Pablo
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bla
Posts: 18
Uruguay
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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
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