Alien Breed 3D II The Killing Grounds RTG patch

[Angus]

Hi,
I wanted to get Alien Breed 3D II TKG displaying on my mediator/voodoo 1200 using the RTG patch but have had no success. Has actually anybody achieved this?

Thanks.

[alexh]

Did you install Picasso96, RTGMaster and AHI and test to see that they were all working?

[Angus]

Originally Posted by alexh

Did you install Picasso96, RTGMaster and AHI and test to see that they were all working?

They've all been on my system a long time and I know P96 and AHI are working, although I can't actually claim to know what RTGMaster is doing.

How should I ascertain it is actually working properly?

P.S.
Still keen to know if anybody has run it successfully on Voodoo and survived to tell the tale.

[alexh]

RTGMaster comes with some demo's, try them?

[Angus]

Originally Posted by alexh

RTGMaster comes with some demo's, try them?

A sound plan. :-) I'll download and try them tonight.

I've read the description on Aminet, but I'm still not clear on what RTGMaster actually does. It resides on your hard drive along side other systems like P96 and is used simply when a program calls it?

If I install RTGMaster its not going to upset my P96/Mediator set-up is?

(This assumes that RTGMaster is not installed correctly on my system, but I guess that is entirely possible.)

Cheers.

[viddi]

Hey Angus,

I don´t have a mediator and/or voodoo 1200.

But I zoned my installed RTG version.
Just give it a try!

[Angus]

Originally Posted by viddi

Hey Angus,

I don´t have a mediator and/or voodoo 1200.

But I zoned my installed RTG version.
Just give it a try!

That's very kind. I think my TKG installation is okay, but I'll certainly give yours a go and see if it improves things. Thanks.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Angus

I'm still not clear on what RTGMaster actually does.

It is a library which offers video games programmers direct access to the chunky frame buffer on RTG gfx cards.

It is programmed with direct hardware access to some of the older video cards, bvision, PicassoIV, Cybervision 64/3D and CVPPC.

Fortunately it can also use hooks to Picasso96 and CGX for cards it doesnt know such as Voodoo.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by alexh

It is a library which offers video games programmers direct access to the chunky frame buffer on RTG gfx cards.

Thanks for that. Well, I got it (RTGMaster library) installed - but the installer has got some serious issues. At the intermediate level it kept aborting with an "error on line 66 message". I went to the top level and got through the installation, but it still hadn't installed some stuff I'm sure I need and hadn't skipped. I put those in manually.

Oh well.

I tried some of the demos and they worked or not to varying degress, but essentially I think it is correctly installed now.

With the demos it was offering me the option of which c2p patch to use (Suzy, cpu040, etc) when I fired up TKG it worked, but didn't offer me a choice, I think I'm missing something here. The docs kind of assumed I had a bit more knowlege than I have. Any ideas?

Also the game was REALLY dark - is there anything I can do to improve that?

Anyway, thanks Alex, it worked. I'm most grateful to you.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Angus

Also the game was REALLY dark - is there anything I can do to improve that?

Not being a Mediator / Voodoo owner, I really dont know. You need to tweak the GAMMA setting, but where or if that setting exists in Voodoo Driver / P96 / RTG Master or perhaps even TKG itself I dont know.

What's the frame rate like?

[Angus]

Originally Posted by viddi

Hey Angus,

I don´t have a mediator and/or voodoo 1200.

But I zoned my installed RTG version.
Just give it a try!

Thanks for this Viddi, for some reason it didn't seem to work here, but my one did. I'm not sure why and I didn't have much time to check last night.

I noticed you had some sort of graphics preference file included, what is that for? Is that how I select which driver the rtg master.lib is using?

I also have a problem with the brightness of the game - its really dark.

Cheers.

[viddi]

Hi Angus

Once you have started AB3DII a RTG screenmode requester appears.
Your choice will be written in the mainscreenmode.prefs and the textscreenmode.prefs file.

I have no idea how to correct your gamma problem.
It might be a mediator / voodoo issue...

[Angus]

Originally Posted by alexh

What's the frame rate like?

I didn't get much of a chance to test it last night and my efforts were further hampered by a distict lack of photons but it seemd to be moving quite a bit faster than I remembered, until it crashed - my hope is that things may improve if I can find out how to use the optimum driver thingy.

Suzy, cpu040 or whatever - or am I barking up the wrong tree?

[alexh]

AB3D2 crashes a lot if your stack size is too small.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by alexh

AB3D2 crashes a lot if your stack size is too small.

I also get a dark screen, although I've only tried it on WinUAE. Its probably best played at night time anyway.

It runs pretty quickly under emulation but its so bloody flakey! I've still not managed to complete level one because it keeps crashing. What stack size do you recommend alexh??

Also I had some problems getting the damn thing to run at 320x240. For some reason it kept telling me that it wouldn't accept that resolution and then only allowed me to select 640x480. How utterly annoying!

Luckily I managed to get around this problem by hardcoding 320x240 into both config files and only selecting use instead of save on the screenmode selector.

[alexh]

stack 200000

[Steve]

Well I just tried it now. I set the stack to 200000 as advised and I also deleted the CLI tooltype from the icon info so it loads straight away after double clicking the icon. Hopefully that shouldn't cause any problems.

The game still crashes on me though. Its a pretty weird bug. If any of the monsters touch me I die instantly and then the game crashes and show the stupid red guru box. Utterly bizarre!

[laser]

that rtg patch is very buggy it crash sometimes in the middle of the game
also using that patch the gamea runs out of sync

to play ab3d 2 the best choice is using winuae and the original exe ..
with a faster computer you can get about 25-30fps

anyways..

ab3d 2 was a fraud like was the port of quake by clickboom

both games runs at about 10-15 fps on the fasters amigas equipped with 040/40 or the 060

10-15 fps is not playable or enjoyable

[alexh]

I wonder if it is RTGMaster lib which is more buggy. I played this patch for hours on my PIV with no issue.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by laser

ab3d 2 was a fraud like was the port of quake by clickboom

both games runs at about 10-15 fps on the fasters amigas equipped with 040/40 or the 060

10-15 fps is not playable or enjoyable

Darn, so all that fun I thought I was having with games like Quake, Alien Breed 3DII and the rest was actually bogus.

Bother! I'll have to rethink my life now.

...on a more serious note, yup TKG does seem a bit crash prone with RTG patch. I've had a chance to give it a bit more of a go - still dark as hell.

Any suggested RTG settings for the 2 windows that come up? 060 with Mediator/Voodoo)