First post, by SevenEleven
Hello everyone,
Recently built a retro PC to play some older games, which has been quite successful across the board, except for one game. Having fond nostalgia for the game "Gex: Enter The Gecko", my friend gifted me his old copy he had laying around. I've been trying to get it to run on my system, but it won't decently work for the life of me.
My specs:
- Windows 98
- Pentium III, 866mhz
- GeForce 4200 Ti 128mb
- 512mb ram
- Soundblaster Live!
- IBM P76 Monitor
- Nvidia 45.32 drivers
- DX8.0
Here's the timeline of what I've tried:
1. Installing the copy I was gifted, which seems to be the 3DFX version. Won't start due to Glide2x.dll missing (obviously).
2. Using Zeckensack wrapper, ironically the best results of everything I ended up trying. The game launches and I manage to play, but sadly after playing successfully with more or less complete graphics, I get permanent graphical glitches even outside of the game. I get these pattern type marks all over the screen, even simply on the desktop, which only go away after reinstalling my GPU drivers and coming back every time I reinstall Zeckensack and launch Gex. Thus, not being able to use Zeckensack as a sustainable option.
3. Tried using dgvoodoo 1.5, isolated in the Gex folder. The game launches but crashes after the intro screens to a "main: grSstOpen failed" error. Every other attempt to restart the game afterwards results in an "illegal action" error, and freezes the system, needing a restart to fix.
4. Noticed there is a D3D patch for the 3DFX version of the game, managed to source it and used it to replace the gex3d.exe on a fresh install. The game tries to launch, the screen has a black screen flicker and goes straight back to desktop without anything else happening.
5. Did all possible tests in dxdiag, and everything appears to be fine.
6. Gave up, and set my mind on purchasing the D3D version of the game hoping it would change something or work better than the patch, for some reason. Found it, bought it, installed it... Surprise: it didn't work. I have the exact same issue as with the D3D patch for the 3DFX version. The game tries to launch, flickers a black screen and goes back to desktop without any error messages or anything happening.
7. Booted into BIOS and limited AGP mode to X2, disabled fast drive etc... basically tried some things I saw could work with other similar issues in similar environments, but nothing.
Tried launching the game in both my default settings, as well as changing up the resolution, as well as changing color depth, refresh rate for all these steps, the results appeared to be the same every time. Getting desperate out here, feel like I've exhausted my knowledge as to having a go at making this work *sigh*.
Would anyone happen to have an idea at what I would be doing wrong, or have other suggestions? Thanks a lot!
