VOGONS


First post, by thepirategamerboy12

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This is a problem that I've had occur on three computers, my NEC Ready 7022 with integrated Alliance ProMotion graphics, my Pentium MMX machine with an S3 Trio 64 V2/DX card, and my Toshiba Tecra 550CDT laptop with an integrated S3 Virge. The only computer I've tried that runs the game perfectly is my HP Vectra VL2 4/66 with integrated Cirrus Logic graphics.

Basically, on those other three machines, the game will run and you can actually hear all of the audio just fine, but the video is totally broken. On the NEC Ready the screen is always completely blank, however on the MMX and Tecra you get a bright white fade in where the first opening logo animation is supposed to be but you can't actually see it. In-game all you get is just a bunch of jumbled ascii characters on the screen.

I really want to get the game working on the MMX machine, since that has a large hard drive and it'd make the most sense to completely install the game to the HDD on there (it's very easy to get the game to run entirely without the CD). I tried it with and without things like S3VBE20, S3VBEFIX, etc. Nothing will fix it. Has anyone else ran into this issue before? I tried searching for it but came up empty.

Last edited by thepirategamerboy12 on 2021-08-11, 21:51. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 7, by Gmlb256

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Isn't the ASCII character thing related to the 8x14 font issue that happens on other games where the font is just garbage on some video cards?

I'm not familiar with that game though.

VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2A @ 1.46 GHz | ASUS P2-99 | 256 MB PC133 SDRAM | GeForce3 Ti 200 64 MB | Voodoo2 12 MB | SBLive! | AWE64 | SBPro2 | GUS

Reply 2 of 7, by thepirategamerboy12

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Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-11, 20:55:

Isn't the ASCII character thing related to the 8x14 font issue that happens on other games where the font is just garbage on some video cards?

I'm not familiar with that game though.

No, I don't think so. Basically, imagine this except all you see is a bunch of random ASCII characters scattered all over the screen. Fyi, this is an SVGA game.

Reply 3 of 7, by Gmlb256

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Probably the SVGA video mode is a non-standard one which predates VESA. Does the game support a VESA video mode?

LineWars II has a similar thing where there is a accelerated S3 video mode that uses 800x600 but that only works on cards prior to Trio64 and this one checks if that mode exist or not.

VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2A @ 1.46 GHz | ASUS P2-99 | 256 MB PC133 SDRAM | GeForce3 Ti 200 64 MB | Voodoo2 12 MB | SBLive! | AWE64 | SBPro2 | GUS

Reply 4 of 7, by thepirategamerboy12

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Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-11, 21:20:

Probably the SVGA video mode is a non-standard one which predates VESA. Does the game support a VESA video mode?

LineWars II has a similar thing where there is a accelerated S3 video mode that uses 800x600 but that only works on cards prior to Trio64 and this one checks if that mode exist or not.

Idk, there's no video configuration in the setup at all, just sound card config. I would think it'd support VESA because the game is from late 1995.

Reply 5 of 7, by Gmlb256

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I have found a manual of that game and says that there is a command line switch called VESA. Try it to see if it solves the problem on the S3 video hardware.

VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2A @ 1.46 GHz | ASUS P2-99 | 256 MB PC133 SDRAM | GeForce3 Ti 200 64 MB | Voodoo2 12 MB | SBLive! | AWE64 | SBPro2 | GUS

Reply 6 of 7, by thepirategamerboy12

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Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-08-11, 21:37:

I have found a manual of that game and says that there is a command line switch called VESA. Try it to see if it solves the problem on the S3 video hardware.

Nice, that fixed it! Thank you very much.