flickery doom..... aarrrggghhhh

I hate this crap. I'm downloading some large files. What's the best way to kill some time? DooM of course. But it seems that sometimes, when I'm on the net, the graphics suffer from extreme flicker and it may as well be unplayable. Seems to happen with Wolfenstein as well and the various derivative games (heretic seems unaffected though). What's the cause and what's the cure, anyone?

BTW I'm running win 98, 333mhz AMD system with 128 megs of ram.

Well Lüt will just reply with some smartassed comment about Win98 :P

Not sure what could possibly be wrong here. You might want to check your modem's or network adapter's(if you are using cable) properties in the device manager to make sure there are no conflicts with your video card (memory range's etc).

I've never heard of this problem before.

I have. It has two names and two sources that could cause this problem.

1)Shitty ISP
2)Shitty comp

The name of this problem is called "Oh shit" or "Shit!" because thats what most users say when they have this horrible problem.

I'm on dialup.

BTW my video card is non-existant. It's emulated out of 4 megs of ram. Fucking compaq cheapskates. I'll build my next system myself.

But the problem is random. It can be fine one minute and terrible the next. It doesn't change in-game, except for when I was alt-tabbed out of the game for a while yesterday. It was perfectly fine after quitting and starting it again though.

Heh heh, Sorry bout the title..........

Yeah I think that's the solution, You Alt-Tabbed out, Quite a few games don't like that.. Which doom are you using? Doom*.exe or a port. I know ZDoom hates Alt-Tab and Legacy doesn't let you..........as for Wolf3d and such.....I have NO Idea...sorry.

Oh yeah, You do realise that Wolf3D used it's own engine and not dooms engine don't you? Considering that Doom wasn't even planned when they made Wolf3D.

I'm using vanilla DooM.

It happens mostly when I start the game. That alt-tabbing bit was just an example. I have alt-tabbed out many times, while on the net, with no problems. Just this particular time I was alt-tabbed out for a while.

Yes, I do realise Wolf3d is a different engine, of course. I'm just saying that this error has occured in Wolf3d too and also Blake Stone, which is of course a derivative. I haven't really tried with any other DooM derivatives, except for Heretic, which as I said seems to be immune. But I doubt it heavily modified to the graphics system. Other than the fact that I recall the demo had some tougher transperant enemies. I don't recall seeing them in the full game though.

Vanilla Doom, Right. I don't think I can help.
But just to check, do you know which ver of Doom you have?
As in... 1.9 or earlier? Apart from that tho....sorry, dunno.

Right that's good, I thought you might have thought that Wolf3D was doom.........Good to see you don't.

Heretic does rule.
Also I would recommend you get a source port..... but from the description of you're vid card.......well maybe not, but still try one, as all except JDoom has software rendering, personally tho I prefer the GL ports but well if you can't run them.....
Actually, maybe Boom might be an alternative
anyway just try one, they are worth it

Heh heh, Sorry bout the title..........

Nobody ever reads post titles you cumquat.

Yes, i'm running V1.9.

I use the source ports occasionally, when a source port's required. I typically like to use ol' plain vanilla for most stuff.

Well, drat......:) I can't tell what the prob is then, sorry.

Lut: well :P, So I'm a citrus now? Whatever. Well here's news for ya: I READ TITLES. Oh yeah, I do know that no-ones reads them which is why I wrote that. Theoretically people will see that, think: "WHAT is he blabbering about" then read the title. So that's the point. You're the Cumquat.

emulated card, do u mean to say u have a card built into the mother board? the built in shit usally sucks, except a built in sound card saved my friends ass(lightning killed all of his PCI slots, nothing was in them but a modem. he is stuck with a ISA now.) I would sudgest grabing a PCI openGL compadible card, or an AGP card(most, if not all, PII an up motherboards have AGP slots) you should be able to get a nice card for that system for about 20-30 dollars US

Yeah, I'm on the lookout for a somewhat cheap pci 3d card. I got just the one pci slot to use. No agp slot. Any idea what would be a good choice, taking in consideration the most advanced games I'd be playing on this are Half-life, System Shock 2 and Freespace 2? Though I'd need something available in Australia. Failing that I'll just wait until I build my own machine.

get your hands on a TNT2 card(or vanta) both come in a cheap PCI flavor. they are also nice cards to have, i had one before my gefroce 2 card, except mine where AGP. anyway u should have no problems finding a PCI version

get your hands on a TNT2 card(or vanta)

I'd say find an older Voodoo card, like Voodoo3 at least... TNT2 cards have a load of problems playing GL games.

Ahh, yes...

I had wondered after reading Kane's topic about his TNT2.

The only problem I can see is that Half-life *might* have an issue with a voodoo card. I recall that with a particular mod they were going on about problems people with voodoo's would have.

I just hope I can find a pci one for like $100 Aus ($50 US) or less. And I really don't want to have to import.