Note of importance to Voodoo users (any)

At the risk of boring you let me elaborate on how I found this. I bought Serious Sam and loaded it up. I got a horrible framerate and lots of graphics bugs. Figuring that I just probably need the latest drivers I got the final release from 3DFX.com and retried. The framerate was playable, however, I was greeted with a huge amount of graphic glitches... most notably, color warps on textures that shouldn't be there.

So I hit the Seriously! forums, figuring that I couldn't be the only asshole running Serious Sam on a Voodoo3. No one directly answered the problem but Wicked3D was always recommended.

http://www.wicked3d.com/technology/wickedgl.htm

So I grabbed and installed it for Serious Sam. The framerate became even better and all the graphics problems were solved. If you're having any problems with Serious Sam and you're using a 3DFX card, go there and get Wicked3D (It will work with ANY Voodoo card you have).

Curious as to just how well these custom minigl libraries worked I also installed the high-resolution optimized one for Soldier of Fortune.

3DFX usually offered minigl drivers for the popular games, such as Half-Life and Quake 2. However, since GLSetup rolled around 3DFX hasn't bothered with this task. Therefore, I was always using the default drivers with games like FAKK2, Q3A and of course SoF.

SoF never ran well on my Voodoo 3. It was always a little choppy, even at 640 by 480 (the lowest resolution, the one I seemed trapped on). Given the success that WickedGL proved on Serious Sam I figured what the hell and started up SoF at 1024 by 768.

At that resolution, it now plays smoother than it ever did at 640 by 480. Texture quality is higher than the default drivers would allow too.

So I'll say it again, if you have a Voodoo, Voodoo 2, Voodoo 3, Voodoo 4, Voodoo 5 or even a Voodoo Banshee you OWE it to yourself to go to:
http://www.wicked3d.com/technology/wickedgl.htm

Now then, I'm sure most of you are thinking... what the HELL does this have to do with Doom??? Am I mistaken, or doesn't Doom Legacy say that you can use the Q3A drivers for your video card? Well, now you can hit 400 frames a second in Doom Legacy. =)

WickedGL 0wnz j00. On this P2 300 with Voodoo2, it's a noticable improvement although it still sucks compared to my brother's Duron 800 Voodoo3. One thing I have to say though is that I didn't see much of an improvement with WickedGL in Unreal Tournament, it's pretty glitchy in that game too.

Hunh? I don't even see an option to install separate drivers for Unreal Tournament in WickedGL! =)

Even if they existed I doubt I would want to use them anyway. The Unreal engine was built from the ground up around 3DFX chipsets, so the default driver is most likely the best anyway (assuming you have a 3DFX, I hear nothing but complaints from nVidia users with that game).

Because of that 3DFX bias I get hellacious performance over Quake based games with Unreal based games. Although I must admit.... SoF at 1024 by 768 R0X0RZ!!!!! Ahem.

I am *VERY* curious as to installing the hires optimized driver for Serious Sam. Do you think I could make it playable at 1024 by 768? I know that in some of the most hectic parts of the game at 640 by 480 it can slow down tremendously so I don't think I should even try...

Serious Sam runs fine on my win2k athlon 800, voodoo 3 2000 pci, running at 1024x768 with wickedGL ...

I'd like to point out that Serious Sam rocks (graphics-wise, not speeds-wise) with my Banshee, using regular drivers. It's playable and does almost all effects. I haven't tried it with WGL.

WGL is great though. I got a 10 FPS speed increase in Quake 3 timedemo demo001, which shows the only limiter to it is the crappy processor (K6-300@333).

Arioch said:

Serious Sam runs fine on my win2k athlon 800, voodoo 3 2000 pci, running at 1024x768 with wickedGL ...

Oh really? Cool, I have a v3-3000 so I think I'll give it a shot. Thanks. =)

Yup, WickedGl makes all the difference

Serious Sam on my PIII 1Ghz with Voodoo3 - crap
With GLsetup - odd colours everywhere
WickedGL - perfect

But why didn't they put it on the disk?

Why did they recommend Voodoo3 on the packet?

Why did they hide literature about the default drivers and GLsetup not working in the docs?

I dunno, that's pretty shady. Over at the Seriously! forums I hear about people with kickass systems and new nVidia cards having tons of crashes. Something about AGP 4X... really strange.

NVidia cards have the tendency to always take a shared IRQ, which provokes those crashes. That was my dad's problem, and everyone else's :)

deadnail said:

Hunh? I don't even see an option to install separate drivers for Unreal Tournament in WickedGL! =)

Even if they existed I doubt I would want to use them anyway. The Unreal engine was built from the ground up around 3DFX chipsets, so the default driver is most likely the best anyway (assuming you have a 3DFX, I hear nothing but complaints from nVidia users with that game).

Because of that 3DFX bias I get hellacious performance over Quake based games with Unreal based games. Although I must admit.... SoF at 1024 by 768 R0X0RZ!!!!! Ahem.

I am *VERY* curious as to installing the hires optimized driver for Serious Sam. Do you think I could make it playable at 1024 by 768? I know that in some of the most hectic parts of the game at 640 by 480 it can slow down tremendously so I don't think I should even try...

Read the documentation, it says how to get it working in UT. But quite frankly don't bother :)

Arioch said:

Serious Sam runs fine on my win2k athlon 800, voodoo 3 2000 pci, running at 1024x768 with wickedGL ...

Well okay I tried it. I've promptly gone back to 640 by 480. The framerate became far too inconsistent. =)

I've had WickedGL for about a year. I have just one comment. The driver for Half-Life seems to crash the game when you start a multiplayer session, so I recommend not using the Half-Life one. Every other game works fine.

Doesn't do that for me...

deadnail said:

Hunh? I don't even see an option to install separate drivers for Unreal Tournament in WickedGL! =)

Even if they existed I doubt I would want to use them anyway. The Unreal engine was built from the ground up around 3DFX chipsets, so the default driver is most likely the best anyway (assuming you have a 3DFX, I hear nothing but complaints from nVidia users with that game).

Because of that 3DFX bias I get hellacious performance over Quake based games with Unreal based games. Although I must admit.... SoF at 1024 by 768 R0X0RZ!!!!! Ahem.

I am *VERY* curious as to installing the hires optimized driver for Serious Sam. Do you think I could make it playable at 1024 by 768? I know that in some of the most hectic parts of the game at 640 by 480 it can slow down tremendously so I don't think I should even try...

I played it through at 1024x768 just fine.

Espi said:

Doesn't do that for me...

Actually I hope it does, just a deterrent to remind me how fucking HORRIBLE online play with Half-Life is. =D

Nuno Correia said:

NVidia cards have the tendency to always take a shared IRQ, which provokes those crashes. That was my dad's problem, and everyone else's :)

Ummm I have a great frame rate with my Voodoo 5, maybe u have a crappy pc ? lol