Hi,
Normally when I have a driver problem I just search these forums and the net and find my own solutions, but recently I was stumped. Here follows my tale of woe and hardship. (children and those with heart conditions are advised to look away)

I've been goofing around with GLQuake ports and the best I've found was lordhavoc's DarkPlaces. Problem is that I can't quite get it to work well. Here's the details.

My Box (Relic)
PIII Katami @ 500mhz
256mb pc 133 ram
Asus p2b-f mb
Voodoo5 agp
Windows 98se
directX 7.0a

Drivers & gl icds I've tried
current driver
x3dfx 1.8.0.4
(these run all my other games well. mostly DX7, 2 DX8)

also tried
amigamerlin 2.9
raziel64 evolution 1.01.64
both good drivers but I never got as good performance as the x3dfx with DX7 games. (not suprising I know they are tailored for dx9 games and on those they are better for me)

driver issue seems moot. I get the same problems performance with all 3 in this situation.

directX
tried 7.0a, 8.1b, 9.0c
all the same results. bit laggier under 9.0c

OpenGL icd / miniGL
This seems to give the greatest variance, so I assume this is the problem/solution.

MesaFX
6301 prerelease & 6202 stable
both the same. renders damn near spot on but with an average framerate of 2 - 6 fps peaking @ 13 or so fps.

3dfx MiniGL
all of them. yeah.... um doesn't even start. just locks up at splash screen.

WickedGL
Ah! I love this file. Rendering was fair, framerate of 30 - 70 fps. problem is this...



hoping that loads.
if it doesn't its a blur. all blurs or triangles or white bands it varies but the 3d images are totally scrapped. but not always. just some of the time. the rest its perfect. the 2d images, menus hud etc, are fine.

Any ideas here? Upgrading is not an option on anything right now. I spent $1000 bucks on a PC a month ago and lost the whole thing including 300+ cds of data games and basicaly my past 7 years worth of downloading 2 weeks later. So I'm spending most of my money on software right now. (The only reason I still have the V5 is it wouldn't fit in the new case I cursed it at the time, but I guess it was a good thing.)

I don't THINK, i'm not sure, but I don't think it's the voodoo. I only bought it maybe 6 months ago. It was sealed in the box when I got it, and has seen maybe 3 months of total use.

Any suggestions are welcome, I know my 3dfx driver trivia fairly well as I had a V3 for pratically forever before this. So feel free to get as techy as you like.
Thanks for looking
Jack.

edit
PS does anyone have a copy of SAGE 1.90 they could email me or link? I saw the post @ 3dfxzone but while the 0.90 works the link for 1.90 (the one I need of course) seems to be down and there's not even a mention of it on Daniel's site or in the forums.

Well, I've never heard this Mod for Quake 1, does it by any chance possibly include a new OpenGL Rendering engine that might exceed a normal Voodoo5's capabilities ?

Ideal case, at least MesaFX or the quite new SAGE OpenGL Cores work, but I'm sure none of these were tested on specific Game Mods such as this one during development.

So there is a chance that it simply doesn't work because noone ever looked at this Mod's specific OpenGL Requirements... worst case, they're tailored at too many modern OpenGL extensions not yet supported (or not properly implemented) even in the latest OpenGL creations for 3dfx.

Yep,
saw the thread with the SAGE links, but one goes to Daniel's site which doesn't have the 1.90 version and the others are where I was trying at 3dfxzone. (which is so far the only place I've seen the V4/5 version anyone know who compiled it, or what changes they made?) anyway the link at 3dfxzone was working again when I logged in tonight; so I gave it a go.

The SAGE worked wonders. DarkPlaces framerate jumped to the 23 - 51 range & almost never drops below 19 now. Also started seeing some features that weren't active before. (probably the dxtnl, I didn't bother too check yet.) I had to turn off a couple of menu options but oddly most things didn't affect the fps one way or the other. I cranked the options to full and other than turning on RealTimeWorld & Bloom Effects (those crawl) I never saw more than a 3 - 5 fps drop overall.... wierd. The Texture Blending is a little broken, looks like a swinging light over a grid where its supposed to be.
For those interested heres some tests from other popular Quake ports.
VengeanceR2 works very well (accurately renders) though the effects are so heavy my fps was in the 1 - 5 zone. Framerate was really high with this port under Mesa but everything was overlayed with bright blue lines. (texture issue?)
FuhQuake & Tremor (both mostly based on JoeQuake) will work with SAGE ... but textures are overlayed in a bright wash, almost looks like a negative B&W photo image. Particles render properly. framerate is quite fair (25 - 35). I suspect with some better documentation of the ports (or hunting) I could even fix the problem with one of the GL flags from the console, I'll keep trying. (it is kinda neat looking though)
All older ports (Fitz, GQ etc) I tried and the original GLQuake (that goes for Hexen2 as well) won't even load under SAGE. Crashes as soon as  it goes fullscreen. No big loss though, these run like demons even at 1600x1280 under wickedGL so...

I aslo tried Uplink (doesn't render right), and a few doom engines (inconclusive yet) that was all I've had time for so far.
Anyway thats my little adventure with SAGE. I'd have to say this overall is an amazing dll for as young as it is. When it works it really works. Daniel did a great job. Let me know if you would like to here more of my adventures in Quakeland or see screens, more specific results etc of the aforementioned engines under SAGE. I figure its always good for a hardware community to share information for future reference.
(Crom knows I'd have had a mental breakdown from my V3 if it hadn't been for others posting their tales of suffering in forums.)
Thanks for the help.
Jack.

Good point I'll drop a reply there later tonight.
hmmm lets see...  not sure the properties don't list a version number and there's no docs in the zip. The date is Oct 11, 2005. 42095 bytes. It's the one they packaged with the 1.90 release of SAGE. I'm still really curious where this came from I can't find anything about it on 3dfxzone's forums or Daniels site. He only has the 0.90 and 0.92 versions. where did this mystery V4/5 version come from?

BTW I noticed your title below your avatar, if that's reffering to the page @ shifter then you have my undying thanks. I'd have never gotten NeverwinterNights working without it when I had the V3.