Quake 1 - 3DFX Voodoo 1 vs. Software Rendering
Posted by ColdCrab6928@reddit | retrobattlestations | View on Reddit | 72 comments
Posted by ColdCrab6928@reddit | retrobattlestations | View on Reddit | 72 comments
Sorry_Willow_3531@reddit
Anhelo 3DFX
mr_dfuse2@reddit
still playing it! the remaster but with ironwail port and without any texture filtering please, crunchy is my taste
pointlessjihad@reddit
I like it crunchy how i remember it
sw1ss_dude@reddit
crunchy is the way
PowerPie5000@reddit
Honestly, I loved Voodoo acceleration back in the day, but now I think it looks a bit poo with it's 16-bit colour and low-res textures (256x256)... I've clearly been spoiled by later hardware. There's no denying that 3Dfx paved the way for 3D accelerated graphics though. They were truly pioneers back in the day! But now I prefer nice clear pixels and details over the vaseline bilinear blur of days gone. I still like it for nostalgia though... Like when I got my first Maxi Gamer 3D Voodoo 1 and it trounced the N64 at the time.
enrious@reddit
The only thing I remember from that time was that 3dfx let you see in water, which was a huge advantage on the CTF map we played on because we could see if someone was swimming up a pipe.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
I like the signature 3DFX look of GLQuake running on a Voodoo card, but I don't feel the same way for those Doom-style MS-DOS shooters such as Blood from Monolith software. To me, those don't look right with bilinear texture filtering and 16-bit color.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
Crunchy Quake is good, too.
Mccobsta@reddit
There's a new source port that makes og quake playable on modern machines natively https://github.com/Henrique194/chocolate-quake
overand@reddit
Yep - disabling interpolation (or, rather, "linear texture filtering?" or no texture filtering, perhaps.
noob-combo@reddit
Quake 1 software renderer was actually so good though.
balki_123@reddit
That software rendering was so damn good. Carmack and co. were genial.
ugzz@reddit
Eh.. old news.. Now VQuake on my rendition card! Mind Blowing!
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
I hear that the Rendition Verite version of Quake has never been ported to anything else. You basically need that specific hardware setup to play VQuake.
carcenomy@reddit
Even more annoying is it'll run on all versions of the Verite but runs better on the OG V1000 than on the later V2200 😂
But, it's the way to play Quake with 3D acceleration from DOS itself - can't do that with a Voodoo or PowerVR!
TheGhostInTheParsnip@reddit
I remember reading about this. Maybe on Fabien Sanglard's blog? IIRC that was because the best way to handle it was to have the cpu do most of the work, so in the end upgrading the Verite itself didn't do much.
ugzz@reddit
It was really cool to be lucky enough to witness early 3D acceleration in DOS.. but man.. that card was a bunch of money I saved up as a kid plus what my parents threw in for a bday..
And it only played a handful of games.. and I only had like 5 of them. But I'll be damned if those five games didn't blow my mind and make me feel like I was playing with future tech!
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
For as much as I romanticize 90s PC gaming, never before did I think about what it must have been like to bet on the wrong horse! At least now in the 2020s if you game on something offbeat like an Intel Arc card, you'll still have a nice experience.
gaspoweredcat@reddit
Q1 was always better on the openGL (powerVR cards for those who remember) than 3dfx, it was one of the rare situations it was actually better
evolutionxtinct@reddit
I remember when this first came out, the upgrade was a great experience I hated the RAM clips and dealing with drivers but was so much different back then, at least from what I remember.
Still_Explorer@reddit
I remember first time switching to 3DFX acceleration and with butter smooth textures and frames the game became somewhat "beautiful" on the looks - for some reason software render gives the game more mysterious and "ugly" look that works better for otherworldly horror aesthetics.
Something similar if you play PS1 emulator games with 8x the resolution and smooth textures. Might work nice for BugsBunny and Spyro, but for SilentHill and SoulReaver you will get opposite results.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
While I like both GLQuake on a Voodoo card as well as software rendered Quake, I agree with you when it comes to Blood from Monolith software. Even though that game has a 3DFX patch I'm reluctant to play it that way because the game looks weird to me with smooth bilinear texture filtering.
Brogs6@reddit
First gpu was 3dfx 5500. It was glorious card.
two2teps@reddit
I remember having my mind blown when I first fired up Quake 2 with my Black Magic Voodo 2 card.
Hypouxa@reddit
Nice thing about it, you could run on Win NT where 95-98 I always battled directx issues in that era. Unless you wanted to play a variety of games. Worked for a ISP at the time so I would host my own servers and monday afternoons was "Quake Night". Quake 2 colored lighting was the big deal. Don't forget Unreal 1 & 2. 😆
purplecow@reddit
There was this patch for quake thta came with my 3dfx card that gave all objects real-time shadows and turned one glass texture into a true mirror. Funny how games still don't really have mirrors that much.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
If you can remember what this patch was called please let me know. I'd love to try it myself.
purplecow@reddit
Maybe it was just glquake? I rember water was transparent as well, or perhaps that was separate and came a bit later around the time qwtf was all the rage.?
Hypouxa@reddit
Just had to edit the console setting in glquake
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
I have GLQuake. What console setting is supposed to add shadows and mirrors?
Hypouxa@reddit
Been way too long. There may be a list of commands you can access in console. /? might pull that up. Either settings start off as cl_wateralpha or gl_wateralpha. There has to be a command list out there somewhere. Might have to check the internet archive.
Hypouxa@reddit
Then you had monster 3D audio to go with.
Hypouxa@reddit
QWTF was great with 3dfx. Set eater transparency and snipe people using the water route. Went from voodoo 1 to voodoo 2 to a FireGL 1000 stacked with 3dfx chips.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
I would love to have one of those weird "SLI on 1 board" 3D cards.
Hypouxa@reddit
Yah, I don't remember what I did with those cards. Maybe gave them to coworkers. Usually I keep all that stuff. I have a dual card nvidia from 2005 or so. That card runs like a furnace with its dumb fan cooling setup. Just dumps the heat back into the case not out the back.
V64jr@reddit
I sold my Quantum3D Obsidian X24 to someone at QuakeCon2003. Regret!
Ok_Classic5578@reddit
the graphics just glide with 3dfx
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
I think Quake on Voodoo used some stripped-down version of OpenGL, but you're not wrong.
V64jr@reddit
Yes… 3Dfx miniGL. The installation tool would literally search your drive and put the 3Dfx version in the program directory of any supported OpenGL game. 👍
Jon3141592653589@reddit
I went for a Riva 128 (Diamond Viper V330) at the time for my K6-200. Really didn't like the idea or cost of having two cards.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
I'm given to understand 3DFX's insistence that you own a 3D card and a 2D card was a turn-off for a lot of gamers in 1998.
Jon3141592653589@reddit
Yeah, I found this concept annoying and expensive. The early NVIDIA stuff just seemed like a more elegant implementation. I am also baffled that Diamond didn't survive... I ran (eventually) a Diamond Monster Sound MX300 and other Diamond cards in that system. I thought their drivers and packaging were very nice.
What's kinda a sad story is, I knew NVDA was going to be huge, and was very annoyed at myself for not putting a few thousand bucks in NVDA back in the early-mid '00s when it was cheap... so I refused to ever buy a single share because I felt I had missed the boat. Almost bought in Summer 2022 and remembered I had missed the boat and said "Eh, I was right in 2002, but it is all too late now." Oh, well.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
I'm of the opinion that 3DFX was amazing until Nvidia Riva TNT came out in August of 1998. After that, 3DFX was just another option. I've found my Riva TNT can basically do everything my Voodoo 3 can do, and in some ways it's superior.
Did you somehow anticipate Nvidia would become an AI datacenter giant? I sure didn't. Growing up I always thought they were a gaming company.
Hypouxa@reddit
If you can find it look up the painkiller mod. Was great with opengl. Best part of it is tossing out gravity wells in confined spaces in Deathmatch.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
I'll check that out, thanks.
Tuhyk_inside@reddit
I was there, Gandalf....
Voodoo 1 was a game changer. It felt like it happened over night, gaming magazines just came up with this miracle technology out of the blue one month in the 90s. And it never stopped.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
It would be interesting if they were still around today.
cappis@reddit
I can hear the click that card made
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
Mine doesn't click, but it would be cool to have a clicky one.
CartographerEvery268@reddit
Very cool
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
Yes I daresay 90s PC gaming is more magical to me even though I have a shiny modern 2020s PC with a Ryzen 7 5800X3D and RTX 4080. But 90s PC gaming just hits different.
CartographerEvery268@reddit
I agree I barely use my modern rig lol.
br0ast@reddit
Game changer
LousyMeatStew@reddit
In more ways than one!
One of the changes they made for GLQuake was to implement a transparency effect for water. With software rendering, you could only see the surface of the water and couldn’t see underneath.
Now consider that ducking into water was a common way to hide in Quake deathmatches...
protekt0r@reddit
Forgot about that!
Remember when Unreal dropped? 😱
protekt0r@reddit
It really was! I saved up $200 and bought one for my AMD clone I had at the time… and it was made by Orchid. It came in a boring white box with a CD of like 4 or 5 Glide enabled games. Good times.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
Did you get a Voodoo 1, or a Voodoo 2?
protekt0r@reddit
Voodoo 1! Then I had a voodoo II, then I went to nVidia because of pixel shading. FSAA was cool, but not as cool as pixel shading.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
I really want a Voodoo II. The only 1998 3DFX product I have is a Voodoo Banshee.
Annales-NF@reddit
I used to have one too! 16Mb of VRAM was something others drooled of having. Good times!
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
If I'm not mistaken 12 MB was high end in 1998! 8 MB was still respectable, though. Now we consider 8 GB to be low-end...
Smack2k@reddit
The Voodoo II's I had were 12MB each.....and that was a LOT!!
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
Dang, you had a rich people PC. XD
Smack2k@reddit
This was like 2015......lol.....definitely not in 1998!!! I had them for about 10 years then sold them.....
Smack2k@reddit
I see the difference...I saw it in 1996, it just wasnt enough of a big change to get me to buy a Voodoo1 card...at least I used that as my excuse for not getting one......it wasnt that I couldnt afford it or anything!
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
In the 90s I played everything in software mode, too.
jrwil@reddit
Homie are you up in here with an Aptiva?
jrwil@reddit
Homie are you up in here with an Aptiva?
mtest001@reddit
This is exactly why I bought my Voodoo1 (which I still own) back then.
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
GLQuake alone made the Voodoo 1 worth it.
Halen_@reddit
You could run software rendering at 640x480 too but at the time the fps was gross and it still didn't look as nice without the texture filtering
ColdCrab6928@reddit (OP)
Whenever I try to game at 640x480 on this PC in software mode, the frame rate is really bad, so I have to play at 320x240. That's okay though because that's the resolution I would play PC games at in the mid-90s, so the big, blocky pixels remind me of those days.