I believe I had this problem before. What I had to do was grab a copy of RivaTuner and change the W-Buffer to 16-bit floating point (instead of fixed) to solve this issue. However this won't work for users using Windows 95 considering there isn't an alternative way to change the W-Buffer settings.

A bit off-topic but nowadays I currently have a Voodoo 2 on my Pentium II 400MHz machine but I try to be extra careful with it. I plan to obtain another 3dfx card (Banshee most likely) for my AMD K6-2 machine. Unreal on Direct3D is considered to be an afterthought and isn't optimized to be on par with Glide. 😒

Wow I wish I had a voodoo card
I'll check out rivatuner. Thanks for the advice!

OK I tried it
Weapon clipping is fixed but now there's weird flickering lines all over the floor
Is there anything I can do to fix that?

Thanks

Plus the textures in some places are shifting and warping

I think I remember having that flickering textures issue even in UT99 and in DM-Malevolence it shows. I'll have to fire up the game to provide a screenshot, but I don't know a fix on that sadly. What are the specifications on your system? just curious.

Thanks for the reply.
I have a Dell Dimension 4100 with
TNT2 M64 16mb
Sound Blaster Live! CT4780
Pentium 3 866mhz
64 or 128mb ram sorry I don't remember ☹️

Unreal engine 1 was always somewhat known for having visual glitch issues, especially z buffer flickering. Some of these glitches are the fault of graphics card drivers, but quite a few are the fault of Unreal's render code.
Changing settings in the game's ini files was often required to minimize visual glitches.
Eventually there were community patches made to rewrite much of unreal engine's render code.

http://www.oldunreal.com/
https://www.cwdohnal.com/utglr/
https://github.com/OldUnreal/UnrealTournamentPatches

akimmet wrote on 2024-10-03, 15:28:

Unreal engine 1 was always somewhat known for having visual glitch issues, especially z buffer flickering. Some of these glitche […]
Show full quote

Unreal engine 1 was always somewhat known for having visual glitch issues, especially z buffer flickering. Some of these glitches are the fault of graphics card drivers, but quite a few are the fault of Unreal's render code.
Changing settings in the game's ini files was often required to minimize visual glitches.
Eventually there were community patches made to rewrite much of unreal engine's render code.

http://www.oldunreal.com/
https://www.cwdohnal.com/utglr/
https://github.com/OldUnreal/UnrealTournamentPatches

Hey thanks!
This could help!

akimmet wrote on 2024-10-03, 15:28:

Unreal engine 1 was always somewhat known for having visual glitch issues, especially z buffer flickering. Some of these glitche […]
Show full quote

Unreal engine 1 was always somewhat known for having visual glitch issues, especially z buffer flickering. Some of these glitches are the fault of graphics card drivers, but quite a few are the fault of Unreal's render code.
Changing settings in the game's ini files was often required to minimize visual glitches.
Eventually there were community patches made to rewrite much of unreal engine's render code.

http://www.oldunreal.com/
https://www.cwdohnal.com/utglr/
https://github.com/OldUnreal/UnrealTournamentPatches

I am kind of curious what would be the last OldUnreal patch that still works under Windows 9x? I still play under 226b when I'm using Direct3D but from time to time I just use Software Rendering if the system is capable.

Unreal looks best on glide, second best on software rendering imo.

That 866 should have no problem with software rendering on 512x384, maybe even 640x480.

st31276a wrote on 2024-10-03, 16:34:

Unreal looks best on glide, second best on software rendering imo.

That 866 should have no problem with software rendering on 512x384, maybe even 640x480.

DAMN IT IVE BEEN REDUCED TO SOFTWARE RENDERING!
I'll just find a 3dfx card
Would a banshee be sufficient for this rig?

You shouldn't be overly concerned about the visual glitches. It was definitely part of an authentic experience of how the game was played when it came out. Most players were too amazed by the large open areas, to nitpick the z buffer flicker. Flickering and clipping errors plagued many early 3d accelerated titles.

akimmet wrote on 2024-10-03, 18:36:

You shouldn't be overly concerned about the visual glitches. It was definitely part of an authentic experience of how the game was played when it came out. Most players were too amazed by the large open areas, to nitpick the z buffer flicker. Flickering and clipping errors plagued many early 3d accelerated titles.

That's interesting to know. It's really hard knowing how a game should look on pc vs on console because on pc it varies a lot but on console it's always the same
But yeah I wasn't alive when these games came out so its hard to imagine what it was like at the time. I'm a Gen z💀

Or you could be like me and try playing Unreal on a overclocked Pentium 75MHz (90MHz) with a great amount of tweaking. 🤣

Video : https://youtu.be/uh_ZpSsMZ3o

But for real though, Unreal is definitely best played on Glide and Software Rendering. Though I find it easier to spot a Banshee (or a Voodoo 3/Velocity sometimes) on eBay than a Voodoo 1 or 2 card.

Admittedly playing Unreal at 320x200 on a low-end PC at the time certainly has an aesthetic to it.

THEBaratusII wrote on 2024-10-03, 20:00:

Or you could be like me and try playing Unreal on a overclocked Pentium 75MHz (90MHz) with a great amount of tweaking. lol […]
Show full quote

Or you could be like me and try playing Unreal on a overclocked Pentium 75MHz (90MHz) with a great amount of tweaking. 🤣

Video : https://youtu.be/uh_ZpSsMZ3o

But for real though, Unreal is definitely best played on Glide and Software Rendering. Though I find it easier to spot a Banshee (or a Voodoo 3/Velocity sometimes) on eBay than a Voodoo 1 or 2 card.

Admittedly playing Unreal at 320x200 on a low-end PC at the time certainly has an aesthetic to it.

PENTIUM? YOURE CRAZY

I tried it on a 120 with no L2 cache. Was not very playable, but it ran a UT dedicated server just fine.

My cousins played it back in the day on an 166MMX with 32MB because that is what they had. They were amazed with how smooth my 300 Klamath ran it. All in software mode of course, none of us had 3d accelerators.

st31276a wrote on 2024-10-04, 05:24:

I tried it on a 120 with no L2 cache. Was not very playable, but it ran a UT dedicated server just fine.

My cousins played it back in the day on an 166MMX with 32MB because that is what they had. They were amazed with how smooth my 300 Klamath ran it. All in software mode of course, none of us had 3d accelerators.

That's crazy. I didn't know you could run Unreal on an mmx

Be aware that different voodoo cards and versions of unreal will also bring different visual experiences for Unreal. Just a "Get VooDoo !!" is not the end all silver-bullet for Unreal and will be another rabbit hole of its own.

The Banshee as mentioned, will get you overbrights because GlideDrv can't do the multitexture path (more optimized but clamps lightmaps/blends detail differently) 😀

Older versions of Unreal (prior to 222) aren't compatible with the Voodoo3.

The multitexturing is also another subjective element because Unreal didn't initially release with that capability! One big element that has been divisive are how the lightmaps combine with blended textures such as layers of skies. Both the Kentie and Dohnal drivers handle and treat these differently and some prefer the other. (personally i think unreal's meant to be played with sgldrv)

After multitexturing was added, GlideDrv had several updates in patches that shifted the lightmap data differently to compensate for the alternate, overbright-less combining. The initial addition didn't at all and rendered Unreal *VERY DARK*.

(MMX is NOT required for running Unreal but stresses its importance for sound mixing and will force low quality sound if it can't detect MMX extensions.)

...running Unreal on Win9x and with a TNT2, I always used Detonator 3.68 and OpenGL instead of D3D (who would use D3D back in the day, unless it was the only choice?!), and I didn't see the issues you describe.

In recent times I've updated Unreal to 226F and used the updated OpenGL renderer from here. If I recall off the top of my head, the version of the OpenGL driver that works with TNT2-based cards is 2.1.0.6, but it might have also been 2.1.0.4. I can check when I'm home again, as well as the settings that you'd have to put in the .ini-file...