3Dfx Blood  v8-15-2014 Release 3 © RTCM MrFlibble , Corvin

Introduction | What You Need | Steps to Begin | Notes

Introduction

In 1998 3Dfx Interactive released a version of Blood that would take advantage of 3dfx graphics cards. This version was distributed by Monolith in the form of an upgrade for the registered versions of the game.

The 3dfx version features various enhancements such as 16-bit graphics, bilinear filtering, and transparency effects.
 *3DFX.EXE was released in it's alpha stage. It does not support voxels (it will use sprites instead), it evokes visual glitches (skybox's won't be seamless and status bar is scaled wrong), and suffers from memory leaks.

Blood 3dfx can be played in DOSBox. However, you will need a DOSBox build that supports Glide emulation, and a Glide wrapper.

Playing OUWB v1.21 with 3Dfx...
You will actually be playing with a blood v1.20 without the v1.21 changes/fixes. The official Blood 3DFX Alpha EXE was made prior to v1.21 coming out on retail. However any updates v1.21 did to the game data remains. Such as EXE's, .ART, .RFF etc...

What You Need

o DOSBox Taewoong's SVN Daum (DOSBox /w Glide support)
o nGlide (Glide API wrapper)
o Blood Registered OUW v1.21 
o Blood Registered 3dfx patch v1.0 (the custom OUWB-3DFX_patch.7z file)
 

All Downloads can be found in the RTCM Download Sections under general-tools-dosxp and the OUW 3DFX patch can be downloaded from blood-patches.

Steps to Begin

Step 1. Install Taewoong's DOSBox SVN Daum. You can get an installer or a files-only package. In the latter case, simply unpack the archive into any directory of your choice (preferably not on the system drive), e.g. D:\DOSBox.

Step 2. Install nGlide.

Step 3. Open the directory where DOSBox SVN Daum is installed, and delete the file called glide2x.dll (or rename it into something else, e.g. glide2x.dl_). This will allow nGlide to function properly which uses its own dll.

Step 4. Open the file dosbox.conf, which is also found in the DOSBox SVN Daum directory, with Notepad or any other text editing program. Find and change the following values (only values that need to be changed are shown):
 
Code:
[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fullresolution=original
output=direct3d

[dosbox]
vmemsize=4
memsize=63

[cpu]
core=dynamic
cycles=max

[glide]
glide=true

Step 5. If you haven't already, install Blood registered version. Make sure that this is the latest version (v1.21).

NOTE: Blood uses a DOS-based installer.

Step 6. Get the registered 3dfx patch (OUWB-3DFX_patch.7z).
Unzip the executable files (3dfx.exe and bl3dfx.bat) and place it in the same directory where Blood OUW is installed.

Step 7. Create a desktop shortcut pointing to the DOSBox SVN Daum dosbox.exe

Step 8. Make sure you set your BLOOD.CFG video to ScreenWidth = 640 , ScreenHeight = 480 via the standard setup.exe. Drag SETUP.EXE onto the desktop icon for DOSBox SVN Daum.
o Set the sound FX card to Sound Blaster (the program should correctly auto-detect DOSBox settings).
o Set the music card to General MIDI, port 330h (default).
o Set the screen resolution to 640x480. (Important if you haven't already)
o Configure the controls to your liking.

Step 9. Save your changes and exit setup.

Step 10. Drag bl3dfx.bat onto the DOSBox SVN Daum Desktop Icon and it will run. When the 3dfx version is started for the first time, it will convert game textures for future use. This process will occur during play and you may notice some delay. Upon completion you will be-able to play in 3DFX smoother.

 

Notes

NOTE: When the 3dfx version is installed, you have the option to play either the regular version or the 3dfx version. Run blood.exe for the regular version and 3DFX.EXE for the 3dfx version. Both versions have use the same configuration file, and save games are not interchangeable.

On a side note, You can set output=openglnb if direct3d doesn't work for you. Most modern graphics cards should be OpenGL and Direct3D compliant anyway.  You do not want "opengl" as an output or you'll get double the filtering and the game will be extremely blurry.

*Blood stuttered some, frames seemed to drop. Maybe future versions of DOSBox will run smoother.

**If you get a standard video adapter error(like a blank screen), run Blood's setup.exe and set the resolution to 640x480. I couldn't get Blood to run in a window or a higher resolution no matter what I tried. It seems v1.0 of the 3dfx executable only allows low and mid video settings.