Subject: Re: Video Cards and Buillding
From: Tommi Leino (namhas@majik3d.org)
Date: Thu Nov 11 1999 - 10:43:03 EET
On Wed, 10 Nov 1999, Ryan Ziolko wrote: > I recently came accross your game from Freshmeat... and I have to say it > look good! My roomates just started getting into Everquest. No linux > version :-( Your game looks liek the closest thing to Everquest, even > better in some respects. It will get better. :) Our goal really is not to do a Everquest clone, we aim a bit higher. It just takes some time. :I > I am now in the market for a new 3D card for my linux box. I was > wondering if there is a card you can recomend? I would like to play your > game with 3D acceleration, but I would also like good 2D performance. > What would be the best card? Short: A card that has Open Source drivers and supports OpenGL: TNT2. Long: Nowadays there is only two viable alternatives of 3D graphics libraries, Direct 3D and OpenGL. You know, Direct 3D is Microsoft crap and OpenGL is then SGI's and have been used in high-end graphics workstations for years already and is also very portable and it is really more open than Direct 3D and we even have a Open Source implementation of it: the Mesa. Which one would you choose? Then there is a few to choose from when selecting the actual card. There is 3Dfx Voodoo cards and then there is Nvidia's TNT cards and then there is Matrox G400 card for example. For Linux, there is no other alternatives, AFAIK. Voodoo cards uses their own libglide implementation which is 3Dfx own closed source library like Direct 3D/Open GL, that means, totally worthless as there is already such libraries available, but they just wanted to do their own and in fact, at the time there weren't Direct 3D or it wasn't just good enough. Only 3Dfx cards uses the library. Linux supports it, but it allows only full screen rendering, so you can't switch back to Linux when playing a 3D game and if the game crashes, .. too bad. Nvidia's TNT2 cards and Matrox supports OpenGL, they have chosen it right (of course, they still support D3D too). I don't know much about Matrox, but I myself have both Voodoo 2 and TNT2 so I can tell something of those. Nvidia has Open Source drivers for all their cards from lowly Riva TNT's to TNT2 Ultra's and should have soon for GeForce 256 too. Also, Nvidia has in fact made some code for OpenGL and is working with Precision Insight and SGI to provide a good GLX (3D acceleration over the X11 protocol) implementation for Xfree86. So, as you, I would chose Nvidia's card over the others as it is Open Source and is otherwise pretty good in both 2D and 3D (and it can even do both at the same time ;>) and Majik supports it fully. :) If you're in hurry, just buy TNT2 or TNT2 Ultra, otherwise wait for GeForce 256. > Lastly, when do you think building and structions will be enabled? "In future." :) > What about a method of communicating with other players? Well,.. telnet majik.majik3d.org 7600 :) -- Tommi Leino / Majik 3D project namhas@majik3d.org https://majik3d-legacy.org
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