My P99 Green Machine -- Retro Build

[soronil]

OP please download green beta and make sure the night darkness shaders don't kill your perf / cause weird graphics glitches! This is a cool project but i think the guys working on classic darkness took some liberties assuming modern hardware

[Znakebite]

Mad Props!
Mountain Dew cans, Pizza boxes, Combo wrappers, Hot Pocket sleeves... EVERYWHERE!

[eqgmrdbz]

This is definitely PCMASTERRACE worthy. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Jibartik]

Oh my god this made my LIFE!

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[Yorkshire]

That is seriously impressive! I love that idea!

[toddfx]

Originally Posted by Vexenu [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

How far are you willing to go for true period accuracy?

Will you watch only 1999-2000 era TV shows in the background while playing? On a 19" CRT television of course. Will you wear baggy JNCO jeans while playing? Will you communicate with other players in game while referencing only 1999 pop culture and events?

Let's find out how deep this rabbit hole goes.

I'm not gonna lie, another retro computer project I've been wanting to try is connecting to the web via a 56k modem. I still have mine. There are guys on YouTube who show how it's possible in this day in age. When I finally get around to that, you better believe I'll be testing EQ on it.

Originally Posted by Mblake81 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Everquest with TechTV programs like the Screen Savers.

edit: link

NOW we're talkin! This would absolutely be classic for me.
Great idea actually.

Originally Posted by BlankDiploma [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I love the build!

Not to throw cold water on your aspirations, but have you tested Blue with advanced lighting enabled? It's forced on on green and I suspect you may have... issues.

Originally Posted by soronil [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

OP please download green beta and make sure the night darkness shaders don't kill your perf / cause weird graphics glitches! This is a cool project but i think the guys working on classic darkness took some liberties assuming modern hardware

Thanks guys, definitely something to look out for. Fortunately I have indeed been testing on Green, and have run into no major red flags just yet. Gets between 15 and 45 FPS depending on what's on the screen. Definitely anticipating some bogging when the population spikes. Screenshot in Green with FPS counter

Originally Posted by gnomishfirework [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Haha. That’s great. A vodoo card is what I played eq on originally.

I might break out my CRT monitor, which I played eq on originally (though 2001-2002 so probably late period). It would capture the feel without the performance issues.

Originally Posted by Coridan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Awesome, my only recommendation is to swap out the nVidia for a Voodoo3

Heck yeah voodoo3! I still have mine as well. Also played on a NVIDIA TNT RIVA2 at some point. During the course of my testing for this project, I tried numerous cards including Voodoo3. It does work! I only tried it with the Pentium III machine though, never with this P4 machine I ended up with. I should indeed give it a shot.

A few of the cards I tested for this build:

Nvidia GeForce2 GTS 32MB (April 2000)
Nvidia RIVA TNT2 16MB PCI (March 1999)
3dfx Voodoo3 3000 16MB AGP (April 1999)
Asus V7100 Geforce2 MX 32MB AGP (June 2000)

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I landed on the NVIDIA Quadro2 Pro (i.e. GeForce2 Ultra) from March 2001 because it was the best match to the Pentium 4 CPU I ended up with, both performance and date wise.

At one point I also picked up a really neat BFG Nvidia GeForce 8400GS 512MB DDR2 PCI from 2007 which is one of the fastest and latest GPUs you can get on the PCI interface. My reason for briefly trying it was to gain access to modern drivers, which was a path I went down during my troubleshooting of a Pentium III based machine that didn't end up working out. The 8400GS is supported all the way up to Nvidia WHQL driver version 340.52 from 2014, but it was no use! My issue was definitely CPU or chipset related.

[zaneosak]

Puts the rest of us prep work to shame. That's amazing, haha.

[uygi]

If I could have one wish, it would be to get my old 286 back. Dual 20MB MFM hard drives, VGA graphics, it was a beast...

[Maelstrom]

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[Gustoo]

Most of my gaming in this era was done on a voodoo 5 5500 it was an elite build with a similar viewsonic 19 inch display which was over the top huge compared to anyone else at the time. With a 1ghz thunderbird processor. It was maximum excellent. Before that we had a pentium 3 with MMX technology!!

Got 22 inch CRT's later.

Nice retro build