VOGONS


First post, by DosFreak

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

I decided to pull Anachronox out and give it a whirl again after playing it for a bit when it first came out and then putting it aside.

Unfortunately all it would do was crash. I did everything.

Patched with Build 44,45,46 Patches
Tried all of the game options for the game.
Tried Glide Wrappers. (Weirdly the game uses WickedGL for some odd reason.....)
Reduced sound acceleration.
16/32bit color desktop.
Made sure FSAA/Ansio was disable.
Tried that gl_multitexture commandline but that didn't do anything.
Tons of other stuff.

Nothing worked. The game would crash indicating an error in "anoxgfx.dll" or if I was using a glide wrapper it would point to my "atioglxx.dll" drivers.

Finally due to being familiar with having to use older OGL ICD's to get games to work (although admittedly I haven't had to do this for quite some time), I went through my collection of OGL drivers and went to the first set of Catalysts with X800 support.

Catalyst v4.5

I extracted the atioglxx.dll driver to my Anachronox folder and Tada! I've been playing Anachronox @ 1600X1200@32bit with 4x AA/16Ansio for the past 20 minutes. (Before the game would either crash immediatly or crash within a minute or two).

So here's the info if anyone else runs into this problem.

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Make your games work offline

Reply 1 of 5, by DosFreak

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Been going through the ATI OGL drivers.....and decided to investigate something that's been bothering me for awhile but I've put it off.

I've noticed an "atioglx1.dll" file along with the "atioglxx.dll" file in my system32 folder for quite some time. I simply assumed it was ATI's uninstaller that simply renamed the older .dll instead of deleting it. NOPE!

Looks like ATI is bundling an older ICD along with their newer ICD's!

From the 5.8 Drivers:

ATIOGLX1.dll=6,684,672 bytes)
ATIOGLxx.dll=5,005,312 bytes)

as you can see a major reduction in size in the atioglxx.dll. It doesn't appear that the atioglx1.dll is used for fallback either. I bet if the user has a problem with their OGL program they call up ATI, ATI has them use the older ICD and then they log the call......probably track the programs with errors. That's assuming that they give a rats ass. A shitty ass beta test procedure if I've ever seen one.

Found this post: http://digg.com/gaming/ATI_has_miracle_OpenGL_hack

Here's the real issue with ATI's Open GL: after Catalyst 5.3 (+/- a version), any Catalyst version going forward for the R4xx series GPU's seem to require earlier versions of "atioglxx.dll" and "atioglx1.dll" to run certain OpenGL games, e.g. MOHAA Spearhead. Several fixes are described on the web, yet ATI refuses to acknowledge the issue or repair the problem. I say use resources to fix quirky drivers to allow popular games to run on popular hardware as advertised and then evolve the efficiency. But that's just me.

If that's true that would also explain my SpearHead not working....it would simply crash to Desktop...I assumed it was SafeDisc even tho I have the original CD.

WTF ATI. You cannot hide your incompetence with a single ICD now you have to bundle two with your driver packages? W-T-F. I've never been one of those Nvidia freaks that boast about how their Nvidia ICD can get XXX # of FPS in Q3. I've always known that Nvidia has the better ICD but it's something I put up with for all the other benefits of using an ATI card. It looks like with the 7800 series Nvidia has finally caught up with ATI....so unless ATI fixes their ICD before the next generation of Nvidia cards comes out (When I plan to buy my next Nvidia card) I'll be dumping ATI.....AGAIN! Heck, I'll get better Linux support too!

Can someone who has the latest CATS look into this, to see if ATI has unified their ICD? I would try the latest but I usually stick with drivers for quite awhile because I like a stable system.

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Make your games work offline

Reply 2 of 5, by eL_PuSHeR

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Yep! I have also have two of them. Didn't know about this crappy issue. These are taken from Catalyst 5.11 (which are currently installed). 😳

Intel i7 5960X
Gigabye GA-X99-Gaming 5
8 GB DDR4 (2100)
8 GB GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming (Gigabyte)

Reply 3 of 5, by gulikoza

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I think one of these is for OGL 1.5, the other is for 2.0

Reply 4 of 5, by eL_PuSHeR

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Still, they should have made it in JUST ONE FILE keeping backwards compatibility. That's just my opinion.

Intel i7 5960X
Gigabye GA-X99-Gaming 5
8 GB DDR4 (2100)
8 GB GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming (Gigabyte)

Reply 5 of 5, by HunterZ

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Interesting. Also, Anachronox is a very buggy game built around the Quake/Quake 2 engine. Be sure to dig up all the patches you can find for it (I think there is even a semi-unofficial one that helps)

I put the game down (at least twice) after leaving the first planet because I lost interest. It's a very original aventure/RPG hybrid but it needed better pacing.