Glide Wrapper for Independence War 1

[sauron1]

Since the forum is b0rked, I thought I'd just re-post the location of the Glide wrapper that allows Independence War/Defiance to be played on current-generation video cards. You can download it right here:

http://home.t-online.de/home/zsack/glide_wrapper/index.html

Hope this is helpful. :)

[Nightwatch]

I solved my stopping problem! I remembered I had a inbuilt sound card in the motherboard so I turned it on in BIOS, set the prefered device to it and not the fortissimo 2 soundcard and it worked! woohoo! So switch it to the motherboard for I-war, switch back for everything else! Sweet!

I found the reason some people were finding it so slow in window mode is that I-war will only run windowed in software mode, so you were not actually using the glide wrapper. Its in the I-war readme.

[Nightwatch]

Oh. I did dome experiments, and thiose that are having curruption in the in game movies in windowed mode. try running the game with windows in 256 colour mode. Did the trick for me.

[arrrse]

Meanwhile, I'm back to the damn thing not working :cry:
I've got windows etc back up to proper working order & yet I still get the open then close straight away issue :(

[Stephen Robertson]

There's a new version of the wrapper available, which fixes most of the reported problems.

Here's the email I got from the author:

Hi,
I've had some luck with the I-War: Defiance demo.
I can now run it fine on both Win98SE and Win2k,
on a Radeon 9500Pro to boot, float shaders on or off doesn't
matter either.
There were two issues with the demo:
1)first menu screen was garbled
2)in flight, the nebula stuff sometimes didn't render properly

Both issues are fixed, and the game runs quite nicely AFAICS.
You can get the goods at the usual place:
http://home.t-online.de/home/zsack/glide_wrapper/index.html

Hope this helps.
-Rolf Neuberger/zeckensack

[Stephen Robertson]

A big thumbs up for the new version because...

... the game now works in 800x600 mode! :D :cool:

The only bug I can find is the movie smearing one.

He's a genius! :up:

[sauron1]

I'm going to try that when I get home! :)

Any particular settings that are important, or just default + 4MB?

[EDIT - wow, IW1 at 1600x1200 with Quincunx AA sure is pretty. :D ]

[Stephen Robertson]

I set the texture memory to 16mb, and turned off the float shaders.

[arrrse]

ARRRRGGHHH! :mad:
I still can't get the damn glide wrapper to work again :sour:

[Parias]

http://members.shaw.ca/alvandyk/IWDERadeon.jpg

So beautiful on my Radeon 9600 Pro... *paws at screen*

Edit: Gah, now if I could just figure out how to quit out of missions without it crashing.

[SchnozBott]

Whooooooo it works and looks pretty! So much better than software!

Runs a *little* slow but still playable, kinda feels like it's the 'right' speed now, since playing in software makes it go almost too fast sometimes.

What configurator settings yield the best performance results? i set it to 16mb, default mipmapping, try highres (it was faster this way?), and no float shaders (does I-War even use these?)

Should i try anything with those two options in the lower left corner?

:)

[sauron1]

Originally posted by Parias
Edit: Gah, now if I could just figure out how to quit out of missions without it crashing.

Yes, that would be nice - it kinda breaks the immersion.

[Nightwatch]

Thats the main reason I've gone back to running it in software. It crashes once when I complete a mission, then if I start it again for a second time without rebooting it locks my machine. Probably dosent unload propoerly the first time. Its bloody annoying, and I have too much respect for my machine to keep doing that.

[Ranger]

I have the crashing problem as well. I think it's the result of the glide wrapper unloading or something and the game thread gets killed with it.

[sauron1]

Mine says it's trying to write to memory location 000000.000, and dies. I can restart the game without rebooting though.

Interestingly, the crash bug didn't happen the first few times I ran the game, but always occurs now. Even more interestingly, it also used to happen on my legacy rig with Voodoo2, using some drivers (not sure which ones though).

[jkatz01]

Thanks to this glide fix, I am able to use I-war deluxe in Windows XP. THANKS!
For some reason, I cannot run the game in Software Mode? Anyone know why this is? The game starts, but crashes before the option screen loads?
Also, I have the problem where the game crashes when you exit the level by pressing shft-Q . Any fix or work around for this? Will I lose my progress when playing?

THANKS IN ADVANCE
J. Katz
NYC

[Stephen Robertson]

Try turning your sound acceleration slider down, in the sound / multimedia control panel, and see if it still crashes.

As for running in software mode, if you've got the 3Dfx mode working there's no point really. It looks much nicer in 3Dfx mode, and you're less likely to get any issues with the framerate going too high for the game to cope with.

[Dreadnaught]

Parias-- post a screenshot of another ship or LDA or something, silly! You can't see anything in that pic :p

[Stephen Robertson]

Hmmm... I can't get I-War to work on at all my rebuilt Windows XP PC. Says it's out of memory in the debug.txt

I've tried Windows98 compatibility mode. I seem to remember someone else had the problem, but all the threads got deleted...

[sauron1]

There's a new version of the wrapper out, btw. From zeckensack's website:

"If you're currently using 0.76 or 0.76b, you really should upgrade."

Don't know if this will help, Steve, but it may be worth a shot. Also, didn't somebody say something on the lost thread about a workaround for Radeon drivers? Wish we still had that **** thread. :sour:

[0berkorn]

Does it work in a Gforce 4? and I still have to put the -nozlock command line?

[arrrse]

I did manage to get it working on XP pro with my 9800 but then reinstalled windows & have neither been able to work out what it was that I did that made it work nor get it to work again :cry:

Iwar was working with no compatibility mode, 'hires mode', 'generate mip maps' & aa/af set to max on the drivers with or without either sse mode, float shaders or r300 line workaround.
That was using the 74 version I think.

I recieve a line of IWar 1.100 02/20/04 03:22:18
C:\psg\PSSYS\RES\RESMAN.C(145) : Verification Failure: ->No Available Memory for resource manager
in the iwar install folder/debug.txt for each time I try to run it.

[Stephen Robertson]

That's the error I'm getting. :cry:

[arrrse]

But you don't know what it means?

[l3enny]

edit: Even better, everything works now, just had to turn starfield blur off. Only problem are these same "Unable to write to memory" errors everyone is getting. The ship's movement also seems to skip after small regular intervals.

[Cpowers22]

So how does one go about using the wrapper? The only executable program I have is the config.....

[arrrse]

The installer puts the glide .dll file in the appropriate position & then when the game requires it, it finds it where it should be.

[Stephen Robertson]

I've got a feeling the 'Unable to allocate memory' bug may be due to me having over 512mb of ram in the PC. It's the sort of thing that might happen if a short int were use for memory allocation rather than a long int.

How much memory do those of us who are getting that problem have? I have 768mb.

[GrandpaTrout]

1 gig ram. I get the same error. WinXP.

[Unheard Of]

As above :(

[Stephen Robertson]

I think that may be it then. The only way to check for sure would be to remove a stick of memory and then see if it works. I might try that, but I'm a bit wary of mucking around with my PC - I've just rebuilt it and got it all working again!

[GrandpaTrout]

If the problem is in the wrapper, the glide development fellow could fix it. If the problem is in Iwar - then we are stuck. (Darn shame that a working wrapper would appear just at the moment the standard gaming rig passes the 512meg mark. Curse you Ironic world!)

Who had the name of the glide developer? Pehaps he has an idea on where the issue might be. Perhaps we can fake the lower memory size?

[arrrse]

But I have a gig & I had it working :cry:

[sauron1]

Originally posted by GrandpaTrout
Who had the name of the glide developer? Pehaps he has an idea on where the issue might be.

Grandpa- it's in the link I posted at the top of the thread. He's a really nice guy - it would definitely be worth emailing him.

Hope this helps. :)

[GrandpaTrout]

uh, yeah, I, uh, saw that *blush, blush*

Ok, I have sent him an email. Hopefully, it is something he can fix (crosses fingers).

[GrandpaTrout]

His very quick response:

That's an interesting theory, but doesn't fit exactly, I'm afraid.
I'm not sure how you'd arrive at 512 megs with just 16 bits. If you count
memory pages (which are usually 4k=2^12), you get to 2^(16+12), and
that's just 256 megs :\

Anyway, the wrapper uses 32 bit pointers for all memory allocation.
Using 16 bit wouldn't make much sense, because then, every time
I need a true memory address, I'd have to look it up somewhere. Direct
pointers are much easier to use, and that's what I do.

Physical memory is btw not likely to matter here, because applications
can't really distinguish between virtual (on-disk) and physical memory,
except for when it comes to performance, of course.

... which might just be another thing to try: if you have played around
with your virtual memory settings - many people set it to a large, fixed
size, heck, I do that too - try reverting it back to defaults ("let Windows
manage virtual memory" or something like that). The idea is, that
Windows may run out of physical address space (not memory), and it
needs some of that to set up communications with the graphics hardware.
Ie there is no free address space to work with, because it's all statically
bound to some part of the swap file on disk, even though none of it is
allocated.

Please try that.

Another thing, I've recently fixed one thing that could cause a crash
in the wrapper. When an applications calls some specific funtions before
the render window is initialized, it could bypass a sanity check and Windows
would nuke the process with a memory exception. That would have been an
invalid read at address 0x0000000C. I've fixed that in the meantime but I'm
not yet ready to release. I'm interested in *exact* error messages you guys
are getting when I-War crashes, to see if that was it.

Please copy this to the thread on the Atari forums. I can't register there
(they don't accept my email provider for some reason), and it's the best
way for me to reach more I-War users.

We'll hopefully get this worked out. Thanks,
-Rolf Neuberger/zeckensack

[arrrse]

I have it working again now :D

It was either the patch for outlook express I downloaded off windows update, or it was fiddling with my virtual memory settings after reading what steve said.

I think the latter since that was what I was doing previously when I got the thing to work & the error is talking about memory.

What I did today is disable the system managed virtual memory on d: & put a 500mb virtual memory on c:
What I had done the previous time was that hinted by the 'memory' error, I discovered that I actually had been running windows for some time with NO virtual memory :bulb: so I set myself a 500mb on c: and a system managed on d: (the bigger drive).

[GrandpaTrout]

I reduced my virtual memory to below 500meg, and it started working.

I still get a crash when I exit.

[MichaelShane]

When I run the game (I-War/Defiance) everything seems fine except for the main viewport. There's nothing but a blank screen. The sounds and movies play fine... but no stars or ships. This shot was taken on the first mission; the salvage mission.

http://images.snapfish.com/33%3A33%3C2%3B23232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2328%3D%3C2%3C%3D8%3A8%3DXROQDF%3E23234%3B%3A%3A56564ot1lsi

I limited the texture memory to 4 Mb as Stephen instructed, but changed nothing else.

Has anyone encountered this using the Glide Wrapper? Any suggestions on a fix?


Win XP (home)
1.1 GHz processor
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400
512 Mb RAM
Sidewinder2 ForceFeedback stick

[GrandpaTrout]

Try hitting "F2" to go to the nav console. I get that black out after about 10 seconds on the command console. But the nav has never blacked.

[Stephen Robertson]

Originally posted by GrandpaTrout
I reduced my virtual memory to below 500meg, and it started working.

I still get a crash when I exit.

Interesting. I'll give that a try, thanks!

[sauron1]

Originally posted by GrandpaTrout
His very quick response:

...Another thing, I've recently fixed one thing that could cause a crash
in the wrapper. When an applications calls some specific funtions before
the render window is initialized, it could bypass a sanity check and Windows
would nuke the process with a memory exception. That would have been an invalid read at address 0x0000000C. I've fixed that in the meantime but I'm not yet ready to release.

-Rolf Neuberger/zeckensack

That's the error message I get when the game crashes to desktop at the end of a mission, I'm sure of it. Maybe it's been fixed now? That would be great!

[Johan]

My old PIII 500Mhz 128MB RAM with a Voodoo 3 3000 was recently upgraded from windows 98 to windows XP.

On Windows 98, I-War: Special Edition worked perfectly, with no faults what so ever. However, when I try to run 3dfx 800x600 mode mode on XP it starts, then immediately crashes to desktop, giving me an error saying:

A problem has been detected during BRender initialisation

Please refer to the readme file for help on this problem

Obviously the readme file says nothing. Besides, the game worked perfectly on '98. What is wrong? How can I fix my problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I-war is one of the best games ever made (i've completed both)

[Stephen Robertson]

I reduced my page file size to 512mb and it works!

I am so happy!http://smilies.jeeptalk.org/otn/realhappy/offwall.gif

[arrrse]

Totally rocks :D
Somebody should tell zackensack.

Are there any new features in the voodoo2 mode Steve? Or is it just the 800*600? (so far I'm prefering voodoo1 with 'hires' mode)

You can set the memory settings to 16mb & it still works MichaelShane.
I can't say I've noticed any blank screens...

[Stephen Robertson]

Voodoo2 mode is simply 800x600. The advantage is that everything looks a bit smoother, and the HUD isn't quite so 'chunky'.

The disadvantage is the control panels look blurrier.

[arrrse]

ahh 800*600 cockpit graphics :)

[Jadman]

I was wondering if someone could help me with this, i can't seem to get the glidewrapper working. When i load up IWAR all seems to run fine, however when i actually try to enter the cockpit of the dreadnaught, things start freezing up and really slowing down. I've tried to decrease the size of my virtual memory swap file, no luck whatsoever.

If anyone has any suggestions how i could get this working i would appreciate it. Also some of you have had luck running this on windows xp hooooooow have you managed this? I'm trying to get it to work on my win98 machine.

Using a win98, radeon 9600, 2.6ghz system to run it.]

Thanks in advance.

J.

[Ranger]

How much RAM? You generally need to reduce the swap file to about 512mb.

Also, try disabling your hardware acceleration. I think to do this you need to go to display properties (in Windows) then in the advanced video settings there's an option to reduce hardware acceleration. Bring it all the way left.

Also, you can go to dxdiag (Start>Run>Dxdiag), go to display, and disable direct3d acceleration for an easier route.

Just make sure you re-enable the acceleration before trying to play any modern games.

[Jadman]

Thanks for the reply, unfortunatly i didn't have any luck with turning off video acceleration. I have no problems running it in software mode, but things just ain't happening in Voodoo 1 / Voodoo 2 mode

I have 512mb of ram.

[Ranger]

If it runs in Software, then just run it in software mode. It's way easier and you aren't missing a whole lot with the Voodoo modes other than a few fancy effects here and there.

[sauron1]

Yeah he is, the hi-res version of the V2 graphics setting completely kicks ass.

Did you make sure to run the wrapper at least once before trying to start the game? Keep us posted! :)

Oh, and I think the key to running in WinXP is to use Compatibility Mode, but I'm forgetting the details - maybe someone else can help here?

[huffduff]

I was wondering if someone could help me with this, i can't seem to get the glidewrapper working. When i load up IWAR all seems to run fine, however when i actually try to enter the cockpit of the dreadnaught, things start freezing up and really slowing down. I've tried to decrease the size of my virtual memory swap file, no luck whatsoever.

I had this exact problem with both I-War and Defiance using version 0.80e of the glide wrapper. The solution that I found was to go the I-War / Defiance options screen and turn off "Starfield Blur".

With blur on I get rougly 0.5 fps. Turning blur off fixes the problem completely, and I think the starfield still does the bluring effect.

[Jadman]

Yep i turned off the starfield blur, it worked. Thanks for the help guys, appreciate it :].

Now if i can just get it working in Windows XP, soon as i load up the game (with windows Compatibility Mode win 98) the screen goes blue with an error msg. Not a major prob i can still play it on the 98 machine, just be nice if i could get it on the Win XP machine :P. (I have set the virtual mem to 512mb).

[huffduff]

Yep i turned off the starfield blur, it worked. Thanks for the help guys, appreciate it :]

Good to know. :)

[RaCail]

Okay, so after I get a hand-me-down graphics card (a Rage 128), a new stick of ram (for a total for 160mb), and Windows 98SE, I decide to give I-War I a spin again with the glide wrapper.

Of course, with my luck, when I launch IWar in either mode, "A problem has been detected during Brender initialisation." Is the glide wrapper not compatible with the Rage 128 or what?

[hoom]

I'm pretty sure its not.
I think it requires a Directx7 graphics card minimum.
Check the readme to be sure.

[Shadowcat SFC]

Originally posted by RaCail
"A problem has been detected during Brender initialisation." Is the glide wrapper not compatible with the Rage 128 or what? That's a pretty good bet. Remember that you need a good fast native OpenGL implementation for your video card in order for the Glide wrapper to function (as well as some excess CPU power over and above the game's own requirements in order to handle the translation from Glide to OpenGL -- there won't be a direct mapping from Glide to OpenGL in many cases, so there's undoubtedly a significant amount of work to be done by the wrapper to make the OpenGL card mimic a Voodoo card, and one Glide call may end up being represented by many OpenGL calls if no equivalent exists).

If you're going to set up a legacy machine, you're best to slap an actual Voodoo video card in there (preferably a Voodoo2 or later (unless the game fails with later Voodoo cards??))

[Shadowcat SFC]

I was just reading through this thread, and noted that Zeckensack's wrapper is the only one suggested for use. You might like to know that dgVoodoo (http://dege.freeweb.hu/) also works a treat, and for those who have crash issues with the game (such as the SHIFT+Q audio glitch) it has the decided advantage over Zeck's wrapper of allowing you to run Glide games in a window. This means the game doesn't mess with your desktop resolution at all, and if it crashes you are not stuck in a different resolution and colour depth than you are expecting. The obvious downside is that you are not running full-screen, and will see part of your desktop when you play. Personally, I'm just thankful for the upside!

I'm using the most recent v1.40 beta release of dgVoodoo, and the configuration options I have changed from the defaults are:

Global:
* Windowed mode
(for the above-mentioned reason)

Glide - LFB Access:
* Closer to real hardware
(without this the full-screen mode (i.e. TAB in-game) can get seriously funky, with some confusing 'ghosting' of the reference grid, contacts, and the like when adjusting attitude)

I did initially think the problem was also related to this setting:
Glide - Refresh rate:
* Always wait for at least one vertical sync
but having done some addition testing prior to posting this, I no longer find that this is the case, so it seems that this one can remain unselected as per the defaults. However, should you come across the 'ghosting' problem even with the "Closer to real hardware" setting enabled, I suggest setting the "wait for vertical sync" option, as I had both enabled and was certainly not seeing the problem.

Do NOT force triple buffering (under Glide - Miscellaneous) or whenever a pre-rendered movie is activated, you'll have the most recent full-screen display visible and flashing (very distractingly) in the background!! If Zeck's wrapper still has those 'smudging' issues with the movie playback, this may be as good a reason as any to try dgVoodoo -- the movies are perfect :)

The only problem I've noted with this set-up is a rare glitch with the display of nebula at the edge of the screen (and this might be in the original game; I can't recall). In any case, I noticed it exactly once over the course of completing about a dozen missions, so it barely qualifies for a mention :)

Oh, I should also state that I have tested this exclusively with "Defiance", and not the original game.


Do also note that dgVoodoo configuration works by updating the DLL files themselves. It is therefore best to place the files into the I-War directory itself, so that when you change the configuration you are not affecting any global settings. If you have Zeck's wrapper installed to your Windows directory (which is the default location), and you install the dgVooodoo files to the I-War directory, then the two wrappers will not interfere with one another, and nothing needs to be uninstalled -- the game will automatically use the (dgVoodoo) files in the local game directory as its first choice, and if you remove them again it will revert back to using Zeckensack's wrapper.

Because I-War is a Windows app, you do not need to run the dgVoodoo.exe program (this is for use with DOS programs such as "Redguard", which also works beautifully!). The only files you need to copy to your I-War directory are:

glide2x.dll
glide2x.ovl
dgVoodoo.vxd
dgVoodooSetup.exe

Then run dgVoodooSetup.exe (the new copy in the I-War directory!!) and make at least the LFB change detailed above, if not the 'windowed mode' change as well, and you're good to go!

[Stephen Robertson]

Thanks for that! I'll give it a go.

[Shadowcat SFC]

Update:
dgVoodoo works fine with original I-War (well, the IWDE version) as well, with the rather curious difference that with I-War "in a window" puts the game into a regular window with title, border, and all the normal window elements, whereas with Defiance you don't get any of the 'window dressing' -- the game is simply set in the top-left 800x600 pixels of your screen.

And in other news, I just finished Defiance for the first time in all the years I've owned it! :) :) I battled through I-War upon its release here, starting in software mode, but upgrading to the 3Dfx patch when it became available with the assistance of my glorious Voodoo2. Curiously I remember noting that there were a few really nice effects in software mode that evidentally couldn't be duplicated with Glide, so the hardware accelerated mode was actually inferior in a few minor aspects; and of course 800x600 mode doesn't mesh with the videos so nicely (in software it really was as seamless as you could ever wish for; the very best use of video I'd ever seen in a game), but everything else was just so beautiful that those were minor issues! Tangentally, that Voodoo2 was my very first 3D graphics card, and my present GeForce4 Ti4200 is only my second :) (and I expect it to do nicely for another year at least).

I didn't get the Deluxe edition immediately, balking somewhat at the necessity of buying the original game again as well as the expansion, but when the price had dropped to that of a normal expansion I snapped it up. I must have been a little ambivalent about getting back into the game, though... maybe due to a couple of ungodly frustrating missions in the original game that had really had me tearing my hair out (the lack of save points in that was a real killer at times). Every now and again I'd fire Defiance up, but I never seemed to play more than two or three missions. Then I upgraded the video card, and it totally went on the back burner while I waited for the Glide wrappers to improve. Of course, I have a ridiculous back-log of games in my collection, so this delay was hardly unusual behaviour for me (sad to say).

In any case, I finally made the decision to play it properly when I recently found the explanation for the SHIFT+Q crashes that I was getting, and I noticed that dgVoodoo would run the game in a window for me. I confess that I found myself a little less willing to endure frustration this time around, and opted to cheat in a couple of missions so as to progress with hair intact, but all in all I greatly enjoyed it. The missions I cheated on were the sharp-shooter mission, and "Antimatter".

So. Now I can finally play I-War 2 :) (which I rushed out and bought the day it came out, but I've spent very little time with it due to my then-unfinished business with the Independent Navy!)

[Parias]

It seems like the original game is becoming more and more playable as time goes on through Glide wrapper support, so on that note, I think it's about time the semi-official forum FAQ was updated with information about this. Catch being is that I haven't personally put forth any comprehensive effort to get the game working on my modern XP2500+/Radeon 9600 Pro / WinXPSP2 system (since I have a dedicated P3/500mhz/Voodoo 5 rig sitting in my room to play it on instead), and I'm also now very much lacking in free time.

Based on that, would anybody who's put a lot of effort into getting the game working be willing to write up a quick, yet comprehensive addendum that I could slap into the FAQ with all the needed instructions for how to get the game fully playable under modern WinXP/SP2 systems? If anybody steps up to plate, then I'll be glad to shove the info into my FAQ so we have something to reference for all eternity without worrying about this thread sinking away (or vanishing if the forum software suffers another "database failure".. *cough*).

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Edit: This post is brought to you by Jefferson Clay.

http://parias.shovebotgames.com/av_clay.gif

[Shadowcat SFC]

That sounds sensible. I'm running Win98SE, so I can't help XP users, but I suspect that any WinXP-specific issues will revolve around non-graphical aspects. For myself, wrapper configuration aside (and being aware of the SHIFT+Q crashes being an audio thing), the game just works.

Here's an edited version of my dgVoodoo information from earlier in the thread:

dgVoodoo (http://dege.freeweb.hu/) Glide wrapper.

Both I-War and Defiance appear to work perfectly (pre-rendered in-game movies included) with v1.40 of the dgVoodoo wrapper (and hopefully all subsequent releases as well).

To use this wrapper with either game, extract/copy the following files from the dgVoodoo archive into the root game directory (whereever you installed the game to; e.g. C:\games\I-War )

glide2x.dll
glide2x.ovl
dgVoodoo.vxd
dgVoodooSetup.exe

Only these four files are needed. Next run dgVoodooSetup.exe (the new copy in the I-War directory!), select the "Glide" tab, and under "LFB Access" select the "Closer to real hardware" checkbox. This will prevent some confusing 'ghosting' problems that can occur with the HUD in the game's full-screen (TAB) mode.

You may in addition wish to enable dgVoodoo's "windowed mode" option. This enables the entire game to run in a window, which can be invaluable if you have CTD (crash to desktop) issues with the game, as your desktop resolution and colour depth will not be affected by a CTD. To enable windowed mode, go to the "Global" tab in dgVoodooSetup, and select the "Windowed mode" checkbox.

Now run the game! You can choose both the 640x480 and 800x600 Glide/3Dfx video modes, or for the best possible display quality, try setting the Resolution (under the Glide tab in dgVoodooSetup) to 1600x1200 and then using the 800x600 shortcut to run the game (if doing this in Windowed mode, you will of course also need to set a desktop resolution of at least 1600x1200!). Some aspects of the game such as the menus and the in-game HUD will still render at an effective 800x600, but as the consequent scaling is by a factor of exactly two, there are no resulting artifacts. On-screen 3D objects will benefit from the higher resolution, however! Having said that, the scaling can cause the pre-rendered video performance to suffer quite noticeably, so you may still prefer to stick to 800x600.

The game appears to run perfectly with the above settings, so I do not recommend further modifications to the default configuration. In particular, do NOT force triple buffering (under Glide - Miscellaneous) or you will likely suffer problems with the in-game movies. The information given here is based on testing performed under Win98SE with a GeForce4 Ti4200 and nVidia's 56.64 drivers.



edit: IMPORTANT

Note this thread:
http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=485711

[Parias]

Added, with appropriate props. Thank you sir.

[Shadowcat SFC]

No problem. I've also just added some additional information to the second-to-last paragraph, to cover running the game at 1600x1200 (or a kind of hybrid of 1600x1200 and 800x600, at any rate) for those with sufficiently fast machines.

[Parias]

Kick ass - amendment added good sir.

Edit: VVVV Yours too.

[hoom]

I'm pretty sure I summed up the method for the Zeckensacks Glide Wrapper in one of the more recent 'how do I get Iwar to run' threads.
Only thing I think I missed was the 'if performance is poor, turn off motion blur in glide wrapper settings'.

edit, found it (slightly altered & updated):

Get Zeckensacks Glide Wrapper here:
http://www.zeckensack.de/glide/index.html
Set pagefile/virtual memory to 512MB or less.
Apparently 1GB system RAM is max that works.
May need older Nvidia drivers.
May not be possible to get it to work with Geforce 6 series as drivers that work with 5 (FX) series are from before 6 series were supported. [I'm actually unsure about this bit, I may have been confusing EoC issues???]
No known problems with ATI drivers.
Game will crash to desktop after ctrl + q at mission end, currently unfixable (apparently an invalid Directsound call) but progress is saved. You can just load again & continue.
If performance is poor, turn off motion blur in glide wrapper settings.

[Zarhan]

Just out of interest, does dgVoodoo have less of those artifacts than Zeckensack, ie. see-thru ships, not completely textured planets (ie. you have a "crescent" where you can see through?)

You should also mention that the full-screen movies only work when in 256 color desktop.

[Shadowcat SFC]

Try it out and tell us. I haven't spotted anything obviously wrong myself, but you know best what you're looking for.

A 256-colour desktop is only required for the movies if using the game's software-rendering mode, AFAIK. Is that what you meant?

[ancient_scars]

Hullo everyone! :)

I finally decided to give Defiance a go again after giving up years ago. Talk about steep learning curve. Sheesh!

Anyhoo... After much gnashing of teeth and fidling with swap-file and what not, I finally get it to work. Yay! ...on my 20" LaCie. Yay! ...in 1600x1200 mode. Double-yay!! :D

This was with zeckenzack's wrapper.

I tried dgVoodoo because of the video smearing, but it's unplayably choppy in 1600x1200, so I'm sticking to zeckenzack.

I'd rather have high-res polys, than nice video. :p

[Luigi30]

Uh... it doesn't crash for me on Shift+Q. I just finished the first mission and it didn't even slow down.

[duemoko]

Originally posted by Luigi30
Uh... it doesn't crash for me on Shift+Q. I just finished the first mission and it didn't even slow down.

What OS was that with? I get the crash on XP with SP2 (DX 9.0C). I really wish there was a way around this as my piloting skills suck at the moment and restarting is driving me insane (even using -nologos)

I suppose I just need a restart mission key rather than Shift+Q :) Or simply get better ...

Rob

[Luigi30]

It didn't crash the first time I ran I-War, but every time after that it did.

[hoom]

Hmm, seems either we need a 64bit wrapper or something in iwar.exe doesn't work with xp64 :(

So much for my B5 inspired quest for some Iwar goodness :cry:

[Harry]

Just a thought Hoom:
One of the things that I did to have my games run better was to make a dual install of XP. One on drive C, one on D. All my utilities and virus protection go on C. C is also used for internet although D is also internet capable. All my games are loaded to D as well as my HOTAS software. Although I have to use a lot more drive space, I've found it a works nicely for me. Also may be a nice work around for the Starforce menace. Satisfies the EULA in that I only have the os installed on one machine.
No reason that an XP32/Xp64 couldn't be used, or an Xp/98 solution.

[sauron1]

Well, it's nice to see that this thread is still alive after almost 2 years :). It looks as though IW1 is getting to be more and more playable on modern systems as the years go by, instead of the other way around. Well done everyone who has worked on making this happen. And while I'm here, a Happy New Year to all. :)

[TonViper]

Speaking of modern systems, has anyone gotten it to work in 64-bit? I get a message that the program isn't made for my machine-type (I'm thinking there's some 16-bit code in there), when I try to run the install program. If so, could the solution be to install it in a 32-bit os (on another machine) and just run the program itself in 64-bit or would that give the same result?

The problem is that I'm not running a dual-boot and I don't feel like using an entire evening setting one up, so I'd be glad if one of you knows if it works like this, and/or another way to get it working.

[Shadowcat SFC]

I get a message that the program isn't made for my machine-type (I'm thinking there's some 16-bit code in there), when I try to run the install program. Try this:
GlideWrapper.zip (http://www.filegone.com/b41k)

These files aside (in Program Files\GlideWrapper by default), the installer just sets up a start menu with links to the configurator, gamma helper, readme, and uninstaller (although you'll not need the latter in any case)

glide2x.dll and glide3x.dll are installed to C:\WINDOWS (or whatever your XP64 directory is, I guess) although I think you should be able to put those files into your I-War directory (not sure if that would mess with the configurator working though... check the readme for this sort of stuff).

[TonViper]

Thanks for the attempt, but I need to convince the game to install before I can use the wrapper. It's the setup file on the CD that's giving me the error. (same error when copied to the hd btw)

[Roy_Fokker]

can't you run it under compatability mode?
I am sure WinXP 64 has compatablity mode.


Right click properties, just in case you didn't know.

[TonViper]

Compability mode doesn't do it. The problem (I think) is that the x64 version of XP is incapable of executing 16-bit code. If the installer happens to have 16-bit code somewhere in it, it just won't run, just like a linux executable file wouldn't run under windows.

My only hope now, it seems is if it's only the installer that relies on 16-bit. If the game itself is fully 32-bit, I should be able to install it on another machine and copy it to this one and then run it from there. I was just hoping one of you happened to know if this would work already, since I'd have to either borrow my mate's computer or use the one I have set up in my parents house (I won't be there before the weekend).

Oh well, I'll report back if I get it working.

[Shadowcat SFC]

Thanks for the attempt, but I need to convince the game to install before I can use the wrapper. Oh, I see. I presumed you were referring to the installer for the glide wrapper (that being, after all, the subject of this thread).

You should start a new thread to discuss difficulties in installing/running I-War on 64-bit processors -- it seems to not be relevant to this one.

[hoom]

Well I started the x64 talk & I don't see a particular need for it to go to a different thread.
I have been using a pre installed copy & the game gets through the intro videos to the bit where it should load the login, then crashes to desktop.
So I think there is a fair chance that a vital bit of the game or the wrapper might be 16bit which would be a shame :(
If we're lucky then its a bit of the glide wrapper & it can be updated.

[TonViper]

Lets hope so. Sounds like I'll be testing it over the weekend then.

Btw, the reason I posted in this topic rather than making a new one was that this topic seemed to be discussing how to run I-War in general and not exclusively glide related, and thus I guessed I'd be more likely to get a relevant reply in here than starting a new topic that may or may not get looked at by those who can help. Hope I didn't steer the thread too far off topic...

[TonViper]

I managed to borrow a comp and install the game there. Moved it back to my x64 machine and saw if it could run. No dice. I tested in software mode, so the glide wrapper isn't at fault. The software mode is because I forgot to copy the glide shortcuts from the other machine when I moved the game. Can someone check how to recreate it manually or upload it for me?

Anyway, I just re-read the thread and noticed someone talking about 1 gig of RAM being the max. I happen to have 2 gigs in the machine. Could this be the cause of my crash?

[Shadowcat SFC]

The options you want are all in the readme file. OTOH there are a number of others not documented there, so if this thread is going to be a bit more general than the title indicates, it's probably a good place to put this (combined info on command-line options taken from a few different sources):


-w - Run Independence War in a window (Software mode only;
256 color desktop recommend).

This option is useful if the game is crashing without any
error message being displayed. Enabling this option will run
the game in a window on your desktop, and any error messages
and dialog boxes will be visible.

-b -16 - Run the game in 3Dfx Mode

-800x600 - Run the game in 800x600 resolution (3Dfx Voodoo2 only)

-xsound - Disable the sound. Useful when the game is crashing to find
out if it's a sound related problem. If the game runs fine
with the sound disabled then it's a sound problem.

-hardstars - Changes the stars in 3Dfx mode into a special hardware mode.
The stars will flicker, but game frame rate and performance
will be increased on slower PCs. May also help with graphic
glitches on Voodoo Rush cards.

-norudder - Disable rudder

-noslab - Use if you have deslabbed the .slb files

-nologos - Disable intro logos (intro movie for Defiance)

-nozlock - If you get corrupted screenshots in 3Dfx mode, then use
this option to output screenshots correctly.

-disk - Run without CD-ROM. See also dreadnaught.ini
VIDEODIR "<install directory>\psg\resource\video"
DIALOGUEDIR "<install directory>\psg\resource\audio"

-start1 - Start from savepoint 1*
-start2 - Start from savepoint 2*
-start3 - Start from savepoint 3*
-start4 - Start from savepoint 4*
-slot0 - Use save slot 0
-slot1 - Use save slot 1
-slot2 - Use save slot 2
-slot3 - Use save slot 3
-slot4 - Use save slot 4
-slot5 - Use Save slot 5

WARNING: Using the savepoint command line options can cause serious
gameplay problems or even crash the game if used incorrectly.



-lagrange

Enables a SELECT LAGRANGE button on the Command Workstation's GSV view
(F1). Select a system, click the "Select LaGrange" button, and the next time
you pass through a LaGrange point you will travel to the selected system.

Originally the game was designed so that you could select your own jump
destination, but we removed the Select LaGrange button during testing, as
having players ignore the mission objectives and go off exploring made the
game almost impossible to test, and frequently caused problems in the
missions.

Normally the Navigator automatically selects your Capsule Space jump
destination, but enabling this button allows you to select your own LaGrange
point destination, and jump to any place in the star map you wish.

We've created this option to re-enable the button because we know many
players would like to do some exploring and see some of the universe we've
created that you don't normally get a chance to see.

Note that this only works with the US, Deluxe, or Special Editions of
Independence War. (the "US edition" might include fully-patched
original UK editions. I always thought that post-patch the two were
essentially the same...)

[TonViper]

Anyway, I just re-read the thread and noticed someone talking about 1 gig of RAM being the max. I happen to have 2 gigs in the machine. Could this be the cause of my crash?

At least I now know that isn't the case. I tried out the game on my machine at my parents house (with 2 gigs of ram and a pagefile of a few gigs), and it runs perfectly with the dgVoodoo wrapper, apart from the Shift+Q crash, which I guess comes with the territory. It did crash in software mode though.

[TonViper]

I have to thank you for that list of parameters. I would have been stuck at an early mission without it.

It's that first mission where you have to rendevous with a cruiser. Unfortunately, the bugger decided to park right on top of the L-Point, meaning that any attempt to get there would result in either mine or both of the ships blowing up. After trying this 10 times with varying degrees of blowed-up-ness, I remembered the lagrange parameter and just flew to L4 instead of the blocked L5. :D

[Shadowcat SFC]

Nice work-around :)

Are you using dgVoodoo as your Glide Wrapper? I thought I detailed this in the threads here, but I discovered there was a serious (if completely bizarre) issue with dgVooodoo at least on my machine, whereby events like that (collisions immediately after jumping) would happen if I was using it. The problem doesn't occur (for me) with either Zeckensack's wrapper or software rendering mode, as the other ships are not waiting right over the jump point if I run the game with those. It's extremely weird.

I was trying recently to figure out how to get an example mission (the one you just mentioned, in fact) into the Defiance demo so that I could send it to the dgVoodoo author, but I didn't have much luck. Must try again, because this rather large issue aside, dgVoodoo works far better for me than the other alternatives.


edit: Here's that thread:
http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=485711

I've also added a link to this in the dgVoodoo details above.

[TonViper]

You guessed it. I am in fact using the dgVoodoo wrapper. I also experienced problems in the second tutorial mission, where as soon as I jumped, the home base station would (apparently) collide with something (freighter I think) and disappear. Then once I got back, of course I couldn't dock with the base and complete the mission.

That one solved itself though. It seems as though on the 4th attempt, that while I got a message that it did collide with something, it wasn't enough to destroy it that time (smaller ship than before I guess).

[Shadowcat SFC]

No one ever responded to that other thread, so it's nice to at least get some kind of confirmation of this.

I have issues with the SHIFT+Q crashes locking up my machine if running I-War full-screen, so I use dgVoodoo windowed, and the -w option to play a mission in windowed software mode to work around any mission that features this problem.

It's annoying if it happens late in the piece (there was one mission similar to your tutorial example, where you collided and died only when jumping back home at the end of everything!), but c'est la vie.

It seems there's no way to get a perfect I-War experience these days in any case (without legacy hardware), so I guess you just pick whichever option irritates you the least :)

[athank]

I have dowloaded zeckensack's glide wrapper but have not installed it yet - I read in his notes for the glidewrapper that it only supports certain graphics cards and not others.

He lists Geforce 2 and what i have in my old laptop (which I am using to play IWar) is a Geforce2 Go with only 16MB of video memory! My laptop is a toshiba pentium III 850Mhz with 400 MB ram and with Win 2000 Pro SP4.

So far I am running IWar in sofware render mode perfectly fine but I would greatly appreciate it if someone could tell me if I could use the glide wrapper with the above specs (especially with my punny geforce2 go) to run it in voodoo 1 or 2 mode.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

[TonViper]

Well, since the original Voodoo card only had 4MB, and the Voodoo2 card had 8MB of RAM, you should have enough juice in your GF2 card to run it in accellerated mode.

[Deleauvive]

Hi to all Dreadnaughts pilots :noob: !

I once had the original french (version française) version of I-War. This incredible (but hard) game benefits greatly from using a sophisticated joystick (MS Force feedback Pro, now a Logitech F3D Pro) and deserves all your attention.

I would like to answer to this question :
"How to run Independance War Deluxe on Windows Vista ?"

This post doesn't deal with the glide wrappers. I salute the work of the creators of these wrappers, but I couldn't prevent strong screen flickering. By the way, my Athlon64 PC is equipped with a ATI Radeon card (the "veteran" 8500 model) and 32bits Vista.

This has been said elsewhere but keep in mind that the I-War engine is old (DirectX5 optimized).
Also, I am not sure that the graphics are absolutely faithful to the original. The ships looks a little purple, may be.:confused:

Ok, here we go : First, reduce the acceleration in Vista display properties :
The slider is in the 3rd position from the left (it should say something about Direct3D and Direct Show disabled acceleration). Reboot the computer (If someone knows a way to apply this modification on the fly, then feel free to post).
The game won't crash anymore (except on final exiting).

Assuming you have one, activate the Realtek AC3 from your motherboard. I think I can say that I-War doesn't like modern Soundblaster cards (Audigy 2). Default on the audio chipset and plug your headphones if you don't want to change the soundcard speaker cables configuration.
These two tricks could work under XP, also

Now you can tweak the shortcut to the game with switches. Here's mine :
"..\IWar.exe -disk -french"
The -disk switch means the game will eventually load the video and the dialogues from the hard disk. I simply copied the 2nd CD directories over the existing ones in "..\psg\resource"
Notice that the game still looks for this CD upon startup.

The "-french" switch means the game will load in french, german is also available.

Next, modify the keyboard setting (keybind.ini) if, you have an "azerty" keyboard, and you're done. If you ask for it, I may post a link to my modified keybind.ini here and a scan of the "I-war" assigned keyboard.

I didn't change any of the compatibility settings of the executable and the game loads in the 640x480 resolution but I added the executable to the prevention security list (under performance), this is necessary because you may have noticed I-War has an odd bevaviour in Vista, when loaded in memory. Concerning performance, I simply pushed the details option slider to the right in the game options.

Again, these settings has not been extensively tested and if you have a Geforce card, you would probably rather take a chance with the wrappers to benefit from superior resolutions.

I was rather despised when I read reviews stating that the Deluxe version wasn't really revolutionary, but as you see, after some work, you can step back on your two feet.

Are you hoping for another Space sim of this caliber, both challenging and superbly produced ?
I am afraid they don't make games like this anymore (INMHO) :(

Congratulations to Ocean software :respect: and please continue investigating the possibilities of I-War and its avatars !

[Loopkin]

By the way, to anyone interested I think I found a way to bypass the game crash with shift-q. :)

The crash in shift-q, as I read, seems to be caused by a call to Direct Sound. I imagined it was being caused by the playback of a sound file at the end of the mission, before entering the campaing missions interface. So I tried to hit Escape right after the screen blanks (after you hit shift-q) and It seems to bypass de problem, jumping directly to the save slot choosing interface. It's not perfect, but It really beats exiting the game and starting It again. :)

[andy2922]

Is there a way to get I-war to work on vista32 using a nvidia graphics card? please help i miss my favourite game thanks

[TomeG]

Or,
Is possible to run Independence War Deluxe on Windows XP with SP3???

[andy2922]

Since the forum is b0rked, I thought I'd just re-post the location of the Glide wrapper that allows Independence War/Defiance to be played on current-generation video cards. You can download it right here:

http://home.t-online.de/home/zsack/glide_wrapper/index.html

Hope this is helpful. :)
hi, is there a more direct link to the download? as i cant speak german so i couldnt find the wrapper. thankyou in advance

[TonViper]

that link is broken. That's why you can't find it. A google search for the term glide wrapper yielded this as the first result though: http://www.zeckensack.de/glide/

Enjoy. ;)

[dchin]

Thanks for posting the link, I'm trying to rediscover this game!

[ancient_scars]

By the way, to anyone interested I think I found a way to bypass the game crash with shift-q. :)

The crash in shift-q, as I read, seems to be caused by a call to Direct Sound. I imagined it was being caused by the playback of a sound file at the end of the mission, before entering the campaing missions interface. So I tried to hit Escape right after the screen blanks (after you hit shift-q) and It seems to bypass de problem, jumping directly to the save slot choosing interface. It's not perfect, but It really beats exiting the game and starting It again. :)

Cool. Thanks for that discovery. Will try soon. It's bloody annoying to restart the game after every mission. :)

[jhohen]

What are the glide wrapper settings required to play?

[draconarius]

I found this page at another forum. It is only 1 year old, I hope it helps.
http://justadventure.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1222542049/27

draconarius