Need help with old OpenGL games

[Graf Zahl]

Playing through some old games I hit a problem with some Q2-engine based ones. The Q2 engine has a nasty problem with trying to read the OpenGL extension string into a static buffer that's too small for today's hardware and several of these old games are crashing on my current system as a result

In the graphics driver's settings (NVidia) I cannot find anything, even though I dimly remember having seen such a setting in the past.
Trying to find a workaround through Google yielded no results. Does anyone here know a solution?

[Gez]

You might try to get them to run with Mesa3D? It has an option for that.
https://www.mesa3d.org/application-issues.html

[Graf Zahl]

Uh, I want to run them with full hardware acceleration. I already had the 'joy' of running GZDoom with Mesa and that was a very shitty experience even on the IWAD levels as there's no hardware acceleration.

[NeuralStunner]

Extension limit has been removed from the configuration UI, but it's still present in application profiles. You can use nVidia Profile Inspector to access this and a few other hidden settings. [Link (Guru3D)]

Disclaimer: This is not a general recommendation. Graf knows what he's doing. If you don't know what you're doing, please ignore this program.

[Graf Zahl]

Thanks, that did it. I have to say I'm a bit surprised how well an old game like SiN still works if these sloppy issues are taken care of.

Extension limit has been removed from the configuration UI, but it's still present in application profiles. You can use nVidia Profile Inspector to access this and a few other hidden settings. [Link (Guru3D)]

I wonder what kind of moron made that decision. This limit is essential for running old stuff.

[NeuralStunner]

It's probably a case of making space for new feature settings (E.G. ambient occlusion) without making the list huge and cluttered. Frankly, that would've been more easily solved by categorizing the list - Which is exactly what Inspector does.

[leileilol]

Another silly way is to hex the extension string in the game's exe itself just dropping the %s out to make the game see no extensions at all (which can incidentally drop certain features anyhow but)

and yes it's nice to hear regressive UX madness affects all the graphics vendors. I thought AMD Crimson had it worse.

[Graf Zahl]

Another silly way is to hex the extension string in the game's exe itself just dropping the %s out to make the game see no extensions at all (which can incidentally drop certain features anyhow but)

That won't work because the buffer that's too small is the one being passed to the system's glGetString function, not something sprintf writes into.

[Graf Zahl]

Is there some sort of emulator that can play back the CD audio music of some of these games even without a CD present? My current system doesn't even have a working CD drive anymore (it broke down last year and I saw no point replacing it because it gets so rarely used...) and even if it did I wouldn't be sure that it even could do it anymore.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Extension limit has been removed from the configuration UI, but it's still present in application profiles. You can use nVidia Profile Inspector to access this and a few other hidden settings. [Link (Guru3D)]

Disclaimer: This is not a general recommendation. Graf knows what he's doing. If you don't know what you're doing, please ignore this program.

I think I'm gonna grab it anyway, in case I want to play those games again. (SiN had it's gameplay flaws but the setting, graphics and especially the sounds were amazing)

[Kinsie]

What games, specifically? There are a number of user-generated patches and fixes out there that get such games to play nice on modern machines.

Is there some sort of emulator that can play back the CD audio music of some of these games even without a CD present? My current system doesn't even have a working CD drive anymore (it broke down last year and I saw no point replacing it because it gets so rarely used...) and even if it did I wouldn't be sure that it even could do it anymore.

There are a wide number of tools out there to mount a disc image of a CD and play CD music through that. Windows 8 onwards natively supports mounting ISOs in Explorer, and WinCDEmu is a great open-source, malware-free solution for other formats.

[Rachael]

The problem with those tools is, ISO images do not contain audio data. That is why there are other CD formats available - I think .bin/.cue pairs do support it but you do need special software in order to mount such images.

[Graf Zahl]

I was thinking about a more generic solution, e.g. ripping the audio data to Ogg and having something that can reroute the CD audio calls to play those Oggs instead of accessing the CD drive. I haven't found anything along those lines yet, but in general I wonder, how are people playing games of that vintage that come with CD audio based music on modern PCs without actually using the CD?

[Rachael]

Try this: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=528516

Winmm seems to be the most promising but you'll have to compile it, yourself, and you'll probably have to drop it in as a .dll in your game's install folder.

If you're playing Quake 2, you can skip this entirely and use KMQuake2, it does exactly that but of course it's limited to that engine.

[Kinsie]

If you're playing Quake 2, you can skip this entirely and use KMQuake2, it does exactly that but of course it's limited to that engine.

He said "Q2-engine" so I suspect it's some weird engine-licensee.

I'd also suggest using the Unofficial Patch by the same guy instead of KMQuake2, it has the OGG music support without all the other mod-breaking eye-candy stuff.