G400 MAX & Soldier of Fortune Gold 1.07!

Hey all after seeing what good games to play with my P3/E 850 Slot1 build I came to a memorable classic from March year 2000 which is Soldier of Fortune by Raven Software one many of you may recall, at first after installing the game the version I have is 1.03 It was very unstable with the G400 MAX but also the V2 PCI 12MB , so after giving it the 1.6 Gold Patch this fixed a ton of things to improve multiplayer I also added patch 1.07,this last patch only fixes a few things for the multiplayer segment of the game, but does not affect single player 1.06 Gold patch fixes all of that.

Here some pics I made at 800x60x16 with the G400 MAX:
SOF_a.jpg SOF_b.jpg

And here at 800x600 with 32 Bit colors the bricks look much sharper
SOF_c.jpg SOF_d.jpg

So yea I been playing at 800x600x16 and that runs really nice everything maxed out with Trilinear_filtering, but even 32Bit runs fine as well and looks a little bit more crispier the EWS64 XL plays the sound effects and music beautifully so no issues with that one either.

And here two pics at 1024x768x32:
SOF_1024.jpg SOF_Mullins_a.jpg

But hey I am really enjoying it so far.

For those that seek SOF Gold Patch 1.06 you can grab that from here:

Soldier of Fortune Gold patch

Upgrades the original release of Soldier of Fortune to the Gold Edition. This update is not needed for the Gold Edition retail release. See the included readme…

community.pcgamingwiki.com

Here the list of fixes made to Soldier of Fortune:

ADDITIONAL FEATURES:
   01. · Re-worked single player AI
   02. · Two new Deathmatch Modes for multiplayer: Control and Conquer the Bunker
   03. · 18 new multiplayer maps. 11 for Conquer and 7 for Control. Standard Deathmatch, Assassin, and Arsenal are also readily playable on all of the new maps
   04. · A brand new multiplayer team consisting of six new player skins
   05. · A computer controlled bot for Standard Deathmatch and Arsenal
   06. · Pure Server support for multiplayer games
   07. · Various bug fixes
   
BUG & FEATURE FIXES
   01. · Added support for multi colored names in the Deathmatch scoreboard
   02. · Added RED/BLUE team support in CTF
   03. · Added RED/BLUE team support into CONQUER deathmatch
   04. · Added downloads of menu .rmf files for deathmatch levels
   05. · Added downloads of bot pathing files for deathmatch levels
   06. · Added support for newer EAX map versions, so we are concurrent with EAX map output from the latest version of Eagle.
   07. · Added a "-nostart" command line option, so that dedicated servers won't automatically start dedicated.cfg
   08. · Added a check for invalided saved game files in the menu code
   09. · Addressed an issue where people behind firewalls are connecting from the same IP
   10. · Update to A3D's A3DAPI.dll to provide detection for Vortex 2 chipsets
   11. · Update to the WON library that addresses some bugs
   12. · Fixed crash in EAX sound code when playing old sounds
   13. · Fixed crash in DM when getting killed by standing over a flaming body
   14. · Fixed crash in DM for Arsenal caused by weapon switching / inventory bug
   15. · Fixed problem where people had difficulty connecting to servers
   16. · Fixed an issue with spectator mode
   17. · Fixed an overflow issue with demo playback
   18. · Fixed CTF issue with force join
   19. · Fixed irqctf1 where players could get into bad spots
   20. · Fixed scripting problem in KOS3 when killing the helicopter
   21. · Fixed a bug in detection of remote IP address for systems with multiple IPs
   22. · Changed the "Error during Initialization" dialog to report the specific error
   23. · Circumvented W2K bug, which would basically not allow various GL implementations to initialize under W2K
   24. · Re-organized CD copy protection
   25. · Made it so that the winsock error WSAECONNRESET doesn't drop you to the console during DM server browsing
   26. · Server Browser updates info when bringing up the status of a particular server
   27. · Automatic account login for dedicated servers
   28. · Clients connecting to dedicated servers no longer need a CD
   
Also included in this version is a DLL from Creative Labs. This emulates EAX2.0 on any card that supports EAX1.0. This would include SB PCI cards, Vortex2 cards, and older Sensura based cards. To install this feature, run the batch file in the SoF directory called "installeax.bat"
   
GENERAL:
   01. · Custom maps may not be compatible between patched and non-patched versions of Soldier of Fortune.
   02. · Saved games will not be compatible between patched and non-patched versions of Soldier of Fortune.
   03. · This upgrade will work for English, German, French, and Tactical CD-ROM versions of Soldier of Fortune. This patch upgrades your copy of Soldier of Fortune to version 1.06. After installing this upgrade, you will only be able to play multiplayer games with people who have also installed this same upgrade.

Patch 1.07 can be grabbed from here:

Soldier of Fortune patch 1.07

Download Soldier of Fortune patch 1.07 now from AusGamers - its free, and no signup is required!

www.ausgamers.com

The OS I am using is Win98SE USA + UnOfficial SP 3 Version 3.66 and everything runs rock solid.

Quote from Early3D

Hi Gold Leader, thanks for the insights. Is SoF an OpenGl only game? Can you share some performance figures for the g400 max? I always missed some tests with and without Trilinear filtering in benchmarks and thought that this might affect the results. It was mostly not stated if that was turned on and maybe this is why sometimes the g400 seems to be lacking well behind a TNT2 or a voodoo 3 (lower texture quality for the Voodoo of course also makes it easier for it). Still, older tests suggested that the g400 was not keeping up with the competition in SoF.

The G400 MAX is quite faster than the TNT2 Ultra in most games plus the image quality iwas the ebst at it's time in2D and 3D, TNT cards were the absolute worst as it came to Image quality even Anandtech strongly advised people not to go for the TNT 1 &2 series when it came to their very poor image quality output:


the 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 has on par 2D image quality but 3D the G400 MAX in 32 Bit is superior but using 3dfx Glide API this is 22Bit color and has better alpha blending so Glide is really not a bad choice, plus it's Box filter also helps the V3 give some very nice results a Voodoo2 how ever is different as these lack the 2x2 Box filter the V3's have in advance.

The graphics card I am using is the Matrox Millennium G400 MAX DH AGP 32MB 128Bit SGR Rev.A 4399 or say the G400 MAX for short, as it's the first experience I have with this card and tbh I am very impressed what it is capable of, it also has EMBM which stands for Evironment Mapped Bump mapping only the G400 & G500 series had this incl the Parhelia & Parhelia LX Series which came after 2002.

128 reasons not to buy nVidia
Canopus SPECTRA 2500 Riva TNT

None of my retro PCs will ever get a NVIDIA based card, but vendors like S3, Matrox ATi & 3dfx will only be used.

Quote from Marlon

Nvidia's TNT got 91% from Anandtech wich is quiet good.

I checked Savage 3D, G200 and TNT with several Games and the TNT was very impressive in 1998.

My choice for a 98 2D/3D Graphics Card is Rage Fury or Banshee.

TNT 1 &2 had terrible image quality, I liked none of these cards even I did have them myself ATi, Matrox & 3dfx as their V3's went were the image quality kings., NVIDIA always degraded image quality for more performance and it was very notable, TNT did not really impress me as I was shocked by the poor image quality output I used a 20" EIZO FlexScan CRT at the time which can do 1600x1200x32 @ 100Hz, the ATi, Matrox, S3 Savage &3dfx V3 cards I had at the time did a much cleaner job.

it's well known that the image quality output of all NVIDIA cards before NV30 were pretty bad, not worth the experience if it were me, yikes.

Quote from undertaker_2

True! I had a 96KHz monster from 17"Samsung CRT @ 1280*1024 @85Hz. with a GF2 - and the image quality in Photoshop was subterranean. With ATI and Matrox cards, on the other hand, the image was razor sharp.

Yea exactly! then again after having around 800 graphics cards since 1988 NVIDIA was by far the worst I ever worked with, always driver issues and image quality issues and I had literally all their top tier cards, 3dfx 's Voodoo3 3000 & 3500 were 3dfx's absolute best cards as 2D image quality went, their Voodoo3 3000 PCI was also seen as the ideal dos gaming card thanks to it's superb 2D acceleration and crisp image output, plus great 8 bit per pixel rendering as well.

Matrox & ATi also share those wonderful advantages, ATI also had iDCT for hardware video acceleration as the only one out there that had this, this was a very neat advantage over all others

Matrox came with Environment Mapped Bump mapping aka EMBM on their G400 line of cards yet for Dos gaming the G200 was still the better bet, although the G400 series are a fine choice for Win98SE, WinMe & Win2K Pro.

S3's best cards were the Savage 4 Xtreme & Savage 2000, these two brought in S3 Texture Compression, this gave a very nice touch to 32 bit OpenGL & Glide Games and they also had the S3 MeTaL API sadly only Unreal Engine based games could take advantage of it and it was more buggy on the Savage 2000 as well, 2D S3 was a nice choice it wasn't too expensive, but it was certainly a tad better than the dreadful TNT cards from NVIDIA.

Savage 2000 also had S3TL as the first card to have this technology, sadly the effect was disabled on release, NVIDIA copied the idea and used it for their NV10, and did as if they were to first to have Transform & Lighting, yes they were the first to use it but no they were not the first to have it, that is the difference most trip on over,a typical NV behavior they still execute today, rather petty of them.

Ah yea it was a time when choice existed, I never sadly experience the PowerVR Kyro cards, these also have superb image quality output as I been treading about, also something I would love to try out someday the Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 AGP 64MB per example would be a fun card to try out some day.

Not sure how SiS's Xabre cards were though, same for XGI as they went as for their Volari line of cards.

Quote from Lotosdrache

Quote from Gold Leader

Savage 2000 also had S3TL as the first card to have this technology, sadly the effect was disabled on release

The claim that S3 were the first to have T&L seems a little exaggerated. As far as I know, S3 Transform & Lighting didn't work due to a hardware bug in the Savage 2000 chip. It wasn't possible to fix it via software. So they had to disable the function. And if it doesn't work, then you weren't the first either. Some times later, S3 released a revised version of the chip called Savage XP aka AlphaChrome.

By the way, I would love to have a card with Savage XP aka AlphaChrome. If anyone knows someone who would like to sell such a card, please let me know.

Savage XP I did see on ebay a few times I can keep watch for you if you'd like
And yea back in 1999 I had a beta driver for S3TL, the X-Tension Roling Demo did work but there were certain glitches here and there, a shame though would of been nice if it would just work the way it should of