Early win 95 game in high res EXTREMELY slow

[Solstar82]

the game in question is Necrodome, one of the early win 95 games that uses direct x ecc.its in 3d.i am using win 98 with these config

award 430vx pci

ati graphic pro turbo

intel pentium 166

fast vlb\pci
soundblaster 16

64 mb ram

synchronize time to to host clock

voodoo graphic

i have an I7 at ,360 ghz and a geforce gtx 750. the game runs EXTREMELY slow,doesn't support 3dfx or any other accelerated cards.now ,i do know the limits, the do's and dont's of pcem..but is it normal that this game runs so slow,for being an early dx win 95 game?game has two (fixed) res:320x230, which runs perfect,and "high res" which is roughly 640 x480.after setting the latter,the game runs to a crawl.and being how other 3d games runs decently (not counting 3dfx ones)i was wondering if i should change the base video card with something faster ohter than ati graphic pro turbo

[omarsis81]

I've just seen some screenshots and seems an interesting game! I will try this tonight and post my results tomorrow
Are you using vanilla PCem v11? If so, what cache setting? Other than "infinite" may be the cause

[szadycbr]

I installed the shareware version of the game, and for some reason it wont allow me to check High resolution in menu. Maybe thats the shareware limit, game is nearly 500mb and my PAYG transfer from phone is gone, so i cant get full version. could you check the SW version and can you set high resolution in it?
BTW , on diamond stealth 3d game runs on 320x240 and drawing distance is on full, all textured, bla bla bla and it runs fine, when i installed the ati pro turbo display, game runs at what appears to be 584x480 (strange, why?)and everything is on full and works perfectely fast on p120mmx. I tried to manually change SVGA to 1 in .cfg but it wont work, like i said , maybe SW version have no high resolution. On high resolution , what is resolution of the game? is it 800x600? cos i doubt it will be 1024 on software, but close to 640x480 is working fine, The SW version at least.

[omarsis81]

Ok, I'll check it

[szadycbr]

I got it , thanks. The full version is only 80megs, rest from cd thats audio tracks. Full version allow me to run High resolution, i was wrong assuming it wil have 800x600 resolution, it is 640x480 but it uses high resolution textures. On max detail, and so on , using p166mmx PCem , even on my shity laptop runs at 100% during gameplay, and it works absolutely fine on ati pro turbo, and it seems to get more fps on virge dx/gx , test was on win98 and i did reinstal original directX 2 files from CD. The game runs at proper speed even on p120mmx but it really needs minimum p166mmx to play comfortably or mmx200 cos game on p120mmx in some places gets like 10-15 fps and it is horrible, much better on p166mmx and on p200 would be smooth i think , but no test on 200mmx cos i doubt i can run this cpu at resonable speed.
MR. Solstar82 tell me what Your host CPU is? is your PCem display 100% most of the time? if you are using 166mmx and have something even much slower than my laptop and if you emulating P166mmx at 50% then every second will be like two seconds, although it will still be 166mhz emulated but it will reach that 166 in two seconds therefore it would appear half the spped, and sluttering audio btw.
Someone said here that if you got 50% in PCem then it runs at half of your emulated cpu speed, that is kind a truth but not exactely cos still PCem thinks it is 166mhz , but every operation takes twice as long. how do i know that? run 3d mark 99 , FPS tests, and i can even emulate 300mmx and get like 25 fps in test but one second count three, you can check that by yourself. Any way if you got good cpu, and At 166mmx PCem runs at 100% then game should work perfectely fine, not slow at all.
I found no problems. Post more info if still its wrong.

[szadycbr]

i run it on mmx300 , much better and smother but bit slower as PCem did 65%, on p166mmx i have same speed as on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc_4XY6Y7vM but of course not so many FPS. Game requires minimum p60 and i run it on p100 and on standard settings it run flawlessly, so p60 might be true, but for high res you need something bit stronger, game looks in 640x480 similar do Blood, and has better textures, try run blood in 640x480 on p100, you will see that it is not enough. otherwise i see no problems.
One more thing, after making render distance to about half and turning off perspective correction, it runs much smother on p166mmx.

[Solstar82]

ok thanks i'll try using p166 mmx.i always used p166 so far,and even with the render distance halved,it was still slow

[leilei]

Necrodome's hi-res mode (and low-res!) is meant to be that slow. Raven's Vampire engine wasn't as optimized as the others at the time (especially for one not even as feature filled as Magic Carpet). The first time i've seen it run smoothly on a real PC was on an Athlon Thunderbird. (and that's 4 years after the games' release)

Not much of a PCem problem, more like a Raven problem. ;P also it's not an early win95 game when it came out 18 months after Win95.


(For the record, in Necrodome the low-res is 320x200x256, the high-res is 640x480x256, typical of games at the time. What really sucks are the span drawers Raven did)

[omarsis81]

ok thanks i'll try using p166 mmx.i always used p166 so far,and even with the render distance halved,it was still slow

Also keep in mind what I told you about the cache, it can make the difference. The game works fine at very good fps!
I tried the shareware version and the resolution option is grayed out, most probable shareware limitation

[omarsis81]

Ok, I just tried the full version, and indeed this version enables high definition, and on a Pentium MMX 166 and 200 with a ViRGE 375 it seems kind of slow, not EXTREMELY, but around 15 fps... I would have to test with real hardware to see if this is the fps it would normally behave. PCem is at all times running at 100%

[leilei]

I can assure you it's this slow on the real thing. This thread doesn't sound like a PCem bug to me; it's more of a misled perception issue. Not all games ran smoothly in their period.

A very very nice example of this is Jane's US Navy Fighters. A 1994 3d engine has so slow texture mapping you'd need a Pentium III to enjoy it. It's appropriately slow in PCem too.

[omarsis81]

I can assure you it's this slow on the real thing. This thread doesn't sound like a PCem bug to me; it's more of a misled perception issue. Not all games ran smoothly in their period.

A very very nice example of this is Jane's US Navy Fighters. A 1994 3d engine has so slow texture mapping you'd need a Pentium III to enjoy it. It's appropriately slow in PCem too.

Sure! That's why I mention in the previous post that I'd need to test it in real hardware. Software rendering is ineed slow. Try for example Quake II or Unreal in software rendering mode.
If this game would use Glide, or Direct3D would very smooth.

Tell me leilei (or anyone), what do you think was the best 2D card for playhing with soft rendering? Maybe one of the Matrox Mystique or Millennium?

[leilei]

That's a sweeping generalization. There are fast software renderers, and you've just named two of them.

Anything PCI with native support for a linear frame buffer will do. One of the most desirable cards for 2D at one point was the Matrox G200 series for fast directdraw and sharp pixel clarity (this was 1998 though, when 3d envy was at a peak high this use wasn't in consideration as 2d gaming had a brief hard loathing)

One of the definite worst slowest cards you can use for 2D is anything with a Rendition chipset not emulated yet, but could be! The technical paper w/ registers is out there.....

[omarsis81]

That's a sweeping generalization. There are fast software renderers, and you've just named two of them.

Anything PCI with native support for a linear frame buffer will do. One of the most desirable cards for 2D at one point was the Matrox G200 series for fast directdraw and sharp pixel clarity (this was 1998 though, when 3d envy was at a peak high this use wasn't in consideration as 2d gaming had a brief hard loathing)

One of the definite worst slowest cards you can use for 2D is anything with a Rendition chipset not emulated yet, but could be! The technical paper w/ registers is out there.....

Thanks for the answer! I've heard of the Rendition, it was a flop and the company went bankrupt but I'd would love to have all early video cards emulated to test how they worked and different image quality. There were fierce competition those days:

- Rendition
- PowerVR
- nVidia
- ATI
- Matrox
- 3Dfx
- S3
- Trident (Blade 3D)
- Intel (i740)

Oh boy, I remember you had to do a lot of gaming magazine research to decide what to purchase

[Solstar82]

i had the feeling that the game would have been slow anyway..back in the day i playedi it on a pentium 75,and it was more or less this .."fast".maybe a little more because i remember that i played and finished the game in hi res.so maybe i was much more patient with the overall slowness,or maybe it was a bit faster than i remember it is now on pcem

on a side note though...the game runs ok in win 10..strange.and of course at full speed in hi res.20 years-like later..better late than nothing

[Solstar82]

I can assure you it's this slow on the real thing. This thread doesn't sound like a PCem bug to me; it's more of a misled perception issue. Not all games ran smoothly in their period.

A very very nice example of this is Jane's US Navy Fighters. A 1994 3d engine has so slow texture mapping you'd need a Pentium III to enjoy it. It's appropriately slow in PCem too.

Sure! That's why I mention in the previous post that I'd need to test it in real hardware. Software rendering is ineed slow. Try for example Quake II or Unreal in software rendering mode.
If this game would use Glide, or Direct3D would very smooth.

Tell me leilei (or anyone), what do you think was the best 2D card for playhing with soft rendering? Maybe one of the Matrox Mystique or Millennium?

actually the question was which 2d card i need to select,since probably the one i've chosen for pcem (ati graphics pro turbo) is not good enough and there are better choices

[szadycbr]

Solstar82, most likely everyone would tell you, chose virge dx/gx , it is probably the best for 2d and 3d ,any way, wait for other opinions.

[leilei]

That wouldn't make a difference. The Graphics Pro Turbo card is already fast and is playing Necrodome to the fullest extent.

[Solstar82]

Solstar82, most likely everyone would tell you, chose virge dx/gx , it is probably the best for 2d and 3d ,any way, wait for other opinions.

well i'd be damned..it is indeed faster! not incredibly faster, but still faster than before , by using now the virge dx!not only that,but many games that required some nasty VESA drivers, like Balls of Steel,now runs fine at a perfect speed