High Treason
Warrior
Resident Pervert and source of offensiveness.
Posts: 234 
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Post by High Treason on Aug 31, 2015 23:38:05 GMT -5
Still in the making, I have a rather sick machine in the making here. My current Athlon 1500+ is sick and old, headed for retirement because it has run its course... Now, I introduce you to my new one... My new, old one or whatever you want to call it as I already had these parts.  Pictured is; > Chanitech 7VJL Apogee motherboard > AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 266MHz BUS T-Bred. The fastest T-Bred CPU released for the 266MHz BUS and probably the fastest for this board, though I will be trying an obscure Barton 2800+ at the same clock speed (2133MHz) which has double the cache on board. > ASUS nVidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 - Factory overclocked. Comparable to a (Non-SE) GeForce 4 Ti 4800. Evil and very capable in DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3... Might even be able to run SWP/JFSW. > The mobo features a CMI 8738 which is SoundBlaster compatible, meaning I can run Windows 98 SE and play DOS SW and very high frame rates. > At the same time we have adequate GL capabilities and can play ports with limited high-res graphics. > 1GB DDR RAM - At CPU Clock. Can support 3GB, but why should I? I don't need it. I have a 40GB IDE Hard Drive for this, a Seagate, and I hate Seagate because they suck ass but this one is still running so is probably fine. Tempted to add another in RAID-0 with a cheap controller for Mega-Overkill-Super-Turbo-The-World-Warrior-Champions-Fighter-Edition Mode operation. A careful observer might notice that the monitor is displaying a DOS application from another machine. That machine is "Hooker" in the New York themed case the PSU is resting against, it has been serving web pages as far as the USA (From the UK), nice achievement for a lowly 486SX... It used to just display a rude message, but I updated it to something more befitting of the machine's persona;  The means to access this are not public knowledge and it will remain this way. I wouldn't advise trying either, because the ISP the system is using have been known to block entire address ranges for "abuse" when something simply fails to resolve, don't ask me how or why. I shall keep this thread updated as I dismantle the old system (Riccardo) and build this one (Not sure of the name yet. Perhaps Daniella or Fiona may fit with it) before eventually uploading 60FPS Video of how it plays SW captured right from the VGA socket on the ass-end. |
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Post by Robman on Sept 2, 2015 0:30:19 GMT -5
lol! This is the first PC I ever played Shadow Warrior on   IBM aptiva E03 Cyrix pr166 - 133Mhz 16mb SDRAM 66Mhz 2mb ATI Rage2 onboard video 2.1gb quantum bigfoot hdd 5.25" 20x cdrom. Crystal Semiconductor onboard audio. Lucent 56k flex protocol fax modem. Windows 95 + Canon Bubblejet printer. $3000 CDN in 1997. |
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Maren
Grasshopper
Posts: 75
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Post by Maren on Sept 2, 2015 20:24:08 GMT -5
Well, I just got served by Dave. Hope that wasn't the male version of hooker...
Anyways, I never really got any reasonable performance from like-priced Athlon's (as compared to Intel's) back in the day, yet yours should be perfectly up to the task for standard SW maps.
The first time I played SW I did on a 66mhz Intel 486 + 32mb ram. I remember SW being mostly playable except during big explosions. Quite a remarkable a thing when you consider that Blood was pretty much a slideshow on the exact same machine!
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High Treason
Warrior
Resident Pervert and source of offensiveness.
Posts: 234
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Post by High Treason on Sept 3, 2015 8:47:29 GMT -5
I should be setting up the hard drive soon and once that is done, I will be ready to test it out. @robman; Still have pieces of the first system I ran it on. My Dad's P166MMX; > Intel Pentium MMX 166MHz > 16MB EDO RAM > 2MB ATI Mach64 > 1.6GB Seagate HDD > Unknown generic CD-ROM > ESS ES688 AudioDrive > VoiceView 28.8K Modem > Windows 95 Had a Panasonic Color printer... KX-P model of some sort, 1121 or 1131 I think, was stolen with the Opteron I told you about and many other parts. Maren; Nah, Dave is just a recluse, lives in a corner somewhere and gathers dust. Fairly modern by comparison. Hooker lives at a different port. I think a PIII 1.4S would actually be slightly faster for Build games in DOS, but it would lose out as a multi-purpose system, which this is. I have to move several production elements for my cartoon to it as 11 years in I cannot change what I rely on software and hardware wise without it drastically altering the look of the cartoon, essentially making the existing decade of work useless. Too far locked into what I started. Playing SW is on its list of expected tasks though, in fact it is third on the list after cartoon and MIDI control, as I find myself rarely using the PII now. Blood? I don't talk about that if I can help it. I could go on a long ramble about how it broke a few hard drives and why I will never play it again as well as throwing a theory about why the source code will never happen but I will not. Blood wouldn't even run on the P75 written on the box, let alone a 486DX2, goes to show how much testing they did. All I can show you of my own experiences are in how the game screamed at me and then went mental before damaging its last drive all in the space of around 3 minutes; youtu.be/AGwtALejyfQ?list=PLzosKMNG_DwKljK1ApYFdv0m5WM4Omc_f&t=1550 |
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Maren
Grasshopper
Posts: 75
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Post by Maren on Sept 19, 2015 21:39:42 GMT -5
Blood? I don't talk about that if I can help it. I could go on a long ramble about how it broke a few hard drives and why I will never play it again I noticed you played v1.0 on the video, which has quite a few quirks and nuances. Maybe you should try patching it up to the latest version? surely what you describe has nothing to do with Blood, but it helps the experience to play it with less bugs and more balanced behavior. as well as throwing a theory about why the source code will never happen but I will not I've heard it all, but it all goes back to the almighty dollar, with some people being afraid of losing a potential opportunity to cash on Blood's legacy, and the others being afraid of getting burnt for sharing something they're not a 100% sure they own. Blood wouldn't even run on the P75 written on the box, let alone a 486DX2, Well, I actually got it to run on a P75 no hassle, but the loading times were miserable and the framerate unpredictable. Nevertheless, Blood was never meant to be run on a 486, and so wasn't SW, yet it's interesting to notice the difference it made for game developers to have Ken Silverman all to themselves. goes to show how much testing they did They actually did plenty of testing and received a lot of feedback from the players, but the deadline was tight so they were forced to leave a lot to the patches. Happens all the time. Blood will mess up with you brain, I'll give you that, but in good kind of way  |
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High Treason
Warrior
Resident Pervert and source of offensiveness.
Posts: 234
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Post by High Treason on Sept 21, 2015 2:57:13 GMT -5
I am playing V1.0 because V1.21 is well and truly broken, has nerfed weapons and other things that plain don't work. I think the most annoying thing was the Life Leech, I tried to fire it and it appeared on the ground in front of me as it would before you pick it up, my ammo count went to zero and suddenly I got hit by a Tesla charge and died. This happened repeatedly to me and a friend in co-op once (He did not have V1.0). They also appear to have done something to the audio driver as it never worked properly with my setup where V1.0 did. Seriously broken bosses too, Shial consistently refuses to die in V1.21 and the changes to weapons severely ruin the balance in the level anyway.
I personally think the source code won't happen because Jace Hall & Co. are ashamed of what they did, or have something to hide... Possibly for money reasons, possibly not.
I ran it on a P75 years ago... It was borderline playable at times but it was not at all stable. Random crashes were more frequent than usual and the game occasionally went mental with enemies and items being "suspended in time" for long periods... Kind of looked like lag in Multiplayer would do.
If they tested it, the test players must have sucked ass at games or had no idea what they were talking about. They should never have put this game out of the door. Yeah, happens all the time... Today. Perhaps Blood was the start of this bullsh*t... no... wait, we had Quake already and that was just sh*t to start with, at leas Blood actually had the potential to be something good.
Blood doesn't get played any more here, I got sick of running around after the crap it caused and rather like having my machine in a working state. That video was the final nail, if I hadn't already started uploading that I would have quit then and there, instead I got through it but I wasn't happy.
As for the Athlon, I had Windows installed, then installed 3DMark which broke everything and have not yet had time to do anything about it. I will get around to it soon I guess. Or, I hope.
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Maren
Grasshopper
Posts: 75
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Post by Maren on Sept 23, 2015 16:06:14 GMT -5
I am playing V1.0 because V1.21 is well and truly broken If you can patch it up to v1.21, then you're dealing with an unofficial upgrade. Keep that in mind. has nerfed weapons and other things that plain don't work. I think the most annoying thing was the Life Leech, I tried to fire it and it appeared on the ground in front of me as it would before you pick it up That's the alternate firing mode. my ammo count went to zero and suddenly I got hit by a Tesla charge and died Well, I got choked to death while being burned alive and I'm not complaining lol This happened repeatedly to me and a friend in co-op once (He did not have V1.0) If it only happened once, I'd wouldn't personally lay a charge against anything here. They also appear to have done something to the audio driver as it never worked properly with my setup where V1.0 did With a malfunctioning driver, anything's possible! Seriously broken bosses too, Shial consistently refuses to die in V1.21 and the changes to weapons severely ruin the balance in the level anyway Bosses are supposed to be challenging, you know. With the right technique, Shial's actually dispatched very quickly. |
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High Treason
Warrior
Resident Pervert and source of offensiveness.
Posts: 234
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Post by High Treason on Sept 23, 2015 17:41:41 GMT -5
V1.21 was installed from a V1.21 CD, not by patching V1.0. It never had AltFire before and the one they added sucks, so that isn't improving my opinion of V1.21. Why would I want a weapon where its prime function is to kill me? The death by the weapon happened repeatedly in multiple sessions, but according to you, this is normal, so f*ck the dev team, they were just d*cks. The driver is the one in the game, nothing to do with my system. Works fine in everything else anyway. I'd go off and prove it but the system I refer to is no longer around, I parted it out after the drive failure. Bosses are supposed to be challenging, yes, I agree, I hate a lack of challenge... Such as Tchernobog who dies within seconds and Cerberus who can be killed in two hits. But Shial simply doesn't work in V1.21; youtu.be/eZNVh9IGgSM?list=PL188D5859BB5017BD&t=1520Actually, just observe how the game runs on there, that was a beefy system, either a Pentium III at 750-1000Mhz (Can't remember if I had upgraded it yet) or an Athlon 1500+ Other points of interest in no particular order in some posts I made somewhere else; www.scent-88.com/forum/index.php/topic,7.msg7715.html#msg7715 www.scent-88.com/forum/index.php/topic,7.msg7728.html#msg7728 I think all of these were on the second attempt on the P2 though I haven't checked and some may be with the other systems the game ruined. Ignore the argumentative d*ckhead who was trying to start sh*t over there, I generally pretend he doesn't exist... Actually, I generally pretend that community doesn't exist to be honest, but that is not for discussion here. |
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High Treason
Warrior
Resident Pervert and source of offensiveness.
Posts: 234
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Post by High Treason on Sept 23, 2015 17:52:11 GMT -5
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Maren
Grasshopper
Posts: 75
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Post by Maren on Oct 24, 2015 3:54:56 GMT -5
I've read your responses and considered, yet I cannot honestly relate to any of the technical abnormalities you've mentioned.
I, however, definitely feel you on Tchernobog not being much of a challenge (the exact same problem holding true for SW's Zilla), which's quite an interesting thing given the fact that they're both of a similar frame; thin, tall and horned.
It could be, though, that the whole of the issue lies on Athlon's being problematic and just downright inferior to anything Intel has put on the shelves, as it was my very own experience.
From what I recall (and it's been a while), a 220mhz PII was clearly insufficient for certain areas at higher difficulty levels, provided a decent resolution was used (800x600+). At 550mhz (PIII), however, everything was perfectly smooth.
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Maren
Grasshopper
Posts: 75
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Post by Maren on Dec 10, 2015 22:11:48 GMT -5
Back to the SW videos, I was actually a bit surprised there's very little that even remotely touches on SW running on real hardware. I'm guessing the whole crumbling house issue has delayed the recordings, but it already promises to be interesting because everything else on youtube is either DosBox-based or source port-enhanced. If you could also slot in a voodoo somewhere and do a 3dfx run, that would be the cherry on top.
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High Treason
Warrior
Resident Pervert and source of offensiveness.
Posts: 234
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Post by High Treason on Dec 12, 2015 7:27:24 GMT -5
Recordings will be coming at some point, but yeah, the move is getting in the way. I did actually LP the entire game on proper hardware many years ago.
3DFX support? Now why the hell would I want to make the game run worse? That would be a major waste of an Athlon if it had nothing but a measly first gen accelerator from 1995 installed. Could always try a wrapper with the Ti 4600 I suppose, but I'd prefer voxels and solid lines to the unstable sprite-only blur-fest that is the 3DFX patch. With such a fast machine your will invariably get better results in the software mode, not to mention a higher resolution and better frame rates.
I did briefly upgrade the system to a 2800+ but my PSU is too small to run it. Ended up with a mobile 2500+ until I can fix my old 650W monster PSU. The 300W one I have now just doesn't cut it.
The system passed one test run in that I have been uploading an LP where I was running ePSXe on the Athlon. The game was sh*t though.
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Maren
Grasshopper
Posts: 75
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Post by Maren on Dec 13, 2015 5:25:34 GMT -5
I just thought it would be interesting to watch, as I haven't seen SW running on real 3DFX hardware since the 90's.
As a general statement, TI4600 should definitely work fine with the older wrappers, for it's got both sufficient horsepower and native paletted textures support, but the older wrappers are useless for SW 3DFX; too many artifacts if you get it to display anything at all.
The newer wrappers (say nGlide) can handle SW 3DFX correctly, but you need a relatively powerful computer (that is, by today's standards) to get a usable, stable framerate, given it's got to do DosBox on top of it...still on a single core. But even when you get it all right, it still won't do 16-bit color banding like the original, thus some of the authenticity is effectively lost.
SW 3DFX's about the only game I remember that features this weird "striped" type of texture filtering, which interpolates vertically but merely doubles horizontally. That too is neat to watch.
Anyways, I do agree full software rendering puts the 3DFX patch to shame (though translucency and blue-tinted mirrors are a nice touch), but I wasn't seeing this from the "quality" perspective.
Cheers.
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