Latest tale: Mass Defect (May 12,2008) Pete's older Fairy Tales Mass Defect May 12, 2008 EA proudly presents: how to tread your customers... Game of the Year 2007 January 06, 2008 Eschalon what? Titanic mess July 04, 2006 Titans are just humans, too That's life December 05, 2004 But not for me I have a dream, ah, idea July 08, 2004 Can I patent this tale? Sweet silence August 26, 2003 Pssst Let's do the benchmark again June 19, 2003 Read on (the framebuffer) Idle thoughts April 16, 2003 To think or not to think... Final results March 07, 2003 Or Final Fantasy? So far, so good... so what? March 04, 2003 Soooo whaaaaat? Benchmark fun February 22, 2003 Is it heaven or hell? W.I.P February 15, 2003 What the ... is going on? The times are a-changing December 20, 2002 Of past and future works... Futurama January 15, 2002 PS2/XBox/GC emus? Yeah, sure... What would Brian Boitano do? August 24, 2001 I am sure he would kick one @ss or two :) We are best, ah, back again July 14, 2001 Sad FPSE deja vu... Leader of the Pak February 10, 2001 Is a 'Pak' containing one game still a 'Pak'? Plug me in or pull me out November 04, 2000 Who needs plugins anyway? :) We Are The Best! September 15, 2000 And we are the most paranoid ;) Seany, bleem me up May 17, 2000 Enhancing the gaming experience??? It drives you insane April 02, 2000 The current video card driver situation Taming the 3 headed dragon March 05, 2000 General look at OpenGL/D3D/Glide The tale of the two gfx brothers Feb 06, 2000 Installing a GeForce and V3 in one PC May 12, 2008 - Mass Defect EA announced that Mass Effect, Spore and other upcoming EA PC games will be defective by design. Yeah, shortly after they claimed to reduce the defects somewhat, but hey, fat chance that I will buy a game which I can install three times and afterwards throw it into the garbage can. So, no more money from me, Mr. Riccitiello. And, EA, don't forget to blame "piracy", if the PC games sales are poor. Mmm.. time to play some of my old PSX games, I think :) January 06, 2008 - Game of the Year 2007 To make it short:  My personal "game of the year 2007" is....  Eschalon Book I Whut? You don't know this one? Ok, I will give you a short overview: Eschalon Book I is a so-called "old school ERPG" from Basilisk Games.  It is available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh for a fair price (28 US-$, well, that's below 25 Euros including taxes here in germany).  No fancy 3D graphics. No zillion-dollar-intro-movie. No lip-sync speech output... heck, no speech output at all :) But: Good user interface. Nice story. Solid battle system and game balance. To sum it up: great gameplay! In my book it beats all other games I've played in 2007, including Neverwinter Nights 2, Witcher, Bioshock and Crysis. You can try it yourself: a demo version is available.  Now I just hope that "Book II" will be developed as well... hey, I need a GOTY 2008 :) July  04, 2006 - Titanic mess Sometimes me and my girlfriend love to play coop-action RPGs together... stuff like the BG:Dark Alliance or the Norrath-Champions series on the PS2... or coop PC games in our local area network, like Diablo 2 or Sacred. Therefore we eagerly waited for Titan Quest from Iron Lore: we both had tried the TQ demo on our PCs, and apart from some "smoothness issues" (stuttering gfx in certain areas on my PC), we liked it, result: I pre-ordered our copies from Amazon. The game arrived last friday (2006/06/30), and we were looking forward to a nice and relaxed gaming weekend. Installing the game was a breeze, and beside a small disappointment (a quick single player run to the first cave showed me that the occasional "stuttering slowdown" gfx bugs from the demo were still not fixed), everything was looking promising. We started a LAN game, and (after small adjustments to our firewall settings) we played together... yeah, fun! Until the first crash to desktop happend on one of our PCs. To make a long story somewhat shorter: the first crash was not the last one, and it crashed on both of our PCs... sometimes it took 5 minutes of gameplay, sometimes we could play over 3 hours. All crashes happend randomly. We tried it in single player mode, we tried to change the gfx options, we tried to deactivate the sound acceleration, we changed the WinXP compatibility settings of the game exe. Changing something, starting the game, playing 'til the next crash, changing again. Somewhen we decided to stop "playing" (if you want to call it so), and I looked into the official TQ messageboards. And I found lotsa posts of crashing issues, similar to the ones we were encountering. So far, so good. Or not. Because often I could read some replies like "TQ only crashs if you have a pirated version of the game; you must be a thief, and you deserve the crashes". AHA! I should have known it! Since every time I start up Titan Quest, there is some "THQ" logo splash screen... must have been "Th3 Hax0ring Qr3\/\/" which has cracked the game! Mmm...makes me wonder why this evil cracking crew has not removed the silly DVD check as well... prolly to force people to buy this pirated game from their warez-server "Amazon"!!! Yeah, makes sense! On second thought: there was a nice booklet inside the game package... and some skill chart... and a CD key number... I've never heard of a pirated game that comes along with such "goodies". So... could... it... be... an original game after all? But as I had learned from the messageboards: "crashes are for thieves only". So I searched on. And I found funny support forum statements like: "if the copy protection of TQ is finding _special_ software on your PC - the kind which is often used by thieves - it will crash as well... even if you have an original game DVD". AHA! Aha? He??? Typical "thief software tools" are (according to the mods of the official messageboard) CD burning/ISO mounting tools. Wow... yes, I have a DVD burner in my PC, and yes, my GF as well... and yes, surprise, surprise: we also have software installed to burn files on DVDs. Shocking. Can please someone come and shoot me? Mmm... so should I de-install all the DVD software, to run Titan Quest? But what if the copy protection is hating some other software on the PC as well? Maybe it doesn't like installed Software Development Kits and JIT debuggers, like the ones I need for coding, for example? And not to forget: Firefox! OpenOffice! Hey, don't laugh! We all know that such filthy Open Source software is coded - and used - mostly by lawless long-haired hippies. It only makes sense that a good and righteous copy protection would detect such software and make the game crash! But then... what about the user who posted that he formatted his harddisk, reinstalled Windows (+ newest drivers), installed TQ... and it's still crashing?!? AHA! Windows! SURE! Every statistics will easily prove: most thieves are using Microsoft Windows, of course! Therefore the TQ copy protection prolly has blacklisted this operating system as well! Pfff...... seriously.... Please, dear Iron Lore/THQ support team, consider this: 1) the TQ demo is running without crashes, on both of our PCs (btw, the same is true for other current popular games like Oblivion, Heroes V, Spellforce 2) 2) the full TQ game crashes randomly, on both of our PCs (luckily without destroying our save games yet) 3) both PCs are up-to-date with the latest drivers, service packs and fixes (PC 1: AMD 3500+, GF6800Ultra, 2 GB Ram, MSI Nforce4 SLI MB; PC 2: AMD 3700+, GF7800GTX, 2 GB Ram, Asus Nforce4 SLI MB). And no, heat is not an issue, and nothing is overclocked. So, some minimal logic tells us: either one of the latest superhyperdupa megathreading optimization (which was most likely added after the demo release) is the reason for the crashes, or some paranoid copy protection does not "like" the blood red background color of my desktop (or whatever), and wants me to change it. Screams for a patch, eh? Titanic mess.  But please: I can live with buggy software (as long as a patch is coming in the next weeks), but there is no reason to insult me (or other paying customers) by calling me a criminal.  PS.  Dear Iron Lore,  my girlfriend also would be very pleased if you could remove the occasional multiplayer LAN lags in the hopefully-soon coming patch.  Ah, yeah, and I would be pleased if the strange slowdowns on my GF6800Ultra in some areas could be fixed as well... to quote the TQ manual (well, roughly translated from the german manual): "The game has been developed and extensively tested on NVIDIA Geforce 6xxx/7xxx gfx cards ... on a GF6800 (or better) you can enjoy all special effects even on high resolutions". December  05, 2004 - That's life A long awaited, new game got released. Great, I had it pre-ordered, so I went to our local store, put 40+ Euro at the table, and got a DVD case containing the game. Inside: a game DVD (wow) and one sheet of paper, no real manual or whatever. Well, that's life. During the game install, I was taking a look at the paper. It told me that at the end of the install I need to connect to the internet, to create an 'account' and to verify the CD key. Eh? Since I have neither a fast internet connection nor a flatrate (both are not available where I am living), I already got a strange feeling. Ah, that's life. After installation a 'registration' web site was started in my browser. Mmm... is that this account creation? Seems more like the typical 'fill in your data and be prepared to get a lot of useless, unwanted informations from our favourite spam server' site to me. No, thanx, Vivendi. You know, that's life. Starting the installed game, now the real 'account client' was starting up. And it started to download something. For a while. And a while more. Until it seemed to hang. Quit it, start it again, download activity starts again. Repeat that 3 times. That's life, and life sucks sometimes. Eventually some other window appeared. I created an account. After several attempts I was even able to see a list of games, the one I bought included. After a lotta clicking I made it to enter my CD key somewhere. Did I mention that this sorry excuse for a manual (sheet of paper) didn't explain this procedure at all? And should I mention that after entering the key, I got an obscure error message about a WinSock failure? Yeah, I should, because that's life. Nevertheless I proceeded, trying to start the game... but wait, more stuff needed to get downloaded first. Eh, did I buy a game DVD or what? Ok, let's make a fast forward: after 4 hours downloading and waiting the game started up. Well, I've installed a lotta games in the past 23 years, but this was the most horrible, longest and most expensive installation procedure I have ever seen. At least it finished while I was still alive. Mmmm... but 'finished' is the wrong word, I fear. 'Offline mode not available'. Yeah, I was only able to start the game while being online. No word of explanation for the reason. Time for some good ole Alex Harvey Band music... dumdudu... "but now I was framed, I was framed" ...dumdu. New day, new life. During the next day (being online again to start the game), suddenly the offline mode became possible. Aha. Better block all internet access for this game in the future, to keep the offline mode active. Don't even think about the next reinstall procedure. Ignore the sound stuttering that happens from time to time, no matter what game options have been chosen (of course I couldn't resist to go online again the next days, to see if some auto-update will fix the stuttering... none did, of course, it made it  worse, but hey, the game company announced that it happens only to a few systems, so what, harhar). Sure, life goes on. At least for 30 days or so... as I've read in some forums (and tested it myself after reading it), the offline mode will not work anymore after this time span. I would need to go online again, to 'renew' the account. Sorry, that's not life. That's half life. To be exact, Half Life² The one and only "Steam powered" game I will ever own. July 08, 2004 - I have a dream, ah, idea M (entering the kitchen): "Hello Dear, I'm home" W: "Hi Bear, how was your day at work?" M: "Oh, not bad. I made some progress coding the new application, again another three lines of code added." W: "Great!" M: "Yeah, the two weeks of research for checking if the new lines have been already patented are finally paying off. Of course I have to talk to our patent lawyers tomorrow, hopefully we can patent my lines ourself." W: "So you are full on track meeting the planned deadline?" M: "Yup, most likely in seven years our customer can get his special production software, if we can proceed coding on such a speed." W (looks after her cooking, and starts whistling while stomping rhythmically with her left food) M: "Stop this sound!" W (stops whistling): "Eh? What's up!" M: "Didn't you read today's news paper, the daily 'Innovative ideas for a better life (at least for some)' pages? The idea to produce rhythmic noise to accompany music has been recently patented!" W (glances at the surveillances camera in the upper left corner of the kitchen) : "Darn" M: "We cannot afford to pay another common license fee... we are still paying for that "Painting like Leonardo" patent issue." W (getting angry): "Don't blame our 3 year old son again for that! Who could have known that a simple drawing of a smiling face could be protected? 'Mona Lisa license fees', hah!" M: "It doesn't matter for patents if you do know or if you don't! Somebody had the idea first, and he has the right to collect money for it! Or to refuse anybody else to use this idea! Anything else would lead to anarchy!" W (sighing, taking a look into the cooking pot): "I still would like to add some salt to this soup, like in the good old days. Sometimes I am really wishing they wouldn't have legalized the Software patents... that one started all..." M (thinking) : "Yeah, then the book writers followed... can you remember a good sci-fi story? I think I have not seen a good sci-fi book for a couple of years now... of course, the fees for writing about the future are extremly high, as far as I know". W: "And then the artists... and the music industry... food chains... all had some ideas to protect" M (shruggs): "And rightly so! A master-cook is spending much time thinking and trying, to mix the right ingredients to a wonderful meal!" W (looking down in the pot again): "Too bad that it prevents me from cooking a good meal as well" M: "Mmm, ah well, forget about food... let's go early to bed... some things are still free for all people, ehe" (smiles frivolously) W: "Ahem... I've heard that the idea for certain body - ahem - entertainments has been taken as well" M (smile has vanished for some reason): "WHAT? Who on earth owns the rights for such? Some game company? A sex shop corporation? WHO?" W: "...the Catholic church..." End of story. Nothing more to add. Well, maybe one thing: Our german chancellor (Gerhard Schröder) made this week a, well, interesting speech, how wonderful software patents are, and that good old Europe should jump up the american band wagon to protect our valuable "ideas". Well, I am pretty sure that he will not become chancellor anymore when the next elections are taking place. But to think of the damage he can do until then, driven by his ignorance (and of course by big companies which would love to cripple their smaller competition). Oh my... Software patents will not encourage invention and innovation... quite the opposite. August 26, 2003 - Sweet silence Aaaahh... sweet email silence... no complains... no bug reports... no cries for help. Prolly all of my plugin users are happy. Yeah, nothing to improve, that's it. Of course there is a small chance that most emails nowadays not even reach my public mail address. That most people who try to mail will get a reply like "box is full, try later". Could be. Mmmm, wassup? I should check for emails more often? Tooooo laaaaazy, you say? Well, I check the public "BlackDove@addcom.de" address once per day. And yeah, it's a _very_ public address (I post it on my site, in messageboards, etc). So it always was plagued by spam and virus mails. 100 mails each day, and maybe 3 ones out of the 100 are no spam/virus ones. But that was never a problem to me. I am using a small but fine email client. Yeah, it has no "ActiveWhatever" features, and no MS-Internet-Explorer-powered blablabla views, etc. Instead it has an easy and powerful filter system. Which I find much more useful, I have to admit. Because 97 garbage mails a day, well, that was a few weeks ago... that was before SoBig.F, harhar. Nowadays I see roughly 250 mails when I check for mails. Which means: after 250 SoBig.F infected mails, my public box is full. Of course my email client will delete most of them already on the server (did I mention filters?), so it just takes a few seconds to get rid off them. But a few minutes later, the public box will be full again. The next 250 virus mails have arrived. Sidenote: the few mails which are not getting filtered are mostly some automatic replies from servers which are telling me that my BlackDove address has tried to send a virus infected mail to them. I consider such replies as really useless, since virus mails can fake the sender address easily (and in my case it's even more useless, since I only can receive but not send mails on my BlackDove account - sending requires a special dial-up connection, and I never did one, I even cannot remember/find the needed phone number anymore, ehe). If you ever see a mail with "BlackDove..." as sender, delete it asap... I haven't send it, which means: 100% virus. But eeehhh, whatareyousaying? I should change my public address? What for? It will be flooded again in short time. So, of course, the only solution is, was, and ever will be: don't go after the symptoms, go for the root of troubles. And since the trouble is not on my system, but on yours (yeah, I mean especially _yours_), I can lean back and relax and wait until _you_ have fixed it. It's your responsibility, not mine. Ain't that hard, you know? If you don't like full-grown antivirus scanner and/or personal firewalls for whatever reasons (yeah, I know, loosing 0.34556321 frames per second in Counterstrike because of some security backgrund task is horrible), you can use a simple and small SoBig.F killer like the Symantec one. A simple 180 KB download (for the Symantec W32.Sobig.F Removal Tool, a link can be found here: http://download.t-online.de/dl_detailseite3_db.phtml?progid=21067), run it, done (at least until the next virus mutation will show up, harhar). Mmm... but please don't hurry. You know, sweet silence... :) Means more time for me to play the new Gothic2 addon :) June 19, 2003 - Let's do the benchmark again I am still getting texture upload speed results from my February benchmark tale (and if you still want to mail me your results - keep them coming, no problem), so it seems that to run speed tests is one of the all-time-favourite joys for us computer game lovers, ehehe. Anyway, as you may have noticed in the version readme of my latest hw/accel psx gpu plugins, I have a new card to play with (ATI Radeon 9700 Pro). In the readme I have also stated that the overall speed is really good, but the framebuffer reading seems to be very slow, at least 5 times slower than with my old Geforce 3. That's very bad for certain psx gpu effects, when the game engine is reading back the content of the vram to apply some nice wave/blur/swirl/whatever effects. Well, to take a closer look at the reading speed, I created a small benchmark application again (surprise, surprise, ehe). You can download the application here, for interested coders I've also uploaded the sources. The new benchmark creates a small OpenGL rendering window, and measures the reading speed of 4 differnet formats (RGB, RGBA, BGR and BGRA), for the front- and backbuffer. The benchmark is just reading a small 256x256 area (a real psx game would need to read your whole screen size, the bigger the slower). First I started the test on my girlfriend's Geforce 4200 (I haven't put my old GF3 into another PC, so I had to hush my girlfriend away from her PC... a dangerous task, trust me :)) Ok, on the GF4 (Athlon 1800XP, Win98 with 32 bit color desktop) I got a speed of 45 Mpix/s. Then I started up the benchie on my own system (Athlon 2000XP, Win98, also 32 bit color) and got a result of... 2 Mpix/s! Wowie zowie. That's not even crawling... that's like standing still. Booted up WinXP on my system (also 32 bit desktop), ran the application again: 22 Mpix/s. Wowie zowie. 10 times faster. Shit benchmark? Or shit Win98 drivers? Re-checked it, made sure that no FSAA was enabled, etc: same results. To check if my benchmark is reliable, I used a psx game which is doing framebuffer reading in a real gaming enviroment... on my old GF3 I got at least a 80-120 fps framerate with that game, on the ATI (Win98) I only got 10-15 FPS maximum (that's why I wrote in the plugin readme that the framebuffer reading is at least 5 times slower). Now I checked the game in WinXP... and tada... 40 fps. Still not fully playable (a NTSC psx game needs 60 fps), but a lotta better than with W98. Seems that my benchmark is right after all. So what does it mean? Like I've told in my readme, the framebuffer reading speed is slow on ATI cards. On Win98 horrible slow. On WinXP much faster, but not nearly as fast as a Geforce card (in fact half the speed on my test systems). Therefore, since the ATI Catalyst 3.4 driver seems to be faster and less buggy on WinXP, consider an OS upgrade if you are still running Win9X/ME (and if you are owning an ATI card, of course). Okay, and now go and check it yourself... seeing is believing... and have fun :) April 16, 2003 - Idle thoughts Ah, isn't it fun to surf idly through the net? A click here, a laugh there, and some more infos around the next corner. Let's see here... Ah, the german version of Freelancer is delayed another month, now it's announced for end of may 2003. Funny game companies... do they really wonder why german kids are stealing the game software from the net? If games are not available any other way for several months? And it's not even possible for a german youngster to buy the US version easily (due to the new german "youth protection" laws). How hard could it be for a company like Microsoft to develop/release the different language ports at the same time? Of course, prolly the company needs the time to include a new CD copy protection. Protection is important nowadays. To secure the intellectual property. "Property" like the stuff you can listen to on most (copy protected!) crappy mainstream Audio-CDs. Ah, no, wrong wording. I cannot call them "Audio-CDs" anymore, sorry, since their copy protection stuff is violating so many Audio-CD rules, that only the dumbest cd players can still play them. Makes me wonder why it's allowed for a music store to place such protected 'whatevers' among real Audio-CDs? Ah, yes, because there is a small note printed somewhere on the CD label. Ok, that's fine. No problem. I don't care for mainstream music anyway. But, ah, Freelancer... mmm... well, _I_ can wait for the german version. Microsoft knows what's good for their customers, really. Wassup, the old german Starlancer version was terribly translated? Mmm... sure, but see, the MS game hardware is great! I still have my lovely old MS Force-Feedback joystick. And it's still working fine... ah, well, it _would_ be working fine. But Microsoft wasn't able to support it correctly with WinXP. It's too hard for such a small company like MS to adapt their Sidewinder joystick software to a new, unknown, yeah utterly strange Operating System... but I can understand that, no problem. Hey, and MS has a solution for everything: Freelancer doesn't support any joysticks. No need to feel sad. Ah, well, under the light of the new 'youth protection' law, at least when Freelancer will be released here, I can be sure that innocent children will be protected from its violent contents. Shooting at other spaceships, shudder. Could be abused to train children to become cruel starship troopers. Like that American Army shooter... ehehe, I am wondering how the growing "protect our children against violence in computer games" movement in the states is reacting to this game. Ah, prolly the army will simply release a new game, to calm them down... something like "Sim Baghdad", where you can destroy the city, build it up again, destroy it, and so on. 'Reach an high number of corpses, for the love of god and our country'. And maybe sometimes small advertising text infos while playing the game, like "boycott products of countries which are against the war." Like french products. Freedom fries, harhar. Didn't include the phrase 'freedom' the freedom of the ones with a different opinion as well? Prolly not. Isn't it lonesome on the top? Ah, or boycott german products. That's fine for me. Btw, my personal favourite PC game in 2002 was a german production. "Gothic 2". But better don't buy and play it. It could teach you pacifism, ehehe. Oh, and the leading producer of Freelancer is a german guy, too? Tststs... Anyway, Freelancer will be rated with "6 years", I believe. The german rating system is just, its wisdom outshines the sun at night. Of course I am not sure why that funny "Rayman 3" jump'n'run is rated "18 years" in our local game store. But there must be a reason. There's always a reason. Maybe the german government had no time yet to play and rate it. All games without official rating will automatically get an "18" rating. As well as all import games. Sounds for me like burning books, without ever bothering to read them before. Great idea. Saves a lotta time. For someone, at least. Screw all others. At least we and our children are protected. From violence. And sex. And rock'n'roll. And spam mails. Ah, no, sorry, the last point has been smuggled in by one of my lesser important brain cells. The one which is usually handling questions like "Who needs TCPA? When will 'the - cough - cough - protection - sheme - formerly - known - as - Palladium' come and rescue our PCs? Why do I live in a part of germany where I'll never get an internet flatrate?". Well, the last question is easy to answer, of course... because I (and 70% of whole germany) am not worthy in the eyes of the german telecom. We are unimportant. Sheeps. Of course the german telecom can make lotta more money without flatrates. Lovely 50 Euro for full 5 days (120 hours, yeah) each month. And nobody can force them to change their price politics. Neither the American Army, nor the german age rating system. So why bother? Customers are the natural enemies of big companies. Pay the price, be thankful and smile. Goddess be blessed that at least I am far older than 18 years. Damn, I want to play Freelancer, now! March 07, 2003 - Final results Harhar, some users were not quite satisfied with the last results... "my card should be much faster, no way that a XXX card beats my YYY one." Well, calm down. It's not like we are talking about our cars or the size of certain body parts. The benchmark only showed two special abilities of your card, which can be useful for my psx plugin. The results will vary widely, depending on your drivers, on your system enviroment (like the AGP mode or if FSAA is enabled/disabled) and prolly even the phase of the moon will influence the values. But for clarity I've done a small chart this time, more complete (I got another bunch of results, thanks to everybody), and more useful if you really want to look how your own card compares to others. The first column shows the name of the card. Please note that I have mixed certain cards together, like GF2 GTS and TI cards. Simple reason: many users didn't write down the exact card name, so I had to rely on the (more generic) OpenGL renderer name. "TexUpload min/std/max" will show you the "Mtex/s" value from the benchmark output file, section "Texture uploading speed". Only "real" 32 bit texture values were used (R=8 G=8 B=8 A=8... so mostly only the "Format 3", "Format 6" or "Format 9" does count, especially if you run the test in 16 bit desktop color depth). The "min" value shows you the slowest result, the "max" the fastest result, and "std" will be the value most users reported (of course, if only one result of a special card has been reported, all three values will be the same). "FrameTex 16/32" is the best "Mtex/s" value from the "Framebuffer texture speed (back)/(front)" section, in 16 or 32 color depth. Usually "Format:14" (the last value) is the best result... the reported color format (8888, 565, whatever) isn't important here. Ok, here it comes (NOTE: formatting lost due to lazy copy & paste :) ah, sue me :)): Gfx card;TexUpload min;TexUpload std;TexUpload max;FrameTex 16bit;FrameTex 32bit Intel810E(16bit); 9; 9; 9; 10; x Intel-BrookdaleG; 21; 21; 21; x; 4 Kyro2; 19; 19; 19; x; 2 SiS630/730; 25; 25; 25; x; 2 S3SavageMX; 6; 6; 6; 2; x MatroxG400/450; 7; 7; 7; 2; 2 3dfx V5; 14; 14; 14; 2; 2 Ati R128; 12; 12; 12; 1; 1 Ati Mobility VE; 38; 38; 38; 1; 1 Ati Mobility7500; 44; 44; 44; 54; 34 Ati R7200; 9; 18; 29; 126; 104-137 Ati R7500; 28; 39; 45; 174; 136-196 Ati R8500; 25; 40; 65; 223-328; 177-305 Ati R9000; 23; 50; 74; 146-284; 93-250 Ati R9100; 44; 44; 44; 229; x Ati R9500Pro; 45; 45; 45; 414; x Ati R9700 57; 58; 60; 692; 676 Ati R9700Pro; 33; 68; 91; x; 660-712 nV TNT1; 35; 38; 40; 202; 140 nV TNT2PCI; 10; 10; 10; 9; x nV TNT2M64; 15; 16; 17; x; 44-126 nV GF256; 17; 18; 19; 234; 153 nV GF2-MX400; 20; 35; 51; 259; 60-206 nV GF2-GTS(Ti) 21; 35; 81; 247-315; 166-245 nV GF3-200; 44; 53; 60; 413; 335-350 nV GF3 30; 40; 48; 417; 328-376 nV GF4-MX; 14; 30; 37; 90-430; 84-296 nV GF4200; 31; 43; 58; 500; 383-520 nV GF440-GO; 110; 110; 110; x; 251 nV GF4400; 46; 50; 53; 545; 329 nV GF4600; 49; 60; 138; 590-631; 494-629 nV GF4800; 89; 89; 89; x; 490 You may notice that the 9700Pro cards scored better in texture uploading speed this time (I got some more results from 9700Pro owners), as well as the GF4-MX results (which are showing still why I don't like this type of card very much... prolly I will always hate such stupid marketing stunts... calling it "GF4Whatever", pfff... well, ATI pulls the same leg with their 9100 cards). Some cards I had to sort out from the results: if your card vendor is listed as "Vendor: Microsoft Corporation" in the output file, it simply means that you don't have proper OpenGL drivers installed, and you are using the MS software OpenGL library instead. Needless to say that you will not get happy with its performance. You should install real gfx card drivers as soon as possible in that case. Also note: if you want to use my "Framebuffer textures: gfx card hardware" plugin option, absolutely turn off FSAA in your display diver's property. For example a GF2MX, which is scoring 178 MTex/s without FSAA will go down to 60 MTex/s or even 8 MTex/s (frontbuffer access), if FSAA is enabled. Ok, the choice is yours (there are not sooo much psx games using framebuffer textures anyway, so you can enable FSAA if you like it), but please don't mail me complains about bad performance with enabled FSAA: there is nothing I can do about it. Next thing to mention: the packed 4-4-4-4 texture format is horrible slow on all ATI cards (output file: "Format: 13" in the "Texture uploading speed" section). That's exactly the format my OGL plugin is using when you are selecting the "4-4-4-4 texture quality". So, never! use that one an ATI card, better use the "don't care" quality mode (output file: "Format: 01") in 16 bit color depth, if you are looking for speed. Btw, the packed 5-5-5-1 texture format in my plugin (output file: "Format: 11") seems to be very fast on all cards... if you don't mind some black areas (with "alpha multipass" enabled), you will get the best uploading speed in my plugin. Version 1.69 will also offer you a special "fast mdec" option, which will use the 5-5-5-1 upload speed (reduced colors with 24 bit mdecs, but if movies are slow on your system, give it a try). Talking about V1.69: it will be released within the next days, be a little bit more patient. In 1.69 you will have the choice between 5 different texture modes: 1. "don't care" - that's "Format 01" in the output file 2. "R4 G4 B4 A4" - that's "Format 13", and as I've said: better don't use it with ATI cards 3. "R5 G5 B5 A1" - that's "Format 11", fast, but it will cause glitches due to the single alpha bit 4. "R8 G8 B8 A8" - that's "Format 03" 5. "B8 G8 R8 A8" - that's a new mode, "Format 09" in the output file. You can use the benchmark application to check out, if the new 32 bit texture quality mode is faster than the old one on your gfx card (simply compare your "Format 03" and "Format 09" Mtex/s values), and use the faster mode in the plugin... the quality will be the same. On my GF3 card both values are nearly the same (that's why I never thought about using a different format, ehe), but other cards will have a 5-20% faster texture uploading with the new mode. Some cards (like the Radeon8500) will be slower with the new mode, though, so take care. And keep in mind: a faster texture uploading doesn't mean that the plugin's overall performance will be lotta faster as well. My texture caching is quite good, so most times you will not notice any difference. But of course there are some situations when a fast texture upload will help (if the game is pushing the cache to its limits, or if the game is uploading animated textures all the time, for example). Ok, one last thing: one user, who is owning a Radeon 9500Pro, told me that with the "6.14.1.6292" drivers (don't ask me if that's a new or old driver... I don't know the ATI numbering), the reverse subtractive texture blending test is running fine on his system. So either the bug has been fixed, or the 9500Pro hardware does the trick... or the user needs a new pair of glasses, ehehe. Addendum: Mwarhead pointed to this thread http://www.rage3d.net/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33671156 where ATI confirmed that the reverse subtractive blending will work fine in Cat 3.2 or 3.3. :) Stay tuned :) March 04, 2003 - So far, so good... so what? Nearly 100 benchmark results have reached me last week... so first I'd like to thank all of you who took the time to run the small speed test application (you can still download it in the 'older tales' section). Because I think that you would like to see some results yourself, I made a small overview how good or bad the different cards have scored. First the 'Framebuffer texture' speed test, which is a indication how fast my OpenGL gpu's "gfx card framebuffer texture" option (used for motion blur or swirl effects) and the special "screen smoothing" option is working: Framebuffer texture speed test First some general words about the graphic above: blue bars are the 16 bit color depth mode, green bars are 32 bit (some cards will only have a blue or green bar, because I only got 16 or 32 bit results for them). Since the test is a vram -> vram operation, cpu speed or AGP speed shouldn't matter. Nevertheless the results varied from system to system, even if the same kind of card was used, I've marked big differences with dark blue/dark green areas. Such differences are most likely caused by different VRAM timings, and some times the users didn't tell me exactly the name of their cards (so, for example "ATI R8500" will also show the results of 8500LE cards). And the GeForce256 results (marked with *) are most likely wrong... I only got one result of that type of card, and the values were incredible slow (and since I owned such a card once, I can assure you that it should score somewhere between the TNT1 and the GF2 GTS results). Ok, first of all: Intel, Kyro2 and SiS cards are out of business when it comes to framebuffer effects, as well as old ATI Rage cards and the TNT2 PCI one. No mode (out of the 14 tested) was even nearly fast enough to give a playable speed with framebuffer texture effects. So, dear users of such cards: turn the "FB Texture" gpu option off, nothing else can be done about it (well, most likely you should use one of the D3D gpu plugins  anyway). But what surprised me most: I've seen all kind of complains that ATI cards are not performing well with framebuffer textures. But the test results are speaking a different language: at least the 8xxx/9xxx cards should have a playable speed (>60 psx fps) most times. My guess is that often some kind of FSAA is enabled, which is a real speed killer for this type of operation. Also: if you are having speed troubles, try to lower the gpu resolution, less data has to get moved that way. Ah, anyway: as you can see GF3 or GF4 cards (GF4 MX: bah!) have a really good speed, but nothing outshines the Radeon 9700 ones (no GF FX results have been mailed, would have been interesting, ehehe)... No Radeon 9500 (pro) results as well, but most likely they would have been at the same level as the GF3/4 results. But did the frambuffer texture results help me in improving the OpenGL gpu, you may ask? Ah, sorry, no... I am already using the texture mode which prooved to be the fastest, and luckily not only on nVidia cards, but on ATI cards as well. So, version 1.69 will not have faster framebuffer textures... tsts, let us move on to the raw texture uploading speed: Texture uploading speed test The raw texture uploading speed is needed on mdec movies and for the overall performance of the gpu plugin (especially when its texture cache gets stressed by a game, or when a psx game uploads textures all the time by itself). The speed is more or less independend of the window/fullscreen color depth, so I made only one bar for each card this time. The speed depends heavily on the AGP mode (as you can see... the difference between a GF4200 with AGP 4X and a GF4800 with AGP8X is huge... and PCI cards really have an hard time), and how good and optimized the OpenGL drivers are done. So I think ATI has still some way to go with the 9700 cards (there should be no reason why 8500 or 9000 cards are performing faster).  On the other hand some 8500/9000 cards seemed to be running with AGP1X (or are there PCI versions as well?), so my advice is: try to check your motherboard's BIOS and/or gfx card driver settings, otherwise you will waste a good deal of uploading speed. At least this tests showed me a chance to improve my gpu's 32 bit texture speed on some cards (most cards were running fastest with my current internal texture format, but others will run 5-20% faster with a different one, so prolly I will do an additional 32 bit texture mode in the next plugin - as an option, of course). The mdec speed will be not affected by the new 32 bit texture mode, but I think I will offer a special "fast mdec" option in the next OpenGL plugin as well. This one will run the movies only with a reduced (15 bit) color depth, but speed will be noticable better (most likely twice as fast on slower systems). Ok, enough words for today, I have some coding to do... :) February 22, 2003 - Benchmark fun... I've got a lot of nice emails after my last tale, many users with ATI cards wanted to help me in improving the gfx card compatibility and the speed of my OpenGL plugin. Of course it would be a real mess if I would mail special debug/benchmark versions of my plugin to everybody, since the results would depend heavily on the games used. So I've coded a special benchmark application, and if you are interested in helping me out, download it, run it, and email me the results (I've included a readme file with details how to do it). This test is _not_ limited to ATI users, feel free to mail me your nVidia/Matrox/S3/whatever results as well. The more, the better. Pete's texture speed test application (89 KByte Zip-File) Another application is more of interest for ATI users: the current ATI OpenGL drivers are buggy when it comes to the reverse subtractive blending mode (that's why there exists an 'ATI special game fix' in my OpenGL plugin, which is an hack around the issue). If you want to check out easily, if ATI was able to fix the bug with a newer driver release, simply run the application after each driver update. Let us hope... :) Pete's reverse subtractive blending test application (93 KByte Zip-File) And of course: thanx for your support :) February 15, 2003 - W.I.P... Over two months have passed since the last update of the hw/accel plugins, so I have decided to give you some informations what is going on. First of all, at christmas time I got me a PS2, along with four games. Yup, finally - I've waited until the prices here germany dropped to a reasonable level (sorry, Sony, but if I have to pay a lot more for the same thing as, for example, in the USA, I usually feel cheated... and whenever I feel that way my briefcase keeps shut). Needless to say that I spent some time with this new toy. FF10 - good entertainment as always, Baldur's Gate - multiplayer fun with my girlfriend, Jak&Daxter - best jump'n'run I've ever played, Ratchet&Clank - well, not played much yet, had to finish the other games first, but it's also looking nice. But nevertheless I also got back to emu coding from time to time, so here is a small status list of the various projects: - P.E.Op.S. spu: some people like (or need) speed, others are looking for improved sound quality. Linuzappz added a 'mono' mode to the spu, giving a better framerate for low-end systems, while Eric currently wants to try to add a good sound-enhancing sample interpolation... good luck, not an easy task :) - P.E.Op.S. soft gpu: I have spent a few evenings trying to get around the small texture problems which occur in a few games (sometimes small garbage lines, sometimes ragged textures). Ah, truth is that the internal fixed point math is occasionally not precise enough, using real floats would fix the issues, but the speed drop is so dramatic, that I prolly have to find another way... we will see. - P.E.Op.S. cdr: Zydio of Emuitalia reported me a bug with certain PPF3 patch files... the plugin will go into an endless loop on startup with some patches. Luckily Zydio could give me a PPF3 file showing the issue, so I was able to fix the bug. Also SaPu, a fellow emu coder, gave me the sources of his (very good) cdr plugin, to use his functions in the P.E.Op.S. one, if I see something which improves the plugin... digging through unknown code is time consuming, though, so I don't know yet what I can use. - Translations: Kidd, a girl from sweden, sent me a very nice mail, and attached the swedish translation of the P.E.Op.S. spu readme. Yup, it's true, prolly most of you are not interessed in such (personally I don't know a single swedish word as well), but I have to admit that I really like this kind of actions... you don't have to be a cool coder or something, there are a lot of other ways how to contribute to the emulation scene... some can do translations, or artworks, or simply trying to help other people in public forums or IRC. Ah, anyway, you can find Kidd's work in the 'translation' section of my site. mmm... there was something else, wasn't it? aahhh, yes... OpenGL and D3D plugins, I remember ;) Well, there were small fixes and enhancements, most of them I have already released in the last soft gpu plugin, but my major concern of the next release is an improved OpenGL compatibility with newer ATI cards. And that's a very time-consuming work for me, since I don't have a Radeon card myself. So I have to do special beta plugins and benchmark/test applications, send it to my ATI beta testers (special thanx to Lindsey, who proved to be a very patient and exact tester), wait until I get an answer, try something new, send it to... well, you've got the idea. I already could fix some issues (no more 'black screens' on startup in fullscreen mode, for example), and I've got in contact with the ATI driver coders, who (hopefully) will fix the 'reverse subtractive blending' bug in one of the next ATI driver releases (we will see... they wanted an easy test application showing the issue, and because of the informations of Tomoaki Hayasaka, who did an Linux 'ATI bugfix' wrapper for the zinc plugin, I could easily do one. But after I've mailed it to the ATI coders, well... there was silence... either they are busy fixing the bug, or shocked beyond believe that I really could do such an app... feel free to send a lotta complaining emails to ATI if the next Catalyst drivers are still buggy, ehehe). Why do I care for ATI cards, you may ask. Honestly, I got very disappointed from the GeforceFX reviews. Yeah, the card seems to be a little bit faster than the current 9700 Radeon cards, but that's not very important for me. Yeah, nVidia announced that the FX will be OpenGL 2.0 compilant (which _is_ important for me), but considering that we prolly will see the final OGL2 specifications in 2004, that's not a strong argument as well. What really brings me down is the reported noise and heat. Is the FX a graphic card, or a (bad) sound card which doesn't even needs speakers? There is _no_ way that I will put something like that in my system. Well, prolly I will assemble my next system in summer, and if nVidia has no reasonable gfx card by then, I will most likely switch to ATI... the answer, my friends, will _not_ be blowing (disturbing noises) in the wind, that's all I am sure of :) December 20, 2002 - The times are a-changing 1998 December = PSSwitch : PSEmu Pro frontend 1999 April = gpuPeteTNT.dll : PSX gpu plugin (OpenGL) 1999 June = spuPeteMidas.dll : PSX spu plugin (Midas sound library) 1999 November = OGL renderer.ipc : impact gpu plugin (OpenGL) 1999 December = D3D renderer.ipc : impact gpu plugin (D3D) 2000 February = Video.dll : N64 (Nemu, Corn, TRWinGL) renderer (OpenGL - not released) 2000 May = PCSXGui : PCSX frontend (not released) 2000 May = gpuPeteOpenGL.dll : PSX gpu plugin (OpenGL) 2000 June =  gpuPeteD3D.dll : PSX gpu plugin (D3D DX7) 2000 July = gpuPeteDX6D3D.dll : PSX gpu plugin (D3D DX6) 2000 August = gpuPeteSoft.dll : PSX gpu plugin (software, DirectDraw) 2000 September = ePSXeCutor : ePSXe frontend 2000 October = libgpuPeteMesaGL.so : PSX gpu plugin (Mesa3D Linux) 2000 November = gpuPeteSoftD3D.dll : PSX gpu plugin (special D3D soft gpu - not released) 2001 February = libgpuPeteSoftX.so : PSX gpu plugin (software, Linux) 2001 May = cdrPeteAspi.dll : PSX cdr plugin (aspi/ioctl) 2001 June = AdriActivator : ADRIPSX frontend (not released) 2001 June = spuPeteDSound.dll : PSX spu plugin (DirectSound) 2001 August = libspuPeteOSS.so : PSX spu plugin (Linux OSS) 2001 November = gpuPeopsSoft.dll : PSX P.E.Op.S. gpu plugin (software, DirectDraw) 2001 November = libgpuPeopsSoftX.so : PSX P.E.Op.S. gpu plugin (software, Linux) 2001 December = D3D renderer.znc : zinc gpu plugin (D3D) 2001 December = OGL renderer.znc : zinc gpu plugin (OpenGL) 2001 December = sound.znc : zinc spu plugin (DirectSound) 2001 December = librendererznc.so : zinc gpu plugin (Mesa3D Linux) 2001 December = libsoundznc.so : zinc spu plugin (OSS Linux) 2002 May = spuPeopsDSound.dll : PSX P.E.Op.S. spu plugin (DirectSound) 2002 May = libspuPeopsOSS.so : PSX P.E.Op.S. spu plugin (OSS Linux) 2002 September = cdrPeops.dll : PSX P.E.Op.S. cdr plugin (aspi/ioctl) 2003 = ???     :) ... January 15, 2002 - Futurama The following tale is dedicated to everybody expecting the impossible, demanding it nonetheless and ignoring all statements from more experienced ppl... PS2 EMU RELEASED Speed is great, compatibility is 100%... runs all original games, without any troubles. Just download this file:PS2Emu, burn it on a CD, and insert the CD into your Playstation2 console. Wait until the CD spins up, and eject it quickly again. Now you can insert ANY PS2 game into your PS2 console, and it will play fine! Why did we choose a PS2 system for emulating a PS2? Weeeeelllll.... BECAUSE NO PC SYSTEM IS POWERFULL ENOUGH NOWADAYS TO EMULATE THE PS2 HARDWARE! DON'T EXPECT A WORKING PS2 EMU ON PC'S FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS! DID YOU GET THE POINT? I don't think so, sigh. Well, for some more in-depth infos visit this page:  http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/2q00/ps2/ps2vspc-1.html (thanx to Ranma for the link on Kazzuya's Messageboard :) K(L)ICK HERE FOR XBOXeMULATOr It didn't work? K(L)ICK HARDER :) Yup, everybody knows that the XBox is a PC alike system, but hey, that doesn't mean that coding an XBOX emu is easy and that it will happen in the near future (or ever). Well, you can follow the discussion on Slashdot about an (of course fake) XBOX emu, if you want (http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/12/1529233.shtml), there are some valid points there (and a lot of lamers who just don't get it), but the basic point, imho, is: Why do you want a XBox Emu anyway? Prolly most XBOX games will have PC ports, and prolly most of them will have advanced features compared to the XBox version. So go and buy yourself the PC game version instead of the XBox one, and be happy. And if you are just here for 'playing free warez games with emus', please move on, you are visiting the wrong site right now. VGC (Virtual Game Cube) AVAILABLE  Ahhhh... that one is really working... so, close your eyes, please... move your hands together... move the fingers of your left hand in a clockwise circle... move the fingers of your right hand in a counter-clockwise direction... now change the directions... get faster... wiggle you fingers some more... turn your palms up-side-down... get faster... fingers here, fingers there, a cloud of fingers... and suddenly: a scream of joy... YUP, you did it! You have solved Rubik's (TM) Virtual Game Cube the first time! Congrats! Ahem... now you can open up your eyes again :) Some final words Just to make it clear: there are no emulators for the mentioned game consoles available right now. If you want to play a PS2/XBOX/GAMECUBE game, you have to buy the proper console, or maybe do a search if a PC port of that game exists. Looking at the hardware specs and complexity of the new consoles, it will take a long time until real emulators will show up. There will be a lotta fakes (bundled with nice virus and trojan funcs) until that will happen. And, of course, unlike PS1 CDs, no original console game DVD can be used with your PC DVD drive, so you will need illegal rips of the games as well. So, please, don't waste your (and more important: mine or some other emu coder's) time asking for such an emu. Better get real... and have fun :) August 24, 2001 - What would Brian Boitano do? Time for a small sign of life...  so I've decided to update my page with a small FAQC. Q stands for Question, A for my Answer, and the C marks additional Comments... The C will (maybe) help you to understand the A better... of course most of it is a bit exaggerated, but not much, I can assure you :) Okay, let's start: Q: GIMME BIOS OR DIE!  A: ok, no problem... I choose death C: We all have to die sooner or later... that's life :)  Q: Your plugins are the best, you are great... (that goes on over a couple of lines)... Could you please send me the PSX BIOS file or maybe tell me a link to it? A: no C: Doesn't matter what you say... when it comes to the bios, you are on your own. And if I have to read a dozens of meaningless lines, my answer will be as short as possible :) Q: "enabling FSAA is causing big slowdowns" or      "texture filtering is causing glitches in 2d backgrounds" or      "my monitor makes beeping sounds if I play at a 3200x2400 resolution" A: Sorry, but I have no time to look after that issue... yesterday I've found a terrible bug in my gpus: everytime when I am playing with my OGL plugin, and I press that small button (labeled "Power") on my monitor, the screen goes black! Imagine that! I have to find that damn bug first before I can do anything else, sorry. C: If some option/feature/whatever is causing troubles on your system, well, don't use it! Q: There are zillions of options in your gpu plugins. Can't you make an easier setup like VGS (or maybe Bleem!... but Bleem! also has too much options, imho)? A: Hit the "fast" or "nice" button. Don't click on anything else! Don't even look at anything else! Don't read the included info files! Don't think! Don't live! C: You don't have to use all the options, if you don't want to... but  tweaking for speed or quality is fun... why don't you try it? :) Q: My favourite game "Burning Revenge Of The Iron Sausages" doesn't work. Fix that in your next version! A: Yes, boss, sure... whatever you say... mmm, boss? I think we have a problem here... strange... I haven't received any $$$ from you lately... C: It's not my job to do emu plugins... it's an hobby. So be happy if something works, or send me a nice bug description so I can try to look what is going wrong. But never, NEVER try to command me what I have to do as long as you don't pay me at all.  Q: files for your interest A: _none... mail gets deleted ASAP_ C: Damn viruzzz... please, to everyone who is reading this: make sure you don't spread any mail worms. The latest SirCam virus is _very_ annoying. Check your system (for example, look at http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/sircam.shtml ) And, for your information: my mail client is configured to delete any mails bigger than a certain size. I will not even see (or download) mails with big attachments. So, also sending me big pictures or save states is not possible without asking me first! Q: When will you release the next plugin version? A: When the moon is shining and small fairies are dancing naked around the camp fire in my garden C: No comment... the answer above is true :) Well, maybe a small info about the next release: in the last weeks I was busy to install W9X, W2K and Linux on my new system (Athlon 1.2C, GeForce3), currently everything is up and running, all developement tools are ready, I've finished Anachronox, life is nice, gpu 1.52 is on its way, the linux plugins will get updated shortly after, a stuttering bug in my spu with w2k has been fixed, the native w2k ioctrl cdr support in my cdr plugin is currently slow as hell (3-10 seconds for reading one sector, haha), and this stupid FAQC is finally done :) Ok, that's all for now... and don't get discouraged sending me mails... I try to answer them all (sometimes it will take awhile, though). July 14, 2001 - We ar