VOGONS


First post, by Shagittarius

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Hey all, just got my vintage PC up and running and wanted to try out TR2.

Currently I'm running Win'95 w DX-6, The Latest Voodoo2 drivers I think 3.0.1.1 or something like that for DX-6, I'm using the Diamond Monster II board for the 3d, I've run several other games and had no issues.

The weird thing is Tomb Raider 1 (in DOS) had the same problem and I needed to set up certain environmental variables in DOS to get it to work correctly, but that hardly seems like the right thing to do in Win'95.

I did some searching on the net but I can't find anything about this particular issue. Does anyone have any experience or ideas about this?

Thanks, and sorry, I just realized I posted this in the wrong forum.

Reply 1 of 14, by MiniMax

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Reply 2 of 14, by doomer

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I think it might related to the settings in Tomb Raider 2. What options did you choose in the tomb raider 2 setup? And what resolution? Missing textures could indicate insufficient video memory for a specific (higher) resolution, and one of the results is exactly missing textures.

Reply 3 of 14, by batracio

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doomer wrote:

I think it might related to the settings in Tomb Raider 2. What options did you choose in the tomb raider 2 setup? And what resolution? Missing textures could indicate insufficient video memory for a specific (higher) resolution, and one of the results is exactly missing textures.

Not in Voodoo2. Framebuffer and texture memory are physically separated.

Don't use environment variables for Tomb Taider 2. They aren't needed.

Reply 4 of 14, by doomer

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Not in Voodoo2. Framebuffer and texture memory are physically separated.

Don't use environment variables for Tomb Taider 2. They aren't needed.

Yes.. but imagine.. if he is trying 1024x768... he will get no textures.. I guarantee you that..
That's why he has to list the resolution he has selected..
Surely you must know voodoo 2 can't output insane 3d resolutions like 1600x1200? Its limit is 800x600.

Reply 5 of 14, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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Shagittarius wrote:

The weird thing is Tomb Raider 1 (in DOS) had the same problem and I needed to set up certain environmental variables in DOS to get it to work correctly, but that hardly seems like the right thing to do in Win'95.

Wait, if you need to set up environmental variables in DOS, then you need to set the same environment variables as well when running the game in Win9x; that's also the case with Mechwarrior 2 and EF2000 V2.0.

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 6 of 14, by doomer

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I also have another idea, Shaggitarius. As the Voodoo 2 is a passthrough card, make sure it is the one selected as primary in tomb raider 2 setup. Otherwise, if your 2d card is selected as primary it might have insufficient 3d capabilities, thus resulting in missing textures and other defects. Check Tomb Raider 2 Setup.

Reply 7 of 14, by batracio

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doomer wrote:

Yes.. but imagine.. if he is trying 1024x768... he will get no textures.. I guarantee you that..
That's why he has to list the resolution he has selected..
Surely you must know voodoo 2 can't output insane 3d resolutions like 1600x1200? Its limit is 800x600.

If he is trying 1024x768, he won't get textures, right... actually he won't get anything at all, because the game will report that 1024x768 is not supported by a Render init failed with "CreateZBuffer" error message... unless he disables the Z Buffer option, and then the game will be able to run at that resolution. But, again, that has nothing to do with the textures, because frame and Z buffers use one memory bank, and textures use another one.

PS: just one more comment... you can bypass the 800x600 limitation with a single Voodoo2 by installing the Metabyte Wicked3D driver, which allows to play TR2, TR3, TR4, TR5, Resident Evil and other games at 1024x672.

Reply 8 of 14, by Shagittarius

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Thanks for all the great suggestions. I'm going to try all of them and let you know what works, as far as the resolution im running it at 640X480 so I don't think its a problem with memory.

I think the suggestion about environmental variables being important in WIn95 sounds promising and I'm gonna try that first and see what happens thanks all.

I'll let you know the results.

Reply 9 of 14, by batracio

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Shagittarius wrote:

I think the suggestion about environmental variables being important in WIn95 sounds promising and I'm gonna try that first and see what happens thanks all.

Shag, the environment variables are used only by Glide libraries, the Direct3D driver just ignores them. And Tomb Raider 2 is a Direct3D game. But well, try whatever you want, it won't do any harm (because it won't do anything).

Reply 10 of 14, by Shagittarius

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You are right, the environmental variables didn't do anything...

I'm wondering what the problem is I remember playing Tomb Raider 2 back in the day on a Voodoo2...Maybe there are just some particular drivers that make it work?

When you play the game all the shading is there the lightmaps etc...its just missing all the textures...

Also the Voodoo2 is the card im choosing for rendering.

Reply 11 of 14, by batracio

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Shagittarius wrote:

I'm wondering what the problem is I remember playing Tomb Raider 2 back in the day on a Voodoo2...Maybe there are just some particular drivers that make it work?

Maybe, but the 3.01.01 drivers you're using are very good. Better than latest (IMHO), because 3.02.02 drivers have a bug with transparent textures that makes them appear as opaque textures. You can download and try other drivers from here:

http://falconfly.de/voodoo2.htm

(Most 3rd party drivers for Win9x, like FastVoodoo2 releases, are based on 3.03.00b Direct3D driver, which also has the transparency rendering bug).

Shagittarius wrote:

When you play the game all the shading is there the lightmaps etc...its just missing all the textures...

Could you take a screenshot? I had a similar problem in Tomb Raider III demo several years ago, because the demo required DirectX 6 and I had DirectX 5. An update solved the problem.

Reply 12 of 14, by Shagittarius

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Sure, I'll take a screenshot ASAP but I've got some other interesting news as well...It works under '98SE...

I installed the same driver for the Voodoo2 under 98 and 95 but I'll have to check and see if the DX version is different...I'm running DX6 on 95 but not sure whats running on 98SE. I have to get ready for work but when I have more time i'll follow this up with a more informative post.

Thanks for everyones input.

Reply 13 of 14, by Shagittarius

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Thank you all for the help, It appears that it was simply a DX version. While I believed I had installed DX6 on 95 I may not have, but I found a good install for DX6.1 and that took care of the problems.

Thank you all for your assistance I wouldn't have fixed this without your suggestions.

Reply 14 of 14, by batracio

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Glad to know that. So many years playing the classic Tomb Raiders on Voodoo cards had to be useful for something.