rec.autos.simulators

by **Don Chapma** » Sat, 26 Jun 1999 04:00:00

I just purchased Midtown Madness after reading many positive web reviews and
r.a.s posts.

3D Racing Mania(99/100) -
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Digital Sports(99/100) -
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Avault(5/5 stars) -
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Operation Sports - (95/100) -
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

I usually stick to sims such as GPL, Indycar 2, GP2, Nascar 2/1999, MGPRS2,
etc., but I also play some arcade racers with my non-sim oriented friends,
and one of these friends recommended Midtown Madness as well. I'm normally
pretty skeptical when it comes to game reviews, but after finding this many
near-perfect reviews of the game, I figured I couldn't go wrong. Besides,
one of my favorite PC racing games was Vette(where you could race around San
Francisco), and Midtown Madness sounded like it could be very similar.

Anyway, I have a Windows 95 , PII Celeron 300a overclocked to 450, 64mb
100mhz Ram, 2 12mb Pure 3D II Voodoo 2 cards in SLI, Intergraph Intense 3D,
Diamond MX300 A3D 2.0 Sound Card, and a Logitech Formula Force Steering
controller(connected to serial port). In GPL at 800x600 I get a very
consistent 36fps. In other arcade
racers such as Powerslide, Need for Speed III, and Motocross Madness, I can
run at 1024x768 with pretty detailed settings, and get a very smooth frame
rate. First person shooters like Quake II, Unreal, and Half-Life also run on
my machine at 1024x768 with benchmarks well above 50fps(depending on the
timedemo).

HOWEVER, Midtown Madness just crawls at 640x480!! With a couple cars ahead
it
will completely come to a standstill, and then start again half-way down the
street. I have reduced the detail settings down to where the game is
downright ugly, but it still chops along, starting, stopping, hiccuping all
the way. I tried in-car views, out of car views, and dasboard views, but had
similarly poor results. I tried it at 1024x768 and it would hardly budge.
The Pure 3D II is selected in the Graphics options, so I know its not trying
to run on the Intergraph Intense 3D(only used for Indycar II and SODA these
days). Polling is turned off in the game controller settings, although I
don't know if this would matter since the Wingman Formula Force runs through
the serial port. Again, TOCA 2, MGPRS2, Sportscar GT, and Viper Racing all
run very smooth at higher resolutions.

Any ideas, or is this game just another poor example of D3D coding?
Microsoft's own Monster Truck Madness 2 and Motocross Madness run very
smooth on my current setup. Anyone with a similar setup have better results?
Please don't respond with "buy a TNT2 card or a Voodoo 3 card, then you will
get better results". My setup was about the best money could buy for 3d
graphics speed just a few months ago, so I am not ready to call it obsolete
yet. The system requirements on the box state Pentium 200 or Pentium 166
with 3d accelerator and 16mb ram for pete's sake!! I can't imagine how
horribly it would play on such a machine. I would have to say on my setup it
is nearly unplayable and definitely not enjoyable. However, there must be
something wrong with my setup because a quote from the Digital Sports review
states the following:

"GRAPHICS: 100 - One hundred you say? Dead on correct! Played at the maximum
resolution of 1024x768 on my SLI'd PII 450, the visuals have never been
better. With all the doodads turned on, the frame rate was as smooth as
silk, making the feeling of acceleration as convincing as I've yet to
experience in any kind of racer."

"Frame rate smooth as silk"?? "Acceleration as convincing as I've yet to
experience in ANY kind of racer"?? Maybe I picked up the wrong game because
my experience has been anything but that. I went back and played some GPL,
Viper and SCGT just to make sure that those games were not performing poorly
as well, but fortunately they were humming along as usual!! The PC setup
described in the Digital Sports review sounds like my exact setup, yet I run
the game at 640x480 with no detail, and it is a slide show at best!!What am
I
doing wrong? I have all the lastest drivers for Direct X, Pure 3D II,
Diamond Mx300, and Wingman Formula Force.
The Operation Sports reveiw also states:

"Running on a PII 350 with 2 Voodoo II cards in SLI mode, I was able to max
all the graphic settings out and still have a great framerate."

Again, I have the minimum graphics set at 640x480 and it chugs. What could
be up??? Just for kicks, I decided to change my clock settings back to
normal for my Celeron 300a. I have an Abit BX6 so it is easy to change the
settings through the Bios. I booted up and tried the game again. Same
results!! Honestly, the demo for Nascar Revolution ran faster and smoother
on my machine than Midtown Madness.

I also have a Pentium 233mmx, 64mb, with the original Canopus Pure 3D(Voodoo
1 6mb card), so I installed Midtown Madness on that machine as well.
Unfortunately, the performance on this machine was even worse!

What PC setup can actually run this game smoothly and at full detail like
these reviews state? I asked my friend who recommended the game if he had
similar problems. He has a P233mmx, 32mb, Voodoo 1, and he said that it does
not run very smoothly, but that none of his games do so he is used to it. Is
this what happens to the general game buying public? They get these games
home, install them, they either run poorly or don't run at all, and they
just chalk it up to having a slow system or they just accept buggy,
lackluster games as is.

There's got to be something wrong with the setups on my machines. I have
also already tried all the tweaks recommended on the Midtown Madness Tweak
Guide site - http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Only thing I have't tried is running it in 320x200 software renderer, and if
I have to do that to get a decent frame rate on my machine, then this game
will go back to the store.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am about to go crazy trying to
figure this out. Is there a way to frame rate benchmark in this game?

Don Chapman

by **Daxe Rexfor** » Sat, 26 Jun 1999 04:00:00

It seems to be heavily dependant on RAM, with 64 being the minimum. I didn't
read your whole post because it was too long, but did you try and reinstall the
game? It runs perfectly on my system which is a P2/450 sometimes o/c sometimes
not. I have a V3/3000 and 256 MEG of ram. It ran perfectly on my ATI
all-in-wonder 8MB AGP and monsterII 12 meg, too. I have to think it's the
memory issue.

daxe

by **Don Chapma** » Sat, 26 Jun 1999 04:00:00

Yeah, I've re-installed it twice on both machines. Each of my computers(PII
450 and P233mmx) have 64mb of ram. I know you can't trust them, but the
minimum specs on the box says 16mb. I've never had a problem running any
other games on my setup.
When I say Midtown Madness runs slow and choppy, I mean unplayable. I would
have to estimate less than 10 frames per second. I can't believe that a PII
450, 64mb, Voodoo 2 SLI setup cannot run faster than that. The reviews I
mentioned in my previous post have similar setups to mine, and they claim
that they can run 1024x768 with full detail settings and get a smooth frame
rate. However, they do not mention the amount of memory they have. 256mb of
ram to get a game to run smooth seems extreme to me.

Thanks for the info and sorry about the length of my previous post.

Don Chapman

>> I just purchased Midtown Madness after reading many positive web reviews
and
>> r.a.s posts

><snipped a lot>

>It seems to be heavily dependant on RAM, with 64 being the minimum. I
didn't
>read your whole post because it was too long, but did you try and reinstall
the
>game? It runs perfectly on my system which is a P2/450 sometimes o/c
sometimes
>not. I have a V3/3000 and 256 MEG of ram. It ran perfectly on my ATI
>all-in-wonder 8MB AGP and monsterII 12 meg, too. I have to think it's the
>memory issue.

>daxe

by **Zoll** » Sat, 26 Jun 1999 04:00:00

The prob really seems to be the RAM. I got 128 MB on a PII 300 with a TNT1
graphic card and it runs smooth at 800x600, even with FF, while SCGT just
sucks in term of framerates (so my prob is the CPU).

CU, Zolli

>> I just purchased Midtown Madness after reading many positive web reviews
and
>> r.a.s posts

><snipped a lot>

>It seems to be heavily dependant on RAM, with 64 being the minimum. I
didn't
>read your whole post because it was too long, but did you try and reinstall
the
>game? It runs perfectly on my system which is a P2/450 sometimes o/c
sometimes
>not. I have a V3/3000 and 256 MEG of ram. It ran perfectly on my ATI
>all-in-wonder 8MB AGP and monsterII 12 meg, too. I have to think it's the
>memory issue.

>daxe

by Jo » Sat, 26 Jun 1999 04:00:00

>Anyway, I have a Windows 95 , PII Celeron 300a overclocked to 450, 64mb
>100mhz Ram, 2 12mb Pure 3D II Voodoo 2 cards in SLI, Intergraph Intense 3D,
>Diamond MX300 A3D 2.0 Sound Card, and a Logitech Formula Force Steering
>controller(connected to serial port).
>HOWEVER, Midtown Madness just crawls at 640x480!!

There is definitely something wrong here. I have a slower system than
you - P2 300, 12MB Voodoo2, 128MB RAM, the same wheel. And here the
game runs very very well at 800x600, with all graphical details turned
on. I'd say it averages aroun 25-30 fps depending on traffic and so
on. Good frame-rate, great sense of speed.

So don't despair, there is something weird going on. Could it be SLI?
Is it easy for you to disable one of your V2 cards and run it on the
other one? That's all I can think of off the top of my head, other
than that we have ver similar configs (except that mine is a slower
machine!).

Joe McGinn
==========================================
Staff Writer for the Sports *** Network
http://www.racesimcentral.net/***.com/
==========================================

by **Lutrel** » Sat, 26 Jun 1999 04:00:00

I have a P2 350,128MB PC100 RAM, V2 12MB SLI and all the graphics on at max with 1024 x 768
res and it runs very smooth. I would think that not enough RAM would cause it to pause while the hard drive
read more for the Virtual memory, but slow frame rate sounds like CPU or 3D card problems.

I mostly play realistic driving simulators, but this is a lot of fun if you just go along with its arcade style.
I hope someone can make some hacks to modify the cars or make new ones. I think most of the cars should hit the curbs like the Panos
GTR-1 unless its a high 4X4, and the grass should be more difficult to drive on.

Lutrell

>>When I say Midtown Madness runs slow and choppy, I mean unplayable. I would
>have to estimate less than 10 frames per second. I can't believe that a PII
>450, 64mb, Voodoo 2 SLI setup cannot run faster than that.

by **Timbuk** » Sat, 26 Jun 1999 04:00:00

It's your RAM. Some systems load enough in the background with drivers, etc
that cause this game to have virtual memory problems with 64 meg (especially
if you have an AGP card). I heard there is a bug with 64 meg that allows
the game to run fine with 32. Weird.

Anyways, there are sveral games that push VM even at 64 megs. You'll be
better off with 96.

> Yeah, I've re-installed it twice on both machines. Each of my
computers(PII
> 450 and P233mmx) have 64mb of ram. I know you can't trust them, but the
> minimum specs on the box says 16mb. I've never had a problem running any
> other games on my setup.
> When I say Midtown Madness runs slow and choppy, I mean unplayable. I
would
> have to estimate less than 10 frames per second. I can't believe that a
PII
> 450, 64mb, Voodoo 2 SLI setup cannot run faster than that. The reviews I
> mentioned in my previous post have similar setups to mine, and they claim
> that they can run 1024x768 with full detail settings and get a smooth
frame
> rate. However, they do not mention the amount of memory they have. 256mb
of
> ram to get a game to run smooth seems extreme to me.

> Thanks for the info and sorry about the length of my previous post.

> Don Chapman

> >> I just purchased Midtown Madness after reading many positive web
reviews
> and
> >> r.a.s posts

> ><snipped a lot>

> >It seems to be heavily dependant on RAM, with 64 being the minimum. I
> didn't
> >read your whole post because it was too long, but did you try and
reinstall
> the
> >game? It runs perfectly on my system which is a P2/450 sometimes o/c
> sometimes
> >not. I have a V3/3000 and 256 MEG of ram. It ran perfectly on my ATI
> >all-in-wonder 8MB AGP and monsterII 12 meg, too. I have to think it's
the
> >memory issue.

> >daxe

by **Ben Marker** » Sun, 27 Jun 1999 04:00:00

I dont know what your problem could be, because I have a Celery 333,
64MBRAM, PCI Voodoo Banshee 16MB, and an AGP ATI Rage 3D Pro 4MB,(second
monitor) running Win98. I have no problems with this game at all. Maybe it
could be Windows95? I have talked to a few ppl online after reading your
post, and the 2 who had been having problems,(one was P3 500, V3, 64MB,
other was P233MMX, 64MB, V2 12MB) were both running Win95, the others were
running W98 and had no problems. I'm not sure, but I think your press
SHIFT-CRTL-F to get the frame rate display. Oh yeah, it's slow on the ATI
too, but its because ATI cards suck.

Ben Markert
Give me Drag Racing, or give me death!

>Anyway, I have a Windows 95 , PII Celeron 300a overclocked to 450, 64mb
>100mhz Ram, 2 12mb Pure 3D II Voodoo 2 cards in SLI, Intergraph Intense 3D,
>Diamond MX300 A3D 2.0 Sound Card, and a Logitech Formula Force Steering
>controller(connected to serial port). In GPL at 800x600 I get a very
>consistent 36fps. In other arcade
>racers such as Powerslide, Need for Speed III, and Motocross Madness, I can
>run at 1024x768 with pretty detailed settings, and get a very smooth frame
>rate. First person shooters like Quake II, Unreal, and Half-Life also run
on
>my machine at 1024x768 with benchmarks well above 50fps(depending on the
>timedemo).

>HOWEVER, Midtown Madness just crawls at 640x480!! With a couple cars ahead
>it
>will completely come to a standstill, and then start again half-way down
the
>street. I have reduced the detail settings down to where the game is
>downright ugly, but it still chops along, starting, stopping, hiccuping all
>the way. I tried in-car views, out of car views, and dasboard views, but
had
>similarly poor results. I tried it at 1024x768 and it would hardly budge.
>The Pure 3D II is selected in the Graphics options, so I know its not
trying
>to run on the Intergraph Intense 3D(only used for Indycar II and SODA these
>days). Polling is turned off in the game controller settings, although I
>don't know if this would matter since the Wingman Formula Force runs
through
>the serial port. Again, TOCA 2, MGPRS2, Sportscar GT, and Viper Racing all
>run very smooth at higher resolutions.
>Don Chapman

by **Martin Urs** » Sun, 27 Jun 1999 04:00:00

>It's your RAM. Some systems load enough in the background with drivers, etc
>that cause this game to have virtual memory problems with 64 meg (especially
>if you have an AGP card). I heard there is a bug with 64 meg that allows
>the game to run fine with 32. Weird.

This isn't true for me. I only recently upgraded from 32 to
64 MB and have found Midtown Madness to run tremendously better with
64. Playing the game with 32MB is playable in cruise mode but
intolerably slow (horrendous hard drive access times) during races.

Martin
Nigel Mansell RIP!

by **David L. Roger** » Sun, 27 Jun 1999 04:00:00

Midtown Madness runs just fine on my homebuilt P233 o/c'd to 266 w/ only
48MB RAM and a Diamond Monster (old) 3D card. Here are a couple of things
you can try:

1) Download and install Cacheman. It seems to improve speed a great deal.
2) Go to MM graphics options and uncheck "Speed Loading" and also check
"Hide Pedestrians". I'm not sure why, but speed loading actually works
slower with alot of graphics cards and you can't kill the pedestrians so why
bother.
3) Make sure you have the absolute latest drivers for your graphics card.

Those little things are what made my system work with MM.

Regards,
David

> I just purchased Midtown Madness after reading many positive web reviews
and
> r.a.s posts.

> 3D Racing Mania(99/100) -
> http://www.3dracing.net/reviews/midtown_madness.html
> Digital Sports(99/100) -
> http://www.digitalsports.com/dsports/pc4/midtown_madness/review.html
> Avault(5/5 stars) -
> http://www.avault.com/reviews/review_temp.asp?game=midmad&page=1
> Operation Sports - (95/100) -
> http://www.operationsports.com/ReviewVault/reviews.asp?game=midtownmadpc

> I usually stick to sims such as GPL, Indycar 2, GP2, Nascar 2/1999,
MGPRS2,
> etc., but I also play some arcade racers with my non-sim oriented friends,
> and one of these friends recommended Midtown Madness as well. I'm normally
> pretty skeptical when it comes to game reviews, but after finding this
many
> near-perfect reviews of the game, I figured I couldn't go wrong. Besides,
> one of my favorite PC racing games was Vette(where you could race around
San
> Francisco), and Midtown Madness sounded like it could be very similar.

> Anyway, I have a Windows 95 , PII Celeron 300a overclocked to 450, 64mb
> 100mhz Ram, 2 12mb Pure 3D II Voodoo 2 cards in SLI, Intergraph Intense
3D,
> Diamond MX300 A3D 2.0 Sound Card, and a Logitech Formula Force Steering
> controller(connected to serial port). In GPL at 800x600 I get a very
> consistent 36fps. In other arcade
> racers such as Powerslide, Need for Speed III, and Motocross Madness, I
can
> run at 1024x768 with pretty detailed settings, and get a very smooth frame
> rate. First person shooters like Quake II, Unreal, and Half-Life also run
on
> my machine at 1024x768 with benchmarks well above 50fps(depending on the
> timedemo).

> HOWEVER, Midtown Madness just crawls at 640x480!! With a couple cars ahead
> it
> will completely come to a standstill, and then start again half-way down
the
> street. I have reduced the detail settings down to where the game is
> downright ugly, but it still chops along, starting, stopping, hiccuping
all
> the way. I tried in-car views, out of car views, and dasboard views, but
had
> similarly poor results. I tried it at 1024x768 and it would hardly budge.
> The Pure 3D II is selected in the Graphics options, so I know its not
trying
> to run on the Intergraph Intense 3D(only used for Indycar II and SODA
these
> days). Polling is turned off in the game controller settings, although I
> don't know if this would matter since the Wingman Formula Force runs
through
> the serial port. Again, TOCA 2, MGPRS2, Sportscar GT, and Viper Racing all
> run very smooth at higher resolutions.

> Any ideas, or is this game just another poor example of D3D coding?
> Microsoft's own Monster Truck Madness 2 and Motocross Madness run very
> smooth on my current setup. Anyone with a similar setup have better
results?
> Please don't respond with "buy a TNT2 card or a Voodoo 3 card, then you
will
> get better results". My setup was about the best money could buy for 3d
> graphics speed just a few months ago, so I am not ready to call it
obsolete
> yet. The system requirements on the box state Pentium 200 or Pentium 166
> with 3d accelerator and 16mb ram for pete's sake!! I can't imagine how
> horribly it would play on such a machine. I would have to say on my setup
it
> is nearly unplayable and definitely not enjoyable. However, there must be
> something wrong with my setup because a quote from the Digital Sports
review
> states the following:

> "GRAPHICS: 100 - One hundred you say? Dead on correct! Played at the
maximum
> resolution of 1024x768 on my SLI'd PII 450, the visuals have never been
> better. With all the doodads turned on, the frame rate was as smooth as
> silk, making the feeling of acceleration as convincing as I've yet to
> experience in any kind of racer."

> "Frame rate smooth as silk"?? "Acceleration as convincing as I've yet to
> experience in ANY kind of racer"?? Maybe I picked up the wrong game
because
> my experience has been anything but that. I went back and played some GPL,
> Viper and SCGT just to make sure that those games were not performing
poorly
> as well, but fortunately they were humming along as usual!! The PC setup
> described in the Digital Sports review sounds like my exact setup, yet I
run
> the game at 640x480 with no detail, and it is a slide show at best!!What
am
> I
> doing wrong? I have all the lastest drivers for Direct X, Pure 3D II,
> Diamond Mx300, and Wingman Formula Force.
> The Operation Sports reveiw also states:

> "Running on a PII 350 with 2 Voodoo II cards in SLI mode, I was able to
max
> all the graphic settings out and still have a great framerate."

> Again, I have the minimum graphics set at 640x480 and it chugs. What could
> be up??? Just for kicks, I decided to change my clock settings back to
> normal for my Celeron 300a. I have an Abit BX6 so it is easy to change the
> settings through the Bios. I booted up and tried the game again. Same
> results!! Honestly, the demo for Nascar Revolution ran faster and smoother
> on my machine than Midtown Madness.

> I also have a Pentium 233mmx, 64mb, with the original Canopus Pure
3D(Voodoo
> 1 6mb card), so I installed Midtown Madness on that machine as well.
> Unfortunately, the performance on this machine was even worse!

> What PC setup can actually run this game smoothly and at full detail like
> these reviews state? I asked my friend who recommended the game if he had
> similar problems. He has a P233mmx, 32mb, Voodoo 1, and he said that it
does
> not run very smoothly, but that none of his games do so he is used to it.
Is
> this what happens to the general game buying public? They get these games
> home, install them, they either run poorly or don't run at all, and they
> just chalk it up to having a slow system or they just accept buggy,
> lackluster games as is.

> There's got to be something wrong with the setups on my machines. I have
> also already tried all the tweaks recommended on the Midtown Madness Tweak
> Guide site - http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/mm/
> Only thing I have't tried is running it in 320x200 software renderer, and
if
> I have to do that to get a decent frame rate on my machine, then this game
> will go back to the store.
> Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am about to go crazy trying to
> figure this out. Is there a way to frame rate benchmark in this game?

> Don Chapman

by **ZRocker_Rac** » Mon, 28 Jun 1999 04:00:00

I had a PII-400 w/64 MB and Voodoo2 SLI running at 1024x768 and it was
smooth except when you would turn a corner and it would stutter.
I was not getting 10 FPS though. Probably between 25 - 30.

I have since upgraded to a PIII-450 and Voodoo3 and still get a
"little" stutter turning corners but not as pronounced.
Remove "spammers.die!" from address to send email.

Webmaster - Racers Point.com
http://www.racerspoint.com

by **Thom j** » Mon, 28 Jun 1999 04:00:00

Don my system is very similar to yours & I have no idea what your
problem is? I run MM for fun but I have all my graphics, sound etc
maxed out & I don't have a***ch, hic'cup or spudder! So it seems
you should either re-install or check it on another machine!

----- Original Message -----

Newsgroups: rec.autos.simulators
Sent: Friday, June 25, 1999 4:03 PM
Subject: Midtown Madness is Maddening!!!

> I just purchased Midtown Madness after reading many positive web reviews
and
> r.a.s posts.

by **Proph** » Mon, 28 Jun 1999 04:00:00

Turn off the cd music. MM was a slide show until I disabled the cd music. Runs
fantastic now.

p2 333
viper 550
mx 300
196MB ram

Prophet

by **Mountain Kodi** » Thu, 01 Jul 1999 04:00:00

>So don't despair, there is something weird going on. Could it be SLI?
>[...]

Nah, I have a SLI setup, but with 96M RAM, and my Midtown runs fine in
800x600. I'm putting my money on RAM-- get more, it's cheap. If
that's not the problem, at least now you have more RAM! Heh, heh.

--mountain K