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Game Forum / Action Games / Half Life / July 2005My Dad bought me Half-Life Platinum at a Yard Sale for $1.00
It has Half-Life - Half-Life Opposing Force - Team Fortress - Counter Strike with all four CD.s. I like it. I am stuck on climbing out after the crash in the lab - but I do not want help on how to get around it. I was wondering as my Dad kindof likes computers himself if the game would look better with a Voodoo Card or whatever that is. I have a Dell with 512MB memory and other things - but my video is something called Intel Extreme Graphics 2 - my Dad says it would be good ebough for that game as is is an older Game - but would a Voodoo Card be better whatever that is? I know he did things to the game called Open G I think and it looks much better. My Dad is my friend so if folks could tell me I am off in asking anymore I would like it. thanks > My Dad is my friend so if folks could tell me I am off in asking > anymore I would like it. You are off in asking anymore. Do you like it? -^- David davidfirewater(a)hotmail.com > It has Half-Life - Half-Life Opposing Force - Team Fortress - Counter > Strike with all four CD.s. I like it. I am stuck on climbing out after [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > better. My Dad is my friend so if folks could tell me I am off in asking > anymore I would like it. Open GL was for Glide. It was open cos it was an open standard. I.e anyone could help develop it. This was a good idea but ended up mainly for voodoo cards. A company called 3dfx brought hardware accelrated 3d graphics to the pc. They were the bring in dual cards on one monitor SLI. I owned an original diamond monster card which was based on the card. The second generation was the one capable of single or interleaved cards. That is 50 lines on a screen but every odd line for one card and every even for another. This idea is making a comeback at the moment. There was a 3rd generation card that was not as powerful than the sli setup but a powerful stand alone card called the banshee. Unfortunately the drivers were sh.t. Also 3dfx bought out a graphics card maker. These bods weren't good 3d card makers but 3dfx prior only made the chip and sold it to board makers. The whole thing bombed. I think the remants such as patents and staff were bought at firesale price by ati and nvidea. Glide at the time was optimised for 3dfx and was a standard more efficient than the current dx version which was 6.0 i think. If you want to play old glide compatible games on an old computer then voodoo is great. But if you want to play above dx 6.1 games then don't bother. A cheap a.s ati or nvidea that is on sale new today will wipe the floor with them. Silicon graphix work stations might use something like the diamond fire GL. Something like babylon 5 might have been rendered on it. But voodoo cards are only for the bargain bin games of yesteryear. Something like the original quake with the open gl patch might work nice. oh and carmageddon. but the patch only really worked in dos mode. I have 'the curse of armaggon' which won't run ontop of quake in windows mode. ian lincoln thought about it a bit, then said... > Open GL was for Glide. OpenGL has nothing at all to do with Glide. Two completely separate and different graphic interfaces. In fact, 3dfx had to use Glide calls to try and implement OpenGL on their cards. Nvidia had a full OpenGL implementation before 3dfx did.  SignatureKevin Steele RetroBlast! Retrogaming News and Reviews www.retroblast.com >ian lincoln thought about it a bit, then said... >> Open GL was for Glide. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >In fact, 3dfx had to use Glide calls to try and implement OpenGL on >their cards. no McG had it right, glide was a wrapper for the 3dfx driver which only used a subset of opengl functionality, 16bit colour being the most obvious limitation of the voodoo chipset. dr ratt ------------------------------------------- the man who crosses me and leaves me alive. he understands nothing about tuco. nothing. ------------------------------------------- doctor.ratt thought about it a bit, then said... > >ian lincoln thought about it a bit, then said... > >> Open GL was for Glide. [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > only used a subset of opengl functionality, 16bit colour being the > most obvious limitation of the voodoo chipset. Glide was a 3dfx proprietary graphics language specifically for their Voodoo cards, while OpenGL is a vendor-neutral, multi-platform standard language ("Open Graphics Language", AKA "Open-GL") developed by SGI. 3dfx's OpenGL driver only implemented a subset of the full OpenGL spec, and then only through calls to Glide. In fact, they developed the "MiniGL" driver just to run Quake on Voodoo cards. McG did not have it right, nor do you. SignatureKevin Steele RetroBlast! Retrogaming News and Reviews www.retroblast.com >doctor.ratt thought about it a bit, then said... >> [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] >3dfx's OpenGL driver only implemented a subset of the full OpenGL spec, >and then only through calls to Glide. as i said here: 'glide was a wrapper for the 3dfx driver which only used a subset of opengl functionality,' it is a 'wrapper' because it insinuates itself between hardware & driver and driver & os. >In fact, they developed glide was a wrapper for the 3dfx driver which >"MiniGL" driver just to run Quake on Voodoo cards. > >McG did not have it right, nor do you. you even say yourself that one is a part [subset] of the other then insist they are independent of one another. you can't have it both ways. dr ratt ------------------------------------------- the man who crosses me and leaves me alive. he understands nothing about tuco. nothing. ------------------------------------------- >'glide was a wrapper for the 3dfx driver which >only used a subset of opengl functionality,' Glide has nothing at all to do with OpenGL. Glide was the language that corresponded directly to the Voodoo chipset instructions. When Quake came along, 3dfx wrote the MiniGL wrapper which translated a subset of OpenGL instructions to Glide. SignatureAndrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards, please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text. Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question. doctor.ratt thought about it a bit, then said... > >doctor.ratt thought about it a bit, then said... > >> [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] > 'glide was a wrapper for the 3dfx driver which > only used a subset of opengl functionality,' Glide _was_ the 3dfx driver. > it is a 'wrapper' because it insinuates itself between hardware & > driver and driver & os. [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > insist they are independent of one another. > you can't have it both ways. No, one is not a "subset" of the other. Read it again - the 3dfx OpenGL driver was a subset of the "official" OpenGL spec, i.e., 3dfx did not implement a full OpenGL driver. Nothing to do with Glide 3dfx _did_ use calls to Glide to implement their OpenGL driver, and their MiniGL driver before that. Glide itself did not use a subset of OpenGL, GLide was used to implement an OpenGL driver that used a subset of the OpenGL spec. OpenGL, though, was and is in no way associated with or created by 3dfx. ian lincoln said that "OpenGL was for Glide," which is inaccurate. OpenGL has no relationship or dependencies on Glide (heck, they're not even 2nd cousins twice removed ;-) That's the error that I was trying to correct in ian lincoln's post. SignatureKevin Steele RetroBlast! Retrogaming News and Reviews www.retroblast.com > doctor.ratt thought about it a bit, then said... >> [quoted text clipped - 55 lines] > even 2nd cousins twice removed ;-) That's the error that I was trying to > correct in ian lincoln's post. I consider myself corrected.I do remember glide being mentioned as well as gl and merely assumed that one was the other. Its an honest mistake considering the open gl mini gl glide and wrapper being thrown about. From what i can see is glide is a proprietry 3dfx technology. It isn't a driver as such. A driver merely tells the rest of the pc what voltages amps etc go where and connect to what so that the card itself can be used. Then comes open gl. Graphics language. An open standard for SGI. Voodoo only implements cirtain features such as its limit to 16 bit support. No doubt the quake engine didn't implement the entire GL instruction set so in the sake of efficiency a minigl was constructed. Whether this was done by Id. (quakes creators) or 3dfx i can't remember. Anyway the miniGL with only the necessary GL instructions was used. Then came the Glide wrapper. T This seems to be the confusion. I have seen the glide wrapper and that was for non voodoo cards to play quake using the minigl. There were also proper glide versions of cames such as mechwarrior. With a specially released glide version there was no translation layers of software and the 3dfx processing time could be devoted entirely to the 3dfx. Whatever version of direct x was out at the time was not as efficient as the GL standard so it enabled the same cards to run faster. The quake mini GL was written with the voodoo chipset in mind. So in summary. Who used the glide wrapper? I'm sure it was ati and nvidea to use the mini gl instead of dx to play the quake using the mini gl. Who developed the minigl? sgi, id or 3dfx? People on this thread are still confusing what is glide. Some appear to be saying it is a subset of GL only the relevant directly translatable parts but is that not just the minigl? So who wrote the mini gl 3dfx or id? > doctor.ratt thought about it a bit, then said... >> [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > > McG did not have it right, nor do you. Horsefeathers :) GLide WAS the 'wrapper' OGL calls were redirected TO and run IN. Half-Life has a GLide 'miniport' built-in just for the 3Dfx chips. Don't know about the 3Dfx renderer for Quake. I ran a Verite 1000 board at that time and it came with a 3D 'port' just for Quake and the original Tombraider. Just after that I ran 2 Voodoo2's in single and SLI. There's no doubt that 3Dfx gave us the first 3D rendering in games for the masses. I thought their implementation a bit odd, but it worked. McG. McGrandpa thought about it a bit, then said... > > doctor.ratt thought about it a bit, then said... > >> [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > > Horsefeathers :) Horsepucky. ;-) > GLide WAS the 'wrapper' OGL calls were redirected TO and run IN. > Half-Life has a GLide 'miniport' built-in just for the 3Dfx chips. > Don't know about the 3Dfx renderer for Quake. I ran a Verite 1000 board > at that time and it came with a 3D 'port' just for Quake and the > original Tombraider. Just after that I ran 2 Voodoo2's in single and > SLI. Glide was not the wrapper, it was the driver. 3dfx developed "wrappers" for OpenGL and D3D use that were then translated into native Glide calls. The "miniport" you're remembering is the "MiniGL" 3dfx created, which was just a "subset" of OpenGL with just enough OpenGL commands to run the Quake 1&2 engines (which HL was based on). And the MiniGL just translated those calls to native Glide commands. > There's no doubt that 3Dfx gave us the first 3D rendering in games for > the masses. I thought their implementation a bit odd, but it worked. > McG. I agree - I had a Voodoo accellerator and moved to a Voodoo Banshee before 3dfx imploded. SignatureKevin Steele RetroBlast! Retrogaming News and Reviews www.retroblast.com > McGrandpa thought about it a bit, then said... >>> doctor.ratt thought about it a bit, then said... [quoted text clipped - 40 lines] > OpenGL commands to run the Quake 1&2 engines (which HL was based on). > And the MiniGL just translated those calls to native Glide commands. Look, I'm going to own being confused about what was which some 9 years ago with all that stuff about GLide. I know that OpenGL is a graphics language/standard/API that stands on its own just as Direct 3D does. I also know that the driver for the Voodoo2 wasn't the same at all as for the Voodoo. I do know that when I first got the Verite board I could finally "see" because of the AA smoothing. Then it got a lot better with the Voodoo2's. I'd always thought that GLide was the wrapper, because it was referred to as "GLide Wrapper" in the readmes and any number of posts in a.g.quake. The languaging used was ambiguous, and could as well mean "GLides' Wrapper" where there are two items, not one. I'm sure that a little googling will yield further text in the history of GLide, and I'll do that this weekend. >> There's no doubt that 3Dfx gave us the first 3D rendering in games >> for the masses. I thought their implementation a bit odd, but it >> worked. McG. > > I agree - I had a Voodoo accellerator and moved to a Voodoo Banshee > before 3dfx imploded. How does the Banshee stack up against the older Voodoo2? Having 3 video type cards in the box was a chore, with the Voodoo2's and a 3D Blaster PCI (Verite 1000) for the 'host' card. I was pretty slow on upgrades back then. I'd had to wait till prices dropped some, and by the time I wanted to go to a Voodoo 5, 3Dfx folded. There has been a long list of video cards in the progression from an ATi VGA Wonder (512K, v.1.0) to my eVGA 6800 GT today. 20 years since I got that card. Wow. Still have it, wonder if it works?! Drivers? HA! McG. McGrandpa thought about it a bit, then said... > Look, I'm going to own being confused about what was which some 9 years > ago with all that stuff about GLide. I know that OpenGL is a graphics [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > little googling will yield further text in the history of GLide, and > I'll do that this weekend. A "glide wrapper" was using using the glide API and a D3D or OpenGL "wrapper" to basically emulate D3D or OpenGL. > >> There's no doubt that 3Dfx gave us the first 3D rendering in games > >> for the masses. I thought their implementation a bit odd, but it [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > type cards in the box was a chore, with the Voodoo2's and a 3D Blaster > PCI (Verite 1000) for the 'host' card. The Banshee was a great card, at least for any games that didn't do multi-pass rendering (it only had one TMU, while the Voodoo 2 & 3 had two TMUs) The Banshee was faster than the Voodoo 2 for single-pass games, but slower for dual-pass games (like Quake). Strangely enough, Half-Life didn't do dual-pass rendering, even though it was based on the Quake engine, so the Banshee's speed was pretty good. It also rocked for "Forsaken" (remember that one?) > I was pretty slow on upgrades back then. I'd had to wait till prices > dropped some, and by the time I wanted to go to a Voodoo 5, 3Dfx folded. > There has been a long list of video cards in the progression from an ATi > VGA Wonder (512K, v.1.0) to my eVGA 6800 GT today. 20 years since I got > that card. Wow. Still have it, wonder if it works?! Drivers? HA! I got a Diamond Multimedia special, with the Banshee card and their 3D sound card (Monster Sound MX300, with the Aureal Vortex 2 sound chip), just in time for Half-Life. Half-Life was amazing with that sound card. SignatureKevin Steele RetroBlast! Retrogaming News and Reviews www.retroblast.com > McGrandpa thought about it a bit, then said... >> Look, I'm going to own being confused about what was which some 9 [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > A "glide wrapper" was using using the glide API and a D3D or OpenGL > "wrapper" to basically emulate D3D or OpenGL. Okay. Now lets either clear or muddy the waters some more :) GliDOS. It allows one to play the old GLide versions of some DOS games (not Quake, but Tombraider 1, Carmageddon, Redguard and such) in Windows with almost any modern 3D graphics card that's fully supported by Windows. GliDOS is the wrapper and Glide is the API it's intercepting? >>>> There's no doubt that 3Dfx gave us the first 3D rendering in games >>>> for the masses. I thought their implementation a bit odd, but it [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > it was based on the Quake engine, so the Banshee's speed was pretty > good. It also rocked for "Forsaken" (remember that one?) Yeah :) Have it installed for the odd times my son wants to show off and kick his old Pop around in it for a little bit! Runs pretty slick today for such an oldie. But most games have a seperate renderer option for the 3Dfx chips. Meaning GLide I'm guessing. And 'seperate rendeerer' equates to an independant API, right? (egads talk about breakin all the little parts down to simplest components!) >> I was pretty slow on upgrades back then. I'd had to wait till prices >> dropped some, and by the time I wanted to go to a Voodoo 5, 3Dfx [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > just in time for Half-Life. Half-Life was amazing with that sound > card. McGrandpa thought about it a bit, then said... > Okay. Now lets either clear or muddy the waters some more :) GliDOS. > It allows one to play the old GLide versions of some DOS games (not > Quake, but Tombraider 1, Carmageddon, Redguard and such) in Windows with > almost any modern 3D graphics card that's fully supported by Windows. > GliDOS is the wrapper and Glide is the API it's intercepting? GliDOS is a "glide emulator" that takes old Glide commands and translates them into modern D3D calls, which any Direct-X vid card can probably handle. Almost exactly the opposite of what 3dfx had to do in the past (taking D3D and converting to Glide ;-) So yeah, you could call GliDOS a "wrapper" in this case. The term "wrapper" is what's making things confusing here. 3dfx used the term "wrapper" when it meant "emulator," probably because it sounded better and less kludgy. <snip> > > Strangely enough, Half-Life didn't do dual-pass rendering, even though > > it was based on the Quake engine, so the Banshee's speed was pretty [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > rendeerer' equates to an independant API, right? (egads talk about > breakin all the little parts down to simplest components!) Yup - Glide was 3dfx's renderer, basically like D3D or OpenGL, although it predated both of them. It had its own programming API, so if a program had a 3dfx option, they had probably written a Glide-based renderer for their game. (For a while, companies had to code for each 3D card - I can only imagine the headaches that caused...) SignatureKevin Steele RetroBlast! Retrogaming News and Reviews www.retroblast.com > McGrandpa thought about it a bit, then said... >> [quoted text clipped - 35 lines] > caused...) I get the picture now :) That should have clicked a LONG > time ago! Because there was no standard API for 3D graphics yet, of course :) You're right, it must have been a major headache. Tombraider (the first DOS based one, all the rest of the TR series ran in Windows DX) has at least two different executeables for 3Dfx alone, then one each for other cards like Verite 1000, Matrox (two cards there too) and a couple other cards. That covered a lot of bases but not near as well as using OpenGL and/or DirectX do now. As much as folks hate M$, they DID make it fairly easy to get 3D to pretty much everyone with a video card :\ And lots of game devs also threw in the API's for OGL, Glide, S3 MEtal, and just plain software too. Unreal has about 5 renderers available. Nowdays, in games like HL2, Doom3, Riddick and Far Cry I open up the config files to tweak standard settings to push my rig to its limits. Not to enable/disable a renderer :) Now the headaches are ours! The last year has given me games that are more fun to mess around with internally than the whole 19 before it. Except for QUake :) iD really opened the floodgate with Quake. I love to tinker, and all these newer games give us a lot to tinker with. McG. > McGrandpa thought about it a bit, then said... >> Look, I'm going to own being confused about what was which some 9 [quoted text clipped - 46 lines] > just in time for Half-Life. Half-Life was amazing with that sound > card. Oops (hit send too soon) Enter Half-Life about 1997? Yeah, I recall some weirdness in that HL would run on either the DX or OGL and it looked and played way better for me with the OGL *but* there was always confusion over which OGL got installed and loaded. It worked with both implementations for the Verite 1000 and the Voodoo2. I remember having to write myself an instruction sheet so that I wouldn't be running the OGL for the Verite. That one was slower and not as good as the one for the Voodoo2 :) I think that 98Se would let you have both installed at the same time. I crashed it a lot back then :) I was happy to get that first 440BX rig and AGP card! Viper V770Ultra! I don't think I want to talk about how much money I've spent on video cards in the last 20 years :-\ The big thing to me then was, single card solution for 3D acceleration! McG. >> ian lincoln thought about it a bit, then said... >>> Open GL was for Glide. [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > nothing. > ------------------------------------------- Well, I "was there!" and have a couple Voodoo2 12 meggers I SLI'd for a little bit :) But it was the original Voodoo Monster Graphics chipset and then the Rush that DID use the GLide wrappers. The Voodoo2 didn't! Anyway, all that Voodoo and 3Dfx stuff really is outdated in function and performance now. A Geforce2 GTS 32 meg card runs well against most 3Dfx chips. That kids mobo have an AGP slot? McG. >Well, I "was there!" and have a couple Voodoo2 12 meggers I SLI'd for a >little bit :) But it was the original Voodoo Monster Graphics chipset >and then the Rush that DID use the GLide wrappers. The Voodoo2 didn't! All the Voodoo cards used Glide as their native instruction set. OpenGL and D3D support was via wrappers. SignatureAndrew, contact via interpleb.blogspot.com Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards, please don't top post. Trim replies to quote only relevant text. Check groups.google.com before asking an obvious question. >>Well, I "was there!" and have a couple Voodoo2 12 meggers I SLI'd for a >>little bit :) But it was the original Voodoo Monster Graphics chipset >>and then the Rush that DID use the GLide wrappers. The Voodoo2 didn't! > > All the Voodoo cards used Glide as their native instruction set. > OpenGL and D3D support was via wrappers. ah glide dos. as someone mentioned ealier. i could run quake and carmageddon inside 98 but if i wanted voodoo acceleration i had to download a patch and run in dos. I had a diamond monster 3d which was a 3dfx voodoo chipset. it sat in a pci slot. it ran 3d games only. 2d effects and normal desktop was a proper agp graphics card. In my case a diamond 3d 2000. I then chucked both and got the banshee. In between was the voodoo 2. Another bypass 3d only. If you were clever rich and mad you bought a 2nd voodoo 2 and ran sli. The banshee was the first agp 2d included. It ran some things faster than individual voodoo2 but 2 v2 sli wiped the floor with it. The main rival for the banshee was the nvidea tnt2 ultra. The 64 and other cheaper ones didn't quite cut it. But they did 32 bit. 3dfx went the 16 bit raw frame rate route and nvidea went for picture quality. Eventually nvidea managed to match speeds and 3dfx bought up a 2d card manufacturer rather than simply supply the 3dfx chip. nvidea stayed a chip only supplier. 3dfx burnt all their bridges with diamond and creative. There was also lots of driver problems. Having to patch everything didn't help. Limited to supplying chips to their own line of cards killed 3dfx. i switched to a geforce 256. More driver problems. nvidea seemed to upgrade their graphics weekly. Diffierent drivers for different games and all unstable for all round use. ati brought out their complete download. If it was ati card with a Radeon series chip then you simply downloaded that. They seemed more stable and not released every week. So i switched to a radeon 9000. Still going. I like that since I'm a dad and a grandpa... :) I doubt if a VooDoo card would improve what you have... They are very old and you would probably have trouble finding drivers for WinXP... If your dad got it to work with OpenGL then you're fine... There is an add on game called "Blue Shift" that has a "High Definition" pack that improves the graphics considerably plus it is a good game in itself... You play through Black Mesa as Barney the security guard... You can probably find it for very few bucks.... HL is a great game, stay with it.... Ya sound like a good kid... :) >I know he did things to the game called Open G I think and it looks much >better. My Dad is my friend so if folks could tell me I am off in asking >anymore I would like it. > >thanks -- "The Buffalo Theory" A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kill brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine! That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers. > It has Half-Life - Half-Life Opposing Force - Team Fortress - Counter > Strike with all four CD.s. I like it. I am stuck on climbing out [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > > thanks The Voodoo is a MUCH older card and isn't as high powered as the built-in Intel Extreme Graphics 2 you have now. Your Dad used the OpenGL renderer in the Video Options of the game itself. Most video chipsets come with an 'interpretation' of the OpenGL driver these days. Another poster mentions GLide. This was a 'wrapper' developed for the 3Dfx Voodoo chips. It offered some features which would make a lot of games look better. Your vid chipset uses an implementation of OpenGL that's more up to date than the old Voodoo GLide wrapper. I think your Dad is right; that your current Intel video is good enough for the Half-Life Platinum Edition games. If they look good and play smooth, then get into it and enjoy those games! McG. > I was wondering as my Dad kindof likes computers himself if the game would > look better with a Voodoo Card or whatever that is. I have a Dell with > 512MB memory and other things - but my video is something called Intel > Extreme Graphics 2 - my Dad says it would be good ebough for that game as > is is an older Game - but would a Voodoo Card be better whatever that is? Hmm have you instealled Steam? If you have skip it and run HL in native mode If you don't know what Steam is just leave it as is HL runs like sh.t on a Intel Extreme Graphics when run through Steam I know that for sure - my Dell laptop has onboard graphics I can play HL2 on the machine but not HL <some cursing> > My Dad is my friend Hehe thats the spirit :-) I have two teenagers myself, just trying to keep up with 'em :-) > so if folks could tell me I am off in asking > anymore I would like it. ? Don't know what you're saying here But keep your questions comming Take care/Peter |
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