OpenGL - how to install it and whatever?
How do you actually install OpenGL, if it needs installing at all? I seem to remember for Quake 3, when it came out in 1999, that I had to install a 50MB or so beta OpenGL .exe to get Q3 to run. Plus I originally used WickedGL (or a similar name) for other OpenGL stuff. Looking back, that was with Win95 and a 12MB Voodoo 2. Anyway, I'm now using Win98, and I don't think I've installed any OpenGL drivers, but Quake 3 and Half-Life 2 both work with OpenGL mode selected. However, Unreal Tournament doesn't recognise the mode, and crashes if I force the OpenGL mode, and Spin (latest version from the Latest Version thread, just before Dunny went on holiday) doesn't seem to work with OpenGL selected either - when i select it, the Spectrum sounds (music from the loaded game, etc) is fine, but there is no Spectrum display. Incidentally, if I select Direct3D from Spin, the emulator runs *very* slowly, yet Direct3D runs fine in every other game or program I've tried.
The other two display choices (Direct Draw and GDI) work fine in Spin. I would have posted this in the Spin thread (and I will post the Spin problem there), but it's Unreal Tournament that bothers me more, though not much, as it does run fine under Metal and Direct3D - I just want to know if there is a program with my machine. It's a P3-700 (laptop) with Win98, 384MB, 8MB S3 card.
So is there something I have to install first to get some OpenGL games working, or does each individual game/program contain all of the necessary code?
Thanks for any answers.
The other two display choices (Direct Draw and GDI) work fine in Spin. I would have posted this in the Spin thread (and I will post the Spin problem there), but it's Unreal Tournament that bothers me more, though not much, as it does run fine under Metal and Direct3D - I just want to know if there is a program with my machine. It's a P3-700 (laptop) with Win98, 384MB, 8MB S3 card.
So is there something I have to install first to get some OpenGL games working, or does each individual game/program contain all of the necessary code?
Thanks for any answers.
Post edited by ewgf on
Comments
The sad truth is that the S3 8Mb video card just doesn't cut it anymore.
True, but why throw away a PC that does just about everything I want, merely to buy another, more expensive one that I can't easily afford, just to gain access to some more features and programs that I don't really care about anyway?
The laptop is old, but it runs all of the emulators and programs I want to run, is great for word-processing and reading text/HTML/scanned magazine files, and plays all of the PC games I want to play. I'm not too keen on PC games, as I much prefer consoles, but most of the PC games I like that aren't available on consoles run fine on the laptop, such as Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex, Half-Life, Carmageddon, Alien vs Predator 1 and 2, and No One Lives Forever. It would be nice it ran modern games too, but if it can't then fine; on the odd occasion when there is a new PC game that I want to play, I can usually play it at my mates', or if it's not too demanding, on my desktop, an AMD 3200+, 128MB ATI rubbish graphics card; a 9200SE (spit spit). Or just not play it at all. I don't like the mouse keyboard combination for first person shooters.
Anyway, the reason I use the laptop is because it does what I want (including, via emulation, giving me access to just about any game or program for the Spectrum, SNES, Megadrive, Amstard CPC, C64, arcade games from the 80s, etc), it doesn't play up (unlike my desktop system) and it's portable. And if it can't do something, then it can't do it. If Spin can't access OpenGL mode on it, then fair enough, I'll stick to a setting that works. And if Spin didn't work then, I'd use a less demanding emulator (X128 has never failed me yet, and with SGD gives me a first class front end). Half-Life 2 won't work on it, but I can play that on my XBox (I lose the high quality textures of the PC version, and the ability to play third party mods, but I can use a joypad, plus (hurray!) I don't have to mess about with Steem). F.E.A.R. won't work on the laptop, but I can play it on a 360 if I do buy one (I was waiting to see the PS3, but the way things are looking...), or play it at my mates', or not bother. And so on.
All I'm saying is that I don't see the necessity of upgrading hardware (well, most of the time you're not even upgrading, you're replacing), if the trouble and cost of the upgrade won't return sufficent advantages. Even if I had a top of the range laptop, I wouldn't play many new games on it, as most newer FPSs are just generic Quake/Halo rippoffs with little immersion or replayability (first person shooters are the only type of PC games I ever really play, aside from Carmageddon 1 and 2, I didn't like C3). It would be nice to get a new system, and run all games at a high resolution and frame rate, even if just for curiousitie's sake, but I can't easily find the cash. When the laptop dies, I will buy another, more powerful replacement, but hopefully that won't be for ages yet, as I'm yearning for a next gen. console, though the PS3 is looking rather dissapointing at the moment, and the XBox doesn't have much to attract me at present.
Sorry for the rant, it's a combination of exhaustion (been lugging bricks and other debris out of my brother's back garden all day...) and irritation at the disposable nature of the PC market - I used to build and upgrade PCs for people, and it was irritating how many people had massively powerful systems, and just played the same undemanding games on them as they did on their older machines. And often, due to the hardware upgrades (or the Operating System upgrade made necessary by the hardware upgrade), they couldn't play their old favourite games any longer anyway :roll:
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
The S3 graphics on my computer (Celeron 1.3ghz, 384mb ram, Win 98) can be set at 4mb, 8mb, 16mb and 32mb via the BIOS settings - it grabs from system ram.
Even at 8mb it will play a great version of Quake III arena in OpenGL mode.
Throw some Playstation emulation software at it, grab the Wipeout series, Crash Team Racing and add some USB gamepads and it`ll be a nice portable PS1.
Download the latest version of Bomb Munchies Ver2210 4th July 2020
Fair enough, but I still stand by my quote. That S3 8Mb video card simply isn't any good anymore. I could send you an unaltered picture from my digital camera that eats up more memory than your GFX card has. That's not because of the disposable nature of the PC market, that's technology moving on.
I build and upgrade PC's, and yes, some people do throw money at their machine and not get the full potential out of it, but others (me included) spend wisely, and think forward enough to know what parts to buy, and roughly how much life we'll get out of it. I haven't upgraded any parts in my machine for over a year and a half yet, and I still will get a good 2 years use out of it for games because I was careful. You're playing games on a machine it was never designed for, and you're now having troubles with some of those games. What does that tell me? Out of date equipment that needs upgrading, if you wan't to continue.
When you say that games like Q3 and others run well, define how well. What resolution with how many visual settings? Because I can guarantee you that if you had better hardware, you gaming enjoyment will increase by a huge amount!
I'm not disagreeing, everything you've said is true (except maybe a digital camera image that's larger than 8MB, not a compressed image like a jpeg, was that a joke?), but my point is that I don't have much money (agency work is never well paid, and travelling costs eat into a fair fraction of the wages) and the laptop, old and underpowered as it is today, does just about everything I ask of it, and does it well enough for me. It's too slow and underpowered for modern games, certainly, but it runs Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament, Microsoft Word 97 (the only one I use) etc just as well now as it did in 2001, when it was made. Alright, so I can't use modern games on it, but most of those don't interest me, from what I've seen of them, and the ones that do I can play on my desktop or my mates' PCs.
I would like a more powerful laptop, certainly, and with a widescreen screen (pardon the tautology :-) ), but at the moment I can't easily afford it, and as I said before, I intend buy a next-generation console, as I much prefer console gamimg anyway.
Oh, please don't misunderstand me, I wasn't accusing you of paying over the odds for a machine then underusing it. My point was that if I did buy a new(er) laptop, I wouldn't use it for anything that I don't do on the current laptop anyway. I'd still use Word 97, as I'm used to it and it does everything I need. I'd still play Unreal Tournament (the only PC game I play regularly) and not UT2003 or UT2004, as I don't like them much at all. I'd still play Deus Ex every so often, but not Deus Ex: Invisible War, as it's *far* inferior to the original (and anyway is on the XBox, so I could play DE:IW on there if I liked). And the emulators I like all work on my current laptop.
Yes, I could play Half-Life 2, F.E.A.R., Far Cry and others, but some of these I already have on the XBox, and others I can live without, if it means I can use the money to buy a new console instead of a new laptop.
Of course, the whole "which console to buy" question is none to interesting at the moment; the XBox 360 isn't swamped with (good) games, the PS3 is forever being set back, and looks rather expensive and the controllers looks dodgy (though hopefully that will be fixed by the time of the next big demonstration) and the new Nintendo console (which has to have a name change soon...) whilst interesting with it's new, hopefully groundbreaking controller and it's ability to download NES/SNES/N64 and Sega games, is still an unknown. And of course Nintendo's machines, though with first class first party support, have tended to have little third party support, for the past two generations. And the ability to play older games on it won't interest me or many people too much, as we can also do so using emulators (my XBox has great emulators for NES/SNES/Megadrive/MAME (arcade)/Spectrum/C64 (spit spit)/Atari ST etc already, with all of the games for those systems (that I could find), whereas with the new Nintendo console, you can only download and play specific older games (and then you have to pay for them).
Like many people, I'm waiting to see the PS3 before I commit myself, at least by then the XBox 360 should have some more first class games under it's belt.
If it wasn't designed to run (basic) games, then why does it have a 3D graphics card? Does Microsoft Word need 3D hardware support? Actually, it probably does now, given Microsoft's propensity for bloatware and resource hogging :evil: , but not in 2001.
It does play Deux Ex and UT fine, at least for me. It doesn't need upgrading for that. If I want to play Prey on it, then yes, otherwise no.
And I think you're mistaking "upgrading" for "replacing". Upgrading is when I added a 256MB stick to the laptop, in an empty memory slot. Shelving/dumping/giving/selling the laptop away and buying a new one is replacing, not upgrading.
800x600, with all of the options as standard, I think. No doubt it could look better (there is probably a downloadable higher quality texture pack for it, as there is for UT, though I never bothered with UT's, as it would doubtless slow the game down), and no doubt if I upped the resolution then the frame rate would fall, but I don't mind 800x600 (I'm used to TV resolution on a console, anyway).
Come to think of it, I've never tried to push Q3, with the maximum number of bots. I have (and do) play UT with 15 bots (UT's maximum, unless you use a mod), and even in large maps with long draw distances, the frame rate is fine, but UT is notouriously good with resources. I do remember that on my old P1-233 and Voodoo 2 system that UT ran fine whilst Q3 sometimes chugged, so I wouldn't put it past Q3 to slow down if there were too many bots and a large draw distance. Oh, and I never saw the official add-on pack for Q3 that added more game modes and maps, but I did hear that it needed more resources than Q3, so that might slow down on the laptop.
The big surprise was Alien vs Predator 2 - this runs alright, albeit with most graphical options set to "low" or "off". Still perfectly playable, though.
A strange remark for someone to make on a retro-gaming forum. Especially a forum dedicated to the Spectrum :-?
Games only get "better" on better hardware, if they take advantage of the extra hardware. UT, Deus Ex etc would offer me higher resolutions, better textures (if available) and nothing more. The sequels to both of these games, which I could run on my newer hardware, would still be inferior to the original games. The originals would look better, but that wouldn't increase their gameplay.
Still, this does explain why you prefer Half-Life 2 to Perfect Dark :-)
Oh right. Thanks.
Yes, it seems fine to me (though I much prefer Unreal Tournament over Quake 3 anyway).
I never thought of that, it's a great idea. The laptop is already a portable Spectrum/arcade/UT machine/Atari ST etc, why not a Playstation :smile:
Cheers!
Not at all. If I pull out my Canon EOS Digital 8 Migapixel SLR camera, and shove it in RAW mode, each pic will take about 12Mb in size.
Actually, it does. I play the game as it was meant to be seen by the designers. You haven't. At best, you played it on the X-Box, which is jerky, slower, and lower quality than the PC. So of course I cannot take any points made in the other thread as being valid, since you never played HL2 as it was meant to be seen.
Berlimey!
I first played it (and completed it) on my mate's PC, and I don't think that the XBox version is noticably slower or jerkier (except for a second or so after a load point) than the PC version. As for lower quality, then yes, if you count the lower resolution and texture maps, but apart from that, it seems the same. Well, the XBox version doesn't have a multiplayer mode, but then neither did the PC version that I played (it was made available after my mate had gotten rid of HL2). HL2 on the XBox does have more load points than the PC version, but that doesn't impact on the gameplay, at least not to me (my XBox plays all games from it's hard disc, so the loading times are negligable). Actually, there is one thing I found annoying about the XBox version, and that is that you cannot turn off auto-aim. Auto-aim if fine for beginners, or people who just like the function, but you should always be able to turn it off. I don't know if HL2 (PC) has auto-aim (HL1 did, but you could turn it off), but HL2 on the XBox forces you to use it, which to me is wrong.
But even aside from you being wrong about my never having played the PC version, an asumption which you had no reason to make, it has to be said that whether or not I had played HL2 game on the PC, my other points are still valid.
That doesn't sound right - 8 megapixels at 24 bits per pixel would work out at 24Mb. Unless your camera really only does 12 bits per pixel, which would be a bit strange...