Descent 3 on newer machines ??

[Krom]

I've found some older games tend to be a bit crash happy at higher framerates, so forcing vsync on them usually helps.

[Avder]

I've found some older games tend to be a bit crash happy at higher framerates, so forcing vsync on them usually helps.

I play every game I have with vsync on as I absolutely can not stand tearing.

There has to be something I could do. It just keeps freezing. I have to save every few minutes because the next freeze could be literally around the next corner.

Also, two things are impeding me from using Direct3D full time instead of OpenGL: it' periodically jerks and drops a bunch of frames, probably while it's loading something. 2. Stuff like highlights in menus and the loading bar indicators are simply not there. OpenGL runs silky smooth. Also Glide via nGlide works nice and smooth as well. It's just my outdated video card can not give me at least 60 frames per second in an outdoor scene while using it.

So, throw out any possible ways to make D3 more stable and less freeze prone. I'll try pretty much anything at this point.

[Krom]

Have you tried XP or even the 98 compatibility mode? (Requires running it as administrator though.)

It would probably help a lot if you could obtain a memory dump from the crashes, which would help figure out where it is faulting so you could see if there is anything that can be done about it.

[Avder]

Have you tried XP or even the 98 compatibility mode? (Requires running it as administrator though.)

It would probably help a lot if you could obtain a memory dump from the crashes, which would help figure out where it is faulting so you could see if there is anything that can be done about it.

Not a crash, a freeze. I have to alt-tab or ctrl-alt-del out and kill main.exe in task manager.

If you can recommend a program I can use to get the info you need, I can get you whatever it is that's needed.

And I have tried various compatibility layers. 95 and 98 both made two of my axes nonfunctional, and 2000 and XP compat dont do anything. I'm also running it with desktop composition disabled via settings in the RadeonPro app and themes disabled in the compatibility tab.

Also why would I need to run the compatibility modes as administrator? I don't have D3 in the Program Files directory. It's in C:\Games\Descent 3\

[Krom]

If you are running windows 7 or later, you can pull up resource monitor and analyze the wait chain on main.exe while it is frozen, it could give a hint what is up.

Check your video drivers and set any profiles for main.exe to defaults, also try running with -nosound / -nonetwork / etc switches to verify it isn't something in those areas. Check if it does it in all the graphics APIs, or just OpenGL.

[Avder]

If you are running windows 7 or later, you can pull up resource monitor and analyze the wait chain on main.exe while it is frozen, it could give a hint what is up.

Check your video drivers and set any profiles for main.exe to defaults, also try running with -nosound / -nonetwork / etc switches to verify it isn't something in those areas. Check if it does it in all the graphics APIs, or just OpenGL.

Running Vista, believe it or not. This machine was built a few months before 7 was released, and I could get either Vista Business 64 or XP 64 through my schools program. I went with Vista and it's been surprisingly cooperative. Given my inclination to the rule of thumb "if it ain't broke don't fix it", I never felt compelled to upgrade to 7. Is there a similar function in Vista? Or in process explorer from sysinternals?

I will start trying main.exe with nosound, no network, Direct3D and Glide tomorrow when I get home and see if any of them make it through level's 3 and 4 without a freeze.

Also any suggestions on how to get loading bars and highlights working in Direct3D mode? My card is an old AMD HD4850 with the absolute last drivers AMD released for it.

[Avder]

I nailed down the problem.

-nomusic did it. So I remembered I had installed that IndirectSound and had put it in normal Direct Sound mode because i thought it sounded weird in both EAX and Direct Sound 3D mode.

I put it back in EAX mode because DirectSound 3D meant sounds had the wrong volume and some just seemed to be missing completely.

If I get sick of the sound I'll just uninstall IndirectSound and suffer with crappy normal sound.

[Avder]

Now, I don't suppose there's any chance in hell there's a way to fix the blackshark + a bunch of stuff = crash on detonate bug is there?

I've never used the 1.5 beta patch, what fixes are in that for singleplayer?

[CDN_Merlin]

So after getting my new system, I've copied over my D3 install folder and trying to run it. It runs, but anytime I start a game, it minimizes and it won't come back. I can ALT-TAB and it does nothing. I've tried compatibility mode and without and neither help.

My command line is
-nointro -nooutragelogo -nosparkles -nomotionblur -playermessages -z32bit -framecap 999 -height 1920 -width 1080 -aspect 1.78 -z32bit -framecap 999

My system
Asus Z170-p
16 Gigs RAM
I7-6700k
Geforce 970 GTX
Win 10 HOME 64 Bit
27" Monitor
1920x1080 resolution

[Krom]

I believe I experienced the same issue, but I can't remember how exactly I fixed it. I have the game running as administrator and I created a custom resolution (1440x1080) that I run in order to get the maximum field of view, but otherwise everything is set to defaults.

My command line is: \Games\Descent3\MAIN.EXE -launched -framecap 0 -nointro -vsync -width 1440 -height 1080

No framecap, but with vsync enabled the game locks to my gsync monitor maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz, which provides the best trade off between performance and various D3 framerate dependency glitches.

[CDN_Merlin]

Running it as ADMIN didn't help.

[Krom]

Wait, maybe it was this: Go into the nvidia control panel, in the "adjust desktop size and position" page, set the scaling mode to "aspect ratio" and perform scaling on the GPU.

Make sure you are running main.exe as administrator straight from a shortcut, not through the launcher (add -launched to the command line for it to work). I noticed you have -z32bit and -framecap 999 both twice in your command line also...

[CDN_Merlin]

Tried the scaling a no go. The game actually was worse off. When it started in the main window, it wasn't full screen. The image was smaller and had black areas around the outside.
I had the height/width reversed. When I switched the, it started fine. I have to use the + to get the image to fit my screen but it works well. The only issue is the menu doens't maximize on my screen so it's centered.

[Krom]

So I was talking with someone about D3 and remembered I have it installed on one of my drives, so I just jokingly decided to try out the good old secret 2 time test on my 4 GHz 3770k/gtx 1080...

Code: Select all

2266.60 Descent3 v1.4
2343 Min
2343 Max

Ya, it literally didn't even take 1 second, so the "second 1" is missing. I remember we used to go ape over timetests under 20 seconds after pouring everything into it, disabling all unnecessary background tasks, even disabling unnecessary device drivers and redlining the overclocks on our systems looking for that perfect run to shave off one more second... Welp, that's done for good now, we've officially shaved off all the seconds.

[Behemoth]

Hey guys question here, so I have a new system and I'm running 64 bit Windows 10 on an i7 6700k with dual gtx 1070s, problem is, I've gone through the nvidia control panel to force vsync off both for d3 first then globally, I set the framerate to 100 because that's my favorite but it still says 62.5 to 66, did I miss something? I can't remember if I've tried in compatibility mode but is that even an issue? Thanks

[Krom]

Post your D3 command line.

[Behemoth]

Just -framecap 100 and -usesmoothing

[Krom]

Did you also disable vsync inside D3? It is right in the F2 options screen and has a habit of turning back on whenever you change resolution or restart the game. When it is enabled D3 ignores whatever you set -framecap to and instead tries to cap to the monitor refresh rate, but the APIs it uses to detect the refresh rate from windows are long gone so it always assumes 60 Hz (even if you have a 120+ Hz monitor).

For best results on a modern system, I actually recommend running D3 on the nGlide wrapper and using glide for rendering instead of opengl or direct3d. But there are a couple tweaks that make it run best. First open up the nGlide configurator and set the screen resolution to the native resolution of your monitor, then set aspect ratio to preserve original. Other settings (vertical sync, refresh rate, glide logo) can be to your preference or leave them at default. You can also set application specific anti-aliasing for main.exe in your graphics driver (for some reason anisotropic filtering as an application specific override doesn't work for D3 on nvidia cards, but the global setting does so just enable it globally before you run D3, otherwise you end up with no mip-maps or anisotropic filtering which can be quite ugly).

The big benefit of nGlide is that by setting it to your monitors native resolution it will automatically and permanently override whatever resolution D3 desires, including its forced 640x480 menu/automap resolutions, avoiding a time consuming and often glitch inducing mode switch every time you open the automap or go back to the main menu (it also means you don't have to specify -width and -height in the command line). Setting it to preserve the original aspect ratio also makes it automatically letterbox the default 4:3 aspect in D3, which is useful because widescreen "aspect 1.6" or "-aspect 1.78" modes in D3 work by clipping off the top and bottom of the field of view (commonly known as "vert-" scaling mode). The only downsides are you may drop from 1000-2000 FPS down to ~500-1000 and the font/hud rendering is a bit ugly because it is just straight scaled up from 640x480 to whatever your native resolution is set to.

[Alexander]

My Descent 3 runs lot better when I'm using DxWnd program, I did lots of tune up in Descent 3 but some bugs are still there, and I'm only using Descent 3 for mostly playing online. Using DxWnd, Roncil made a how to run Descent 3 using that program, which is right here , his video is little old, DxWnd keeps updating lot, but I watch his video, I did everything what he said to do and it works great for me.

[Nosferatu]

I have always used nglide and everything has always been smooth and bug free.

But I do think nglide has become abandonware and I think I could get better graphics with dgvoodoo2.

So I have been experimenting with using dgvoodoo2 lately.

Unfortunately I have never once been able to get dfvoodoo2 to run D3 smoothly without a lot of jidder.

Just asking if anyone knows some option I can try. I'm perfectly happy just continuing to use nglide for now.

And yes I have tried setting/unsetting vsync at all the different places it can be set/unset.