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3dfx Section >> Games >> Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
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Message started by nudgegoonies on 20.04.05 at 14:43:53

Title: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by nudgegoonies on 20.04.05 at 14:43:53
Hi,
in this forum i only found instructions for V4/V5 and i had no success with these tips on my V3. But with MesaFX and MESA_FX_MAXLOD=9 it runs as you can see here:

http://people.freenet.de/nudge.goonies/nw1.jpg
http://people.freenet.de/nudge.goonies/nw2.jpg
http://people.freenet.de/nudge.goonies/nw3.jpg
http://people.freenet.de/nudge.goonies/nw4.jpg
http://people.freenet.de/nudge.goonies/nw5.jpg
http://people.freenet.de/nudge.goonies/nw6.jpg
http://people.freenet.de/nudge.goonies/nw7.jpg

But to be true, it is much too slow on my specs.

Regards,
Andreas

P.S.
I don't have the full version, only the demo!

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by nudgegoonies on 27.04.05 at 11:17:33
At least one bug. The bik video is not shown. Tried with safevideo 0 and 1. No luck!

Regards,
Andreas

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by bloodworm on 12.05.05 at 14:48:38
the bik video won't work on the V5 either........  Unless you run the game screen size and the desktop screen size the same.  it's a screen resize thingy in opengl that's keeping it from working.  I got it to work with the opengl "FIX" a long time ago before mesafx, but mesafx at least lets the game run too.

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by FalconFly on 12.05.05 at 15:09:39
With the K6-2 500, MesaFX might be drawing alot of CPU power away.

It should work fine, but might require more CPU power (e.g. a Duron or Athlon class CPU)

Otherwise, you could try different Versions of MesaFX, as performance can differ quite a bit inbetween them, depending on the individual System.

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by nudgegoonies on 12.05.05 at 17:12:13
According to the official Neverwinter Nights site http://nwn.bioware.com/about/requirements.html my system should be fast enough. But i agree with you FalconFly that MesaFX is taking to much power. But that's normal for a program that emulates things in software (scaling) to overcome the voodoo 3 hardware limitation of 256x256 textures. So with this additional cpu overhead caused by MesaFX i am under the minimum.

By the way i havn't bought the game. It look's interesting but i was always addicted to turnbased RPG's like Buck Rogers - Countdown to Doomsday, Ultima 4-5, Wizardry 8 (Glide), DDD (german C64 freaks know what these 3 letters stand for) etc. Maybe because of the tactical turnbased combat system. I am a big 5-Star Series, Steel Panthers and Battle Isle Series fan and i don't like the 'clickfest' that RTS and modern RPG's became.

@bloodworm
It seems that this game isn't the only one where bink has problems on 3dfx card. Look my Alone in the Dark 4 thread.

Regards,
Andreas

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by ps47 on 13.05.05 at 16:54:25
..just a little note: software rescaling does not produce a performance hit.it simply scales the textures to 256*256,thats all.and voodoo3 can work with 256*256 textures just fine..I have tried the game on my celeron600/voodoo3 3500tv machine and it runs fine,with or without sw rescaling (which is needed only for the menus anyway)..

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by FalconFly on 13.05.05 at 20:27:03
Well, the rescaling Process still draws some power when loading/swapping.

I remember the effect when playing a F1 GrandPrix game using 1024x1024 Textures on a Voodoo3 during 3D Analyzer Alpha testing.

Thomas initially thought it would even draw too much CPU power to be useful, but luckily the performance hit after implementation was only like 10-15% on the AthlonXP system being tested.
Still, it was an AthlonXP 2200+ with fast DDR RAM...

I agree though, that once loaded onto the Voodoo3 VRAM. the performance 'should' be back up to normal.

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by ps47 on 14.05.05 at 02:15:37
hmm,you mean there is a version of 3da that supports sw rescaling for D3D? I wasnt aware of that..

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by FalconFly on 14.05.05 at 02:48:11
Hm, I didn't use it in a long time, but it was there and functional back in the Alpha testing days.

The only thing it could never fix, were menus made out of large Textures (forcing to navigate them more or less blind).
The Results actually looked not bad, although the Textures had to be quick&dirty rescaled to avoid additional performance loss for filtering them smooth.

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by ps47 on 14.05.05 at 12:39:28
any chance I could get my hands on that alpha version of 3da? strange that this feature was never added to the regular version..

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by FalconFly on 14.05.05 at 12:52:43
I've checked old Storage bins on my HD, and all I found was the internal Alpha 22.

In the Supplement I can see that I wrote "Emulate Big Textures Caps" (14 May 2002) but I actually don't find that anywhere implemented in this specific version from 19 May 2002.

It must have been with the internal Alpha 20 or 21, not sure.

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by ps47 on 14.05.05 at 15:11:27
too bad.thanks anyway..

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by nudgegoonies on 14.05.05 at 15:39:21
It really seems that all Mesa3d based OpenGL renderers (GLDirect, MesaFX, Koolsmokeys OpenGL32.dll) are slower than the 3Dfx/Metabyte ones (MiniGL, ICD, WickedGL). I don't think that only the emulated functions from newer OpenGL standards produce this overhead. Mesa is a typical opensource multiplatform library and thus can't be optimized for maximimum performance on all platforms. But it's good to have them. How else could we run OpenGL 1.2 programs on our good old voodoos.

Regards,
Andreas

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by ps47 on 14.05.05 at 21:25:57
well,I must agree that mesafx is usually slower than wickedgl and 3dfx ICD,but only a little bit slower..

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by nudgegoonies on 14.05.05 at 22:35:20
This also depends on the cpu power and wich optimizations are used. On low spec systems like mine you often see differences that others won't notice.

Regards,
Andreas

P.S.
@ps47
Are you the ps47 from the Incubation's Data Archives?

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by ps47 on 14.05.05 at 23:48:56

wrote on 14.05.05 at 22:35:20:
@ps47
Are you the ps47 from the Incubation's Data Archives?

yes.I'm using only two nicks everywhere,either ps47 or voodoo47 ;D
I would say,if you see a guy named ps47 with 3dfx logos all over,its pretty obvious it has to be me :D
incubation is one of my all time favorite games..

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by nudgegoonies on 17.05.05 at 11:17:23
What a small world the internet is :)

I got incubation and mission pack with the battle isle platinum compilation. But i havn't played it yet. Too many personal problems at the moment and no end in sight  :(

Regards,
Andreas

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by bloodworm on 17.05.05 at 22:36:09
of course it is slower.  when you draw a full face with one driver and then draw it without EARS and EYES with the other driver, the other driver is going to be faster one........

Title: Re: Neverwinter Nights on Voodoo3/MesaFX
Post by nudgegoonies on 17.05.05 at 23:58:15
You got the point bloodworm.

Regards,
Andreas

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