software rendering

[theclyburns]

i have installed mechwarrior 3 on my win xp pro 64 using compatibility mode.
Sometimes it works but then crashes. other times it crashes right after it
loads. I read an article on wikipedia about software rendering which helps to
get it to work right but I do not know how to do that. It says that instead
of using the graphics driver that it uses the cpu. OK but it doesn't explain
how to do it. My computer literacy is pretty good but I would not call myself
advanced or anywhere near advanced. Can someone who has dealt with this
explain how I would set that up. And can you tell me is that going to cause
problems on other things on my computer if I do that?

 

[Joe]

i have installed mechwarrior 3 on my win xp pro 64 using compatibility
mode. Sometimes it works but then crashes. other times it crashes
right after it loads. I read an article on wikipedia about software
rendering which helps to get it to work right but I do not know how to
do that. It says that instead of using the graphics driver that it
uses the cpu. OK but it doesn't explain how to do it. My computer
literacy is pretty good but I would not call myself advanced or
anywhere near advanced. Can someone who has dealt with this explain
how I would set that up. And can you tell me is that going to cause
problems on other things on my computer if I do that?

Geez, how to explain this...

OK, all those pretty graphics you see on your screen with the smooth
polygons and shading and lighting, etc. are rendered on your video card.
This is what the industry has termed as "Hardware Rendering". Your
computers GPU (Graphics Processing Unit, it's like a CPU on your video
card) is GREAT at rendering and drawing those beautiful graphics you see in
todays games.

Back in the day, BEFORE all these beautiful graphics cards came along,
before 3dfx invented the magical Voodoo2 card, the only way to render 3d
graphics was through software with no hardware assistance. Of course this
was just the way it was until hardware assisted renderers came out (Games
that supported 3Dfx were the first), which at that point the industry
started calling non-hardware assisted rendering... "Software Rendering".

Now a days, just about every game uses hardware rendering because just
about every GPU can do it.

In old games like Mech Warrior 3 you could specify if you wanted to use
software rendering or hardware rendering. Usually something in the setup or
options in the game would allow you to set which rendering system to use.

Note: compared to Hardware, Software rendering requires more umph from your
CPU because instead of the GPU doing all the work, now the CPU has to do
all the work.

With computers today it should not be an issue, computers today are so fast
that you should be able to play the game in software mode at pretty high
resolution, but you will see a noticeable loss in graphic quality. Brace
yourself.

You said MW3 crashes, does it say anything when it crashes? Be specific, I
have a feeling that your computer is probably crashing for some other
reason, or it could be MW3 just crashes on todays hardware. Might be
nothing you can do about it, but try Software rendering. If you can't
figure out how to set it, I'll see what I can dig up in google, I haven't
played MW3 in years. Great game though, I'm gonna miss FASA.

 

[theclyburns]

Thanks Joe, I really appreciate it. I googled software rendering but didn't
really get an explanation. As to the crashes, It's just that. I don't get an
error message that I can access because when the game crashes, the mouse
freezes up and the only way I can get out of it is using ctrl-alt-del and
then using the keyboard to move around. Although once that wouldn't work and
I had to restart the computer.

Right now I can't get thru op 3 because after the briefing the screen goes
grey for a few seconds and then I get the error message. I would think that
my graphics would be sufficient since mech didn't require that much anyway
given that it was designed for win 98. I have a mobo with graphics built in.
it's nvidia's 9300 - 730i with the n-cuda technology and it works really
good. I play flight sim - X on this computer and it works just fine, and that
requires much more graphics power than mech does. Not to mention I also play
BF2142 which, if you are familiar with it, is pretty graphics intensive and
it works just fine. The only one where there is a problem is mech.

Anyway, while you are working on an answer to this predicament, I will also
keep working on a solution. Oh, and I don't remember it asking me, when I was
installing it, if I wanted to use hardware or software rendering. But I am
going to investigate that. I might wind up uninstalling and then reinstalling
if I can't find a way to change it and then hope it gives me the option.

 

[Joe]

Thanks Joe, I really appreciate it. I googled software rendering but
didn't really get an explanation. As to the crashes, It's just that. I
don't get an error message that I can access because when the game
crashes, the mouse freezes up and the only way I can get out of it is
using ctrl-alt-del and then using the keyboard to move around.
Although once that wouldn't work and I had to restart the computer.

Right now I can't get thru op 3 because after the briefing the screen
goes grey for a few seconds and then I get the error message. I would
think that my graphics would be sufficient since mech didn't require
that much anyway given that it was designed for win 98. I have a mobo
with graphics built in. it's nvidia's 9300 - 730i with the n-cuda
technology and it works really good. I play flight sim - X on this
computer and it works just fine, and that requires much more graphics
power than mech does. Not to mention I also play BF2142 which, if you
are familiar with it, is pretty graphics intensive and it works just
fine. The only one where there is a problem is mech.

Anyway, while you are working on an answer to this predicament, I will
also keep working on a solution. Oh, and I don't remember it asking
me, when I was installing it, if I wanted to use hardware or software
rendering. But I am going to investigate that. I might wind up
uninstalling and then reinstalling if I can't find a way to change it
and then hope it gives me the option.

Found a couple links.

Patch for MW3 to update to 1.2...

http://www.mechwarrior3.org/wordpress/download-manager.php?id=17

Coincdentally, http://www.mechwarrior3.org is a great little open source
community that's trying to support the game, unofficially. Here's a
direct link to their forums http://www.mechwarrior3.org/wforum/index.php)
Might try posting this question there.

New computer + old game = iffy.

Might be tough other than to suggest making sure all your video card
drivers are up to date. You can try right-clicking on the game Icon,
Choose Properties, and under Compatibility change the emulated mode to
Windows XP. See if that helps.

If you run Linux... http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?
sClass=version&iId=4549&iTestingId=7495

Wine is an app for running Windows games in Linux, so ignore this unless
you get your hands on a linux box.

 

[theclyburns]

Thanks, again. I've downloaded the patch and will be trying it out. Also
found a couple of downloads on the forum sight you listed that should help.
That is basically what I was trying to find but it never came up in my search
engine when I was searching. Again, thanks a lot. Hopefully one or all of
these downloads will fix it.