I think a long rant helps get things off your chest... hehe.
At the time when GPL was being made, the TNT cards were very new and
indeed buggy, but by the time the game came out the cards were getting
fairly popular. The problems with them have been a few though:
1- games not designed to run in D3D or OpenGL. Patches are never a
half decent solution and never give any decent frame rate.
2- Poor drivers. Well known fact that these have been a huge problem.
3- Bugs with super 7 boards. Most of the bugs and dramas have been
related to the (generally less stable) super 7 platform. Lack of a
quality chipset meant all kinds of dramas.
The cards themselves aren't poorly designed IMO, just the drivers were
never given proper testing with beta versions given to the guinea pig
end users. If it weren't for the competition, we'd never be looking at
some impressive V4/5 cards coming soon. 3DFX were very one eyed with
the V3, leaving out an enormous list of features that other cards had
alreadly implemented. That's why the TNT2 and GeForce are so popular.
32 bit colour, full scene anti aliasing, blah blah... If you play
games like Q3, UT, etc., V3's aint anything special. As long as the
game was not designed with Glide in mind...
With regards to OpenGL, I disagree. Q2 had a huge following, allow
with other games using it's engine. Q3 will follow suit for sure. I'm
no programming guru, but apparently OpenGL and Glide are very easy to
program in, while D3D is a pig. That's why Glide was so popular, along
with the cards being widely available. As long as new games stick to
either D3D or OpenGL (and 3DFX do a half decent job implemeting
OpenGL) then EVERYONE will be happy. TNT/Geforce users, 3DFX users,
Matrox users, etc. Without competition, we'd still be stuck with V2's
at big bucks.
That's my rant anyway...
Rafe Mc
>I sure hope it makes it back across the pond to the USA, hehe. I'm still in
>a search for GPL with no success. Even offering to buy a used copy locally
>brings no responses, argh!! Anyways....
>I been a longtime Sierra fan going back to the 80's. What with King's Quest
>and various other games they produced. I used to get their quarterly
>magazine and the last part of 98, they had reviews of upcoming games, such
>as N3, GPL, Tribes and Starseige, plus a WW2 Fighters type game that got
>cancelled at the last second...getting to the meat of the subject...
>Even back then, with the *** of 3dfx, and their king of the hill
>Voodoo 2 card, Sierra basically made the call that nobody was gonna catch,
>no way would they ever beat, 3dfx and their voodoo style cards. I might have
>my time period wrong, but anyways, the TNT cards were not released yet, or
>had just been released. In their reader/consumer feedback mailbag for this
>one issue, someone asked that very question..."Why no OpenGL support?".
>And basically already gave you the answer, 3dfx was the king of the hill, so
>Sierra was only gonna make games for those line of cards.
>I seen this same goofy argument for months and months when Tribes came out,
>Dec 98 i believe, which some folks had just bought their shiny new, and
>obsolete when it hit the shelf, TNT cards and complained. Know what Sierra
>did? Released an OpenGL patch. Know what happened then? The TNT owners
>complained that their cards running Tribes didn't look as pretty, nor run as
>fast as their friends who used 3dfx voodoo's.
>DUH!! Reality check. If you ask me, and nobody did, but my two cents here,
>Sierra in a way, was right in what they did. It was the consumers who made
>the mistake of sinking their money into a poorly designed card. For those
>that don't remember, you could buy 2 TNT cards, 1 would work in your
>machine, the other one wouldn't work in your machine. That was *proven* by
>countless magazines and even fessed up a bit by Invidia. It was a rushed
>design and build, which makes for a poorly designed card. Yeah, many months
>down the road it became usable with lots of updated drivers, but mostly the
>TNT debacle was forgotten when the TNT-2 came out. Even the GeForce (Gee
>Whiz?) cards aren't what they should be. Far from the Voodoo killer they
>claim to be. I'm a reformed flight sim ***, and Janes made their WWII
>Fighters to support everything, D3D, Glide and OpenGL. Know what happened
>when the flying jocks got their new cards?? They wouldn't work, not in D3D
>nor OpenGL. No way am I gonna spend double what a Voodoo 3 costs, and not be
>able to use it. :)
>By the way, you'll be lucky to find OpenGL support for anything in the
>coming years. Janes apparently gave up on it, as did Sierra. You know
>Microsoft won't want it in their games, they make the D3D, hehe. More and
>more companies are going to a Direct 3D and/or Glide combo in their games.
>Such as Nascar 3 did, Janes USAF, Janes F/A-18, and probably some of the new
>ones coming out any day. I never knew what the big deal with OpenGL was
>anyways. It doesn't look as good at D3D or Glide, and is prone to be alot
>more buggy.
>Anyways...
>Destin
>p.s. Kinda neat how Bethesda has some race games coming out in the near
>future, but yet their previous drag racing games gave you two choices.
>Software render (unaccelerate, might as well be 2d) or 3dfx Glide. So get
>ready to complain when the Skip Barber racing game comes out, unless they
>include D3D and OpenGL.
>> For those of you that haven't heard, GPL is now available (at least here
>in
>> England) on the Sierra Originals label. I picked up a backup copy today
>for
>> 9.99 from Game. Unfortunately they haven't updated the CD so it still
>> installs version 1.0. Hopefully this budget release will bring a whole
>new
>> set of people to GPL.
>> I do feel that Sierra missed an opportunity to sort out the OpenGL patch
>and
>> open the full beauty of GPL to everyone. How many people are going to get
>> it home, install it, find it doesn't work in hardware mode and then bin
>the
>> best race sim ever? I know I nearly did when I got my copy four months
>ago
>> from a bargain bin. It was only by trawling the net and stumbling on the
>> OpenGL patch which led me down the road of buying an LWFF, CH Pedals, SB
>> Live! and V3 2000 all to improve GPL.
>> Cheers
>> Phil
>> --
>> http://www.racesimcentral.net/
