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Expendable (by Rage) bump mapping issue

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Reply 80 of 131, by maximus

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kolano wrote:

Finding/getting the older fairy demo, the demo from the G400, is even harder. Was very disappointed after a long time searching for it and finally getting it, that even with the "i_promise_to_buy_a_g400" line added to it's config, it still wouldn't run on my nVidia card under Windows 7, nor in XP mode.

I can't even get the G400 fairy demo to work with the Parhelia under XP. Even with hardware detection disabled! (FYI, I believe the exact config line is i_promise_i_will_go_buy_a_matrox_g400). It does run fairly well on the G400 MAX under Windows 98, though, provided that VSync is disabled. VSync absolutely kills that card. Can't imagine why it's forced on by default.

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Reply 81 of 131, by maximus

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philscomputerlab wrote:

Sweet!

How does that card compare to the G400 MAX?

For a concrete comparison, here are some Expendable timedemo results.

System A: Pentium III 1400S, Matrox G400 MAX, Windows 98 SE
(all benchmarks run at 1024x768x32, high settings, bilinear filtering)
retail install, no bump mapping, no stencil shadows: 59 fps
retail install, no bump mapping, stencil shadows enabled: 48 fps
G400 patch, bump maps and stencil shadows enabled: 37.7 fps

System B: Pentium 4 2.8 GHz, Matrox Parhelia 128MB, Windows XP SP3
(all benchmarks run at 1024x768x32, high settings, trilinear filtering)
retail install, no bump mapping, no stencil shadows: 112 fps
retail install, no bump mapping, stencil shadows enabled: 92.7 fps
G400 patch, bump maps and stencil shadows enabled: 91.9 fps

EDIT: G400 patch, max settings, 16x FAA and AF enabled: 77.7 fps

Last edited by maximus on 2014-11-06, 10:26. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 82 of 131, by vetz

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Could you try and swap the Parhelia into the P3 system and bench? Just to see how much the CPU affects it

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Reply 83 of 131, by maximus

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I'd like to, but Matrox never released Windows 98 drivers for the Parhelia, so I would need to do a fresh XP install. Eh, I've been meaning to re-image the Pentium III system anyway... maybe I'll load up XP first and fool around.

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Reply 84 of 131, by PhilsComputerLab

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Another option, check the BIOS if you can lower the FSB or multiplier of the P4.

Or can't you just put the G400 MAX in the P4 machine? Both are AGP right?

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Reply 85 of 131, by maximus

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If anyone is still interested, I finally got around to testing the Parhelia in the PIII rig.

System: Pentium III 1400S, Matrox Parhelia, Windows XP SP3
(all benchmarks run at 1024x768x32, high settings, trilinear filtering)
retail install, no bump mapping, no stencil shadows: 90.7 fps
retail install, no bump mapping, stencil shadows enabled: 75.4 fps
G400 patch, bump maps and stencil shadows enabled: 73.81 fps
G400 patch, max settings, 16x FAA and AF enabled: 67.87 fps

It looks like the Pentium III 1400S bottlenecks the Parhelia a little, but not too much. Pretty impressive, considering that the Pentium 4 2.8 runs at twice the frequency.

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Reply 87 of 131, by soviet conscript

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can someone just clear something up for me real quick?

So does the EMBM feature in Exendable only fully work with a matrox g400 or can other cards be made to do it perfectly? I remember reading that you only got all the graphical effects with a G400 and I remember a page that had 3 screen shots, one without EMBM, one with EMBM on a Matrox g400 and one with EMBM on a Radeon or some other card. the not matrox card had the water effect going for it but some details like the tank tred marks on the ground were missing and I've seen others where the translucent water effects only work on a G400.

Is this no longer the case?

Reply 88 of 131, by maximus

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Non-Matrox cards like the Radeon 8500 and GeForce3 have EMBM support; 3DMark2000 backs this up. The problem is that the Matrox patched version of Expendable will only launch on Matrox hardware. Without the patch, most EMBM effects (e.g., water) are not available. If we could figure out a way to fool Expendable into thinking it was running on Matrox hardware, that would be fantastic. (As I said above, I tried doing this with 3D-Analyze - no luck.)

Last edited by maximus on 2015-08-22, 03:25. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 89 of 131, by idspispopd

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IIRC the EMBM version will run on G400, G450 and Parhelia, but not on G550.
There was a link to an older page with a patch to make the EMBM version run on Non-Matrox cards, but that patch isn't available any more.

Reply 90 of 131, by soviet conscript

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idspispopd wrote:

IIRC the EMBM version will run on G400, G450 and Parhelia, but not on G550.
There was a link to an older page with a patch to make the EMBM version run on Non-Matrox cards, but that patch isn't available any more.

strange for a patch to go completely missing from the internet, you would think it would be archived somewhere or someone would still have it on a hard drive. I guess its not so big of a game though for people to care.

and yikes! matrox Parhelia still are $50 to $100+ on ebay? why?

Last edited by soviet conscript on 2015-08-21, 18:16. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 91 of 131, by Stiletto

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soviet conscript wrote:
idspispopd wrote:

IIRC the EMBM version will run on G400, G450 and Parhelia, but not on G550.
There was a link to an older page with a patch to make the EMBM version run on Non-Matrox cards, but that patch isn't available any more.

strange for a patch to go completly missing from the internet, you would think it would be archived somewhere or someone would still have it on a hard drive. I guess its not so big of a game though for people to care.

I'll take a stab at finding, I already found a few other "edsfilho"'s...

[EDIT] and at least one of them was wrong, of course.

Looks like edsfilho's patch made it to Poland at some point, here it is in some (undated?) chat log, probably from around the same time: http://heh.pl/abc/f9/tid11753.html
also dead/unarchived.

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do the Fandango!" - Queen

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Reply 92 of 131, by maximus

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soviet conscript wrote:

and yikes! matrox Parhelia still are $50 to $100+ on ebay? why?

With a little vigilance, you can find OEM Parhelias for well under $20. Retail cards are more; 256 MB versions are WAY more.

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Reply 93 of 131, by idspispopd

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maximus wrote:

With a little vigilance, you can find OEM Parhelias for well under $20. Retail cards are more; 256 MB versions are WAY more.

Even those can go for less, see http://www.ebay.fr/itm/carte-graphique-MATROX … O-/141758150506? (sold for 15€. I suppose that one is PCI-X, though.).

Reply 94 of 131, by Tuxality

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Try this: http://redtux.rocik.net/?page=projects&sub=expendable
Apply this on a clean Expendable installation from Retail CD. Works on my desktop with NVIDIA GeForce 6100 on 32bit version of Microsoft Windows 7. It will crash when exiting the game, just tell me if this works for you and then I'll make a proper patch.

Screenshots in 1680x1050 resolution with 32bit depth and HW Texture Compression enabled:
screen1.png
screen2.png

Last edited by Tuxality on 2015-08-29, 15:11. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 95 of 131, by vetz

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OMFG!

Vogons community to the rescue again 😁

This is a first! Previously members have miraculously found lost patches or demos, this time Tuxality recreates it!

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Reply 96 of 131, by ZellSF

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Is bumpmapping forced on? I tried disabling it for comparison and still got the result in the attachment.

Nvidia 680/64-bit/Win8 here. Seems to work.

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Reply 97 of 131, by Tuxality

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ZellSF, I believe that switch in options menu is for bump mapping on objects not EMBM on water surface, although it's my first time playing this game so I'm not sure. You can see the difference on objects when switching it on/off. I only bypassed the Matrox hardware check, nothing is forced on.

vetz, haha thanks! 😁