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#384 Tribes2 + Voodoo5, DRI = bad combination

Rendering Error
open
nobody
5
2001-10-03
2001-10-03
Anonymous
No

Yes, I know we've all heard that Tribes2 is an
nVidia-and-ATI-only game. I recently tried it on my
Voodoo5, and it got working (smoothly, I'd like to
add). However, there are a few major (some might say
glaring) problems with rendering; I'm not sure whether
they're due to card design problems or driver problems,
but they sure are annoying. I report them here just to
see if they can be resolved to the benefit of 3dfx
users everywhere (a dying breed).

I tried both the X 4.1.0 and mesa-3-5-branch versions
of DRI. My box is configured as follows:

- Pentium III 933MHz (Coppermine)
- 256MB PC133-rated, known-good SDRAM (running at 100MHz)
- Kernel 2.4.10 (DRM compiled into the kernel)
- 3dfx Voodoo5 5500
- Variables:
-- X 4.1.0, mesa-3-5-branch of DRI as of 10/1/2001
-- Glide3 (downloaded from dri.sourceforge.net),
SLIAA-1-0-branch of Glide3 CVS (which
effectively provides working SLI)

X 4.1.0, both versions of Glide:

Right from the start, textures are corrupted. The
green-and-blue textures of the main screen are replaced
by rainbowy ones. In the game itself, most things
render correctly, with 3 exceptions:

- HUDs randomly switch from rendering correctly to
rendering colorful, staticky patterns.

- When the character enters a high-polygon-count
portion of scenery, the textures are replaced by a
corrupted one (a green-and-black dithered pattern), or
removed altogether and replaced by solid blue, light
orange, light pink, or white (and unaffected by
lighting conditions).

- After about 2 minutes of play, the green-and-black
dithered pattern begins rendering in bands up the
screen, the skybox textures are corrupted, and
eventually, the leftmost band of the scene is rendered
repeatedly across the screen and X dies, leaving the
image frozen onscreen. When this happens, you can't
switch consoles to a working shell (you have to press
Alt-Ctrl-Delete and hope for the best).
mesa-3-5-branch, SLIAA-1-0-branch of Glide3:

This doesn't work. Any GL app you try to run segfaults
with the typical "missing SST" errors.

mesa-3-5-branch, standard Glide:

As with X 4.1.0, but different in two ways:

- Texture corruption in the interface screens doesn't
occur, and it's greatly reduced in-game.

- All fonts not under the mouse cursor are corrupted,
appearing as random triangles.

Discussion

  • Nobody/Anonymous

    Logged In: NO

    One of the patches submitted to dri-devel today (the first
    one, IIRC) fixed the font corruption problem. 1 down, 2 to
    go. :)

     
  • Nobody/Anonymous

    Logged In: NO

    I've traced down the texture corruption, etc. to a specific
    trigger condition. If you stray more than, say, 200 meters
    from your starting point, the textures will begin getting
    increasingly corrupted, eventually spreading to the HUD,
    weapon model, and explosions. My guess is that there is
    some problem with a texture loader somewhere.

    Hope this helps (other than my T2 problems, DRI has worked
    great for months). :)

     
  • Amon-Re

    Amon-Re - 2001-12-29

    Logged In: YES
    user_id=413646

    I wish they (lokigames.com) told me that Voodoo5+DRI+Tribes
    doesn't work good before I purchased the Linux version of
    the game. The demo with Voodoo5 works fine under windows.

    I've had similar problems. The menu system have rainbow
    colors when you select 16bit or 32bit textures but when you
    select paletized for the textures the menu is almost
    completely fine with the exception of a few minor problems
    on the left and right. The game is unplayable because of the
    texture problems. I can't see any ground textures at all.
    Instead there is just one large field of a base color like
    white or black. You can't make heads or tales of it. Then
    there are some maps that you can not host and I'm still
    confused if it has anything to do with 3d rendering or just
    the game settings. When you fire a weapon you can hear the
    echo of it long after it has left your local area. Like the
    spin fuser when you shoot that you can hear it travel to the
    other side of the map before it crokes.

    The ground textures produce rainbow like colors at some
    times however those rainbow textures don't show up when you
    record a demo. I've also had problems with the intro movie
    on UT and the menu on UT... menu systems on other games and
    rainbow textures come out in other games as well like RUNE.

    I've been running on a fresh install of Mandrake 8.1.
    Voodoo5
    SBLive!
    815i
    128@133Mhz
    800MhzEB

     

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