Finally...A Glide wrapper that works and is fast!

D

Da'an

Spaceman
I'm a newbie to posting in these forums, but I monitor them regularly, because I have Wing Commander: Secret Ops, and am always looking for ways to improve it. One way, which everyone here seems to be looking for, is a Glide wrapper which allows one to use Prophecy and Secret Ops with all of the Glide "bells & whistles" such as removing those annoying lines using Direct3D mode, the fading effect on ship explosions and missile trails, and a perfect lens flare. There are a LOT of glide wrappers out there, but I just happened to stumble upon this one today; I ran Secret Ops with the res patch set to Glide, and to my amazement, it works GREAT as far as I can tell, and it's fast too! Here is the address:

http://home.t-online.de/home/zsack/glide_wrapper/index.html

This will probably work with Prophecy as well. I was surfing the net looking for something that would allow me to use 3D hardware acceleration in the Windows 95 versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter under Windows 2000/XP. This didn't work for that, but I tried it in Secret Ops just for the heck of it, and wallah! Just to let you know, my video card is an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB using the latest Catalyst drivers. The author of this program states that it's mainly for the Nvidia GeForce and ATI Radeon family of video cards. I would love to hear some feedback to see if this works for everyone else as well. Also, if the community is already aware of this util, please forgive me. ;) Enjoy! :D
 
Yes, that's exactly the same I'm using (Already posted it in the Standoff-Forum, but never here, and I haven't seen another post speaking about it yet, so thx for posting :) )
It's really great - especially cause 640x480 can be rendered as 1280x960 :D (via: Try High-Res - Great feature for older 3dfx games)
To the speed: for those interested:
In Diablo 2 I get 100fps more with wrapped-glide than with natural Direct3D. - In numbers: max. ~800fps instead of 700fps. Not much slower than my sister's Voodoo5 Duron 2GHz with max. ~1000fps. So real fast wrapper ;)
Another example: UT in 1280x1024x32bit with FSAA (if I checked that correctly) with 16 bots I get ~30fps average. Ok, much slower than with normal settings, but imho still impressive compared to those wrappers I tried before. - Oh, nearly forgot: that's with a PIV 3.2GHz + R9800Pro + Cat 4.2 drivers.
But I have to disapoint some of you: With a Gf2 GTS, for example, there are some gfx bugs in WC SO/P :( - e.g., the arrows showing where the enemy etc is are in a black box. After all the author recommands Gf3 and R8500 + (no Gf4 MX!) to play WC SO/Prophecy best. - Yes, WC Prophecy works great as well ;) - So might explain the gfx-bugs.
EDIT: And some people even seem to be unable to use Glide at all in WC SO with this wrapper (see Standoff Thread about 3dfx). So too bad, it's not an alround solution :/
P.S.: To make things clear, before someone asks how I get so much fps in Diablo2: As I wrote, that is MAX - inclusive some tweaking (640x480, no 3D Sound etc)
 
Those are some impressive numbers! After using it for a few hours, I've got a few questions. First, after installation, this wrapper won't interfer with my regular games that use Direct3D and openGL, right? Second, in Secret Ops, I've notices this blue haze or fog at the bottom of my screen; is there a way to get rid of this?
 
First, after installation, this wrapper won't interfer with my regular games that use Direct3D and openGL, right?
Click to expand...
As far as I can say it: No, it won't make any troubles. I can play any non-3dfx game (or any game where I selected Direct3D/OpenGL instead of Glide) the same way I did before installing the wrapper.
Second, in Secret Ops, I've notices this blue haze or fog at the bottom of my screen; is there a way to get rid of this?
Click to expand...
Don't know if I can help you there. But what is your (whole) PC-setup? Maybe you need to change some things in the wrapper config, cause your Hardware doesn't support it (CPU is important, too, as far as I understood it). Drivers are Cat 4.4, right? Oh, and can you make a Screenshot? Could help analyzing as well, I'd guess ;)
But I can't guarantee, that I'll be able to help you, sorry :(
 
THE_WUQKED,

See the attached screenshots displaying the error. The first one was taken when the game was run at 640x480; I drew arrows pointing them out. They look like 3 blue, oval lines, kind of like cockpit struts. The second was taken when I ran the game at 1024x768. This resolution blurrs the line to look like blue haze at the bottom portion of the screen, which stays with me no matter which direction I fly in. I've also tried all of the wrapper's options, but still no luck. I also ran the game on Windows 2000 & Windows 98, but still have the same problem. Here's my system specs:

P4 2.4, 400Mhz FSB
768MB SDRAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB with Catalyst 4.3 drivers
Direct-X 9.0b
Windows 2000 SP4 & Windows 98

Any ideas? :(
 

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Anone tried that wrapper together with a true 3dfx compatible card (Voodoo1) also present in the system? Can they coexist on one machine?
 
Da'an,
Ah THAT bug. Well, it has nothing to do with the Wrapper - my Voodoo Banshee, my Voodoo1 and my sister's Voodoo5 get that/similar things at higher Res, too. The Problem is, that the High-Res Patch was never tested with 3dfx cards by the author, cause he has got none.
But why do you want to play in 1024x768 anyway, if you could just check "try High Res" in the Wrapper Config? This way you casn play in 1280x960. - Looks relly nice :D - Only disadvantage is, the radar, shields etc images are still as big as in 640x480.

KrisV,
I'll try out this test at once ;)
EDIT: Lol? It doesn't work although I can play the game? :confused: Really strange stuff... I'll try out my Voodoo1 later, to see if it has even probs with pure 3dfx cards. Oh, here is the Error Message I get directly after starting:
FileStreamer::read failed 0 0 998
fs::read WaitForMultipleObjects 1 0
Click to expand...

cff,
no, not yet, BUT it will overwrite the glide2x.dll and the glide3x.dll, so I'd guess it'll make some problems - or simply always use the wrapper instead of the Voodoo1.
 
THE_WUQKED,

Well, I reinstalled Secret Ops without the high-res patch, but I still get the blue-line bug, even with the wrapper's high-res feature. Oh well, it doesn't look too bad at 640x480; I turned off the game's cockpit struts, and pretend that the blue lines are them. :p
 
Lol? I don't see any bug in your 640x480 screenshot. Those Blue lines are meant to be there! But they were meant to be removed in the High-Res Patch, cause the author thought they were useless anyway + the bug you got at higher res occured (didn't seem to work for 3dfx, though, but as I said, he didn't test them with glide). And yes, it's meant as cockpit structure. I've got the same blue lines in Direct3D and Software mode and I had them before with my old 166mhz, my "DOS-Machine" - K6-2 400Mhz, etc etc. - Only the High-Res patch removed them for me in Direct3D.
Or wait. Did I get your last sentence right? You got them switched off via switching off cockpit? If so, I'll give that a try, too. :)
 
THE_WUQKED,

Where did those blue lines come from? Are they supposed to be generated by the original game, or were they put in there by the glide wrapper author? And what are they meant to represent? I can't seem to turn them off in the options, that's why I assumed they were a bug generated by the glide wrapper.

I used to have a 3dfx card a looooooooooong time ago, but I don't seem remember the lines being there before. I've been using Direct-3D for years now, and have never seen those lines until I started using the wrapper.

In my last sentence, I meant that I turned off the cockpit struts in the options, and "used" the blue lines as my cockpit frame. :)
 
- The blue lines were made by Origin themselves
- Nope, you can't switch them off (in glide)
- They are meant to represent th Cockpit-HUD (part of it)
- I've just checked Direct3D again, and you are right, no blue lines there. BUT I guess that is for the same reason why some parts of the crosshair are missing (guess you noticed that already - IF you don't use the High-Res Patch, that is!)
- I've played WCP via my 3dfx card not long ago, and I have got those blue lines there, too. So belief me, they are meant to be there (although they are useless ;) )
 
No problem ;) - and have fun with it. :D Looking forward to finally replay it again in 1280x960 myself (just finished WC1 SM2 and started with WC2, so it'll take a while) :)
 
I've had nothing but trouble with Glide wrappers, though maybe I'm just using the wrong games...

I have a copy of Die Hard Trilogy (1, not 2), and I'm fairly certain it uses Glide to run stuff. The only trouble is, the game never likes me to use 3D acceleration, even if I try to set up a Glide wrapper. Whenever I select it and return to the game, I just get the message "Directx Error #35." or something like that and I get booted. Or sometimes I'll get booted immediately with "Directx error #11." Am I not setting something up properly with a wrapper, or is my problem deeper than a Glide wrapper can fix?
 
No idea if the problem is deeper than just awrapper problem, but Die Hard isn't listed as a tested game at the author's site so far (at least fr this wrapper). So quite possible it doesn't work for that game. Is that game using Glide2x or 3x? If 3x: The only 3x game really supported by the linked wrapper at the moment is only DiabloII as far as I understood the readme.
 
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