VOGONS


Shadow Warrior 3D black screen

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First post, by Arbys Guy

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Hi All new to the site, been collecting parts and i finnaly got around to building a few computers but i cant get shadow warrior to run it just loads a blank screen with either dos or windows exe, allthough Duke Nukem 3D works.
current build
Asus P2B-VM
Ati Rage Fury(Rage 128)
Realtek RTL8139C
64mb SDRAM
128mb SDRAM
64mb SDRAM
Pentium II 400MHZ(realmode)
40GB Maxtor
Windows 98 SE
I can get Shadow warrior to work with a Gigabyte GA-622 32C(TNT2 Model 64) but when near water the FPS drop dramatically, its playable but highly undesired.(plus i think the ati card fits more with the mobo theme since the onboard is rage aswell)
ill post all of my video cards asap maybe somebody can suggest a better one instead of trying to fix this problem, i do have some voodoo 2s but i wanted to sli them and add heat sinks fans ect but there is only 3 pci slots and i need a network card for multiplayer i dont see any way to accomplish that with this board, i also have a voodoo 3 but its either incompatible with agp 2x or broken because i get weird lines through the screen and distorted colors.(surprisingly shadow warrior works great 🤣) i did get it with a lot of old computers for practially nothing so who knows. here pics of the comp i went a little nuts with blue leds hahaha

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Reply 1 of 24, by leileilol

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Arbys Guy wrote:

I can get Shadow warrior to work with a Gigabyte GA-622 32C(TNT2 Model 64) but when near water the FPS drop dramatically, its playable but highly undesired

Welcome to the wonderful world of software renderers with lookup table translucency.

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long live PCem

Reply 2 of 24, by Arbys Guy

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are you saying its because its running in software mode? i thought all you could change in that game was resolution and minor details in scenery.

Reply 3 of 24, by Warlord

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I had plenty of problems getting Shadow Warrior to run. Basically I am going to tell you is the game will not run if your CPU is like over 600mhz. You also cannot patch the game and use the 3dfx build engine to build the game textures if the CPU is too fast. You can try to down clock your CPU if your BIOS will allow it if not you may have to try a program to throttle the CPU but i never tried that. I had the same problem and searched a lot of threads and only like 1 guy explained that and not very well. I have a P3 800mhz and I had to downclock the game to 75% bus speed to get it to run in pure dos.

Seeing how yours is only 400mhz though i can't see how thats a problem for you, The game will run on a voodoo 2 as far as software rendering i have no clue. voodoo 3 doesn't work on shadow warrior i t only will work is software mode not glide mode.

Reply 4 of 24, by leileilol

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Besides, losing 3dfx support in SW's not that big of a deal. It's still a technically software renderer - just annoyingly blurrier and not any faster. Its hype and impracticality keeps the 3dfx fanboys at bay out of fear of not being able to use their hardware in the late 90s.

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 5 of 24, by Arbys Guy

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Warlord wrote:

I had plenty of problems getting Shadow Warrior to run. Basically I am going to tell you is the game will not run if your CPU is like over 600mhz.

Well i ran it on my voodoo 2 sli,riva tnt 2 900mhz AMD and it works, still really laggy near water.(i think the riva tnt2 is running the game though not voodoo.) maybe the game is just poorly made? like i was saying before its stopped working in the 400mhz computer as soon as i put the ati rage fury in there.

Reply 6 of 24, by Arbys Guy

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leileilol wrote:

Besides, losing 3dfx support in SW's not that big of a deal. It's still a technically software renderer - just annoyingly blurrier and not any faster. Its hype and impracticality keeps the 3dfx fanboys at bay out of fear of not being able to use their hardware in the late 90s.

What graphics card or cards work the best with shadow warrior? i have a bunch of 8mb cards from nvidia ,ati,matrox,others i cant remember, i will post my cards today hopefully i got something allready.

Reply 7 of 24, by Arbys Guy

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Okay here are the
MATROX
Millenium G200LE -- Millenium G200 -- Millenium P650 -- G100A/4/hp -- MATROX MGA-MIL2I 576-06 rev.B thought i had more most are doubles.

OTHER
Pine3d XP 2800 -- SiS 6326 -- ProLink MVGA-CLM30P -- Number Nine SR9 Extreme Rev.B -- Intel i740 -- Cirrus Logic CL-GD5446-HC-A -- S3 Virge Rev.D(MPEVGA Pro3d) -- S3 Virge/GX2 Rev.B

ATI
RAGE XL -- RAGE 128 Pro -- RAGE Pro Turbo v2.0 -- RAGE IIC -- 3D RAGE IIC Rev1.0 -- Radeon 7000 -- Radeon 9000 Pro -- Radeon 9550 -- PowerColor RAGE 128Pro (A5PT) -- PowerColor Radeon 7000(RV6D) -- PowerColor Radeon 9200SE(R92LE-C3S) -- PowerColor Radeon 9200SE(R92LE-LC3) -- -- Celestica Radeon 9200SE -- HIS Excalibur Radeon 9250 -- Sapphire Radeon 9550 Lite
ATI All-in-Wonder
Radeon 32M -- Pinnacle Radeon 8500DV -- 9600 Pro

nVidia
Riva TNT Model 64 (Sevral Variants)---- MSI Vanta / Gigabyte GA-622 32C / also have the vanilla cards if they are better or worse for certain games
Riva TNT2 Model 64 (Sevral Variants)------- MSI MS 8808 / Innovision TN2 M64 32MB / also have the vanilla cards if they are better or worse for certain games
Micro Star MS-8852 V.2(GF2 MX400) -- Asus V8420(GF4 Ti4200) -- Asus V8170 re 1.00(GF4 MX440) -- Asus V7100 Pro(GF2 MX400) -- Leadtek Winfast a340 T (GF FX 5200) -- MSI MS8817 (GF2 MX400) -- MSI Geforce4 MX440 -- XFX Geforce 6200(micro) -- PowerColor Geforce 2 MX400 -- EVGA e-Geforce2 MX200
Quadro2 MXR -- Geforce4 MX440 SE -- Geforce2 MX400

i also have a
one voodoo 3 2000
two voodoo 2 V2 1000
one voodoo 2 provideo
one diamond monster 3d 2(voodoo 2)

I still have more cards but they are PCI-e or in computers i haven't dabbled into yet

Reply 8 of 24, by leileilol

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Arbys Guy wrote:

What graphics card or cards work the best with shadow warrior? i

Anything with a Vesa 2.0 implementation. It's not that picky (except for special optimized 320x200 modes for VLB-era boards that had been left in since '94).

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 9 of 24, by Arbys Guy

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leileilol wrote:
Arbys Guy wrote:

What graphics card or cards work the best with shadow warrior? i

Anything with a Vesa 2.0 implementation. It's not that picky (except for special optimized 320x200 modes for VLB-era boards that had been left in since '94).

Well i searched vesa 2.0 on ebay and the only thing that showed up was the SiS 6326 150$! good thing i have one! i will give it a try tonight, im sure i got some more that are also vesa 2.0.

BTW with vesa 2.0 support will the water areas still drop fps severely? is there anyway to solve that?

Reply 10 of 24, by leileilol

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Arbys Guy wrote:

BTW with vesa 2.0 support will the water areas still drop fps severely? is there anyway to solve that?

By not having butter-smooth expectations of CPU-driven software renderers that use palettes. Overdraw will always be a big dip, especially in high resolutions. There's no miracle video card that will solve this.

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 11 of 24, by Arbys Guy

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leileilol wrote:
Arbys Guy wrote:

BTW with vesa 2.0 support will the water areas still drop fps severely? is there anyway to solve that?

By not having butter-smooth expectations of CPU-driven software renderers that use palettes. Overdraw will always be a big dip, especially in high resolutions. There's no miracle video card that will solve this.

Damn thanks for the explanations. How about a miracle cpu? i got a bunch of those aswell
Or am i forever plagued with the loss of fps around water. i know i could jsut play the steam version or get meltdown or something, but i really like playing on old hardware, especially for multiplayer, i found ipx games work the best on windows 98

Reply 12 of 24, by gdjacobs

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Arbys Guy wrote:

Well i searched vesa 2.0 on ebay and the only thing that showed up was the SiS 6326 150$! good thing i have one! i will give it a try tonight, im sure i got some more that are also vesa 2.0.

BTW with vesa 2.0 support will the water areas still drop fps severely? is there anyway to solve that?

Have you got an AGP slot? TNT2 cards are very compatible and have good performance. Also, some versions of S3 cards (like the Virge GX) also have excellent DOS speed and compatibility.

Don't forget to tweak the MTRR.
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/dos-graphics-boost.html

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 13 of 24, by Warlord

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Just my opinion, probably a matrox g400 Maxx with a voodoo 2, running the game from pure dos with sw3dfx would run this game the best. Matrox and Voodoo3+ cards have a much higher quality DAC digital to analog video converter over Nvidia and ATI cards. Images in general are much clearer. Unless you have never used a matrox card than you wouldn't know. I'm sure people don't like that but its just the truth. TNT2 and Nvidia Cards are great in general when running in x32 and in open GL. This game is neither of those things. at x16 and lower resolutions TnT gets smoked in benchmarks by Matrox and 3dfx cards in 2D and at 16x and lower res.

Last edited by Warlord on 2018-02-03, 04:04. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 14 of 24, by gdjacobs

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3dfx cards are fine for DOS compatibility, although they're less available than older nVidia cards. Matrox cards are known to be subject to glitches in DOS, although a G400 might be fine with SW.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 16 of 24, by Stiletto

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Moved.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 17 of 24, by Arbys Guy

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gdjacobs wrote:

Have you got an AGP slot? TNT2 cards are very compatible and have good performance. Also, some versions of S3 cards (like the Virge GX) also have excellent DOS speed and compatibility.

Don't forget to tweak the MTRR.
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/dos-graphics-boost.html

Yes there is 1 agp 3pci and 1 isa
and no i did not tweak the mtrr, i still havnt setup dos mode going to do that pretty soon here Thanks!

Last edited by Arbys Guy on 2018-02-04, 07:00. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 19 of 24, by Warlord

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the sw3dff11.zip from 98 It is the 3dfx patch for that game. It doesn't do a full 3dfx conversion like many people said. It does however allow you to utilize a voodoo 2 at 800x600 and the game does look better and play better even if it's not a massive improvement it is a improvement over the software rendering.