Hi Guys,

Anyone knows a way to get this old gal working on a system with XP installed?
Maybe the latest nvidia driver is a problem too. (I have a GF8600 gpu)
Which is the latest driver which supports the game? Or is there a workaround?

Thanks in advance,
Buren

Buren, the only way I know to get M1TP2 to run on modern system is to use an ATI card. And I don't have one of the new generation of ATI's, so they may not work either. I do know that any modern Nvidia driver will NOT work, from experience on my system and that of others on this and other forums. I believe it is possible that some in the 94.xx or earlier series of drivers may work, but the newer Nvidia cards can't use those drivers.

I wish I had better news or advice for you (and me!). Maybe someone else has had a breakthrough or better luck.

Too bad that several great sims are going to be completely lost in time because of newer and incompatible HW and/or drivers.

Anyway, thanks for the reply, and lets hope that someone will come up with a working solution sooner or later.

Cheers,
Buren

I dont think Eugene (with the greatest of respect) has the whole story there. Folk have got M1TP2 workin using a glide wrapper. Bit of software that can run it graphically as it would of done on an older machine. Ive had it running on this PC with an Nvidia card and also on my laptop with Nvidia so not sure what the issue is there. Mght be wrong but I hope you can get it going its a classic and never bettered !

Please specify the card and the driver. So far it has been impossible to get M1TP2 to run on an Nvidia 8800 or newer card with drivers much later than 94.xx

Believe me, we have used Glide Wrappers to great effect in many other sims, but trying to run M1TP2 is a no go with DGVoodoo or Zeckensack. After the splash screen and the movies, the menu screens are just a multicolored hash.

If there are any NVidia control panel settings or Glide Wrapper settings that work, I would sure like to see them!

Recluse

NickMow, I hope you have the answer. But first, what card and driver are you using? That works? The Glide wrapper route is a given, except that M1TP2 will crash after every mission unlike in D3D mode. But neither Glide nor D3D have been reported to work on new Nvidia drivers. If you have been able, that would be great. I've tried every adjustment on Nvidia control panel and wrapper settings. Same result as Recluse reports, every time. Lots of posts on various threads and forums wrestling with this, to no avail.

A number of us still run MTP2 on machines using ATI cards, or older Nvidia (Glide and D3D modes). But not using 1XX.XX Century series Nvidia drivers.

Point taken I was wrong about the PC it was my old one ! Darn it. Cant even find my CD to try it on this one but if what your saying is true its pointless !

The problem is that these elder games access your rendering hardware in 8 bit graphics mode. Geforce stopped supporting 8 bit mode long ago.

If someone would write an 8 bit to 16 bit wrapper, that will work for the ones that do not return an error code (like EAW) if 8 bit can not be found. I think M1TP2 assumes 8 bit rendering, so this would work.

There has been some sucess with these games using Vista, but the graphics "pitch" is often wrong. That means you have to work blind and try and move the mouse to the location of the screen that the "hot spot" or "button" exists on.

It's easier to keep an old, legacy Win98 computer around to these games.

I, too would like to play this game again, so I've done some research, and here are some links maybe someone can run with? I'm not that techie at all . . .

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=74535

http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=534

If I find anything more, I'll post it here.

Also, since my card is an NVidia 8600 GT, I went to NVidia's site and posted a question about it.

What if I just disabled my NVidia 8600 video card and plugged my monitor into my onboard video? Why shouldn't I try that?

what is the onboard video? If it is ATI, there is a chance it will work

Just checked the manual- it IS ATI! I may get both M1TP2 and LB2 going here . . . If I can get enough stuff going with OFP, I may not even need my newer NVidea 8600 GT video card at all!!!! Man, I hope so that thing's just given me grief since I got it.

Well, I couldn't figure out how to get the onboard video to work. Any 8/16 bit emulators inthe works out there?

Well as an old fan of M1TP2, and with a new system (E8500 and 8800GTS), the only way I can play M1TP2 is to use Virtual PC and win98 install. it runs in software mode as virtual pc lacks hardware acceleration. If anyone needs the exact steps, let me know.

I had it running in WinXP Pro with an older Radeon 9200 video card just about half a year ago (before I upgraded my whole system). Smooth as silk, no glitches. It's this $^%#$^# Nvidia/GeForce card my friends talked me into that's giving me this, along with a bunch of other, headaches.

I was a HUGE fan of M1TP but, if I recall, wasn't M1TP2 a huge disappointment?

Maybe I am remembering the wrong game but, I thought this game was universally hated?

Negative that, UTR. And until recently, there was a really nice site devoted solely to it, linked to from here at SimHQ. John had lots of missions, mods, info, editing tools, etc. After the two patches it is a decent enough sim but was eventually surpassed by Steel Beasts, which runs on XP just fine. However, M1TP2 has campaigns, and so far as I know, we don't have a modern tank sim with campaigns - including the SB series so far.

I never had much online experience with it though, and you may be recalling some issues there? Or the more modern problems that make it about impossible to run on modern Nvidia cards and drivers. But I enjoy running it still on my ATI card-equipped machine (an older but serviceable X800 GTO). Looks great on Glide, but suffers the usual Windows XP crash after a campaign mission. So I'll run it in direct X sometimes just to avoid that and endure the blocky graphics.

Hmmm... odd.

When I say loved, I mean LOVED M1-Tank Platoon so, I wonder why I never got into the 2nd version?

Oh well, I will find a copy somewhere and get it running on one of my machines to give it another go.

Thanks!

Cool!

I have to say that while I enjoy M1TP2, I can't say that it has been quite as much sheer fun as M1TP1. Might be that it was simply easier to hop into it and fight than the newer version. But definitely worth it, and now that you are Retro Enabled, all the more so. Hope you enjoy it.

AUGH! IMHO, M1TP2 is the best Tank Sim out there- for my tastes. Steel Beasts rules in the ultimate line of realism, but the graphics are too old to stand and no, I'm not dishing out $100+ for a game.

Are there any other ways to trick this sim into running on my system?

Specs: 2400+ dual athlon proc, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 8600 GT, Win XP Pro.

I already tried my on board ATI video, and it didn't work. My old ATI 9200 is probably frozen, but wouldn't handle my other games. . .

Any tricks? Dosbox? Virtual PC in WinXP Pro? Anything? Please?

So far no joy other than running on a retro Win98 Box. I haven't tried VIRTUALIZING 9x on XP, but I hear that the virtualization option doesn't really work very well for gaming, especially when there are no real video drivers for 'modern' cards on the old OS. This is a barrier to Dual Boot solutions as well. I'm not sure DirectX is supported either, though this might just be old enough to work.

EDIT: Just saw the post above about getting it to work with Virtual PC, but in software mode only. POSSIBLY sticking a GLIDE WRAPPER in could help that situation, but probably not.

Recluse

Slightly off topic, but parallel - Recluse and I are going to try M1TP2 online. We've both got older machines networked at our homes, that can run it. One issue could be how it likes or doesn't like being hosted behind a router. That's fixable, but not sure about other issues lurking about. I've got an XP machine, with an older ATI card; he's got a Voodoo5 machine, I think with Win 98. We might be on some shakey branches, but it's worth a try.

In a further attempt to find as economical a way as possible . . .

Does anyone know of a graphic geeks site, or emulator site where I might be able to continue my search for some software tools to get this sim/game going? My search has been unsuccessful so far.

Thanks a lot in advance!

The most economical and easiest way is by installing Virtual PC 2007 (Its free) and using Win98 install in it. I haven't been able to even install M1TP2 on my Vista machine. It does install and work on XP machine using zeckensack's glide emulator, but crashes after every mission, doesn't show "back" and "quit" menus, requires ATI gfx board (works with boards < X1000)and is overall unstable.
I have also tested using VMWare latest build for virtulizing win98, VMWare has recently introduced d3d hardware acceleration, but alas Win98 is not supported and the graphic card emulated is worse than one emulated in Virtual PC. Therefore I recommend playing in software mode using Virtual PC. just remember in the graphic properties of Win98 in the performance tab, make sure to decrease hardware acceleration slider to basic only. Then it will work.

I was lucky to be able to install M1TP2 on my other computer with board graphic adapter (came handy after all).

Played quickly few scenarios and will argue with anyone about inferior graphics of SB1. Waypoint control is just as easy, but there is no high fidelity of utilizing the ground cover which is perhaps the best feature of SB1.

Good news is that interface, views and some of the mechanics of M1TP1 are so similar to SB1 that after you guys done with it I am sure I'll try to convince you to the on line game.

Then you will hopefully have full and the deepest appreciation, comparison and feel of both wonderful games.

Polak out...

Polak, you should be able to run M1TP2 - UTR, you too, and probably any Nvidia user with recent drivers - by simply hitting alt F during or after the opening videos. The key combination was documented in the m1tp2readme in the main directory long ago. However it was for a different problem involving some sort of flashing on a specific screen. I never thought to try it before, but it sure works now.

Also, not looking to argue about this sim compared to SB, which I also enjoy. I enjoy a variety of foods, books, movies, and people. Same with sims.

YESSSSSSSSSS!

Many many moons ago I got M1TP2 working on my XP Pro system. But then I updated my video driver to take advantage of the graphics in another flight sim (FreeFalcon or something) and didn't realize til over a month later M1TP2 didn't run anymore. Well, after a long time of sporadic testing and downloading, I finally found a video driver that lets it run ion my GeForce 8600 GT card: NVidia 6.14.11.8250 driver. Just downloaded it somewhere, installed it, and it works! I'm stoked now. I know it's a tank sim lite, but I still love it. And I didn't have to pay $100+ for it! $15 or something years ago. I'll maybe be posting video and screenies form it for kicks n giggles.

Hey, Fritz, that's really good news. Regarding your driver; Nvidia 6.14.11.8250. That does not sound like the designations made for the drivers I am familiar with. In my sig below is the latest Nvidia official driver - they are up to the 191.07 release at this point. Can you find a different entry that would identify your driver in that format?

I played both M1TP and M1TP2, and a few of the 'also rans' like Team Yankee, and at least one of the Voxel based ones (specifics elude me).

Once I had tried the SB-Gold demo I never looked back though. Sure it is graphically unimpressive, but the ground is intricately formed, and 'readable'. The essence of it is still at the core of SB-Pro.

If you haven't already tried it I would recommend hunting for the SB-Gold demo, or a second-user copy. SB-Pro may be too rich for a casual tanker, but anyone interested in tanks and tolerant of retro gaming should at least try SB-Gold.

Running Vista 64 and M1TP2 works fine on my system.

I'm familiar with SB Gold. Got it. Can't stand the dated graphics. I agree it's superior simulation, but I can't handle the graphics, and the funky shell trap-turret on the M-1s. I actually played it for along time. Years. But I can't be hard core about every simulation I run on my PC, so I compromise with tank sims. M1TP2...yeah, my pref for it is all about eye candy. But it's only missing one or two things I really want (which yes, SP Gold has) so I make do.

Here's a few screenies from my recent playing, including a very brief review:

http://www.iamfritz.com/GamesStuff/M1tp2.html

I'm looking up that link where I got that driver. Hope to find it for ya soon. Hitch is: I don't remember which web browser I was using, or exactly when I went looking for it. But I'll keep trying!

It was a non-official driver, IIRC. I'm looking for the link and will try to get it to you.

Anyone know of a platoon skill editor? I'm crashing at the end of every engagement so I can't raise anyone's skills or award medals or promotions.

Tried running it through a program called DXWnd in directX 6 mode (no option for 5) and i still get the green terrain even after reinstalling. Wish i could find a fix.
Plus side i can ctrl-alt-del out of the game since i can't exit to desktop any other way....and take screenshots...sort of

Perhaps you need to do a complete video driver uninstall, then re-install to remove possible software artifacting from a previous driver?

-edit: This still happens to me from time to time after a game starts with all correct textures. Some tiles will turn IR green. Its an old game...

Hello, Fritz. I am able to run M1TP2 still, with the recent official Nvidia driver, using the "alt f" command several times at the opening screen. We discovered this approach some time ago, although for me only the Direct X mode will work, not Glide unfortunately. However, I also get the green earth effect as Stormtrooper posted - and always have - on XP/Nvidia.

Man, I wish I was more techie to help you guys out. I'm going through my history to try and find teh link to where I got that driver. Will post it here moment I find it!

If you google "NVidia 6.14.11.8250" you can find the drivers here:

http://www.radarsync.com/drivers/d169862-nvidia_geforce_8500_gt

Choose 32 or 64 bit to suit your OS.

Please post if they work--I wouldn't mind digging out my M1TP2 also!

lep, the new drivers for Nvidia do work for M1TP2, except for the color issue in some cases. You could try the sim now, and if it will run, but you do have color issues go through the driver dance for possible cures. But what the heck - see if the old girl runs as is. In any event, don't forget "alt-f"...it can tease the menu out from the graphic corruption o many of the drivers out this past year or longer.

Thanks, Eugene I'll have to look for my M1TP2 CD and give it a try.

Good luck, lep.

Just for the heck of it, I tried the "other" glide wrapper - Zeck's more global version that installs to windows, rather than dgVoodoo's sim-specific files simply placed in whichever sim you are running with Glide. I've had generally good luck with dgVoodoo, so sometimes forget to try Zeck. But dgVoodoo isn't working on M1TP2 for me. Zeck's did - no trouble at all, correct colors, high resolution available. It does suffer the glide fate of CTD'ing at the end of any mission. But still...it runs!

Aft-F during the opening videos. You can hit escape to get past them, and the main menu generally clears up quickly. It might take a few seconds for the full image to appear, and it might be semi-doubled - nothing serious. And the sim itself runs and looks just fine.

That's the one! That's the driver that is now allowing me to run Longbow 2, M1TP2, FF5.3 and all my other sims with little to no glitches! I will never, ever upgrade.

BTW- none of the wrappers have done anything to the game for my M1TP2, and running it in Glide mode just sucks. It runs fine in DirectX mode. Only prob is during big battles when there are lots of pixels getting thrown around, the IR and daylight sprites get mixed up.

Now, has anyone tried the Gunship terrain/map editor? I haven't had time yet, don't know if I will, but I'd love to lock horns with bad guys in towns and do some MOUT clobberin'!

OK - That turns out to be the relatively recent 182.50. Interesting that it works for you in terms of getting rid of the green terrain. I believe I used a very slightly earlier one in the 18X. series for quite a while, although it didn't perform markedly differently for me. I've had the green landscape for a while, so may go back and try the 182 again. However, the Zeck wrapper does make M1TP2 look terrific on my machine and the current driver.

BTW, FF5 runs fine so far as I know on many of the newer Nvidia drivers. And I have no problem with it on the very new driver listed below. Haven't had trouble with any using LB2 too either, for quite a while. Have not tested it yet on these 191.07's though.

Regardless, great that people are still giving this (and LB2!) some time these days.