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Streets of SimCity and SimCopter

Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2014 7:25 pm
by tfishell
Coupla questions:

1) Does Streets of SimCity run more or less just like it did "back in the day" with nGlide+VooDoo Rush patch?

2) Can SimCopter make use of nGlide? From what I gathered there was a later patch that added 3Dfx support, but I thought maybe there was a reason the game is not on the Compatibility list: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe ... fx&spell=1

Would certainly be great to see the games come to GOG if EA allows the publishing of more titles. EA has many other classics still unreleased. (I'm saddened Future Cop LAPD still hasn't shown up yet.)

Re: Streets of SimCity and SimCopter

Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 1:18 am
by Gamecollector
1) Same. But - it runs much SLOWER. Why this game needs so much CPU power to emulate?
2) Heh. The game have the glide 2.1.1 dependency after the patch.
I can't test it with my real Voodoo 2. With nGlide 1.03 the result is - black rectangle (640x480), some in-game music/sounds. And the game quits to desktop if you press Esc. Symptoms are same as for Streets of SimCity w/o the Rush patch.

Re: Streets of SimCity and SimCopter

Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 4:58 pm
by Zeus
Streets of SimCity
Graphically it's the same but physics is broken on fast systems. The game also uses DDraw in main menu which can be problematic on Win7/8.
SimCopter
I managed to get it work today, but don't get too excited. This is very early, buggy and incomplete patch.

Here's what readme mentions:

If you happen to own a 3d accelerator card based on the 3Dfx chipset
(Diamond Monster 3D or Orchid Righteous 3D to name two). You can play
around with an early alpha version of SimCopter with enhanced 3D graphics
that uses this chipset. This capability is included in the same 1.0.1.3
executable however you will have to download a separate file from the
Maxis Web Site that contains the texture maps for this capability.

This capability of SimCopter in the current version is completely
unsupported
. The entire user interface is disabled. When you enable
3Dfx acceleration, the game automatically looks for the city "happylnd.sc2"
to open and jumps right into it. The game completely runs and can be
played in a fashion, but the intent right now is just to provide you with a
new way to see your cities if you happen to own the right 3D card.

In order to enable Voodoo 3Dfx acceleration start SimCopter with the /v
command line switch.

simcopter.jpg
simcopter.jpg (48.23 KiB) Viewed 25691 times

Re: Streets of SimCity and SimCopter

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 11:29 am
by Gamecollector
Well, your results are better. I still got black screen + background voices.
Have installed the game (setup needs win9x compatibility mode to install correctly) and 1.02 patch (again, win9x compatibility). Have deleted glide.dll and sst1init.dll in the game directory. Have started with simcopter /v...
Maybe I miss this "separate file with textures"?

Re: Streets of SimCity and SimCopter

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 12:28 pm
by Zeus
You're doing everything properly. I managed to get it work by fixing nGlide. ;)

Re: Streets of SimCity and SimCopter

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 1:55 pm
by Gamecollector
By the way, Zeus, can you try to make an glide 2.1.1 -> glide 2.4x+ wrapper in the future? The target is - use glide 2.1.1 games with ANY voodoo2/Banshee/3/4/5. Or with any glide wrapper.

Re: Streets of SimCity and SimCopter

Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2014 6:31 pm
by Zeus
Doesn't something like this exist already? I think I have seen it somewhere, or maybe it was 2x->3x? :?

I don't remember, but perhaps Stiletto will know.

Re: Streets of SimCity and SimCopter

Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 5:10 pm
by tfishell
Cheers, and thanks for the info. So just to be clear, what is the current status of SimCopter? Zeus, when you said, "I managed to get it working by fixing nGlide," were you referring to SC?

Re: Streets of SimCity and SimCopter

Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 10:22 pm
by Zeus
Yes, I was referring to SC. But like I said earlier 3dfx patch is incomplete and should be treated only as a curiosity.

Re: Streets of SimCity and SimCopter

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2014 4:49 pm
by Stiletto
Zeus wrote:Doesn't something like this exist already? I think I have seen it somewhere, or maybe it was 2x->3x? :?

I don't remember, but perhaps Stiletto will know.
There's definitely a Glide 2x-3x wrapper, you can find it here:
http://wenchy.net/old/glidexp/
If it no longer is a wrapper, it was at least originally implemented that way in an earlier revision.
Whether it will work separated from the rest of its packaged DLLs, I've no idea. Source provided, though...

As for Glide 2.11 to Glide 2.4, I think kjliew was working on one once but the project was stopped for some reason.
[EDIT] Oh yes here he said he discovered dgvoodoo and stopped his project:
http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=8 ... 85#p344685
Perhaps he based it on his OpenGlide work? We've lost the files he submitted a long time ago: http://sourceforge.net/p/openglide/feature-requests/3/

As long as we're talking crazy ideas, I'd love to see that stub utility made that converts static DOS Glide binaries to dynamic, haha. :)