hello,I'm having yet another problem caused on purpose by some evil anti-3dfx council or whatever:
the game "icewind dale" works perfect with my v3,both with the "3dfx card" checkbox enabled (I guess it switches to glide or uses a minigl) and with the checkbox disabled. (it uses regular opengl,it looks for the opengl32.dll file,I know because I tested it with wickedgl and I got the logo).
well,as I said,the game runs fine in glide (or minigl) mode and in opengl mode (I tested it with wickedgl,mesa,and the official 1.0.0.761 icd),BUT,after installing the expansion "heart of winter",THE GAME STOPS SUPPORTING VOODOO CARDS AND ALL WHAT YOU GET IS A WHITE SCREEN.
the readme of the expansion says it:
"Icewind Dale does not support any of the 3dfx Voodoo series of cards in 3D mode.
If you run the game using 3D mode using a Voodoo, you may experience white screens, lock ups, or other problems."
well,this is just stupid:
the program/engine supports perfectly a card but installing the expansion,removes the support?????!!!!!.
the readme statement is not even accurate,icewind dale does support the cards,it's a problem of heart of winter.
besides it being stupid,I'm sure it was made on purpose,call me paranoid,but I think there's some kind of conspiracy or something against 3dfx cards. nvidia and/or ati are behind it,and I guess they were outraged at the developers of the game: "how dare you to allow the game to support 3dfx cards!,fix that inmediatly!" so for the expansion the developers were forced to either remove the support from the engine,or to add code to artificially prevent the game from working if a 3dfx card is detected.
the pseudocode must be something like this:
"if (card == 3dfx),fillscreen(white);"
grrrrrrrrrrr!.
well,it doesn't matter if you check or uncheck the "3dfx card" box in the setup menu,the same thing happens,and I've tryed with the official icd,wickedgl,mesa with and without setting the enviroment variable to support textures bigger than 256x256,and the same thing happened: a white screen.
so,my question is: is there some patch or something that restores the support / removes the code that breaks it?

ps: ok,the original icewind dale works fine,and heart of winter works in software mode,but that's not the point,the point is that,as I said before,IT'S JUST STUPID (and evil,and indignating) that installing an expansion removes support for 3dfx cards.

I've got both games at home but they're not installed. I'll install them tonight when I get home and see what happens. I thought they both worked although I could be completely wrong on this. It's been a LONG time since playing either game. I remember playing Baulders Gate with a Voodoo card as well and that I know worked fine but..... I'll check, might just come up with same problem as you, who knows?

Pablo, the situation is not that bad. 3D mode in games that use Baldurs gate engine adds nothing to the game itself. The readme file claims that lightning effects are done better, but I am stating that this is mostly unnoticable in fact.
I had some problems of my own with 3D mode with voodoo 5 and later with radeon 8500 as well as GF4 mx440; every once in a while 3D mode crashes. I woud dare to say that there are some gremlins in the enginge :P You're better off with software + hi res (1024x768 or even 1600x1200) then 3D mode and 640x480/800x600 :)

But, if you insist on playing in 3D mode, may I recommend driver change?

hello,I just tryed with

-official 1.07 drivers
-1.07 beta
-x3df 1.08
-omega 1.03
-mikepedo 1.1

(besides amigamerlin 2.9,I was using those drivers and now I switched back,I find them to be the best v3 drivers for 9x,at least in terms of speed and features avaiable).

the results were the same,a white screen,so I guess it's not a drivers problem (or an opengl icd problem),it's just that the expansion removed the support for the card. (and I'm sure they did it on purpose,grrr).
somebody somewhere must have made a patch that restores the 3dfx support...
anyway,it's not like "I won't play it unless it's in 3d mode",what bothers me is the concept "hey,let's add some code just to prevent the game from working if a 3dfx card is detected!".

have you tried 3dfxHQ drivers? I found these drivers much to my liking. They worked even better then amigamerlins... Give it a shot if you're allready playing with them.

About the thing: "Let's disable the support for 3dfx", that's deja vu. Remember Neverwinternights? There is also a tag in readme file that states something like this: "Sorry folks, 3dfx is no more and we decided to remove the support for 3dfx cards, even if they could possibly be able to work".

I hate that too,
but there is nothing we can do...  >:(

Quote:

"Sorry folks, 3dfx is no more and we decided to remove the support for 3dfx cards, even if they could possibly be able to work".

Translation for 3Dfx users ;):-

"We are clearly a bunch of nVidia worshipping morons who have not yet removed our heads from our own A$$ES" :-X

LMAO! ROFL! LOL! ;D ;D

But yeah, in retrospect - it sucks they did that to the game! >:(

I couldn't agree more Paulpsomiadis :) sad that things like that get removed, oh well I'm wuite sure there is a way to add voodoo card support in game like that right? just by changing the .ini file? or does that sit in a much more complicated place?

@ Pablo
Did you try to use 3D-Analyze and change the card ID lets say to Geforce4-TI-4600 ? Maybe that is enough to fool the expansion set...

wrote on 01.12.06 at 01:38:08:

I couldn't agree more Paulpsomiadis :) sad that things like that get removed, oh well I'm wuite sure there is a way to add voodoo card support in game like that right? just by changing the .ini file? or does that sit in a much more complicated place?

Now that's an idea. Try to modify baldur.ini and game.ini files, without running the setup. Also, search the registry for icewind dale and look for any graphic options there. It a tiny chance, since the only thing the setup does is the modification of these .ini files... but still - it could work. ALSO try to replace the new ini files with the old ini files that worked in original icewind dale! That could also happen to work... hopefully  :-/

keep us posted...

Hopefully it will only be .INI and registry... :P

...worst case - it's only supported via the .EXE file!!! >:(

hmm maybe there is a way to change the whole .exe file as well :)

wrote on 01.12.06 at 21:58:40:

hmm maybe there is a way to change the whole .exe file as well :)

Or change the game :P
Let's not over-do it  ;D

LOL

well,I searched in the registry and there's nothing "tweakable" in the
entries of the game. (I checked all the entries that said "interplay",
"black isle" and "icewind"),and I compared pre-expansion and post-expansion
ini files,and the stuff related to graphics/what renderer to use,is the same,
and it's configurable from the configuration program or from within the game,
so,there was nothing new to try there.

the entries are self explanatory,like "3d acceleration=1" and "mini port=1".
the miniport thing is a 3dfx.dll file located in the game's directory,that's just
an opengl ICD,(a very old one,the properties say its 3dfxolg.dll beta 2.1,from 1998).
I tryed replacing it with modern ICDs,mesa,wickedgl,etc,just in case,but I didn't
expect different results (and they didn't happen) since it's just the same thing as
trying the ICDs using the opengl32.dll name and the miniport option disabled.
the only difference if the miniport option is enabled,is that the program
looks for 3dfx.dll instead of opengl32.dll if the miniport option is enabled.

another "just in case test" I did was replacing the post-expansion 3dfx.dll file with
the pre-expansion one,(the properties were the same in terms of file size,dates,version,etc,
and you can call me "supersticious" for trying knowing already it was the same file,
but I wanted to be sure),and I got the same result,a white screen.

3d analyzer tests:
2.36 didn't even started,(it crashed every time I tryed to run it)
2.34 ran,but the game didn't even start and I had to terminate the 3d analyzer task,
it just stopped responding and nothing else happened. (I waited enough to be sure it was
not just a slowdown).
the same thing happened with 2.31,even with all the options disabled/cleared,so I guessed
it just doesn't work with 3danalyzer.

anyway,my conclusion is the problem is something inserted in the code of the main exe,
(or removed),it doesn't seem to be a renderer problem,an ini problem,a registry problem
or an opengl incompatibility problem,considering the game uses opengl 1.1 an the old
ICD 2.1 beta from 1998 was enough to run it in its pre-expansion status.
I think I won't lose more time with this,it escapes the kind of tweaks the user can do,
and the game runs in software mode anyway,but what frustrates me is the whole concept,
it took the "hey!,let's remove the 3dfx support" one step further removing it from
a game that worked perfectly by means of adding some code to the expansion in order
to prevent the game to work if a 3dfx card is detected.
as I said in my first post about this: that's just stupid.


ps: I tryed the 3dhq drivers once,but something went wrong and I replaced them.
I don't remember what happened...but I know I had a reason for not using them.
maybe I'll give them another try.


ps2: a quick offtopic question: why should I use the glide3x.dll file that comes with the
    mesa fx zip instead of the regular glide3x.dll file I use all the time?.
    since I found that the amigamerlin 2.9 drivers + the official glide?x.dll files
    from the 1.07 drivers was the fastest combination (for me),I never switch the
    glide files. should I? (I mean compatibility reasons,to use with mesa or something
    like that,I know third party glide files are supposed to be optimized,but for
    some reason,they run slower for me).


edit: I just tryed replacing the post-expansion exe with the pre-expansion exe,but it crashed,I guess there's something different in the post-expansion engine besides just more areas and stuff

there is some new stuff implemented it the latest glide3x that is needed for mesafx to work properly,dborca said that once if I remember correctly.the latest glide3x build is here.you dont need to overwrite the file in your system folder,just drop the new glide3x to the game folder together with mesafx opengl32.dll ;)

Sorry Pablo, looks like one more "who cares about 3dfx" case :(

--> But then again; maybe not. There is one more chance. One straw left to draw for. The last one.

The baldurs gate fans have made an update of the game engine. The patch allows the baldurs gate 1 to be run in baldurs gate 2 engine, which is the engine that works with 3dfx. You could try to apply the same patch to icewind dale and try to run it in the modded enviroment - in the baldurs gate 2 enviroment! That MUST do the trick. The question is, are you willing enough to play with this any more? I would do it out of principle and then would gladly give someone over at the black isle a finger.

Sorry for the "bad" words, but I hate these guys (only the ones responsible for not allowing 3dfx support)!!!

I already deinstalled the game,(I lost the will to play it,I think I'm going to play something like "legend of mana" for psx as some kind of "rest" before playing something complex again),but I'm looking for info about that patch,if it's something easy,(an exe or a compressed file that should be installed/decompressed in the game's directory and that's it),I'll try it.