M1 Tank Platoon II - Page 4

Polak2 · 10-22-21, 05:26 PM

Quote:

I don’t think a USB thumb drive would work, either.

In one of the early posts you said that usb joystick worked so you have USB ports probable in the back.

RetroGamer · 10-22-21, 11:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polak2

In one of the early posts you said that usb joystick worked so you have USB ports probable in the back.

Absolutely correct. The ports are there but if I plugged a modern day 16 GB USB thumb drive in there, the fragile Win98 OS will probably give me a BSOD, LOL!!!

Maybe not…I might give it a shot.. Windows 98 is really unstable. It’s blue screened on me for just running DXDIAG. I noticed if I run a 3DMark benchmark after playing a 3D game, it sometimes locks up.

If I can get a USB drive to work, or be able to burn a CD, we might be in business.

RetroGamer · 10-26-21, 07:52 PM

This afternoon, my second Voodoo2 card eBay purchase arrived. I eagerly plugged it in to test it and….nothing. It wasn’t even detected by the PC.

I tried a different PCI slot and the desktop PC wouldn’t even boot.

I then reinstalled it in the original slot that I’d tried the first time and it worked! The only explanation I have is that the card probably hadn’t been used in over 20 years and the capacitors or other parts just needed to charge and wake up a bit. I’m not sure.

I then connected and installed both Voodoo2cards in SLI mode and ran the 3DMark2000 benchmark, then 3DMark99 max and finally 3DMark2001. Guess what?

There was ZERO performance increase, LOl!!!!

The reported memory shows it’s double what it was and the voodoo display software shows the memory has doubled, but aside from that, there is no difference….I do find that a little funny even tho I’m a bit disappointed.

M1TP2 runs and looks great but it was great before the install.

Maybe I need to try different drivers.

Anyway - it was a fun experiment for M1TP2 and me.

UPDATE:

Further research indicates I am likely using the wrong drivers and wrong benchmark programs. For the purposes of getting the most out of M1TP2, I’m going to try different Voodoo2 drivers.

http://falconfly.3dfx.pl/voodoo2.htm

The game looks good now, it’s just the frame rate could be improved.

The jerkiness be improved by my installing one of the M1TP2 patches. Once I get this thing smoothed out, back to reports and hopefully media of gameplay!

Polak2 · 10-27-21, 06:47 PM

I remember I had 2 Voodoo cards and SLI. What I do not remember what happened to that computer and the other thing is which of the cards the video cord is attached to? It does not matter or it does matter?

RetroGamer · 10-28-21, 08:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polak2

I remember I had 2 Voodoo cards and SLI. What I do not remember what happened to that computer and the other thing is which of the cards the video cord is attached to? It does not matter or it does matter?

Copy that. I missed that entire era of 3dfx. I was using computers but the games I was into weren’t 3D accelerated.

This is all new to me and I’m having a lot of fun with it. After some research, I came up with the photos below. I suspect it does matter how everything is connected.

I learned that if a program or benchmark isn’t written for 3dfx, SLI will make no difference. If it is, it’s fantastic! I replayed Star Wars Racer (the kids and I played that in 1999), and that game looks unbelievable!

M1TP2 looks great too. I think I’ve gotten it running the best I can. All that’s left is to install the game patches. One of them, I remember smooths out the CITV engagement function and makes it less jerky.

I’m working on getting Fraps and a USB drive working with this legacy rig. I might set up a dedicated YouTube channel just for M1TP2 gameplay. There are other videos out there but the demonstrators usually don’t really know how to play and it’s kind of annoying.

I gotta show everybody what this game can do!!!!

Polak2 · 10-28-21, 11:29 AM

All looks as per the schematic.

The main card is Matrox. Do you have all the best drivers for all that?

RetroGamer · 10-28-21, 12:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polak2

All looks as per the schematic.

The main card is Matrox. Do you have all the best drivers for all that?

Oh, those photos are images I pulled from the internet during my research.

My main card is an onboard 8MB ATI Rage 3D Pro (reported by Windows). The BIOS sees it as an ATI MACH 64. When I first refurbished this PC, I used the latest (wrong) drivers for the onboard video and it ran all 3DMark tests slow. I tracked down the drivers that an Aptiva E530 came with and those run all three 3DMark Win98 tests (99, 2000, & 2001) a lot faster even though those driver were older.

Short answer: Yes, I believe I have the best drivers available for onboard video.

As you can see, it’s a pretty basic, old PC (formerly in used by an accountant)

RetroGamer · 10-28-21, 12:26 PM

In case anybody is wondering….PCI slot #1 is completely useless! It is blocked by the big green capacitors and heat sinks!!

The only card that could go in there is one of those odd shaped ones - those are typically sound cards. Upon further inspection - no card can fit there.

I don’t think there are any more video upgrades physically possible. There’s just no room. I’m happy onboard video is passable. I’m also lucky that the onboard sound card has DOS drivers for MS-DOS mode. There’s just no more room for anything else in the case.

Polak2 · 10-31-21, 05:23 PM

Here is our 1st potential "homework" in trying to remove some bugs or odd behavior in M1TP2.

Problem:
Vehicles sometimes collide when spawned.

Video:
collision

no collision

Possible solution ...TBC and edited in this post.

RetroGamer · 11-06-21, 05:04 PM

I gave the 3dfx-enabled IBM Aptiva a break and took out a different Win98 PC to try M1TP2 on.

Absolute fail using a GeForce 3 Ti200 AGP card with 128MB video RAM. If I disable 3D acceleration, it plays in software mode but that stinks!

I even tried an older GeForce 2 AGP card, same result. Videos play but the game crashes or locks up at the 1st screen.

I updated M1TP2, disabled the 3D acceleration, setup D3D in the configuration, and tried again with 3D acceleration enabled. It did not work.

The PC I’m using is an old dell running Win98 at 1.8 GHz. I would’ve liked to see the performance with those specs but nope.

Does anybody know which direct 3D cards work with M1TP2? I’m not opposed to buying a card known to work with the game.

As far as correcting gameplay - you guys are way ahead of me. I’m still learning how to play it!!

Polak2 · 11-07-21, 02:52 AM

It is rather difficult to advise what to use with W98 as the only thing I know how to make it look and play good is to have a dgVoodoo wrapper combined with DXWind on win10. It took me a long time to adjust and tweak all the settings but finally, it worked and worked well.

Polak2 · 11-07-21, 03:23 AM

In regards to correcting gameplay or still (after all those years) discovering new things possibly hidden in M1TP2 how about this little picture discovered recently when all of the images were opened from the CAT files.

Does it look like a nice Mission Editor maybe hiding still there?

RetroGamer · 11-08-21, 11:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polak2

Does it look like a nice Mission Editor maybe hiding still there?

Now that's more like it! The maps I'm seeing barely show the high ground, which is good to know. Usually, I send any TOW support platoons to the high ground to cover possible enemy avenues of approach.

If you can improve the maps, that'd be huge, IMO!

Also, I answered my previous question by researching some M1TP2 FAQs. Specifically, this one:

Q: What cards are supported in Direct3D? A: Direct3D may be used with the Matrox Millennium and Intel 740 cards.
So what the heck....these cards are pretty cheap on eBay right now so I picked
up an Intel 740 8MB AGP card.

Now...I'm pretty sure I can get a USB stick to work in Win98. My problem is
Fraps 1.9d. I installed it but I haven't gotten it to do anything.

Assuming I can get Fraps and USB thumbdrives working, I intend to upload some
M1TP2 gameplay under Glide and D3D....not sure anybody cares but, still working on it....

Polak2 · 11-09-21, 07:30 AM

M1TP2 is running pretty well on the new..er OS and graphic drivers, but only in Glide not so much D3D. Perhaps D3D has not been tried enough, however, there are some strange artifacts (black tiles) on the ground. I am not sure what D3D could do better than Glide for M1TP2 maybe transparency and maybe particle effects.

The problem is that from what I see the transparency is very basic and ancient and unless the change was made to the code to accept a more modern texture format like DDS (DXT3 and DXT5) all efforts may be rather futile to work on PCX with its index mode.

I am really surprised that in Glide M1TP2 looks good as it does on modern hardware and Win10.

This subject is close to my main interest but sometimes it is disappointing to conclude that this is a closed case and nothing can be done.

RetroGamer · 11-10-21, 12:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polak2

M1TP2 is running pretty well on the new..er OS and graphic drivers, but only in Glide not so much D3D. Perhaps D3D has not been tried enough, however, there are some strange artifacts (black tiles) on the ground. I am not sure what D3D could do better than Glide for M1TP2 maybe transparency and maybe particle effects.

The problem is that from what I see the transparency is very basic and ancient and unless the change was made to the code to accept a more modern texture format like DDS (DXT3 and DXT5) all efforts may be rather futile to work on PCX with its index mode.

I am really surprised that in Glide M1TP2 looks good as it does on modern hardware and Win10.

This subject is close to my main interest but sometimes it is disappointing to conclude that this is a closed case and nothing can be done.

You're way ahead of me in the software / graphics / programming area! I know nothing of texture formats, PCX, or DDS. I'm not going to attempt running it on my Windows 7 PC until I get it running on the old PCs 1st. I really want to see how M1TP2 is supposed to look when it's running under Win98.

For the life of me, I don't know why I never gave M1TP2 a chance earlier. I have the game in mint condition - box, keyboard card, disk, box, everything!!

Being a computer hobbyist, people have given me computers they were going to discard, knowing I would work on them. As a result, I have 4 old desktops - and one laptop. Three of them run Windows 98, one of the desktops - a Dell 8200 - runs 98, XP, and DOS perfectly, all the rest run XP. I basically have a hodgepodge of abandoned equipment.

Tonight, I booted the Dell 8200 into XP instead of Windows 98 and I'll be...M1TP2 ran beautifully in D3D mode. There is just one quirk - you can't exit the game because the "exit" button is gone! Alt+F4 had to be used to exit. D3D mode did not work at all with the exact same hardware in Win98. Go figure.

In comparing D3D to Glide (the two Voodoo2 cards in SLI), I can see very little difference. Maybe there's just a little less sharpness around the edges in D3D as opposed to Glide but it's nothing really.

I've got the Intel card coming in a week or so. The goal is to have M1TP2 run perfectly in Win98 in Glide (that's been accomplished), and in D3D as well (in progress).

Looking forward to posting comparisons! This is a great game! If I don't feel like getting too overworked, the Armor School Basic Gunnery mission is a great short warm-up. So is the Artillery training mission. Lase, track, fire, watch those awesome graphics! Hah! It's hard to beat that!!!

10-26-21, 07:52 PM	#48
RetroGamer Mate Join Date: Sep 2021 Posts: 54 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	3Dfx Voodoo2 cards in SLI Mode This afternoon, my second Voodoo2 card eBay purchase arrived. I eagerly plugged it in to test it and….nothing. It wasn’t even detected by the PC. I tried a different PCI slot and the desktop PC wouldn’t even boot. I then reinstalled it in the original slot that I’d tried the first time and it worked! The only explanation I have is that the card probably hadn’t been used in over 20 years and the capacitors or other parts just needed to charge and wake up a bit. I’m not sure. I then connected and installed both Voodoo2cards in SLI mode and ran the 3DMark2000 benchmark, then 3DMark99 max and finally 3DMark2001. Guess what? There was ZERO performance increase, LOl!!!! The reported memory shows it’s double what it was and the voodoo display software shows the memory has doubled, but aside from that, there is no difference….I do find that a little funny even tho I’m a bit disappointed. M1TP2 runs and looks great but it was great before the install. Maybe I need to try different drivers. Anyway - it was a fun experiment for M1TP2 and me. UPDATE: Further research indicates I am likely using the wrong drivers and wrong benchmark programs. For the purposes of getting the most out of M1TP2, I’m going to try different Voodoo2 drivers. http://falconfly.3dfx.pl/voodoo2.htm The game looks good now, it’s just the frame rate could be improved. The jerkiness be improved by my installing one of the M1TP2 patches. Once I get this thing smoothed out, back to reports and hopefully media of gameplay! Last edited by RetroGamer; 10-26-21 at 10:42 PM.

10-28-21, 12:26 PM	#53
RetroGamer Mate Join Date: Sep 2021 Posts: 54 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	In case anybody is wondering….PCI slot #1 is completely useless! It is blocked by the big green capacitors and heat sinks!! The only card that could go in there is one of those odd shaped ones - those are typically sound cards. Upon further inspection - no card can fit there. I don’t think there are any more video upgrades physically possible. There’s just no room. I’m happy onboard video is passable. I’m also lucky that the onboard sound card has DOS drivers for MS-DOS mode. There’s just no more room for anything else in the case. Last edited by RetroGamer; 10-28-21 at 09:41 PM.

11-06-21, 05:04 PM	#55
RetroGamer Mate Join Date: Sep 2021 Posts: 54 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	D3D and M1TP2 I gave the 3dfx-enabled IBM Aptiva a break and took out a different Win98 PC to try M1TP2 on. Absolute fail using a GeForce 3 Ti200 AGP card with 128MB video RAM. If I disable 3D acceleration, it plays in software mode but that stinks! I even tried an older GeForce 2 AGP card, same result. Videos play but the game crashes or locks up at the 1st screen. I updated M1TP2, disabled the 3D acceleration, setup D3D in the configuration, and tried again with 3D acceleration enabled. It did not work. The PC I’m using is an old dell running Win98 at 1.8 GHz. I would’ve liked to see the performance with those specs but nope. Does anybody know which direct 3D cards work with M1TP2? I’m not opposed to buying a card known to work with the game. As far as correcting gameplay - you guys are way ahead of me. I’m still learning how to play it!!

11-09-21, 07:30 AM	#59
Polak2 Weps Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 371 Downloads: 60 Uploads: 0	M1TP2 is running pretty well on the new..er OS and graphic drivers, but only in Glide not so much D3D. Perhaps D3D has not been tried enough, however, there are some strange artifacts (black tiles) on the ground. I am not sure what D3D could do better than Glide for M1TP2 maybe transparency and maybe particle effects. The problem is that from what I see the transparency is very basic and ancient and unless the change was made to the code to accept a more modern texture format like DDS (DXT3 and DXT5) all efforts may be rather futile to work on PCX with its index mode. I am really surprised that in Glide M1TP2 looks good as it does on modern hardware and Win10. This subject is close to my main interest but sometimes it is disappointing to conclude that this is a closed case and nothing can be done. Last edited by Polak2; 11-09-21 at 03:31 PM.

10-27-21, 06:47 PM	#49
Polak2 Weps Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 371 Downloads: 60 Uploads: 0	I remember I had 2 Voodoo cards and SLI. What I do not remember what happened to that computer and the other thing is which of the cards the video cord is attached to? It does not matter or it does matter?

10-28-21, 11:29 AM	#51
Polak2 Weps Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 371 Downloads: 60 Uploads: 0	All looks as per the schematic. The main card is Matrox. Do you have all the best drivers for all that?

10-31-21, 05:23 PM	#54
Polak2 Weps Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 371 Downloads: 60 Uploads: 0	Here is our 1st potential "homework" in trying to remove some bugs or odd behavior in M1TP2. Problem: Vehicles sometimes collide when spawned. Video: collision no collision Possible solution ...TBC and edited in this post.

11-07-21, 02:52 AM	#56
Polak2 Weps Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 371 Downloads: 60 Uploads: 0	It is rather difficult to advise what to use with W98 as the only thing I know how to make it look and play good is to have a dgVoodoo wrapper combined with DXWind on win10. It took me a long time to adjust and tweak all the settings but finally, it worked and worked well.

11-07-21, 03:23 AM	#57
Polak2 Weps Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 371 Downloads: 60 Uploads: 0	In regards to correcting gameplay or still (after all those years) discovering new things possibly hidden in M1TP2 how about this little picture discovered recently when all of the images were opened from the CAT files. Does it look like a nice Mission Editor maybe hiding still there?