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Glide Wrappers
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Page Last Updated: 8/1/17
Table of Contents
Introduction
Developed by 3dfx Interactive for their Voodoo Graphics video cards, Glide was a graphics API which was synonymous with PC gaming in the 1990s. Quake, Need for Speed, Tomb Raider, Diablo, & Monster Truck Madness 2 being just a few among the slew of hits which made use of Glide.
As with all things, however, time marched on and the Voodoo video cards themselves went the way of the dinosaur over 15 years ago. However, you don't need to dig an old Pentium 3 out of mothballs in order to play these classic titles - you simply need to make use of a glide wrapper, a neat little software program which translates the Glide 'calls' to today's Direct3D. In other words, the wrapper makes it so you don't need to have a Voodoo card to run the game. On top of that, today's wrappers don't simply make the game playable - with a little tweaking, you can enjoy graphics quality that even the priciest PC available would not have been capable of putting out back when these games were first released.
There are several different wrappers available, but for the purposes of this page, we will be taking a look at two of the most popular ones - nGlide & dgVoodoo.
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**Not sure if a particular game supported Glide? Check out the nGlide Compatibility List, which features a comprehensive list of Glide games. This page also lists whether each game is compatible with the nGlide wrapper, as well as any additional steps which need to be taken in order to play the game.
1. nGlide
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Zeus Software's nGlide wrapper boasts excellent game compatibility and supports Windows versions as far back as Windows XP -- in fact, it even works well when used inside of XP virtual machines!
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Installing nGlide couldn't be easier -- it is available at the following link:
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nGlide Download Link (Zeus Software)
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After the download completes, run the setup program and press install. That is all there is to it! nGlide installs 'globally' -- meaning any Glide games you play should use it by default.
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While you can hop into a game right away, to get the most out of nGlide, you'll want to take a peek at the nGlide configurator.
2. Running the nGlide Configurator
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After the install, you should have an nGlide folder in your start menu. Inside that folder is the nGlide Configurator, where you can fine-tune how nGlide works.
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You can adjust the following options:
Screen Resolution: Obviously the option that has the biggest impact on a game's appearance, and the one you will mess with the most. The default setting, "by app," means nGlide will just use whatever resolution you have set in the game's settings. But that's no, fun, right? By selecting a custom resolution here, you can enjoy visuals that simply could not have been imagined back in the 1990s.
Just make sure you don't select a resolution your monitor doesn't support, as the drop down list will likely include several options which are unsupported by your monitor. If you're unsure of what to select, a safe way of doing this is to select "by desktop" - this setting tells nGlide to output at whatever your desktop resolution is currently set to. The only catch is that depending on what your desktop resolution is, this can take a LOT of processing power. So, if you open your game and the framerate is crawling, you may need to come back here and select a lower resolution.
Aspect Ratio: This will depend on your game and your monitor. "Fit to Screen" will attempt to fill your monitor with the game's picture. If you have a widescreen monitor and you don't wish to see your game's image stretched, you can select "Preserve original" to retain the original 4:3 ratio.
Refresh rate: I just have a 60HZ monitor,so I have never touched this. If you have a killer monitor which supports a high refresh rate, you can raise this setting.
Vertical synchronization: Commonly referred to as VSync - this caps your game's framerate to your monitor's refresh rate. How this works from a practical point of view -- imagine you have a powerful PC that can pump out 100 frames per second in your favorite game, but your monitor is only capable of displaying 60 frames. This is pointless - you're still only seeing 60 frames, and you're wasting processing power. This where VSync comes in.
On the other hand, if you find that a game is running slowly with VSync enabled, you can try turning this setting off to see if you can spot any improvement.
Gamma correction: Controls the screen brightness. Ranges from 0.5 to 1.5, with lower numbers producing a darker picture and higher numbers being brighter. I've rarely if ever moved this off of 1.0.
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3Dfx logo splash screen: If set to on, the classic 3Dfx logo will appear on the screen before your game starts. This is great for testing purposes - if you see it, you know nGlide is working as it should. Once you've established that, though, the logo may just be a needless delay, so you can turn this off if you prefer.
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3. dgVoodoo2
dgVoodoo2 is the greatest thing ever created by man. OK, that's a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one. It emulates both Glide AND old versions of DirectX, allowing us to play nearly 20 years worth of games that we otherwise might not be able to. For the purposes of this page, though, we will just be taking a quick look at the Glide side. To get started, download dgVoodoo2 from this link.
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dgVoodoo Install & the Control Panel
The thing to keep in mind with dgVoodoo is that, where nGlide is a 'global' install, placing its files inside the Windows folder, dgVoodoo works best when installed 'locally," meaning you install its files inside the directory of *each* game you want to use it in.
For example, if nGlide works for most of your games but you hate how the framerate in NHL99 is, you don't have to remove nGlide to try dgVoodoo - you just dump the dgVoodoo files inside your NHL99 directory, and the game will attempt to use the dgVoodoo files instead.
This ability to mix-and-match makes nGlide and dgVoodoo a potent tag-team. If one wrapper doesn't work for you, there's a very good chance the other will.
Open the dgvoodoo zip file - you should see the following list of files. You'll want to unzip the dgVoodooCpl.exe file to your game's directory.
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Next, open the 3Dfx subdirectory.
Explaining the three .dll files -- without getting too technical here, there were different versions of Glide -- Glide 2.11 (glide.dll), Glide 2.45 (glide2x.dll), and Glide 3.1 (glide3x.dll).
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I *might* be mistaken on this, but I believe a game will only need one of these .dlls at any given time. Sometimes in the readme file it will tell you which version of Glide was used. However, if you don't know, there's no harm in copying all three files.
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Once the files have been unzipped, run dgVoodooCpl.exe. The first thing you'll want to do is enter your game's folder in the "Config folder / Running instance" line. You can do that quickly by clicking the backslash icon (it’s to the left of “add” in the top right corner). In this instance, you can see I've added my NHL99 folder. Next, you'll click the Glide tab.
There's a lot here. Fortunately, most of these settings you should rarely if ever have to deal with. Like with nGlide, you can force a resolution here. Just ensure your monitor supports the resolution you select. You can also force vSync if you prefer.
Antialiasing (MSAA) smooths the rough edges of the image. Your mileage may vary, but generally you go with the highest number you can use without negatively affecting your framerate.
"Onboard RAM" and "Memory size" sound sexy but do not effect speed/performance in my experience.
Once you have your settings how you want them, click “Apply” and then “Okay” and you should be done. If it worked, you should now see that a “dgvoodoo.conf” file has been added to your game's folder. If this file does not appear, try running the Control Panel as an Administrator.
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Not much to do now but try your game. If dgVoodoo is working, you should have a 3Dfx logo in the bottom left hand portion of your screen.