VOGONS


First post, by d1stortion

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So I'm trying to get this game working on 3dfx cards. I tried it both on a Pentium III with Voodoo5 and a Pentium MMX with Voodoo1 and on both computers the installer just says there is no 3dfx card installed in the system. To make matters worse, in software mode the game runs too fast on the Pentium III.

I've heard the game doesn't work on anything but Voodoo1/2, which would suck if it's true, but alas I should be able to get it at least working on the Voodoo1. Any ideas?

Reply 2 of 14, by d1stortion

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Heh, if you don't have the game how would you test it out? 🤣

Seems I missed a hint in those corresponding threads when reading them months ago. Installing the software version and copying over the 3dfx exe into the folder. Will try that now on the Monster 3D...

Reply 4 of 14, by d1stortion

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Alright, tried it now on the 200 MMX. Copying Pandy3.bat and Pandy3.exe did the trick. Problem is, even on this computer the framerate is still erratic as hell, both software and Glide. Lags and speeds up again all the time, rather fatal for a platformer like that. It's unplayable. Crystal Dynamics and their damn oddball engines...

In this video here the game actually seems to run like it should. I'm thinking maybe it needs VSync. Will check that now...

Edit: Nope, didn't do squat except for causing the "normal" parts just to be laggy, with the fast ones still being fast. Lowering the refresh rate had no effect as well.

On a closer look the gameplay in the video seems to have these bouts of speedup as well, just not as pronounced as on my setup.

Last edited by d1stortion on 2014-04-29, 00:26. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 6 of 14, by d1stortion

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Thanks for that link, it didn't change anything though. If that patch was created by Zeus it's optimized for nGlide rather than real hardware, so this might explain it.

I could try contacting the maker of that video to ask how he got the game running like that, since it does appear to run considerably better than on my setup. As a last resort I'd get it for Playstation instead. That version was created by a different developer, Toys for Bob, so there might be a chance that it doesn't suffer from this BS.

Reply 7 of 14, by Mau1wurf1977

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Ok I also got the "3DFX not detected" during the installer.

I tried pandy3 but the game seems to only want to use the AGP card (GeForce4) and not the Voodoo.

Is there a way to force the game to use glide via command parameters?

The game itself runs ok but the graphics have massive scanlines.

My website with reviews, demos, drivers, tutorials and more...
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Reply 8 of 14, by F2bnp

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Mau1wurf1977 wrote:
Ok I also got the "3DFX not detected" during the installer. […]
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Ok I also got the "3DFX not detected" during the installer.

I tried pandy3 but the game seems to only want to use the AGP card (GeForce4) and not the Voodoo.

Is there a way to force the game to use glide via command parameters?

The game itself runs ok but the graphics have massive scanlines.

Give 3Dcc a try.

d1stortion, you could try a CPU slowdown program or one of the patches mentioned above. Nothing to lose by trying! I'd love to replay this game someday 😀

Reply 9 of 14, by d1stortion

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F2bnp, what do you mean by "one of the patches"? I only see one on the nGlide site and I did try that already as described above. As for CPU slowdown programs, I'm not into that at all. Tbh I think having several retro PCs should already do the trick, if it doesn't the game is simply at fault...

Mau1wurf1977, by scanlines you mean the intro movies I guess? That was a common thing for cutscenes back in the day, C&C also had that for example. The ingame graphics shouldn't have scanlines if you are playing on a LCD (320x240 fullscreen software).

How did you figure that Glide wants to use the AGP card? AFAIK for a Voodoo2 you need some environment variables for the card to be compatible.

Btw, it's worth mentioning that the 3D accelerated PC port doesn't add anything over the PSX version at all besides higher resolution. Bilinear filtering is disabled which is a rarity on Voodoo cards.

Reply 10 of 14, by Gamecollector

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I have tested all glide 2.1.1 games with my Voodoo2. ASUS P4P800 SE/P4 3.0E/512 MB RAM/WinME. Pandemonium is starting but with severe visual/gameplay glitches. Environment variables aren't working.

Asus P4P800 SE/Pentium4 3.2E/2 Gb DDR400B,
Radeon HD3850 Agp (Sapphire), Catalyst 14.4 (XpProSp3).
Voodoo2 12 MB SLI, Win2k drivers 1.02.00 (XpProSp3).

Reply 11 of 14, by d1stortion

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You are using a Pentium 4 though... ever tried a contemporary hardware config for the Voodoo2? Early Windows games can be CPU speed sensitive (heck, the damn game acts too fast even on a Pentium MMX...).

Reply 12 of 14, by d1stortion

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The Youtube person answered me. Although he uses virtually the same setup as me, he says he can't remember any speedup during gameplay. He suggests me to try Windows 95... 🙄

Yeah, I think I'm done here 😀

Reply 13 of 14, by kjliew

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You have one more option to play the game in DOSBox with voodoo1 emulation and Win98. Base on the year released and system requirements, having DOSBox in modern machines should be suffice to play this game. DOSBox on my not-so-modern Core 2 E8400 3.0G is roughly equivalent to Pentium 266MHz.

Reply 14 of 14, by d1stortion

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I beat the game. It's a good one... apart from those last two levels, which were an exercise in frustration. The end boss in particular is insanely hard and I only beat him due to luck 🙄

The level design in the game is fantastic at times. For what must have been one of the first examples of a 2.5D platformer they did a lot of things right. I'll play the sequel as well. That one I did play briefly back then but don't remember passing even the first stage.