA nForce audio experiences?

Posted on 2019-01-23, 13:37

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The nForce 2 Ultra 400 chipset usually included the MCP-T which supported "Soundstorm" audio. If you look that up you'll find a decent amount of info about it. It was a very nice sound solution for the time. Interestingly, it not only could do Dolby Digital Live encoding for surround sound, it …

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NVIDIA nForce audio experiences?

Posted on 2019-01-21, 20:17

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I haven't ever seen much talk about the nForce audio solutions. Apart from being an early OpenAL accelerator together with Creative's cards, there also seems to be several references to an "Nvidia FX API" that works as an extension to DirectSound. There is an SDK floating around with documents and …

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Keyboards with non-standard keys

Posted on 2019-01-20, 03:29

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a desire to one way or another map out all the keys used throughout the life of the pre-USB IBM-compatible keyboard range beyond the ubiquitous ANSI/ISO sets. A notable historical example is the array of function keys that extended beyond F12 on some old PC keyboards. Of things still relevant …

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Re: GLQuake dynamic lighting performance request

Posted on 2019-01-19, 18:45

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by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

intel i740 gl_flashblend 1, r_dynamic 0 - 34.6 gl_flashblend 0, r_dynamic 0 - 40.4 gl_flashblend 0, r_dynamic 1 - 40.3 This result is interesting, but not surprising, considering this card's way of handling textures over AGP. I thought I would give it a shot on a modern system with Intel integrated …

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Re: Change rom font on Tseng4000 vga?

Posted on 2019-01-16, 16:52

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is there a database of the various VGA fonts that have manifested themselves on this planet?

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Re: GLQuake dynamic lighting performance request

Posted on 2019-01-16, 16:14

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

How do you "mod it in?" I probably made it sound easier than I should have. I meant that you can download the Quake source code and add a few lines here and there involving gl_arb_texture_env_combine. This is what source ports have already done. Also, are there any such sourceports which will run …

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Re: GLQuake dynamic lighting performance request

Posted on 2019-01-15, 21:21

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

So, like, is there a way to fix the issues that article presents using GLQuake? No, but it's very easy to mod in, and most source ports are based on a codebase with support for lossless overbrights. The state of vanilla GLQuake renders the dynamic lights almost invisible, but they are nonetheless …

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Re: Half-Life Performance Issues: The Ressurrection

Posted on 2019-01-15, 12:06

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by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Try adjusting the various gl_ and r_ variables that you can find references to on the web. If I am not mistaken, there is also the launch parameter "-gl 11" to try out.

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Obscure T&L Benchmarks

Posted on 2019-01-15, 11:57

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Scouring the archived internet for an extensive amount of time, I found some programs that I have been looking for. Specifically, official applications that demonstrate the theoretical prowess of early T&L hardware. There are other old gems I have seen references to (like old NVIDIA SDKs), but never …

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Re: Doom vs Heretic VGA performance difference

Posted on 2019-01-14, 15:11

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by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Not a single ISA card that handles Doom better than Quake? Ouch. Things should look really nasty for the latter with vid_mode 1, though.

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Re: GLQuake dynamic lighting performance request

Posted on 2019-01-14, 08:26

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

It's to do with the texture formats involved for slow uploads. It's clearly not BGRA. This was early OpenGL before performance realizations were had. GL_LUMINANCE is slow? That's counter-intuitive. The launch parameter "-lm_4" should convert them to full RGBA. Curious to see how that runs in …

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Re: GLQuake dynamic lighting performance request

Posted on 2019-01-13, 16:48

by

by silikone

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

software (WinQuake 1.09): 14.9 Umm, wasn't the author asking for tests with GLQuake, not WinQuake? Sure I did, but it doesn't hurt to get the performance metric of different modes into the picture. It actually helps put things into perspective. When even software mode runs blazingly fast, you know …

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