Xpert@Play98 Frustration

K

KevinLeeC

New member
Okay, I give up. I can't get the beta drivers to work. So, I thought I'd back up and see if anyone had any thoughts on the problem I'm actually trying to solve. (I'd hoped the beta drivers would solve the problem…)

I'm trying to run Ilan Papini's Virtual Sailor (www.hangsim.com/vs) on a K6/2 system with an Xpert@Play 98 card. The game uses some pretty intense 3D to simulate oceans and ships and land and so on. (It's a great game, btw, and a nice change from flight sims.)

When I use the 4.11.2440 RagePro drivers, the game looks good and runs at a decent frame rate -- for about six minutes. Then my system locks up and I have to reboot. The lock ups generally seem to happen when the screen undergoes major rewrites. (Loading new scenery, changing views, etc.)

The 4.11.2548 and 4.11.2560 drivers seem more stable, but the colors and textures are weird. The texture maps are screwed up and not aligned on the polys. The sky is often black rather than blue and the some textures are completely oversaturated and look bright white.

Worse yet, some of the polys are misplaced (objects vanished "behind" other objects when they aren't really behind them). The hulls and decks of the ships are semi-transparent. The ship's wheel is completely invisible (makes it hard to steer).

So, here's what I need to know:

1) Is there any probable cause for the lock-ups under 4.11.2440? If so, is there a cure/correction?

2) Is there any probably cause for the strange colors in the 4.11.2548 and 4.11.2560 drivers? Is there a known fix for that?

3) Why shouldn't I chuck this card and move into a cave where I won't have to deal with computers any more?

For reference:

AMD K6/2 333Mhz
64 MB RAM
1.5 GB free hard drive space
ATI Xpert@Play 98 w/ 8MB
Win98
DirectX 7.0a

Any insights would be appreciated. I'm loosing my mind trying to get this thing to work.

Thanks,
KC
 
Hey, heh, sounds familliar. I've been busting my skull for the past month working on the same problem with the Game Driver i'm developing right now. Finally got it figured out. Unfortunately, there's no software fix i can find, nothing to tweak except maybe enabling paletted texturing. This helps a lot of problems like that, but not all. U can enable this useing the rage 128 tweaker, or my driver set (the one thats out right now), that is, if the d3d-ogl.reg file works for you (some people have told me that it doesnt work for em). Aside from that, you'd have to use a different d3d HAL, not all of which are stable. Maybe the GD that i'm gonna release will help you, dunno.

------------------
"As far as you're concerned, from now on, Dink Meeker is God"
"Then who are you?"
"I'm the personell officer that recruited God"
 
Isn't that the 5/5/6 thing in RPro? Or am I hopelessly clueless?

What registry setting would you use to change the pallet?

KC
 
:-) no, you're not totally clue-less, but you're not exactly on the spot... the 5-6-5 coloring mode doesnt really affect what i was talking about, palletted textures are textures that reference a special color pallet do ID a color (like a painter's pallet... like in movies, cartoons, stuff like that, only usually, the pallet in a vidgame is somewhat bigger, 16m colors... or more, depends), and map it. The 5-6-5 thing makes sure that the card uses all 16bits of its 16bit color mode. They are related, but not directly.
Oh, and the reg key is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ATI Technologies\Driver\ddhal\palette (set to 1 to use pal tex). This is slower though, so if you can help it, keep p-t @ zero.
Oh, theres also the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ATI Technologies\Driver\0000\3DHAL\PalTex key...

[This message has been edited by RAGE LT MAN (edited 04-19-2000).]
 
Okay, since you're eradicating my ignorance, could someone please explain "WHQL" drivers? Why are they CPU/Board specific?

KC
 
Dammit, you beat me to the explanation... umm, k, i'll tell you why they're MB specific tho. Different MBs use different AGP-to-CPU systems, intel uses one sys, while AMD and other non-mentionable systems use things like Socket7 or Super7 (the latter is an Intel Killer). So the drivers need to be configured for different AGP structures.
 
Talk about the computer hanging, that used to happen when direct3d hardware acceleration is enabled on my computer. I think I fried (electro magnetic/electromigration/whatever) my motherboard, so that everytime I play a game with 3d acceleration, the system hangs in like 3 minutes. Later I found out that by decreasing my system bus speed from the default 100MHz to 66MHz, 3d acceleration stops freezing the computer. Anyway, just thought I'd share that with ya. So now I'm not overclocking anything or using any unstable driver anymore.
 
Aah, heard that 'fore. what kinda MB are you using? Its usually an AGP prob, with AGP2x not working properly with the video bios/MB drivers. Upgrade your motherboard AGP driver, and get it back to 100mhz, try it. Does wonders, especially if runnin an AMD. :-)
 
Interesting...

I'm using a PCI card, not AGP. Still, lowering the bus speed might make a difference.

It's certainly worth trying.

Thanks,
KC
 
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