Lewpy's 3Dfx/Glide³ Renderer

1. Plugin Information

2. Bug Reporting

3. Disclaimer

4. Description

5. Installation

6. Configuration

6.1 Keys
6.2 Menu System

7. Problems

8. Greets

9. Version History

10. FAQ

1. Plugin Information

2. Bug Reporting

Only contact me about things to do with this plugin.
General enquiries about PSEmu Pro will be ignored. Read the FAQ.

Yes, I do want to hear about bugs.
No, I don't want to be bombarded with mail!!

So, a compromise please :)

Before you think about reporting a bug, please check if there is an update for this driver. Try the PSEmu Pro homepage or my own Beta pages.

Email: psemu@arisen.demon.co.uk

Send me details of the problems you encounter with the following info:-

1. Version of PSEmu
2. Version of my plugin
3. Game that has problem, including language, NTSC/PAL, etc.
4. Description of problem
5. Does the software renderer have this problem as well? [if so, then it is more than likely not my problem, but a problem with the main emulator!]

DO NOT include any screenshots!!!! If I need one, I may ask for one :) My mailbox does not need filling!!

*** READ THE VERSION NOTES FOR THE LATEST INFO ***

3. Disclaimer

This plugin is a part of PSEmu and cannot be used in any other software.
This program is freeware and cannot be sold. Also this program cannot be distributed without written permission. This program cannot be used for any commercial purposes.
Authors are not responsible for any damages that this program may cause, and are also not responsible for anything this plugin will be used for.

4. Description

This is a hardware driver for 3Dfx graphics accelerators. This means it will not run on any other manufacturer's 3D card.
It *requires* Glide3 runtime libraries to be installed for you 3Dfx card.
Download them either from your card manufacturers web site, or grab the 3Dfx reference drivers from the 3Dfx web site.

Note: this driver is optimised for the latest range of 3Dfx cards. That is, it offers better visual quality on Voodoo² and Banshee cards. Voodoo¹ cards and Voodoo Rush cards should work with the driver, but they will suffer some transparency problems compared to the newer cards.

5. Installation

Copy this plugin to to "plugin" directory that resides in PSEmu directory.
Use Configuration in PSEmu to choose this plugin, and select the resolution you want it to run in and alter any settings you wish. This settings can be changed at runtime as well.

6. Configuration

6.1. Keys

    DEL - Menu Cycle
       This key cycles through the available configuration items

    END - Change Menu Item
       This key changes the configuration item between it's available settings

    CTRL - Show VRAM
       This is really for my benefit :)
       It's not perfect, as it can't handle double buffer too well.
       BGR is also displayed as RGB :( Seems to be a Glide bug. Oh well.

6.2. Menu System

The Menu System is an On-Screen system: information is displayed on the screen :)
There are two keys to use: one to select, one to activate.

The following options are available to play with:-

Settings are stored in the Registry automatically, and are loaded again at startup.

7. Problems

Don't try and use this driver if you do not have a 3Dfx graphics card!!!
Also, make sure you have Glide3 installed: this will install a file called GLIDE3X.DLL in your WINDOWS/SYSTEM directory. If this driver is not present, expect it not to appear in the list of plugins at all!

Really old 3Dfx cards (mainly sent to developers early on) will not be able to run with this plugin. This is due to the plugin needing a texture palette, and the early 3Dfx cards did not have this capability (Revision0 TMU's). I believe all production cards had later revision TMU's, so this should not affect 99.99% of people.

8. Greets

Greets to :-
IRC: mappy, moopy, stubbette, Ravian, Adept, Vastator, Gaffer, Frenzy, Statix
IRCNet #coders, EFNet #3Dfx & #PSEmu!
RealLife(tm): Paul, Damian, Sarah (and all at Bizarre Creations), Matt, Sue, Dunx, Tabs, Paula, Giles "Hoohah", Simon "Delbert", Harry The Bastard, Jim, Rik, Pete.

9. Version History

* ver. 1.0.17 - 7.3.1999
 - Fixed Texture Window bug
     There was a nasty bug that could result in a crash in games that use
     8-bit texture windows. Fixed.

 - Fixed Alpha Blend bug
     I've revised the way one Alpha Blend mode was handled, so things should
     look better where it is used. It's still not 100% perfect, and I doubt
     it ever will be, due to single-pass limitations. Maybe I will offer the
     option of handling just this Alpha Blend mode as a two-pass operation
     in the future.
     Note: it was always 100% correct in MultiPass mode.

 - Banshee Code option
     Since 3Dfx have released updated Banshee drivers, this option allows
     Banshee-owner's to disable the Banshee-specific code in my driver.
     DO NOT disable this setting unless you are running Banshee drivers
     released this year: on older drivers, my plugin will crash as soon
     as you try to use it [known bug in the Banshee Glide³ driver].
     Good luck Banshee owners :)

* ver. 1.0.16 - 20.2.1999
 - ***Prelimenary*** Texture Window support
     This build contains Texture Window support, but the Texture Windows are
     not properly cached yet. This means it will slow down games that heavily
     use Texture Windows, but it does substantially improve the visual quality
     of the game.
     Proper caching of the Texture Windows will be implemented in a future
     build.

 - Revised Configuration Panel
     All configuration items can be configured via the Configuration Panel
     (ie. outside of a game).

 - Change to InGame Configuration Menu Control
     As soon as you configure an item, the next press of the Menu Cycle key
     will exit the menu system.

 - Control of System Type
     You can control the system type (NTSC/PAL), so that the frame rate
     limiters can be set to 60/30fps or 50/25fps, except ....

 - New Limit Mode: Automatic
     This is an "experimental" mode, whereby the speed of the game is limited
     automatically by the plugin. It ignores all other user settings, and
     tries to work it all out for itself!

 - Control of VSync
     VSync can be controlled from the configuration menu.

 - Revised Display Setting
     Rewrote some of the display setting code, which hopefully reduces some
     of the flashing screens that affect some games.

 - Revised FrameBuffer Writing Sequencing
     Changed the way framebuffer writes were handled, when they occur after
     a series of other framebuffer writes with an inbetween drawn primitive
     (you could call this "The Sandwich Effect" or something :). Previous to
     this, the last framebuffer write would cause the inbetween drawn
     primitives to be overwritten. This fixes some hidden menus, and such
     like, in some games.

 - Banshee
     Again, I've fiddled around with the work-around code I have to use to
     get Banshee working. Hopefully, this stops any nasty side-effects like
     lockups. All problems should magically disappear when 3Dfx release fixed
     drivers ....

 - BlockFill Optimisation
     This was a last-minute optimisation I just thought of. It should speed
     up some games where there is blockfill to clear the screen and you are
     running in a high resolution. Hopefully this hasn't introduced any
     side-effects.

 - Bugfixes
     A few miscellaneous bugfixes, that hopefully help out.

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 12 - 3.1.1999
 - New Configuration System
     The number of keys that I needed was getting too many, so I've re-designed
     the way runtime configuration is handled. Now, it basically takes only two
     keys to do all the configuration settings :) Settings are also
     stored/retrieved from the registry. That has interesting possibilities.
     NOTE: you will need to reselect your resolution setting, as I've
     re-arranged the storage of data in the registry.

     *** BANSHEE OWNERS ***
     My plugin will try to use the Advanced Alpha Blending mode with your cards
     (because the Banshee Glide3 driver says it can support it). At this time,
     the support in the Banshee Glide3 driver is actualy broken (3Dfx should fix
     this on the next release of driver). Until then, please change to one of
     the other settings to avoid screen problems (this should be stored in the
     registry, so it will happen only on initial startup).

 - Frame Skip
     I've added a FrameSkip facility, accessable from the menu system. Only one
     frame in two is skipped, if things are running slow. The affect of this will
     vary from game to game, since some games depend more heavily on the GPU
     plugin than others.

 - FrameRate Limiter
     There is now an option for a 200fps limit (basically no limit), if you want
     to run your games a stupid speeds.

 - Changed Off-Screen Rendering a little
     I finished off my own basic poly drawer, as it was much quicker. Speeds up
     Crash Bandicoot 3, where Crash's shadow is continuously drawn offscreen,
     then textured on-screen.

 - Optimised texture memory invalidation
     Something "Under The Hood". It's a "Good Thing" :)

 - Re-wrote texture manipulation routines
     Some more hand-optimised assembler in action. Speeds things up.

 - Re-wrote palette manipulation routines
     Even more hand-optimised assembler :) Speeds things up, and is more
     "Cache Friendly" (no more huge lookup tables).

 - Implemented a WireFrame Mode
     For research, mainly ... but left in for a laugh :)

 - Check the Menu System section for more details on the available configuration
   settings

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 11 - 27.12.1998
 - Optimised off-screen clearing
     This should speed games up a bit. Amount will vary from game to game.

 - Fixed connected lines bug
     Connected lines was messed up in Beta 10, doing all kinds of weird stuff
     (didn't crash though).

 - Implemented more basic off-screen rendering support,
   using Duddie's GPU code in the end :)
     In Beta 9/10, I added non-textured triangles. Now I've added Sprites.
     Although none are blended correctly yet, it's better to have something
     than nothing :) This means the skeletal menu in MediEvil is now visible:
     a personal crusade to get that going! :)
     None of the offscreen drawing (except clearing and copying) is optimised
     yet. This shouldn't affect too many things, since off-screen drawing is
     not all that common.

 - Fixed potential lockups selecting BiLinear filtering, or doing a screenshot
     These were "interrupts" coming in and executing out-of-synch with the rest
     of the Glide rendering. Thay are now synched to the main flow of execution.

 - New Banshee code
     Hopefully, this should improve matters for the Banshee owners. With the
     Banshee drivers being as painful as they have been, there is always a
     chance things actually get worse :( Since I don't have a Banshee,
     I can't check ... so please give feedback over this.

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 10 - 25.12.1998 - Christmas Release Part II
 - Beta9 had a nasty bug which crept in at the last minute,
   which caused lots of crashes

 - This is a bug-fix for Beta9

 - Fix for DevKit problems

 - Extra "work-around" for Banshee

 - Implemented basic off-screen rendering support,
   using Duddie's GPU code in the end :)

 - Fixed a crashing bug that prevented Crash Bandicoot 3 from running.

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 9 - 24.12.1998 - Christmas Release
 - Happy Christmas everyone :)

 - lots of things, and no time to write this :(

 - See if you can notice the differences

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 8 - 14.12.1998
 - fixed a bug due to Tekken3 "fix"
     Fixed a bug whereby only some of the scene was being drawn in some games,
     such as GT. The whole scene is now drawn properly.

 - Added a Frame-Rate Limiter
     Games are now capped at 60fps(-ish), PAL and NTSC. You can slow it down
     to 30fps by using the SHIFT key.

 - Added multiple Display Modes
     Still playing around with the colour balance!! There are now 3 options.
     The latest option (Option 3) is the best, but it does slow down the
     update rate (depending on the game). Option 1 & 2 are the two options that
     have been available before: one bright, one dim.
     Select the one you prefer, which will probably vary from game to game.

 - Small palette optimisation
     I added a small optimisation to the palette code. Not sure if this will
     really be noticable.

 - Compiled under Visual C v6
     SP1 seemed to stabalise Visual Studio 6, so took the update step.
     Seems pretty cool. Dunno if it's affected the speed of the code, but it
     has made the plugin bigger! You will need the latest Visual C runtime
     libraries (MSVCRT.DLL and MFC42.DLL), which are available from the PSEmu
     beta page.

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 7 - 07.12.1998
 - fixed the Tekken3 hang, we hope!
     Implemented a "fix" for the Tekken3 problem, thanks to the guys on IRC.
     Best bet is to advance to the next round by using the START button to
     skip over the end Replay and the "victory" animation of your character.
     I have noticed repeatable loops if the "victory" animation ends.

 - fixed display modes some more
     Something that I overlooked in Kaz's code. Thanks to Kaz for putting me
     straight! I hope this helps GT NTSC display frames properly ....
     we shall see.

 - fixed problem with DevMode
     Returned initialisation code back to how it was in v1.14, unless you
     have a Banshee in which case a little work-around is required until the
     Banshee Glide3 drivers are sorted!

 - altered colour balance
     I'm messing with the colour balance again! Display has dimmed down again:
     this will allow the menus in Spyro to display the selected item properly
     (it didn't flash in previous beta's, due to colour clamping). This may
     result in another toggle key, to provide a nice, bright display most of
     the time, but if something isn't displaying right you can switch down to
     the more-compatible dimmer display while needed.

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 6 - 29.11.1998
[2 Beta's in one day :)]
 - fixed another crashing bug
     Yep, yet another one squashed! This one was in some old code, that
     pre-dates my work :) Anyway, this lets the demo of MediEvil play, so I'm
     sure it will help other games as well.

 - Messed up menu graphics in GT
     Corrected this. Probably helps other games as well.

 - Messed up dialogue text in MediEvil
     No-one would have seen this yet :) Corrected this. Probably helps other
     games as well.

 - Fixed Screen Scaling
     At last!! My screen resolutions are the same as Kaz's. No more dead area
     at the bottom of the screen!! Thanks to Kaz for his latest code for this.

Known Issues
 - Messed up graphics
     Skeletal menu at the start of MediEvil demo is not displaying right. This
     may affect other games too.

 - Incorrect MDEC display
     I have heard reports of MDEC playing back in white, or really slowly.
     I am investigating this.

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 5 - 29.11.1998
 - fixed frame buffer writes
     Basically re-wrote the way frame buffer writes were handled, plus fixed
     24bit MDEC support (re-wrote that really!). GT MDEC now displays properly
     (no flashing), but it does have rubbish in the "dead" area of the screen.
     This should also fix some crashes, since the previous code was trying to
     draw some "illegal" triangles that would have caused Glide3 to lock-up
     [see previous entries, it's all related!!]. Just to be safe, even the
     screen-writes are now clipped!! :)

Known Issues
 - Messed up menu graphics in GT
     Some menu graphics messed-up (illegible), such as the manufacturer select
     menu. This probably affects other games too.

 - Messed up graphics in the "dead" areas of the screen
     Normally these are CLUTs being uploaded to the screen. Once I sort out
     correct screen scaling, these will all magically go away. At the moment,
     just take this to mean that my framebuffer writing code is working properly!

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 4 - 26.11.1998
 - fixed another crashing bug
     Another update, another crashing bug fixed! :) Hopefully, no more added!
     For those that want to know, it was a problem with Tiles that weren't
     being clipped. Now _everything_ is being clipped, and all seems to be more
     stable. I am sure there are still crashing bugs, so don't be surprised if
     it crashes :( This clears the lock-up in Glide3: I guess it was my fault,
     and I caused Glide3 to get it's knickers in a twist!

Known Issues
 - Flashing Displays
     Yup, some framewrites are not working quite right

 - Messed up graphics in the "dead" areas of the screen
     Normally these are CLUTs being uploaded to the screen. Once I sort out
     correct screen scaling, these will all magically go away. At the moment,
     just take this to mean that my framebuffer writing code is working properly!

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 3 - 24.11.1998
 - fixed some more things to do with frame write uploads
     This clears up a corruption/crashing problem that I located

 - removed some debug code
     This was forcing some default values (like fps counter), plus it prevented
     the frame delay "feature" from working. In fact, it would make some games
     run way too fast. Ooops.

Known Issues
 -   I am trying to track down a lock-up within a Glide3 call. This is totally
     weird, and none of the debugging tools I have is helping :( Basically, this
     is crashing some games and I don't have a clue why!! This coding lark
     isn't fun sometimes :(

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 2 - 19.11.1998
 - fixed some things with frame write uploads
     This should clear up some splash screens. It also now means that some stuff
     gets uploaded (ie. drawn) off the bottom of the screen in the "dead" area.
     Really, that "dead" area shouldn't be there!! It will go once I get the
     display setting stiff working 100% right.

 - removed the display clearing hack
     This was a nice idea, just not fully thought out!! This is what comes of
     coding late into the night!! :)
     I'll resolve the stray drawing another way, for now it just has to stay.

* ver. 1.0.15 Beta 1 - 17.11.1998
 - fixed problems with 2D clipping
     There were a couple of issues here. Firstly, I forgot to clip lines :(
     This resulted in repeatative lockups within games. FIXED. Secondly,
     textures were "swimming" on the edge of the screen, where polys were getting
     cropped. That is to say, they were swimming _more_ than normal for a PSX!! :)
     Problem is related to the fact that the PSX doesn't do perspective-correct
     texture mapping. FIXED.

 - got Banshee working!!!
     I've worked around bugs in the current 3Dfx Banshee Glide3 driver, so
     hopefully all you Banshee owners will be pleased! :) There are still issues,
     but this will be resolved once 3Dfx update the Banshee Glide3 driver, and
     it actually supports what it says it supports!!

 - MDEC support!!!
     Full 16bit and 24bit MDEC support!! It may be slow in some cases :( But I'll
     work on that :)
     This also means that those splash screens and backdrops that were missing
     should now be working!

 - Re-arranged keys
     This was to avoid clashes with other parts of the emulator (mainly the
     function keys), and also to match my Show VRAM to Kaz's :)

 - Altered palette stuff
     Reduced the complexity of my palette caching routines, which hopefully
     should resolve some palette bugs. It may result in slightly slower overall
     speed, but I'll work on that in a different way in the future.

 Things ToDo

 - Find more Speed!!
     Of course! Where I can, I will.
 - Better support for Bilinear filtering
     Maybe. There is a few things I could try. If 3Dfx actually put full support
     for their hardware in their drivers, the black edges that appear on alot of
     textures may well vanish (this is a ChromaKey/Bilinear clash that occurs in
     3Dfx hardware).

 Known Issues

 - I've got a hack in place to tidy up the bottom of the screen. This may possibly
result in some weirdness in games I haven't been able to test with (something like
a large black square covering part of the screen). It does effect the Tekken3 menu
screen near the bottom, but that is easily outweighed by the reduction in rogue
flashing bits on the screen in other games!!

* ver. 1.0.14 - 01.11.1998
 - implemented 2D clipping against the viewport
     This fixes a hack that I had to introduce, so visual quality is up a bit
     It also seems to help speed

 - tried to balance the lighting
     Display is a brighter now, with better balance between textured and
     non-textured surfaces. It's still not perfect, so I may implement a
     toggle-key in a future version

 - loads of behind-the-scenes stuff that you probably won't notice :)

 - maybe fixed problems with Banshee? Nope, it appears not :(
     Damn this is painful ... believe me, I am _trying_ to get my plugin
     to run on the Banshee.

 - PLEASE RE-RUN THE CONFIG SCREEN AND SELECT A RESOLUTION!!!
     Things have changed slighty, so some of the higher resolutions
     will not be on offer. These seemed to be bugged anyway.

 Things ToDo

 - MDEC support!!
     Full support for direct writes to the framebuffer
 - Find more Speed!!
     Of course! Where I can, I will.

* ver. 1.0.12 - 29.10.1998
 - added runtime keys as follows

    SHIFT - Show VRAM
       This is really for my benefit :)
       It's not perfect, as it can't handle double buffer too well

 - stream-lined colour support in primitives
 - added better palette caching
 - fixed screen resolutions: Tekken3 now scales correctly
 - cleaned-up init/shutdown code

 Known Issues

 - Doesn't work on Banshee :(
     I am investigating this ....
 - Funny display
     Try lowering the resolution. I believe this to be a Glide3 driver bug,
     so it may be fixed with improved drivers. If I can find a workaround
    (short of disabling problem resolutions), I will incorporate it.
 - Crashes in some games
     This is on the ToDo list, once I am happy the driver is pretty solid.

 Things ToDo

 - MDEC support!!
     Full support for direct writes to the framebuffer
 - Find more Speed!!
     Of course! Where I can, I will.

* ver. 1.0.11 - 22.10.1998
 - added runtime keys as follows

    F6 - Enable/Disable Bilinear filtering                    Default: Off
       Looks nice some of the time, but not all of the time.
       Now you can choose when and where.

    F7 - Enable/Disable OnScreen display                      Default: Off
       Mainly for debugging, not too useful.
       I can't say whether the stats are 100% accurate.

    F8 - Enable/Disable texture alpha blending                Default: On
       This setting is for the older 3Dfx cards: use this
       to disable alpha blending if you think some textures
       are being made transparent when they should be visible.
       Unfortunately, it will make textures that should be
       transparent visible. Sorry, it's one or the other :(
       For newer 3Dfx cards, this key does nothing as it would
       gain you nothing (except an incorrect image).

 - disabled the following configuration settings

    Enable bilinear filtering
    Disable VSync
    Enable OnScreen display

   They are now obsolete: use the runtime keys instead.

* ver. 1.0.10 - 21.10.1998
 - first public release

10. FAQ

Problem : "Mutual exclusion prohibits this" error message

Solution :

If it happens every time you run PSEmu, then it is probably down to one of the following:-

1) You are running a background task/application that is hogging the Voodoo card. Taskbar applications used to configure Direct3D options can do this. Try stopping any that you have running in turn until you find the one (if there is one) that is interfering.

2) You have an OpenGL plugin in the plugins directory, and you have installed the 3Dfx OpenGL driver. Unfortunately, due to the way PSEmu handles plugins (I guess), the OpenGL plugin with 3Dfx OpenGL driver hogs the 3Dfx card, so my plugin can't use it. Try removing the 3Dfx OpenGL driver, and only put it back when you _really_ want to use it. If you are using the OpenGL plugin more than my Glide³ plugin, then I need to do some serious work :(

"Mutual exclusion prohibits this" error is a new "feature" of Glide³, designed to prevent program contention. Previous versions of Glide did not handle multi-tasking situations, which 3Dfx have tried to address.

If this problem happens occasionally, it could be that a program you have previously run since last rebooting your PC did not close down cleanly, and has left Glide in a bad state. The only way around this is to reboot.

Problem : "VXD Error: expected v1.4 found v1.x" error message

Solution :

The file in question is FXMEMMAP.VXD. What the error message means is this: Glide is loading, and looking for the file it needs, FXMEMMAP.VXD. The file it is finding is the wrong version: it is too old. Therefore, Glide can't run :(
This can happen for a number of reasons, but the main reason is due to stray copies of FXMEMMAP.VXD on the computer, that are not getting updated when the main drivers are getting updated.
A common place for an extra copy of FXMEMMAP.VXD is in the WINDOWS directory (it should only be in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory, and the WINDOWS directory is checked first in the path). If you have a copy of FXMEMMAP.VXD in the WINDOWS directory, rename it to FXMEMMAP.OLD (you can search your entire hard-disks, and rename all copies that are not in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory). Then make sure the latest version of FXMEMMAP.VXD is in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory (there should already be a copy of the file there, so make sure it is up-to-date ... the latest version is in the 3Dfx driver archive that you installed).

Once you are happy your problems are resolved, you may deleted any FXMEMMAP.OLD files, as they are unnecessary and are just taking up your hard disk space :)