******************************************************* Metabyte Wicked3D Software Windows95/98/ME/2K Version WGL1B31 Readme File ******************************************************* Last Modified: 11/07/00 This version contains accelerated MiniGL support for boards based on 3dfx Voodoo2/3/4/5, and Voodoo Banshee chipsets. New in This Version =================== 11/07/00: * Added support for 4x4 Evolution, Axis, Rune, Screamer 4x4 * Fixed "diagonal lines" bug * Fixed BGII flashing screen (disable triple buffering), see readme.txt * Fixed Half-Life 1.1.0.4 "mode not supported" bug, Some file editing required, see readme.txt * Enabling "compress all" texture compression mode now helps Q3 performance too Supported Games =============== This MiniGL driver contains an OpenGL subset for Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Hexen 2, Sin, Half-Life, Heretic 2, Daikatana, Kingpin, Soldier of Fortune, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Rune, Starsiege, Tribes, Serious Sam, 4x4 Evolution, Axis, BGII, Crime Cities, DeusEx, MDK2, KO, MindRover, Hitman, Heavy Metal FAKK2, StarTrek DS9, Parsec, Screamer 4x4, Snok, StarTrek Voyager, Team Fortress, TreadMarks. Deus Ex issues ============== Deus Ex shows some minor bugs in OpenGL support that are not related to WickedGL. Grey square surrounds mouse cursor during menu navigation. This is a bug in DeusEx's multitexturing support. You can either disable multitexturing or ignore this bug. To disable multitexturing go to the DeusEx\System directory and open OpenGlDrv.ini file. Set "UseMultitexture" to 0 in "[Default]" section of the file. During the gameplay some icons may show pink background. To fix this disable texture precaching by setting "DoPrecache" to 0 in OpenGlDrv.ini file. Also disable DoPrecache if you are going to use texture compression. Otherwize it will take a very long time to start the game. Half-Life and Team Fortress issues ================================== After installing WickedGL into Half-Life or Team Fortress make sure that in the configuration -> video -> video modes menu of the game you have selected "3Dfx Mini Driver". When alt-tabing during the game, the very first alt-tab may not work. If you see dirty screen after you just pressed alt-tab, press ESC 2 or 3 times or click on Resume Game menu option until you get back in the game. Then alt-tab again. All alt-tabs after that should work fine. If you upgraded to 1.1.0.4 version of Half-Life and see "The selected OpenGL mode is not supported by your video card" message, there are three ways to fix the problem. 1. You can try not to upgrade to 1.1.0.4 right away, but rather upgrade to 1.1.0.1 and then to 1.1.0.4. 2. You can edit drvmap.txt file in GLDRV subdirectory of Half-Life and make sure it has "gldrv/3dfxgl.dll 3Dfx Mini Driver" line, not "3dfxgl.dll 3Dfx Mini Driver". 3. You can manually copy WickedGL dll (opengl32.dll or ogl_hres.dll file) from the WickedGL directory to the root Half-Life directory and rename it to opengl32.dll. Then in video options select Default OpenGL instead of 3Dfx Mini Driver. Hitman issues ============= Disable "PaletteComp" in Graphics Options of the game. Hitman uses palettized texture format for both lightmaps and base textures, and 3dfx boards do not support simultanious multitexturing of 2 palettized textures. In multitexturing mode only one of 2 currently active textures can use palette. MDK2 and BGII issues ==================== MDK2 and BGII can load OpenGL DLLs only from windows\system directory. To use WickedGL with MDK2 or BGII, install/replace 3dfxvgl.dll in windows\system directory. To do so run WickedGL switching utility, select "Standalone 3dfxvgl.dll" from the game list, select windows\system as a folder for searching, and hit "Install WickedGL" button. When running MDK2 or BGII select "3dfx Standalone OpenGL Driver" in Video Settings. Do not enable Hardware T&L option. Do not enable OpenGL Display Lists option. Note that if you install 3dfxvgl on non-Voodoo2 board, this file gets deleted if you reinstall 3dfx's video drivers. And 3dfx's Voodoo2 drivers replace 3dfxvgl with the original 3dfxvgl. Just run WickedGL switching utility again and repeat installation. IF YOU SEE SCREEN FLASHING IN BGII: Disable triple buffering from the WickedGL control panel. Serious Sam issues ================== Serious Sam may recognize WickedGL as Voodoo1 driver and disable bump mapping as a result. To enable bump mapping open Serious Sam's console and enter 'mdl_bRenderBump=1' command. Starsiege and Tribes support ============================ If you want to try WickedGL with Starsiege or Tribes, open wglgames.cfg file in WickedGL directory and add the following 2 lines: "Starsiege",starsiege.exe,opengl32.dll "Tribes",tribes.exe,opengl32.dll Then run WickedGL switching utility and install WickedGL for these games. Then run the game and in the Display Settings select OpenGL for the Full Screen Mode. It is unknown at the moment if WickedGL provides a better performance for these games compared to the glide mode, so judge for yourself. Unreal and Unreal Tournament support ==================================== Unreal and Unreal Tournament are supported by WickedGL but WickedGL switching utility will not let you install WickedGL for these games. To make switching utility recognize these 2 games open wglgames.cfg file in WickedGL directory and add the following 2 lines: "Unreal",unreal.exe,opengl32.dll "Unreal Tournament",UnrealTournament.exe,opengl32.dll Make sure you select OpenGL driver in Unreal video options. Normally you use Glide driver with Unreal, The benefit WickedGL provides compared to Unreal's glide support is better texture management. If you have Unreal engine based game that uses lots of textures or you just use high resolutions where little memory is left for textures, WickedGL may be faster. Installation ============ Installation of WickedGL is a two step process. First, the drivers and OpenGL switching utility are unpacked and installed in their own directory. You have to specify the name of the directory and select which board you are using. There are 2 different versions of the driver, one for Voodoo2/Voodoo3 with multitexturing support and a non-multitexturing version for Banshee. Banshee version would not run on Voodoo2/3 boards and Voodoo2/3 version would not run on Banshee. At this step you can also ask the setup program to put a shortcut to the OpenGL switching utility on the desktop. Second, you install the driver to the games directories either manually or using provided OpenGL switching utility. In the OpenGL switching utility you select games you want to use with WickedGL and drives where to look for them. When you hit either install or uninstall button the OpenGL switching utility starts searching for the selected games. Once a game found opengl driver file in that game is replaced with WickedGL driver if install button was hit or previously saved driver is restored if uninstall button was hit. WickedGL driver files are actually available in two flavors. One is the regular version and the second is the version with acceleration for high resolution modes. You can select between the two when copying files to the games directories. The OpenGL switching utility has two different install buttons to install either regular version or version with high resolution acceleration. To change the version of WickedGL you are using with a particular game/games just run OpenGL switching utility again and repeat search/install process using a different install button. High Resolution Modes Acceleration ================================== Regular version of WickedGL is the most compatible and most intensively tested version. It does all the rendering in hardware. WickedGL with high resolution modes acceleration utilizes the excess of CPU power to help video card to render faster in high resolutions at the cost of little performance loss in low resolutions and some compatibility issues. These two versions of WickedGL are two different driver DLL files and you can use any one of them depending on your personal preferences. WickedGL with high resolution modes acceleration has been tested with Quake3 only and should be considered a technology demonstration. Regular version has been extensively tested and optimized and we recommend it to use on a regular basis with other games. From the performance point of view Quake3 can definitely benefit from high resolution modes acceleration in modes 1024x768 and higher. For 640x480 it is the best in most cases to use regular version. In all other modes we recommend you to test both versions on your particular system and select the one that gives you better fps. In some cases high resolution modes acceleration may actually cause slowdowns. If you suspect that happening on your system, switch to regular version of WickedGL and compare performance. Voodoo5 issues ============== WickedGL allows applications control the bit depth of the textures. If application does not specify the desired bit depth for textures, then 16 bits are used. The only exception is when the current display video mode is 32 bit and RGBA texture is being loaded. In this case 32 bits are used. You can change that default behavior by using WickedGL control panel. TEXTURE COMPRESSION: WickedGL supports texture compression extensions on a hardware that has that ability (Voodoo5). Due to the high quality of the compression algorithms used in WickedGL, games may take some time to load the first time you start them. All compressed textures will be cached on your hard disk (WickedGL.swp file) so that the next time you start the game WickedGL will not be compressing them again. You can control the maximum size of compressed textures cache from the WickedGL control panel. Be carefull not to make the cache size less than the total size of comressed textures in the game. For the games that do not support texture compression you can force texture compression from WickedGL control panel. Using compressed textures may add 10-15% to your frame rates. Even if a game supports texture compression, enabling automatic texture compression may increase performance, since many games (like Quake3) do not compress all their textures. If you see some unwanted compression artifacts you can enable compression quality control. When enabled, textures with too much compression errors will not be compressed at all. Keep an eye on quality control accept/reject ratio. You still need the majority of textures to be compressed if you want to get any benefits from texture compression. Average compression error reported by WickedGL control panel is a good indicator of what compression quality control should be set to. Brightness/Gamma Controls ========================= WickedGL provides gamma control extensions. Quake3 uses these extensions and enables brightness slider if these extensions are available. It is recommended to set this slider to values not higher than 1.8. If you want to disable driver level gamma extensions in Quake3 use "r_ignorehwgamma 1" command in Quake3 console("~"). Set brightness slider to 1.0 before entering r_ignorehwgamma command. WickedGL's gamma/brightness extensions may be not available on your system. By default gamma/brightness extensions are supported only if it is possible to execute an accurate implementation of these extensions. If you want WickedGL to support the extensions anyway you need to enable them manually with the registry setting. In the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Metabyte key of the registry enter WickedGL_gamma_control DWORD value. Set it to 1 to force the extensions. Set it to 2 to disable the extensions. If you forced the extensions and an accurate implementation cannot be executed an approximation will be used. IMPORTANT NOTE FOR QUAKE3 USERS: This miniGL supports runtime gamma/brightness controls to the best of the board and its driver abilities. Some board and driver combinations limit the extent of brightness control to the simple adjustment of the gamma correction value. In that case instead of just refusing to support gamma/brightness extensions this miniGL gives the best possible approximation so you can still have runtime brightness control in the game. As a result of approximation the colors may look different. In fact the approximation eliminates the saturation effect and gives a smoother image with more shades in the middle of the color ramp. It is a matter of personal preference which color scheme you like and with WickedGL you actually have a choice. If you want to get to your old color scheme just prevent Quake3 from using hardware gamma extensions as described in the first paragraph of this section. If You See Dithering Artifacts (Voodoo3 only) ============================================= If you are using latest 3dfx's drivers that have a fix for dithering artifacts but still see those artifacts with WickedGL go to the 3dfx Tweaks property page and set Alpha-blending option to Smoother. You can also set Video Display option to High to get the best image quality. For the latest information please check our web site at: http://www.wicked3d.com