Tribes 2, Geforce3, Texture and D3D Problems

[Gaunt]

Until last week I hadn't tried playing Tribes 2 after upgrading from an Athlon 750 with a geforce2 MX to an Athlon 1400 with a Geforce3.

They problem is that if I set the video to D3D, I get framerates of 25 while standing still in an outside environment. If I move, my fps drops to 10-15. Switching to OpenGL gives MUCH higher framerates, usually 70fps outside, but for some reason when I go inside any structures, I have strange texture problems depending on where I stand (room boundaries especially). Switch to 16 bit textures in OpenGL seems to help quite a bit, but there's still no reason for it.

So far I've tried switching nVidia drivers, and making sure all my settings are correct. Nothing has helped.

For reference, nothing is over clocked. The system is an athlon 1400, with K7 Master MB, 512MB DDR, Asus v8200 GeForce3, and SBLive 5.1, running Windows 2000 Professional. All drivers are up to date. No other games cause any problems, so I'm fairly sure it's a problem with Tribes 2, just wanted to know if anyone else had similar problems and had found a solution.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Gaunt]

Nobody's seen or heard of this problem before?

It's very depressing to figure you've got a fairly good gaming machine and then have something silly like this ruin the enjoyment of a game.

 

[duragezic]

You might want to try the Sierra Tribes 2 forums or the Tribalwar.com forums. I don't think much people here like T2. I play T2 a lot but I don't have a GF3 so I don't know what's wrong. Actually I haven't played T2 since I got D2X hah. It's still a really good game even though a lot of people think it sucks and has too many technical problems.

 

[Gaunt]

D2X? I'm a little game short-form illiterate.

 

[duragezic]

D2=Diablo 2. D2X=Diablo 2 Expansion. Completely different game than Tribes 2.

 

[YBS1]

If I remember correctly you can solve that by switching back to using lightmaps. Uncheck the Vertex Lighting option under graphics.

 

[tkoller]

Tribes 2 is an OpenGL game, not D3D. Of course D3D will suck.

A better source of help would be from TySoft. He has enormous video card experience, but I bet he says the same thing.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

I have the EXACT same problem w/ indoor textures bugging ou in T2. However D3D isn't such a poor performer, but it still sucks. I have a GF3 TI 200 card. Tried changing every graphical option that has to do w/ inside or has to do w/ textures or palettes and nothing worked. Tried replacing DSO files too. VERY annoying. LMK if you get this resolved.

 

[hx009]

Just bought a Visiontek GeForce4 4600 card today and am experiencing the same indoor textures problem.... guess it's more common than I first thought.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Turning off vertex lighting seems to have fixed it. Haven't checked all maps yet, though. I remember when I turned off interior fog it fixed on one or two maps, but still bugged on several others.

 

[hx009]

Turning off vertex lighting seems to have fixed it. Haven't checked all maps yet, though. I remember when I turned off interior fog it fixed on one or two maps, but still bugged on several others.

Vertex lighting fixed it for me too. I like how neither nvidia's nor more importantly Sierra's site had any mention of this issue...

 

[duragezic]

I used to get massive choppiness on a couple parts of the inside of a couple maps. I don't remember if new video card drivers fixed it, or if it was one of the settings like int dynamic lights, or int fog, etc...