Voodoo2 and UT 2003

[toony5]

I played with UT 2004 tonight, but I didn't have much luck making it look better on a Voodoo 2.  I gave up on the UT 2003 demo since it looked pretty bad compared to the UT 2004 demo and full game.  


Here is what I found with UT 2004:

1.  The intro screen and menus look better if TextureDetailInterface is set to Low in ut2004.ini.  I set DetailTextures, HighDetailActors, SuperHighDetailActors and UseCompressedLightmaps in the OpenGL section to False.  

After I got into the game...
2.  "Texture Detail" set to LOW generally usually looks the best, although I had to change it to LOWER for a few maps because some textures on the ceiling appeared white.  

3.  Characters look best if "Character Detail" is set to LOW.  

4.  "Resolution" set to 640x480 worked best for me.  The screen did not resize correctly if I changed it to 800x600, for example, while I was in the game.  


Here are some things I could not fix, no matter what I tried:
1.  I could not get the HUD to display correctly.  All the weapons and numbers appeared as white squares.  

2.  The FPS did not display correctly, although I had a ballpark guess of what it was by watching the color of the box where the FPS should have appeared:  green=high, yellow=medium and red=low.

3.  The "Loading <map name>" messages that appear on the right side of the screen while a new map is loading would not display correctly.  They appeared as white rectangles.  

4.  The lightning gun's secondary fire mode would not display correctly.  A large box appeared where the zoomed-in image should have been.  

I tried different settings for MESA_FX_MAXLOD again, but that usually resulted in a corrupted picture.  DM-Deck17 map looked absolutely great with MESA_FX_MAXLOD set to 9 one time.  The only problem was with the "smoky" area down by the red lava that makes players bounce up:  The "smoke" came up in large blocks.  I tried some other maps (including DM-Deck17) a few minutes later, but the graphics were corrupt again.  I could not figure out why, so I stopped playing with MESA_FX_MAXLOD.  

Here are the specs for my main computer:
* Athlon XP 1800+ with 256 MB RAM
* Windows XP Professional with SP1
* Creative Labs 12 MB Voodoo 2 (CT6670)
* FastVoodoo2 4.0 XP GE drivers
* MesaFX 6.1.0.9 rc7
* UT 2004 with latest patch (3236?)

I have read that the Voodoo 2 in SLI mode still only has 8 MB of texture memory, so I decided I wouldn't gain anything graphics-wise by putting a second Voodoo 2 in the computer.  Is that true?  Even so, would the FPS increase very much in my situation if I install a second Voodoo 2?  I think 3dfx used to claim double the performance with two Voodoo 2's.  

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.  

Till next time...  Tony

[dborca]

MESA_FX_MAXLOD doesn't do any good on UT engines, because those _DO_ check for max texture size and rescale accordingly. Any texture corruption is caused by unsupported TexEnv (texture application) modes, _NOT_ by texture sizes.

[Sanek]

UT2003

the game runs fine for me with WickedGL. A bit slow sometimes, but if you set all detailes to LOW, the game becomes playable.


Currently any game that supports OpenGL will run with Voodoo2 using either MESA (newer OpenGL support) or WickedGL (older opengl, but sometimes faster).

Tested on Diamond Monster 3D II 8MB, 4 MB tex mem. (Voodoo2 from Diamond)

[perer]

A voodoo2 8mb has 2mb texture memory pro TMU, The 12mb version uses 4mb Texture memory pro TMU. But the limit of the TMU is 16mb. The Maximum amount of ram on a Voodoo2 is 36mb, because the FBI is limited @ 4mb (in theory). Just wanted people to know, because they keep mixing these things up.

[Glide]

toony5, a lot of thanks for your posts!

This one is a Unreal Tournament 2004 screenshot by 3dfx Voodoo2 SLI cards (2x12Mb):




Besides, you can run this game w/o OS registry mod and OpenGL copy into Windows folder.

Simply overwrite ut2004.ini with this UT2004.zip and copy openGL32.dll from MesaFX package to UT2004 System folder.

That's all,

good luck 3dfx users

Glide

[IAN]

with wickedGl it does not run comes back with this error

UT2003 Build UT2003_Build_[2003-02-13_18.53]

OS: Windows XP 5.1 (Build: 2600)
CPU: AuthenticAMD Pentium-class processor @ 451 MHz with 127MB RAM
Video: 3Dfx Interactive Voodoo3(tm)

GL_EXT_bgra not supported - bailing out.

History: UOpenGLRenderDevice::SetRes <- UWindowsViewport::TryRenderDevice <- UWindowsViewport::OpenWindow <- UGameEngine::Init <- InitEngine

works with mesa gl but very slow about 5 fps and unplayable even with all settings very low 640 X 480 res. also cant read menus

500 amd k6-2 running at 450mhz (75mhz X 6)
40Gb +3gb
4mb pci ati rage ii +dvd
2 x 12mb creative 3d blaster voodoo 2 sli
fast voodoo 2 4.0 gold edition drivers
xp pro + sp2

[Nightbird]

The first bottleneck is perhaps your cpu : k6/2 500 mhz
In theory, the game needs a P3 or an Athlon > 700 mhz.

with wickedGl it does not run comes back with this error
GL_EXT_bgra not supported - bailing out.

Was the "classical" problem with UT2003.

[innuend0]

Hi everybody !
I'm very pleased to see that voodoo2 history is not completely done. I found the work of local developpers to be incredible.

I own an old voodoo 2 12mb and i ask if it's possible to enlength his life by playing UT2004. Some of you said that it's possible, but i want to know if it's completely possible, without bugs and visual artifacts at the present time.

(if a voodoo 2 can be bought for 10 or 15 $ or €, i'm ready to buy one, if necessary)

My question is what visual quality can i expect ? Can you please post screenshots ? (i already searched the whole forum)

My mobo is a kt133
My CPU is a palomino 2000+
My main graphic card is "riva tnt2 m64 32Mo"

[innuend0]

anyone ?

[ps47]

..use the riva tnt2.voodoo2 is not good for ut2003/4.visual quality is not very good and speed is bad.se here:
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1317

[elianda]

The following issues are most annoying with MesaFX in UT2004:

- The Squares instead of test is due to the missing render to texture capability I guess. I also can see such white squares in other programs. f.e. try the 'Variform' Demo or similar stuff.
- The many Texture Layers make the world look very rastered.
- The Screen Size is not adjusted correctly, only 640x480 are visible from the lower left corner of the whole screen.

I think the first issue may be possible to be emulated by mesafx, the last issue seems to be some bug?
A visible 1024x768 resolution would be fine on a V2 SLI

Ciao...

[ps47]

mesafx can do wonders,but when the game's opengl support is bad there is not much you can do..

[dmd-0]

is there any way to see the HUD in ut2k4 with 2xV2 8MB??

[ps47]

no I'm afraid.at least not right now.

[dmd-0]

when could that be?