OCIA has us taking a trip down memory lane to remember some of the greatest glide games ever created.
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Best Glide Games
- Thread starter Rich Tate
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defuseme2k
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god I miss 3dfx :\
Neutraleyes
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Starsiege Tribes needs to be on that list. They eventually got OpenGL support working after about 10 patches but God that game looked good in Glide on a voodoo3. And the gameplay is still fun and challenging today..
Everybody has their favorites that will miss a list like this. I have to throw a few out there.
Myth: The Fallen Lords (only looked good in Glide)
Myth II: Soulblighter (They added Direct3D in this edition, but I still think Glide was best)
Thief the Dark Project - one of my favorite games of all time. Even though it was limited to 8-bit colors, the art looked pretty good, especially from a distance.
Wing Commander Prophecy: The series was getting long in the tooth by the time "prophecy" came out and people were losing interest, but this was the best looking of all of the Wing Commander series and I liked the space battles better than Wing IV. They had a Direct3D (if I remember right) but the Glide mode was superior in many ways.
Myth: The Fallen Lords (only looked good in Glide)
Myth II: Soulblighter (They added Direct3D in this edition, but I still think Glide was best)
Thief the Dark Project - one of my favorite games of all time. Even though it was limited to 8-bit colors, the art looked pretty good, especially from a distance.
Wing Commander Prophecy: The series was getting long in the tooth by the time "prophecy" came out and people were losing interest, but this was the best looking of all of the Wing Commander series and I liked the space battles better than Wing IV. They had a Direct3D (if I remember right) but the Glide mode was superior in many ways.
Oh, BTW for those that still have their Myth:TFL CD around and want to play the game without the crappy software rendering (I never found a Glide wrapper that really ran this game right), there is hope. Last year some fellows released a version of Myth:TFL that can use OpenGL (they also did this for Myth 2, but is less critical I believe).
You can download the patch at:
http://projectmagma.net/
You can download the patch at:
http://projectmagma.net/
Totally agree. It's still one of my favorite games of all time. I played it for about 6 months on an ATI 3D Rage 8mb card and could only run it in software mode. I finally saved up enough money to buy a Voodoo 3 2000, and man, what a difference. I remember playing for 12 hours straight with the new card b/c I just couldn't pull myself away.
I loved the old Glide games... Unreal was one of the best.. The Wing Commander games that supported it were very nice also...
And don't Forget Wing Copmmander
rivateer and Privateer 2... those games used Glide also.
I built myself an old retro system which includes my old Voodoo5-5500.
Specs are:
1Ghz Celeron
1Gb PC-100 RAM
40Gb Hard Drive
Sound Blaster Awe64 - boy was that hard to configure correctly for different DOS games
Voodoo5-5500 - back in the day, I put a nice huge Socket 7 heatsink on each GPU... lets me run it at 183Mhz vs. the 166Mhz it was stock.
CD-RW
NIC
Windows 98SE
The motherboard is a TYAN S1854... anybody else remember that board?
It is a killer system for playting old games
And don't Forget Wing Copmmander
rivateer and Privateer 2... those games used Glide also.I built myself an old retro system which includes my old Voodoo5-5500.
Specs are:
1Ghz Celeron
1Gb PC-100 RAM
40Gb Hard Drive
Sound Blaster Awe64 - boy was that hard to configure correctly for different DOS games
Voodoo5-5500 - back in the day, I put a nice huge Socket 7 heatsink on each GPU... lets me run it at 183Mhz vs. the 166Mhz it was stock.
CD-RW
NIC
Windows 98SE
The motherboard is a TYAN S1854... anybody else remember that board?
It is a killer system for playting old games
can anyone copy and paste the article, the site won't load for me in time, keeps timing out, even going to just www.ocia.net, maybe they are just bogged down ATM?!
I wanted to see the list, i hope carmageddon, quake, pod are on there, those where some of my favs, i have a good number of glide games for my build which is in my sig.
I wanted to see the list, i hope carmageddon, quake, pod are on there, those where some of my favs, i have a good number of glide games for my build which is in my sig.
Nice article but very flawed, I guess the writer is quite young?
Most of the games on the list were Direct3D (not glide) and AFAIK Diablo was a 2D game with no 3D acceleration at all.
Quake II was open GL
Where was Tomb Raider, Wipeout, Longbow 2? etc etc.
Most of the games on the list were Direct3D (not glide) and AFAIK Diablo was a 2D game with no 3D acceleration at all.
Quake II was open GL
Where was Tomb Raider, Wipeout, Longbow 2? etc etc.
Yep.. that was a good game
Hm.. checked it out but that doesn't seem to be it, The one I recall is a normal view racer with replay features and different weapons (had stuff like EMP missiles). Basically NFS with weapons.
I remember everyone talking about the voodoo 5 550 still with the quad cores on it. I remember hearing storys like someone found it in a trash can behind a computer store and all that to. I think back than i had a S3 Savage 4 and it was the bomb on quake 3 i remember with my k6-2 500mhz .
.
calebb
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UltraHLE!
Diablo2K
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I remember when I got my Diamond Monster 3D (Not 2, the very first one). I was so amazed at the differance that card made. The included Glide demo was awsome. the differance between Software and hardware Acceleration was so differant. I don't think theres been this much of a leap in Image Quality Sense. I had Quake 1 at the time, after getting the Voodoo 1 card there was no way i was going back to software Rendering ever again. Shortly after Unreal came out. the Flyby demo was awsome, really showing what a Voodoo 1 card could do, all you got with the Voodoo 2 was faster framerates the IQ was the same, but you could also run at higher resolution which did make it look better.
after the Voodoo 1 I got a Quantum 3D Raven (Voodoo Banshee) basicly a Voodoo 2 and 2D card all in one. this was a awsome card, alot of people didn't like it, they prefered there SLI Voodoo 2s and the Quantum single card SLI solution. But I loved my Banshee, it came with NFL Blitz! Awsome game, also played alot of NFS Hot Pursuit with that card. And I will never forget Viper Racing.
Man, Those were the days! When you paid the 300-400 bucks to upgrade and the Image Quality differance slapped you in the face.
after the Voodoo 1 I got a Quantum 3D Raven (Voodoo Banshee) basicly a Voodoo 2 and 2D card all in one. this was a awsome card, alot of people didn't like it, they prefered there SLI Voodoo 2s and the Quantum single card SLI solution. But I loved my Banshee, it came with NFL Blitz! Awsome game, also played alot of NFS Hot Pursuit with that card. And I will never forget Viper Racing.
Man, Those were the days! When you paid the 300-400 bucks to upgrade and the Image Quality differance slapped you in the face.
I think I paid ~$150 for my Monster 3D back in June '97, and good God was it worth every penny!
Can't believe that card lasted me two years 'til summer '99 when I got my Voodoo 3.
That initial leap in '97 from 320x200 to 640x480 was astonishing! Is it even possible anymore to run anything at 320x200?
People in this current generation just cannot even begin to imagine what gaming was like in 320x200! (or was it 320x240?)
I'm holding a Voodoo5 5500 64MB AGP card in my hand (well, not really but it's on the shelf in front of my face over the monitor) and a pair of Diamond Monster II 12MB Voodoo 2 cards right behind me in an anti-static bag.
I almost wish I had some old hardware that I could set up for those old games. Being that Glide was a subset of OpenGL (and 3Dfx/3dfx never fully supported the full OpenGL library anyway, there was no reason) I consider most of the old games to fall under both categories since they're so interrelated.
Of course, the king of all Glide/OpenGL games is, was, and always shall be Quake, period. Anyone that says otherwise simply doesn't know jack shit about the history of what 3Dfx (the original spelling) did for the 3D gaming industry when they put out that original Voodoo card. Think back to those days and those experiences:
The original Quake, loaded up on a Pentium 200 MHz box (Pentium Pro if you were rich) with a humongous 6.4GB hard drive and 64MB of system RAM. You spent $2500+ to build that box, and you were happy with it, but then you heard about this "3D accelerator" card and went to a store to get more info. The salesman didn't have a machine to demo the card on, so you talked for a bit and took a chance. You came home, pulled the card outta the box (I remember that moment, and the smell of that card brand new), and the cables and wondered "Ok, how the hell does this work?"
You read over the simple setup instructions, realized it was meant to be a passthrough product and then it all became clear.
Almost as clear as that singular moment the first time you fired up GLQuake with that Voodoo card in operation - the 3Dfx logo basically zooms in onscreen and you know you're in for a treat. Now I personally remember seeing ads in magazines of that level in Quake where the floors were reflective, along with the "stained glass" textures on the walls. I was gunning to get to that level so I could see that myself.
Suffice to say that experience happened to me and I remember it in crystal clear true color with the sounds and smells to go with it. From that moment when the logo appeared I was hooked like a hardcore crack addict that hasn't has his/her fix in 36 hours. Man that was and always will be something I'll never forget.
The release on the unsuspecting gaming community of the original 4MB Voodoo card was a paradigm shift that still has repercussions felt even now in today's multipipeline room heater kerosene powered generator requiring video card behemoths that fill our PCs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx
Great wiki page, lots of great info and history, with links to some kickass sites with hardware collections worth taking a peek at for old time's sake.
Hell, I think I even have my 3dfx stock certificate around here someplace... I bought 1 single share about 6 months before the Nvidia buyout and the disappearance of the one company that deserves all the credit for making the 3D gaming we have today a reality.
They got the ball rolling; too bad it rolled up one side of the hill of reality and then rolled right back over them in the process.
"3Dfx is dead. Long live 3Dfx!!!"
I almost wish I had some old hardware that I could set up for those old games. Being that Glide was a subset of OpenGL (and 3Dfx/3dfx never fully supported the full OpenGL library anyway, there was no reason) I consider most of the old games to fall under both categories since they're so interrelated.
Of course, the king of all Glide/OpenGL games is, was, and always shall be Quake, period. Anyone that says otherwise simply doesn't know jack shit about the history of what 3Dfx (the original spelling) did for the 3D gaming industry when they put out that original Voodoo card. Think back to those days and those experiences:
The original Quake, loaded up on a Pentium 200 MHz box (Pentium Pro if you were rich) with a humongous 6.4GB hard drive and 64MB of system RAM. You spent $2500+ to build that box, and you were happy with it, but then you heard about this "3D accelerator" card and went to a store to get more info. The salesman didn't have a machine to demo the card on, so you talked for a bit and took a chance. You came home, pulled the card outta the box (I remember that moment, and the smell of that card brand new), and the cables and wondered "Ok, how the hell does this work?"
You read over the simple setup instructions, realized it was meant to be a passthrough product and then it all became clear.
Almost as clear as that singular moment the first time you fired up GLQuake with that Voodoo card in operation - the 3Dfx logo basically zooms in onscreen and you know you're in for a treat. Now I personally remember seeing ads in magazines of that level in Quake where the floors were reflective, along with the "stained glass" textures on the walls. I was gunning to get to that level so I could see that myself.
Suffice to say that experience happened to me and I remember it in crystal clear true color with the sounds and smells to go with it. From that moment when the logo appeared I was hooked like a hardcore crack addict that hasn't has his/her fix in 36 hours. Man that was and always will be something I'll never forget.
The release on the unsuspecting gaming community of the original 4MB Voodoo card was a paradigm shift that still has repercussions felt even now in today's multipipeline room heater kerosene powered generator requiring video card behemoths that fill our PCs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx
Great wiki page, lots of great info and history, with links to some kickass sites with hardware collections worth taking a peek at for old time's sake.
Hell, I think I even have my 3dfx stock certificate around here someplace... I bought 1 single share about 6 months before the Nvidia buyout and the disappearance of the one company that deserves all the credit for making the 3D gaming we have today a reality.
They got the ball rolling; too bad it rolled up one side of the hill of reality and then rolled right back over them in the process.
"3Dfx is dead. Long live 3Dfx!!!"
There was a directX (possilby openGL) wrapper that would let Nvidia cards play glide games. 3dfx shut it down. Now that Nvididia owns glide (and everything else 3dfx), did they ever release (in the legal sense) the wrapper?
I'm pretty sure that virtua fighter 2 was directx. It shipped with a pure software renderer, but you could download a patch that used directx. I'm pretty sure I used it with a radeon at some point.
Wumpus
I'm pretty sure that virtua fighter 2 was directx. It shipped with a pure software renderer, but you could download a patch that used directx. I'm pretty sure I used it with a radeon at some point.
Wumpus
this is still probably the most common glide wrapper around, works good for the games it supports too! Nvidia bought out 3dfx and never supported them, just let all the work die, although if you look on wiki, they did use some of 3dfx's technology in the Geforce FX series.
In response to an earlier poster, Diablo 2 did have a Glide mode, but I mostly remember it as something that created dynamic shadows and maybe some spell effects. It wasn't critical to play the game, but was a nice bonus feature for 3dfx owners.
And Yes, people forget how much we were able to shell out for a decent 3D graphics experience. In addition to a regular video card (for me it was some crappy S3 board that said it did 3D... but looked like crap and did about 4 fps), we had to shell out another $150-200 for the 3dfx card... but it was worth it. At the enthusiast end, I recall a board by Obsidian that basically was two Voodoo2s running in SLI. I think the thing ran about $450 in 1998 dollars.
I look back on some of these titles and consider the 1996-2000 era to be a minature "golden era" for PC games, largely due to the 3D revolution spurred on by 3dfx and Glide. The game designers finally had some hardware that would allow them to pull off some new tricks, and they dumped in a lot of fresh ideas. PC games then weren't hobbled by the need to port things to a console either (See Thief 3).
And Yes, people forget how much we were able to shell out for a decent 3D graphics experience. In addition to a regular video card (for me it was some crappy S3 board that said it did 3D... but looked like crap and did about 4 fps), we had to shell out another $150-200 for the 3dfx card... but it was worth it. At the enthusiast end, I recall a board by Obsidian that basically was two Voodoo2s running in SLI. I think the thing ran about $450 in 1998 dollars.
I look back on some of these titles and consider the 1996-2000 era to be a minature "golden era" for PC games, largely due to the 3D revolution spurred on by 3dfx and Glide. The game designers finally had some hardware that would allow them to pull off some new tricks, and they dumped in a lot of fresh ideas. PC games then weren't hobbled by the need to port things to a console either (See Thief 3).
Oh yeah, on Glide wrappers there was a fairly decent one developed by Creative Labs at one point (called Unified) but it was designed to only work on their brand of TNT2 video cards. LOL, that actually convinced me to buy their brand of TNT2 card, but then the thing got scuttled after maybe 6 months of life.
does anyone remember "Slave Zero"?
i still play it on my k6-2 rig in Glide Mode, man that is still an awesome game to play.
here is my old rig specs:
AMD K6-2+ 570mhz
Powercolor p561a Mobo
768mb PC-133
2x Diamond Voodoo2-12mb SLI Mode
Aureal SQ3500 Turbo
Win 98se
400Watt PSU
i still play it on my k6-2 rig in Glide Mode, man that is still an awesome game to play.
here is my old rig specs:
AMD K6-2+ 570mhz
Powercolor p561a Mobo
768mb PC-133
2x Diamond Voodoo2-12mb SLI Mode
Aureal SQ3500 Turbo
Win 98se
400Watt PSU
I remember everyone talking about the voodoo 5 550 still with the quad cores on it. I remember hearing storys like someone found it in a trash can behind a computer store and all that to. I think back than i had a S3 Savage 4 and it was the bomb on quake 3 i remember with my k6-2 500mhz
The Voodoo5 5500 was a dual core card. This is the highest that was actually sold to the general public. This is the card I have... I actually bought it shortly after it was released.
I still have a Voodoo3 3500 laying around also... the highest of the Voodoo 3 cards sold.
The Voodo5 6000 was the quad core card. None of these cards were sold in stores. There were a small number that actually worked with a few different revisions of the card. Some had internal power hookup, and some had an external power adapter. These cards used to show up on Ebay every once in a while.. bringing quite a pretty penny for the seller.
Do a search for the Voodo5 6000 on google.
I bought my first voodoo 1 card in 97 just to play pod with. I was hooked and played most the games you all have listed. Went from that to a voodoo 2 and then sli, voodoo3 and finally the 5500. Still have them all except my firt voodoo 1. i cant seem to throw them away.