How to use Rice's video plugin and to report problems

[Trotterwatch]

One problem with the framebuffer on Radeon cards, it's hellishly slow. From what I can gather even top end Radeon cards have a framebuffer capacity less than half of a GF4 MX.

Seems like this is one of those issues ATI can't be arsed fixing as they don't believe PC game developers would use it.

 

[gavinpoo]

When trying to use DirectX with 9800Pro get the error message "Can not initialize DX8, check your Direct setting. OpenGL works but with many problems - mainly missing backgrounds/textures. Fast and smooth though.

 

[Clements]

When trying to use DirectX with 9800Pro get the error message "Can not initialize DX8, check your Direct setting. OpenGL works but with many problems - mainly missing backgrounds/textures. Fast and smooth though.

Have you set your depth buffer to 16-Bit (def)? If not, then change it to that to fix the problem.

....

It's easy to forget that Rice's resources are limited, and he can only do the best with what he has. I personally think that Rice's plugin is the most sophisticated available and tries to have a combiner mode for every video card under the sun, but you must remember that it's tough for Rice to fix the problems with certain combiners, since he can't even test them on his own machine.

So far I've found Rice's plugin to work almost flawlessly with about half the games I've tried, with the others looking much better than the previous version like Mario Tennis. Direct X was completely broken for me before (5.1.0d), but now it works perfectly most of the time, and if it doesn't I use S/W T&L and it then works. So it's best to keep trying until it looks the best for your card, and stop bugging poor Rice about which is the best combiner for a certain card! :1964:

 

[Burnpro]

i don`t find rice plugin the best out there.. or maybe its the 1964 .99 the main prob? i cant get a game to work with that combo..

at least if its good but not for newbs like me..

 

[Trotterwatch]

I think the latest Forcewares have messed some things up.

In testing at one point I was using an 900mhz Athlon with GF3 and for the first time ever using that machine I was able to run games looking perfectly without 3D Analyze. Before the beta versions I always need to use 3D Ani to fix games.

Now unless something was broken in subsequent beta versions the GF3 should be fine using the 44.03 drivers (I think) and look perfect on pretty much all games.

Someone who is good with emulation (and can tweak settings etc) and who has a GF3 should try experimenting as I am sure it should work perfectly fine. Try forcing SW T&L anyways, see if that helps.

 

[TheBiscuit]

First off, I just want to congratulate Rice, on the massive amount of improvement in the new version of his plugin. It now produces the best results with the majority of the games I play.
There are two things I'd like to have clarified, mind you. First, why do I get such weird results in DirectX mode? I use a GForce FX5200, and quite often the colours are not what they should be; by this I mean that the grass is a pleasing shade of steely grey, and the sky is red! :happy:
I can get nice results using the OpenGL engine, but if I'm not mis-interpreting, the DirectX driver can do stuff that the OpenGL one can't. Is that right?
Second, do I have to use the older (41.xx/42.xx series) drivers for my card to get the best results. Opinions seem to vary...
In a similar vein, will I get different results depending on which DirectX version I have installed?
I've been lurking on this forum for some time now, but seem unable to discern the answers, especially to the driver question.

Thanks in advance,

The Biscuit

 

[Nighty0]

I think the latest Forcewares have messed some things up.

In testing at one point I was using an 900mhz Athlon with GF3 and for the first time ever using that machine I was able to run games looking perfectly without 3D Analyze. Before the beta versions I always need to use 3D Ani to fix games.

Now unless something was broken in subsequent beta versions the GF3 should be fine using the 44.03 drivers (I think) and look perfect on pretty much all games.

Someone who is good with emulation (and can tweak settings etc) and who has a GF3 should try experimenting as I am sure it should work perfectly fine. Try forcing SW T&L anyways, see if that helps.

I think this too. I go to take off the dust my GF2MX400 64MB, since 41.09 drivers don't support my GFFX5600. I'll try to test when i have some time....
I have many problems with detonator 44.03 & 45.33, but less than FW53.03...see my screenshots (http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?threadid=17955)
SW T&L don't help me........
My computer totally locked 2 times with rice's plugins...

Test complete, see the screeshots http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?threadid=18004

 

[Clements]

First off, I just want to congratulate Rice, on the massive amount of improvement in the new version of his plugin. It now produces the best results with the majority of the games I play.
There are two things I'd like to have clarified, mind you. First, why do I get such weird results in DirectX mode? I use a GForce FX5200, and quite often the colours are not what they should be; by this I mean that the grass is a pleasing shade of steely grey, and the sky is red! :happy:
I can get nice results using the OpenGL engine, but if I'm not mis-interpreting, the DirectX driver can do stuff that the OpenGL one can't. Is that right?
Second, do I have to use the older (41.xx/42.xx series) drivers for my card to get the best results. Opinions seem to vary...
In a similar vein, will I get different results depending on which DirectX version I have installed?
I've been lurking on this forum for some time now, but seem unable to discern the answers, especially to the driver question.

Thanks in advance,

The Biscuit

Certain games in Direct X have problems with FX cards, but the S/W T&L option really does help a lot in certain cases, so try using this option with either the Higher or 4-Stage limit combiner.

The OpenGL engine does not have a framebuffer yet, but not all games use it so it's a good alternative if Direct X doesn't work. OpenGL support is relatively new to Rice's plugin so don't expect it to match Direct X quite yet.

I suggest you stick to Forcewares - they are designed for the FX cards and 41.xx/42.xx offer poor support for them and degrades performance of your games generally, and changing to older drivers just to use Rice's plugin would be a nuisance. Eventually the Forcewares will be better hopefully anyway.

With Direct X, it doesn't matter since DX 9.0b is backwards compatible with earlier versions used by Rice's plugin.

 

[StAmAtIs]

Why do the graphics look different once you update to the latest nvidia drivers?
Things look different and some graphics look like they are missing. Should I go back to my previous drivers cuz everything looked 10 times better?

 

[ingonab]

The "Force Nearest Filter (faster, low quality)" option hasn't done what it should (force rendering without linear filtering) since the last version.

 

[Clements]

Why do the graphics look different once you update to the latest nvidia drivers?
Things look different and some graphics look like they are missing. Should I go back to my previous drivers cuz everything looked 10 times better?

Forceware drivers are really meant for FX cards so you'll be better off with an older driver that is suited to your card. I doubt that the Forceware drivers could do anything to improve a TNT2, since it's very old (relatively speaking here), and is actually more likely to slow performance and cause artifacts than provide any benefit. I think something like 10.xx/20.xx dets are better, but I'm not too sure as I've never owned one.

 

[Rice]

The "Force Nearest Filter (faster, low quality)" option hasn't done what it should (force rendering without linear filtering) since the last version.

I haven't paid attention to this feature for sometime. But, how can you tell if it work or not?

 

[ingonab]

Force Nearest Filter

(I haven't paid attention to this feature for sometime. But, how can you tell if it work or not?

In the earlier version in which Force Nearest Filter worked, when it was used, every sprite[1] that was rendered was rendered with sharp jagged edges. (Instead of Linear Filtering which blurs the edges.)

Although jagged edges might seem visually inferior to Linear Filtering, it was good for one thing: For avoiding the bleeding edges artifacts from Linear Filtering. The idea was to combine Nearest Filter with a form of full-screen filtering (e.g. Display it through a TV[2]) to have a picture that is both smooth and without edge artifacts.

[1] For the lack of a better word.
[2] A nicer solution is if the plugin had its own full-screen filter.

 

[Rice]

Thanks, I will take a look.

 

[TheBiscuit]

Certain games in Direct X have problems with FX cards, but the S/W T&L option really does help a lot in certain cases, so try using this option with either the Higher or 4-Stage limit combiner.

The OpenGL engine does not have a framebuffer yet, but not all games use it so it's a good alternative if Direct X doesn't work. OpenGL support is relatively new to Rice's plugin so don't expect it to match Direct X quite yet.

I suggest you stick to Forcewares - they are designed for the FX cards and 41.xx/42.xx offer poor support for them and degrades performance of your games generally, and changing to older drivers just to use Rice's plugin would be a nuisance. Eventually the Forcewares will be better hopefully anyway.

With Direct X, it doesn't matter since DX 9.0b is backwards compatible with earlier versions used by Rice's plugin.

These were the lines of my thinking anyway, so thank you very much for the confirmation. I am fascinated to note that you say that things will get better with NEWER forceware drivers. I was under the (clearly mistaken) impression that if there was any difference between the new and old driver versions, it was something that they had decided for whatever reason to change, which Rice would have to alter his code to take into account...

 

[Gozu33]

It has been a while since i have checked(i hate sounding like i don't know about computers!!!) how do i find what video card i have?

 

[backgamon]

Hum....strange.
OpenGL work much good of DirectX with my radeon....
And many games doesn't want to start with DX(launch emu-game start...and emu exit-don't crash just exit)[kicked to windows]
---otherwise i think is the best plugin for some games(like offroad challenge-work perfectly on openGL 1.4)---
I just don't understand why DX don't work for me......

[and sorry-very average english] -_-

 

[Stop It]

Yey, finally with 1964 0.99 i can play my old n64 games again, with 0.85 and older plugins i could never get a stable fps, now its 50/60 fps all the way with cpu time to spare
anyway, there are a few Games with slight problems that ive noticed (i will post pics once i find somewhere to host them)
(btw the GFX plugin is default except the combiner (high end seems to work better than 4 stage)) and the res (1024 x 768 32bit)

Shadowman US : Has a few sky texture imperfections, and characters suffer from missing / transparent polygons
1080 Snowboarding US : Sky imperfections again
Legend of Zelda : Both OOT & MM : both have the sun drawn incorrectly, missing text in some menus, and slightly incorrect colours
Starfox 64 : Starts off good then half way into mission one decends into a mess of graphical mess and errors, and becomes unplayable

I will update this when I can be bothered to play some more games

 

[Troublemaker]

1964 0.9.9 works really buggy on my computer(look at the specification under signature, video plugin is rices 5.3.1 but with 5.2.0 is the same thing). First when I start any rom in Direct X mode,screen is black and I hear sound but that works only for a few seconds; after that 1964 closes down. In Open GL mode it works but graphic is bad and in many games it`s not even playable. When I switch from Open GL to Direct X mode sometimes roms start to work with Direct X(no black screen, no closing down) and sometimes not. Two times when I switched to full screen in Direct X mode, computer restarted. Sometimes this message(look at this message down) just pops up(or simmilar one) and I must restart computer to make it go away.
It looks like this: 1964.exe - Application Error
The instruction at "0x77f581bd" referenced memory at "0x00000100". The memory could not be "written".
Click on OK to terminate the program

Rice could you expain to me wtf is happenning and is there a way I could fix it?

 

[ultima528]

well, in the help file for 1964 0.99, it says the following:

Recommended Configuration for 1964 Basic Distribution

Processor: Intel Pentium III 600MHz or comparable processor. Some games will require much faster machines, while some others will work great on much slower machines. 1964 uses scalar SSE instructions when available. Any processor with full SSE1 fpu support will benefit from this.

Memory: 128MB RAM. 256MB or better is ideal

Video Card: NVidia GeForce 2 Series or newer

Audio Card: Unknown

Operating System: Microsoft WindowsXP

your specs seem to barely even be on par, so that may be the problem (?)