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Old 11-10-21, 12:51 AM   #60
RetroGamer
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Polak2 View Post
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!!!
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