Nothing you can do really. Just use dgVoodoo 2 wrapper. You're stuck with ugly undithered image, even if everything else works fine.

menus become invisible and the HUD flickers in and out of existence at random.

That's Nvidia bug with a very long history (dated early 2000s). Easily solvable with RivaTuner or Nvidia Inspector, but probably unfixable with modern drivers.

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-19, 06:30:

What's the newest, beefiest graphics card that will play Blood II correctly, and why?

If you had RTX2070 or even better, then the game just work. I have Geforce GT 730 and the game just rocks and it rocks equally on Ryzen APU/Vega Graphics laptop.

If you wish to know more, then request mods to move the thread.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2021-06-19, 06:39:

Just use dgVoodoo 2 wrapper.

Not an option for a Windows XP user.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2021-06-19, 06:39:

Easily solvable with RivaTuner or Nvidia Inspector

Okay... umm... how?

It sounds like the actual solution is to just get a Radeon.

For RivaTuner that's Blitting tab in Direct3D options. Something similar is also present in Nvidia Inspector, if I recall correctly.

It sounds like the actual solution is to just get a Radeon.

Won't fix lack of 16-bit dithering, unless it's Radeon X1950 or something older.

For the record I installed the GOG version on my XP sys and the highest I can go is 1024 x 768 using a Geforce 7950 GT. Haven't applied any patches yet
though so can't vouch for them yet. Maybe in next few days I'll try some and post the results.

Got me curious on running this on a modern sys, I'll install on my ryzen sys and see how it goes.

Okay, I poked around a bit and there IS a solution:

- Add the line "maxfps=60" to the Autoexec.cfg and defaults.cfg files, and set them to read-only;
- Disable Directx 6 commands;
- Enable optimized Surfaces, poly gap fixing, and triple buffering;
- When you first run the game, press ~ to bring up the console, leave it open for 5 seconds, and then close it.

Blood II is now working 100% perfectly in Direct3D mode on my 32-bit WinXP partition, every time (except that 1600 x 1200 still isn't a selectable resolution and would probably crash my system if it was)

EDIT: since autoexec.cfg also has the resolution information, I tried adjusting the resolution to 1600 x 1200 manually using that file and it worked fine. So, Yay! Blood II working at 1600 x 1200 in Direct3D mode flawlessly.

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-21, 07:05:

Okay, I poked around a bit and there IS a solution: […]
Show full quote

Okay, I poked around a bit and there IS a solution:

- Add the line "maxfps=60" to the Autoexec.cfg and defaults.cfg files, and set them to read-only;
- Disable Directx 6 commands;
- Enable optimized Surfaces, poly gap fixing, and triple buffering;
- When you first run the game, press ~ to bring up the console, leave it open for 5 seconds, and then close it.

Blood II is now working 100% perfectly in Direct3D mode on my 32-bit WinXP partition, every time (except that 1600 x 1200 still isn't a selectable resolution and would probably crash my system if it was)

EDIT: since autoexec.cfg also has the resolution information, I tried adjusting the resolution to 1600 x 1200 manually using that file and it worked fine. So, Yay! Blood II working at 1600 x 1200 in Direct3D mode flawlessly.

that's interesting, but what jumped out is bringing up the console for 5 seconds! how did you find that part out and do you know what it is doing that helps?

blood 2 is one of those strangely sensitive games, worse than most of others from that year!

gerry wrote on 2021-06-22, 08:50:

what jumped out is bringing up the console for 5 seconds! how did you find that part out

DuckDuckGo.

gerry wrote on 2021-06-22, 08:50:

and do you know what it is doing that helps?

Not a clue. I don't even know if it's strictly necessary or not. I also don't know if capping the FPS at 60 is doing anything, or if disabling DirectX 6 is doing anything.

WDStudios wrote on 2021-06-22, 09:54:

I also don't know if capping the FPS at 60 is doing anything, or if disabling DirectX 6 is doing anything.

At the past disabling DirectX 6 commands did fix some things for me when i used WinXP, so that could help. Also capping the FPS at 60 helps with mouse input working without "skipping" and other glitches (physics, collisions, enemies being way too hard/fast/etc) so you certainly want that too.