Doom3 + Voodoo2_Patch_v1_0

[gdonovan]

Originally posted by perer

And they made the banshee, and started the Rampage project. That Banshee strangely slowed down the whole Rampage project. And the purchase of STB didn't made things easy. Because they also where dependant of STB. Whell perhaps they could have worked harder. But do YOU know what exactly they did at 3dfx in 1998?

Banshee was being planned in late 1997 after Rush tanked and was released in September-October of 1998. Rampage was in the works *before Banshee* People forget that there was no one Rampage but a number of them because 3dfx kept adding features over time and changing the spec.

3dfx pissed away a lot of time in 1998 purchasing STB.

[perer]

Well I read in a powerpoint presentation from 3dfx. That the rampage was designen using emulation. I quote the presentation here:

'Rampage is the first product at 3dfx to be developed via emulation
Reduces time to market and increases confidence in the architecture
Provides robust
First silicon
Initial drivers
Emulation has proven invaluable to this development
Most blocks emulated and functional at this time.'

So they didn't have to make prototypes in early beginning of development. But I doubt however if they used this development technique back in '98. Maybe there wheren't prototypes, maybe they where just building features for the Rampage chip, like the T-buffer that was meant to be in the Rampage.

EDIT. The powerpoint presentation is VERY early, there speaking about 1999 and early 2000. This means that the VSA100 is using the rampages functions that where already finished.
BTW. I still don' t understand why they didn't make a dual v3 board.
This would be a Killer card, that could justify the lack of 32 bit.

[sirkoz]

Yes, dborca, you do know quite a lot of the Voodoo architecture.

I know about the Rampage development and a huge disturbance, called Banshee - an evil fairy, that literally destroyed 3dfx, and it wasn't even all that good. From what I know, people only bought it because it was 3dfx and 2D+3D+AGP. Noone really cared, that it only has 1 pixel and one texel unit and a slight increase in core/mem speed (10MHz), making it ~11% better in pixel fillrate and ~45% WORSE in texel fillrate than Voodoo2, which apparently was a tradeoff for having 2D onboard aswell. And if we look at Voodoo1 through Voodoo3, we see not much feature improvements, other, than adding TMUs core clock increases and that's why AND because it was supposed to be the first DX8 part, I though Rampage to be quite an improvement over Voodoos, after all, NVIDIA has made quite a conquest, feature-wise, with GeForce256/2 GTS.
     I read once on Beyond3D, that one member there had tested the Rampage and it was quite a kicker - better, than Radeon 8500 and almost like a GeForce4 Ti4600. Though, no exact numbers/test results were given. I'm not sure if he had a 2-Rampage/1-Sage card, I think so....

[gdonovan]

I know about the Rampage development and a huge disturbance, called Banshee - an evil fairy, that literally destroyed 3dfx, and it wasn't even all that good.

I would not agree with that statment since as a "mainstream" part is sold in excellent numbers (in excess of a million chips shipped) 3dfx had to develop a 2D core some time or another and the excellent Voodoo 3 was based of Banshee design.

Noone really cared, that it only has 1 pixel and one texel unit and a slight increase in core/mem speed (10MHz), making it ~11% better in pixel fillrate and ~45% WORSE in texel fillrate than Voodoo2, which apparently was a tradeoff for having 2D onboard aswell.

Not all Banshees were clocked at 100/100- Fusion and GA-630 were clocked much higher then stock. Typical GA-630 speeds are 110/130.

     I read once on Beyond3D, that one member there had tested the Rampage and it was quite a kicker - better, than Radeon 8500 and almost like a GeForce4 Ti4600. Though, no exact numbers/test results were given.

Then it's not even worth mentioning.

[Voodoo5]

@sirkoz,

and it wasn't even all that good

Nah,

Banshee was a great mid range card, after a voodoo 2 or even better voodoo 2 SLI, it was a superior product to any competitors offering at that time.

You have to remember that this was at the peak of 3dfx's popularity/superiority, just having glide support was a good enough reason to want one, the best game's then were written for glide

I have read on many occasions though that the development of the banshee did steal valuable time from rampage's development and spread 3dfx's resources pretty thin, the upper management believed the Banshee was going to open up new markets and opportunity's for them.


@gdonovan,

I like 3dfx as much as the next guy

Nah, probably more  

[Deagle]

I'm absolutely amazed. Great work Doom, you have put the graphics card industry to shame. If you can do that with a voodoo2, then you have to ask what have they been doing for the last 4-5 years. Sry but LoL at the admin for the pic count telling off. Best thing I've ever seen on this whole site, keep up the good work Doom.

[gdonovan]

Question for Doom- Does this patch work under Win2000?

[Doom]

i dont know, but i thing yes

[Nightbird]

Doom, don't know where i sent an email but check your emails, please.

[gdonovan]

Originally posted by Doom

i dont know, but i thing yes

I get a strange error under 2000, I downloaded the patch again and under 98SE I get "a dll is missing that is required for this program" =p

Update- Ahh, downloaded the needed dll and things are moving along now.

ugh= ERROR:gethostbyname localhost failed

Even with a fresh install and a Geforce4 card the game refuses to run under Win98 on my BX test machine. (Yes even with the exe hack)

Maybe the executable has a way of checking cpu speed too?

Guess I'll have to wait till my Ultra 2 gets here.

[CEO-Engineer]

First I want to give credit to Mr. Initiate from the Czech Republic.  He knew just what software to utilize to get the most performace gain from his old graphics setup.  While some may think it's rediculous to use a couple of V2's from the 1998 graphics era to play Doom 3, I think it's very original, and cool from an engineerng standpoint.  
    I am running a high-end system and this game gave it a run for its money. I can barely play Doom 3 at 1024x768 with full graphics detail.  Granted it looks better on a newer system, but you critics are missing the point.  Doom 3 runs on the V2's, it won't run on most other setups.
    Sometimes old school tech is more refined, and runs smoother.  If you don't know what I mean, look at a good old DOS system Mechwarrior 2.  The game ran very fast and smooth on minimal hardware.
    On a final note, the voodoo 2's had some of the best technology of their time and the best drivers of their time.  I think a lot of engineers could learn a lesson from the old Voodoo 2's!  Scalable architectures are amazing.  Thanks for giving this hardcore gamer a look into the past.

[youkaizero]

If anyone reads this post considering how long the last post was made, archangelcd person, I would just like you to know most people to play games for graphics.(Sure as hell know its 50/50 for me) They play for gameplay and story. I will agree with you, those shots look bad. But for a voodoo 2, it rocks ass. It beats buying a $100 some card, and then doom 3 for about 30($40 in toledo.SUCKS ASS!). I would rather  buy a voodoo 2 off of ebay for about $20(or 30) and then buy doom 3, get all the patches and stuff and just run it like that. I'm used to it anyways. When I had my Radeon 7500, all the games I play(cept Ut2003, 2004) had to be run on Low detail.And most games I still do with my Fire Gl 3.=[ But Voodoos are good cards.Even if you have to you need the patches and stuff to do it.

[OutOfRange]

Hiho

i tried to make doom3 run on my V2 SLI sys but after doom3 starts it hangs in console and system hangs up can anybody help me ?

Sys:
Win98SE, FastVoodoo 4.0 GE, WickedGL 3.02
2400+, 512 MB RAM, 2x12 MB Monster Voodoo 2

[Xasd]

You need the Doom3 path for Voodoo2 from www.voodoo.zarovka.com

Once you have it you need follow the instructions of this patch:
1) unpack pak004.pk4 into Doom 3\base\
2) unpack pak002.pk4 into Doom 3\base\
3) unpack pak000.pk4\Materials into Doom 3\base\Materials
4) unpack pak000.pk4\Guis into Doom 3\base\Guis
5) unpack pak000.pk4\Particles into Doom 3\base\Particles
6) Add into your DoomConfig.cfg "r_singlelight 0" (for better performance) !!!
7) run Doom3 Patch for Vooodoo2
Copy WickedGl 3.02(OpenGl32.dll) into Doom3 dir
9) run Doom3_V2.bat

If you do not follow this steps you wouldn't be able to run Doom3 with your Voodoo2 SLI. Follow this steps with pacience and it will work. If it doesn't run, uninstall Doom3 and delete manually all configs in Doom3 directory. Then install it and follow previous steps.

[OutOfRange]

Thanks for help, but this isn't the problem.
I've done the Patch before starting Doom3... first i've tried the MesaFX 0.61 for Doom3 but then Doom3  starts up and the error "Couldn't initialize OpenGL" occurs... now with WickedGL Doom3 starts, the 3dfx splash screen shows up and i can see the Doom3 Loading screen. After the "Loading Menu" the Doom3 console comes down (i see the wickedGL logo rotating in the upper right corner) and there are four warnings. but then the system hangs.. i cannot close the console or something and must reset the system