PCem crashes trying to run Glide game

[emanueljoab]

Thanks for accepting me in this forum.

I'm trying to make a Glide game to run using Windows 98.

Le Mans 24 Hours (also known as Test Drive Le Mans) is a 2000 Glide API videogame developed by Eutechnyx and published by Infogrames. It was designed to be runned at Windows 95/98 and modern NT systems cannot run two game modes: the main mode, "Le Mans 24 Hours" and the "Qualifies". Even using glide wrappers or compatibility mode I never heard of anyone getting those modes to work on XP or later.

So I decided to try virtual machines and since Virtualbox and VMware failed, PCem got really close to make it playable. I never came so close actually.

In XP or later systems, when the loading is completed and the race is about to start, the game closes itself without showing any error. In PCEM, however, the checkered flag you see when the race is about to start is shown as you can see your car but when the car engine sound is about to roar, PCem crashes.

I've installed voodoo2 and soundblaster16 drivers but it stills crashes. I'm wonder if it has something to do with the sound or something because it crashes right before the engine is start to noise.

If anyone could help it would be amazing. The game is very forgotten and find help about it is almost impossible, Again, thanks!


The configuration is the following:

SO: Windows 98 SE

Machine: FIC VA-503+
CPU: Pentium MMX 233
Memory: 128 MB

Graphic device: S3 Virge/DX
Speed: Fast VLB/PCI
Voodoo Graphics: Yes
Voodoo type: Voodoo 2
Framebuffer memory size: 4 MB
Texture memory size: 4 MB
Bilinear filter: yes
Render threads: 2
Recompiler: yes

Sound device: Soundblaster 16
LPT device: LPT DAC /Covox

HDD: Standard IDE
FDD1: 3.5" 2.88M
CD-ROM: 24X
Hard drive: Drive 0 primary master (C:)
Sectors: 63
Heads: 16
Cylinder: 16253
Size: 7999mb

Mouse: Microsoft 2-button (serial)

Joystick: Standard 2-buttons

Network card: Realtek RTL8029AS

Voodoo2 driver used was v3.02.02 available here: http://falconfly.3dfx.pl/voodoo2.htm

Also, I'm making avaiable a download for anyone who want to simulate the error or maybe just enjoy a fun old school car game.
[Moderator : NO]

[omarsis81]

I will try to run the game in real hardware and make sure it isn't real behavior
Also, as you probably know, Voodoo2 doesn't have official XP drivers, so I'd try the game under Windows 98SE

[emanueljoab]

I will try to run the game in real hardware and make sure it isn't real behavior
Also, as you probably know, Voodoo2 doesn't have official XP drivers, so I'd try the game under Windows 98SE

Many thanks for your help! I was so young when I first played it but I remember that I used to play the main mode and Qualifies in WinXP but it had no service packs. Do you know if Microsoft changed or removed support for some stuff from Win9x in their SPs?

[leilei]

I've tried the demo (tdlmdemo.exe FYI) and it crashes with this as soon as the checkered flag fades out:

fic pmmx233 v2 etc.

Code: Select all

Swap buffer 00000000 2 2EA905B8 1
Swap buffer 00000000 1 286E05B8 0
Swap buffer 00000000 2 2EA905B8 1
Swap buffer 00000000 2 2EA905B8 1
Swap buffer 00000000 1 286E05B8 0
Swap buffer 00000000 2 2EA905B8 1
Swap buffer 00000000 1 286E05B8 0
Swap buffer 00000000 2 2EA905B8 1
Swap buffer 00000000 1 286E05B8 0
triangle_setup wrong order 0 12800 -16
triangle_setup wrong order 0 12800 -16

Triangle_setup is part of the voodoo2 emulation here, so it's definitely no sound crash.

Also occurs on Winchip interpreter and Voodoo interpreter

[emanueljoab]

I've tried the demo (tdlmdemo.exe FYI) and it crashes with this as soon as the checkered flag fades out:

fic pmmx233 v2 etc.

Code: Select all

Swap buffer 00000000 2 2EA905B8 1
Swap buffer 00000000 1 286E05B8 0
Swap buffer 00000000 2 2EA905B8 1
Swap buffer 00000000 2 2EA905B8 1
Swap buffer 00000000 1 286E05B8 0
Swap buffer 00000000 2 2EA905B8 1
Swap buffer 00000000 1 286E05B8 0
Swap buffer 00000000 2 2EA905B8 1
Swap buffer 00000000 1 286E05B8 0
triangle_setup wrong order 0 12800 -16
triangle_setup wrong order 0 12800 -16

Triangle_setup is part of the voodoo2 emulation here, so it's definitely no sound crash.

Also occurs on Winchip interpreter and Voodoo interpreter

Thanks for your reply and testing! Mmm, so I guess it would be impossible to fix it, right? I mean at least in PCem.

[SarahWalker]

Please do NOT link to copyrighted material. I can't believe how many times I have to keep saying this.

[omarsis81]

Please do NOT link to copyrighted material. I can't believe how many times I have to keep saying this.

Is a new user, bear with him

[Cheez]

Need a sticky telling people not to link software that isn't made free explicitly by its developers

[SarahWalker]

I'd have assumed it's blatantly obvious. It's commercial, you don't own the rights, this is a forum owned and operated by someone else, don't post it!

[Xanarki]

Up until a few weeks ago, I didn't know the true definition of "abandonware." For awhile, I just assumed that if a product wasn't commercially available to purchase anymore, it's considered abandon; however, it gets more complicated than that, with licenses and properties still being owned by an entity. I'm assuming most people have the same idea, as the perception does get blurry.

It's going to get even more blurry once other court cases are settled, such as for a certain online archival library website that is considered an institution that hosts a magnitude of software.

As for this particular wreckage of a game, I'll try it on real hardware in a few days. I went thru some old websites, and noticed that crashing after the main menu was a common occurrence, even in the early 2000s. Hell, the developer didn't even provide online support. They instead redirected you to the publisher's website, that had a few highly informative answers such as "shut off your screensaver" and "restart your computer."

[leilei]

PC piracy's always been a semantics cat and mouse game. Back in the '80s there used to be piracy in the form of hex-edited commercial programs to read "public domain" so they'd get blindly passed without guilt (as opposed to the scene releases). Into the mid-90s there was an "oldwarez" scene to recirculate those old cracked dumps and then there's was the "abandonware" scene to filter that down to the gems. Eventually that "term" kept being referred to like some official legal status (it never was one) and then mutated to becoming some kind of catch-all synonym for anything that's not on a digital storefront regardless of popularity to where something as big as DOOM is "abandonware" nowadays. In addition, there's all the possible unique technical issues that arise with the "abandonware versions"!! Dosbox's forum had a rule mainly because of the abundance of broken rips giving false positives about bugs. This forum certainly had a couple already involving broken copies of Jagged Alliance and Quake.

The rights are always held somewhere. Copyright lasts 70+ years minimum. There's no magically sooner expiration dates on software.


If you're uncertain about a bug being a PCem bug or a rip bug, you can always try to find the demo to see if it can be reproduced there. gamers.org's mirrors of the old uwp-uml archive and the gamesdomain.co.uk ftp are nice, legal places to start.

[emanueljoab]

It wasn't my intention to post copyrighted content I was just providing material for research.

Anyway, thank you for everyone here that tested or will be testing this old treasure. I never got so much support in fifteen years.