Newbie here with a few problems

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Mercury
Messages : 80
Inscription : 30 mars 2005 6:11

Newbie here with a few problems

Message par Mercury »

Hey all,

I just (re)discovered POD about a week ago - found the OEM CD that came with my NEC Ready system back in 97. I only barely remembered playing some weird racing game a few times before forgetting about it - unbelievable! I can't believe there was a time that didn't like this game!

Just found this forum today. Doesn't seem very active, but I'll throw this out here. Hope I don't come off too needy or newbish.

So, anyway, I'm running the latest 3dfx version on WinXP, using dgVoodoo 1.31, with a AIW Radeon 8500. All things considered, it works very well, and I can't believe how good the graphics are for a game that's pushing 8 years old now.

A few minor annoyances, however:

I can't run the game full-screen. If I try, it immediately crashes with a "grSstWinOpen Error". In dgVoodoo setup I have to have Windowed mode selected (running it at 1024x768). It's not really a problem, since if it's windowed I can see the time on the taskbar, which is nice (lets me know how long I've been playing). But I think it relates to the next problem:

When POD starts, I can't move the mouse cursor across the whole screen. In fact it seems to be limited to an area of 640x480 pixels - leaving large areas on the left and bottom of the screen that the mouse can't reach. The solution is to Alt+Enter out of the game and bring it back. The game is then unresponsive for a few seconds (even the cursor won't move) then works normally.

The end result is that everytime I want to play POD I waste 10-15 seconds correcting the mouse problem.

Any ideas?

Oh, one more:

On several maps, Pompeii among others, large areas of the sky/background are black - when it seems that these areas should in fact be the brightest. Basically it makes the background very ugly so I end up turning it off, but then all I see is a black void all around - not exactly an improvement.
Amazo_Phanto
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Message par Amazo_Phanto »

Dgvoodoo has an option to change fullscreen resolution, try playing around with that and see what works for you. You could also try changing some of the other settings.

Also, the black areas on the background are there since the background picture was not scaled up from a lower resolution track format (*.bl3), and the .bl4 format is higher resolution than .bl3, so a gap is left.
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HolgerB
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Message par HolgerB »

Dege mentions in the readme of his dgVoodoo wrapper the possibility that some ATI cards don't support w-buffering. He suggests that you should use in this case the W-buffer emulation. You can change these settings with the help of dgVoodooSetup.exe.

If this does not work, change some settings in the menu of your graphics driver. Experiment a little and try all possibilities. Maybe your lucky.

Try also another graphics driver.
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Mercury
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Message par Mercury »

Amazo_Phanto a écrit :Dgvoodoo has an option to change fullscreen resolution, try playing around with that and see what works for you. You could also try changing some of the other settings.
That does work if I set the resolution to 640x480 or "Set by Application", but then it just looks awful.

I think I'll just keep using the windowed mode. I just figured out that if I do the Alt+Enter thing while it's still showing the UBI or Pentium logo, there's no delay.
Also, the black areas on the background are there since the background picture was not scaled up from a lower resolution track format (*.bl3), and the .bl4 format is higher resolution than .bl3, so a gap is left.
That would certainly explain it, but does that mean there's no solution? Does everyone see large chunks of black in the background like me, or is it just me?
HolgerB a écrit :Dege mentions in the readme of his dgVoodoo wrapper the possibility that some ATI cards don't support w-buffering. He suggests that you should use in this case the W-buffer emulation. You can change these settings with the help of dgVoodooSetup.exe.

If this does not work, change some settings in the menu of your graphics driver. Experiment a little and try all possibilities. Maybe your lucky.

Try also another graphics driver.
W-buffering seems to have no effect at all. I tried a few other settings, but no luck there.

Fullscreen mode I can live without, now that I can fix the mouse cursor quickly. It's just those black areas that are bothering me.

Thanks for the replies!
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DeltaFX
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Message par DeltaFX »

You are using the pod OEM CD... hmmm that's not pod gold, right ? What patches did you apply tou your install ?
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Mercury
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Message par Mercury »

Pod OEM using Large installation for MMX.
Followed by the MMX Bundle upgrade.
Followed by the 3DFX patch (twice).
Followed by the force feedback patch for 3dfx.
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Mercury
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Message par Mercury »

OK, a few more problems, map-specific:

Arcade: can't play, crashes with a "Memory Error" (I know there are three versions, I tried them all)
Forest: can't play, crashes with a "Car behavior Error"
Tron: can't play, crashes with a "Car behavior Error" (This is a Forest reskin, right?)

BTW, thanks for helping me out so far. :) Really appreciate it.
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BJ
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this can happen

Message par BJ »

hi mercury,
1st: welcome to the POD pack, hehehe.
2nd: some of the latest tracks are crashing to the desktop on some systems. i cannot race some of these tracks either.
3rd: try bandies new forum as well. this can be found here:
http://bandie.ba.funpic.de/phpBB2/index.php?c=14
4th: please enter the PODcafe. this can be found here:
http://www.berlinrc.de/pod/
5th: hope to see you on IO next time we race online.
greetz BJ
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Freddy
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Message par Freddy »

The reason for the error messsage is that Arcade does not work in glide mode, it only works in D3d mode ;)

Forest and Tron tend to crash the first time you run them, try them again and they should run ok 8)
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Mercury
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Message par Mercury »

Freddy a écrit :The reason for the error messsage is that Arcade does not work in glide mode, it only works in D3d mode ;)
Really? All 3 versions? That sucks. I got POD running in D3D but no textures there...
Forest and Tron tend to crash the first time you run them, try them again and they should run ok 8)
I tried them several times, no luck.
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Freddy
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Suggestion

Message par Freddy »

:idea: The other thing I can think of, so that you can run forest or Tron is to limit the amount of tracks.

I believe the limit of tracks that you can load is 47 or 48, before running into problems. :?

:keskidi: On the other hand I have more than 47 loaded and never had problems with running POD. Every now and then I experience a crash when trying to run certain tracks for the first time again.
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Mercury
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Message par Mercury »

Well, including the preinstalled tracks, I have 56 right now.
But, I tried to run forest before, when I only had 30-something tracks, so I don't think that's the problem.
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Mercury
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Message par Mercury »

Just an update. As of right now, I'm unable to play four maps:

Arcade - "Memory Error" (someone got it to work under 3DFX...)
Forest, Tron, Ecocoon - "Car Behavior Error" (doesn't seem to have anything to do with the car)

I'm clueless. :?
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Mercury
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Message par Mercury »

It's nine months later, but I finally figured out the source of the "car behavior error"... The difficulty must be set to "Hard". Setting it to "Easy" or "Normal" causes the error.

Nine freakin' months... :shock:
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grokon
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Message par grokon »

But now you can play POD :)
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