Thanks Recluse, you are THE MAN!

I too have the Hind CD and like you say, for anyone without it, the "abandonia" site is a priceless resource; everyone should give this sim a spin, it's an absolute classic. I had been meaning to try it again after flying around in the fantastic Arma Mi-24 Addon (by Red Hammer Studios) and had a yearning for something a little more umm... "in depth"... to go with the eye candy

Thanks again, mon ami. Perhaps Lepus will update his broken download link at some point but you really saved the day for me and hopefully a few newcomers to the sim too. Cheers

PS: Hehe almost forgot to say THANKS very much to the man himself... Lepus, God of better Hind gfx!

Happy to have been of assistance. Did you get it to work??????? If so, please report on the configuration details. I tried a little last night to get it going with 3dFX/Zeckensack Wrapper, but had no success. I didn't try a 'fresh' install of Abandonia + Lepus, but I will if you meet with success there, or find some DGVoodoo settings that work with either the Lepus patch or the CD 3dfX install.

Recluse

P.S. Not sure why I posted what I did in response to your question. I think I just saw the Thread Title and posted...not realizing that there were new posts..and not realizing I had already weighed in on this thread, when it was newer. Senility, no doubt!

Nice to have the thread renewed, and maybe I will get to see the Hind in its 3dFX glory yet!

Well mon ami, thanks again for the patch but unfortunately I spoke too soon... no joy for me in 3Dfx mode I can get it to run up to a point... as far as the menu (I can see the new 3Dfx shading on the models in the "Recognition" section), but on starting a mission proper, I momentarily hear "Bettyski" in the cockpit and/or rotor sounds and immediately afterwards it's a black screen, then CTD. Here's the CTD message:



Also, for some reason, I can't get Hind to run in 3Dfx windowed mode at all - it always switches to full-screen. I would've at least hoped to get the 640x480 window like you on my desktop (1440x900 60Hz LCD).

I'm only guessing... perhaps it might be one of those rare cases of having to go back to installing an older gfx card driver version (Nvidia for me; I had to do this with "Mig Alley" for example, which solved it for me), although what good that would do with the same Glide wrappers I'm unsure (I tried both Zeckensack's 084c and dgvoodoo 1.40+ with various settings mentioned above (plus a few of my own with no luck). It's a bit of a shame really because (as you know) this was one of the best helosim's ever made, and as Davros showed before, 3Dfx mode can run nicely on certain set-ups. If I had the time I would like to make a Wiki for this sim, as was done for EECH, Longbow 2, etc. so we can come together to solve this prob finally for everybody. Unfortunately at the moment, I don't Hopefully at some point in the future, the reason for Hind's instability under 3Dfx will finally be solved... Take care everyone

EDIT: As one last try I thought I'd try disabling dwwin.exe (Dr Watson) by disabling Error Reporting in services.msc and also deleting "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ AeDebug"... yet after rebooting and trying Hind95 again, the error STILL pops up...

In the interests of narrowing down the prob, I was wondering if anyone else was getting the "dwwin.exe" CTD? If it makes any difference, I just recently "upgraded" to XP SP3 from SP2... I have a strong feeling (no proof) that this was also the cause of my beloved M1 Tank Platoon 2 no longer working for me under XP SP3 (when it worked perfectly before under 3Dfx glide wrappers with SP2)... oh well, at least I can still read the nice Microprose manual until I have time to reformat my old hardie and re-install SP2 and enjoy some proper sims again (which for some "unknown" reason, it appears Microsoft doesn't want us to run anymore... but that's another subject altogether, heh).

Z.S.

WHOA!! You got M1TP2 running in WinXP SP2??? I haven't managed that feat. I see we share an interest in Retro Sims. I have tried and been unable to run some notables on my machine:

MiG Alley
M1TP2
Janes USAF

I think the issue is less the OS and more the Nvidia 8800 series (and newer) graphics card and associated drivers. This is certainly the case for USAF. MiG Alley apparently also had some issues with large amounts of memory (large being relative :), of course) in addition to whatever other glitches were happening.

What did you have to do to get M1TP2 running under XP SP2? I suspect I am still out of luck due to the graphics card/driver, but I wouldn't mind giving it another shot!

Recluse

P.S. The DGVoodoo 1.5 wrapper seems to have some better options for more modern machines. I assume you tried it since you said 1.40+

This is a really useful topic and discussion for we few we stubborn we Retro Sim heads. Any clues may occasionally lead to a breakthrough for someone.

Recluse, I think you know I have no trouble running M1TP2 on Windows SP2, but with a Radeon card (older X800GTO). Absolutely no luck at all with this Nvidia 8800 GT though. We've never heard whether anyone has had luck by rolling back to something in the 9X.XX driver series though.

I thought of that after I posted...that you had it running on the P4/ATI/SP2 machine but not on the Core2/Nvidia/SP2 machine. Still, I figured it would be a useful discussion.

It is indeed (useful): I'm hoping someone might have some success who has modern Nvidia's like us. Just wanted to narrow down the problem in that way.

Hey guys, I just tried somethihg. I'm still using XP SP3, and the ONLY thing I just did was to go back to an older gfx driver version (Nvidia Forceware 93.81) and Hind 3Dfx "accelerated" now works!!!! It WAS the driver after all!!!! Ok... so it's slideshow-city whenever there's more than a few objects on screen at once (as was confirmed earlier by others). Looks like software mode is the one to stick with after all for now. Somewhat more importantly though... I tried M1 Tank Platoon 2 to see what happened and guess what? It works!!!! Oh, happy joy HA HA HAAAA!!!! You're right mon ami, it WAS the Nvidia driver and nothing to do with the OS whatsoever! Ok... not perfect results... as in the same prob we all have with it CTD-ing after every mission (obviously, negating any Campaign progression) but that's Glide mode. In software mode there's no CTD at all and it runs perfectly! I'm going to try some more drivers later and go through them to see if I can find one that doesn't CTD after every mission in Glide (but I'm not holding my breath)... http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=10

For the record, my current config to get at least this far in M1TP2 (and 3Dfx "working" in Hind):

XP Pro SP3, Nvidia forceware 93.81 & Zeckensack's glide wrapper 084c.
P4 2.8GHz, 1GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce 7800GS+ 512MB AGP version, SB Audigy 2.

Note 1: I used exactly the same zeckensack glide wrapper settings as Lepus recommended for Hind above (i.e. make sure Thread Policy is set to "Use Render Thread", etc.)

Note 2: In Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0, I found an entry under "Applications" called "M1 Tank Platoon II". I'm not sure if it made any difference or not, but I copied and pasted it into a new database entry and "Installed" it in the same folder as M1TP2.exe.

I wonder... perhaps with some extra tweaking in this toolkit (memory allocation aka Longbow 2?) this might be the avenue to the elusive breakthrough we've been looking for?

At least, I wonder if Forceware 93.81 will get M1TP2 running on your rig too? Good luck!

Z.S.

Great news, Ziggy! And thanks for the details. Not sure whether drivers back that far will support my 8800 GT. Will have to check into it. But really promising news. Do you have to use the MS App Compatability software?

No problem Eugene. Since then, the most recent driver version that worked was 97.92, so it's a case of any 9x.xx you like (I think you might have posted something along these lines a few years ago - during my Googling I'm sure I came across you mentioning this before? hehe). Anyway, I tried between Nvidia, NGO and Omega versions, but they all gave the same result. For whatever reason, it appears that M1TP2 support was dropped since forceware 100.xxx.

As I was doing this process of elimination, something occured to me. I cannot for the life of me remember if Glide mode EVER worked properly in M1TP2?! And by that I mean with my original PCI Voodoo 2 card in my old PII rig! By Googling around the few M1TP2 links still around, I couldn't find any references to M1TP2 NOT CTD-ing after missions under Glide! It occurred to me that Glide mode may have NEVER worked correctly in M1TP2, and perhaps my memories of playing through the Campaigns were in software mode all along!? Thoughts? As you know, Microprose went "belly up" not long after M1TP2 was released... maybe they never got around to releasing a FINAL Glide patch (after 1.2) that fixed it??? I'm probably wrong... but it's something to consider while we're wasting hours of frustration?!

Whatever the cause for the actual CTD/hang after missions though, someone more technically minded could always find out more by putting it in software mode and viewing the exact files/screens/movies that are accessed? From my layman's POV I noticed it occurs just before the option to "save battle". In "Direct 3D" mode however, it CTD's a few seconds slower, allowing one to see more of what's going on before the inevitable back-screen and CTD. It appears as if it could be a resolution (refresh/timing?) related error; The mouse pointer sprite cannot travel the entire area of the screen, and when the mouse is moved off-screen it CTD's (no error messages). (Or.. a hardware/software mouse pointer error perhaps?). Try it for yourself and you'll possibly see what I mean if you can recreate it. The other problem to bear in mind is that certain sprites aren't showing up on the menu (exit game) regardless of Glide on or off. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember duplicating this error originally back when I was using my Voodoo 2 card and finding an unofficial patch that actually fixed it - possibly one of those no-cd hacks - I'm racking my brain trying to remember under what conditions I could see the "exit button" properly but it's no go Like you said, hopefully this might jog someone's memory, but I'd better stop now before someone complains this should be moved into the Armor/Tanksim forum Take care you tankers!

I meant to do it last night and double check, but I *think* that M1TP2 ran under GLIDE without CTD on my old P3/Win98/V5 5500 machine. Been awhile, so I may be mis-remembering, or maybe I ran in D3D all the time. Will check it out and post back with a report.

Recluse

Thank you very much, Lepus!
3Dfx Hind now works on my 7600GT. However, frame rate is way too low for a 1995 game. Any ideas on how to improve it? Tried playing with wrapper settings, by no positive results...:)

@ Recluse: I believe M1TP2 ran correctly on an earlier machine of mine also, running Windows 98. The exit button used to display as well, and it does not on XP/ATI, regardless of D3D or Glide modes. If this is an accurate recollection, then the problem might be with the OS. But it's been so long, it might not only have been a Win 98 OS, but also equipped with a Voodoo 2 pass through card.

Nowadays, I can complete missions on an ATI equipped XP machine in D3D mode, get to debrief, and then back to the menu page. With Glide (wrapper) mode, any mission will CTD at its conclusion, after selecting "Y" at the "Y/N" end mission dialog.


@Logrus: I had the same result as you, with frame rates. In fact, before getting it to run in D3D just fine, I had tried the DOS version, using dosbox. Extremely slow frame rates - ona far more powerful modern machine than platforms that existed at Hind's release. But dosbox allows you to ramp up your CPU cycles using Ctrl F12 at user-controlled increments. By moving from a default of 3000 cycles and cranking way up to 40K or 50K or more, Hind smooths out. I don't recall that the Glide wrappers offer this ability, and I couldn't increase Windows/Glide mode frame rates. Rendered the sim unplayable.

Strange thing is that increasing resolution or AA/AF doesn't significantly influence FPS. There should be a way around this! Maybe something to tune in videocard settings?

Does anyone know of some emulation software that may play these legacy games, particularly glide based games? Other than using a glide wrapper. Dosbox?

DOSBOX works great for DOS games, but not so much for Windows games...and no help with GLIDE emulation (so far).

Recluse

Thanks Recluse for the info.

Nice to see Im not the ony one playing this great old game.

But I have a small request. I downloaded it from underdogs.com and there was no list of keyboard comands in the rar. so can somebody post them or put a link to scaned manual or someting.

Thanks anyway.

Never mind, I found the controls on this site: http://www.allgame.com/cg/agg.dll?p=agg&sql=1:13296~T2

Hi,
The complete Hind manual is available as pdf file from replacementdocs.com

http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.1700