Can't get Outcast to work on G400--any ideas?

[tomr]

Has anyone out there gotten outcast to run on a G400 system? I'm running Win95 OSR2, Direct X 7 and 5.25 matrox drivers. The game loads, but then the screen goes black and the system stops responding.

I spoke with Outcast tech support and they said "we don't support the Matrox chipset" That sounded a little strange, but why argue with the tech support guy? I thought that the whole point of DirectDraw was that it didn't matter what chipset you're using.

Anyway, if anyone has gotten outcast to work, or can confirm that it really can't work, I'd love to hear about it.

Tom

[RyanJBlack]

Hi, Tom.

I had problems getting Outcast to run on my old Mystique 220, and here's what I did to get it to work (it wouldn't run in FULL-SCREEN, despite the fact that the mystique is capable of 320x240x16)

Download SciTech Display Doctor (can't remember where it is from, but you can find it, I'm sure, if you search)
Install it, so you'll get VESA modes. (it's shareware, but I recommend you purchase it because it's time-limited, and it has some cool features)
Scitech display doctor has a Outcast-on-Mystique-lifesaving feature that lets you use a VESA (SciTech) driver set instead of your video card's natural drivers (e.g. Matrox). There should be an option in SDD to "Switch Video Drivers", so try using the Scitech driver, not the Matrox driver.

It worked for me, anyway, and it seems to bypass the problems I had with my Mystique. Of course, you'll lose TV-OUT, and DVD, and 3D support, most likely... but you can switch your drivers back to Matrox's G400 drivers and re-boot any time you're not playing Outcast.

Again, I tried it on a Mystique 220, not a G400, so I don't know. Hope this helps. I'm curious if it'll work for you.

Cheers,
Ryan Black
rjblack@ualberta.ca

[Bilbo]

Dunno about the G400 yet (waiting for my Bro to finish the game so I can *cough* borrow it) But when setting it up on his AGP G100 I had to actually set up the monitor refresh rates for those resolutions using the "Monitor Settings" option in PowerDesk. Some Monitor "inf" files for W95/98 don't seem to have the info. for those "low" resolutions. Soon as I set those resolutions up, bang, in it went and a runs sweetly.
Now I just need him to let me borrow the CD's

------------------
G400 32MB DualHead,
PIII450@504,
64Mb,
QDI Brilliant 1 Mobo,
Goldstar 32X CDROM,
6.4Gb UDMA SAMSUNG HD,
3.2GB Quantum Fireball UDMA HD,
Int. IDE ZIP Drive,
ASUSCOM ISDN TA (Internal)
10/100MB Fast Ethernet Card,
SB AWE64 Gold,
Belinea 10 70 10, 17" Monitor,
Hmmmm and a Floppy Drive


[This message has been edited by Bilbo (edited 16 October 1999).]

[KvHagedorn]

Outcast tech support eh? What a snide, ignorant, superior attitude. Looks like that's one more game I won't be buying. Heh.. screw you, Outcast techie dumbass.

------------------
Kind Regards,

KvH

[tomr]

Ryan, Bilbo:

Thanks, I think you've put me on the right track. It turned out that SciTech doesn't support the G400 yet, but those guys seem pretty on the ball, so I'll wait and see.

Interestingly, the SciTech VESA compatability test hangs in the same way that Outcast does. That makes me think that there might be a bug in the low-resolution VESA code for the G400. Is that in the on-board BIOS? I got the latest from Matrox, but no help.

Does anyone from Matrox read these postings?

[tomr]

KvH:

I know what you mean, but I try to cut tech support people a lot of slack. I did that sort of thing for a while, and you just can not imagine how crappy a job it is. (There's a web site somewhere of crazy tech support stories that's one of the funniest things I've seen on the web...If I find the url I'll post it.)

[tomr]

Oh well. Infogrames confirmed that outcast won't work with the G400, and has offered me a refund.

This leads me to two questions: Anyone care to recommend an RPG game to spend my $40 on? I've been in the 1st-person shooter and flight sim world for the last few years, haven't kept up on RPGs at all.

And question two: Is matrox the right choice? I'm really a fan, for some reason, but from my own experiences and from reading this forum, it's beginning to seem like compatability is going to be a constant issue.

Opinions?

[KvHagedorn]

Have you read the front page of MURC lately? http://www.murc.ws
Ant has an idea there.

------------------
Kind Regards,

KvH

[KvHagedorn]

I suppose you're right about the tech support guy. It's hard to have an answer immediately at the ready for every weird problem that crops up. It's possible the guy just didn't know how to solve the problem, so he just said that it wouldn't work.

------------------
Kind Regards,

KvH

[Ant]

Word from Matrox is that there are no problems that they know of with Outcast, obviously they don't know much.

[RAB]

I, too, have had nothing but problems with Outcast on my K6-2 350 and G200. The best suggestion I have is to run the game at half your normal screen resolution. If you are using 800x600, run Outcast at 400x300, etc. Since OC only goes to 512x384, you will have to limit your regular display to 1024x768. I still have crashes using the 5.21 drivers, but I can at least play the game for about half an hour now before it crashes.

Save often.

I don't know if this will help on any particular system, but its worth a try. Also, use the Cinema mode in the game setup.

RAB

[This message has been edited by RAB (edited 20 October 1999).]

[LAMFDTK]

I have played the Demo of out cast on a G400 no problem. Look in your game folder and notice the individual files for each resolution. select the on that you will use and play with the settings. Start low and work your way up. Do not use full screen. this is another game that needs a cray to run. I had it working @800x600. The funny thing with this and all RPG for me is after a short time, I could care less I the hero saves the town or finds the weapon or save the universe. Thats when I uninstalled the game. You can get it to work I did.

[jws]

I installed Outcast and it ran ok. I played for a few minutes. Now, I must say that I was not impressed with the graphics. There may have been something wrong or I may have had something not right, because it was really grainy looking. Then again, it's not 3d accelerated, so maybe the game just looks like crap.

btw, I have a G400 Max, 5.30 drivers, Directx7, Win98, Celeron 366 overclocked to 413.
I have no idea what resolution I installed it in, but I'm sure I would have
tried the best.

Jeff

[This message has been edited by jws (edited 20 October 1999).]

[This message has been edited by jws (edited 20 October 1999).]

[cmoss]

I've had Outcast on my PIII-500 + G400 (+ BE6 + SBlive) for over a month now, with no problems. I'm running it at 512x384, and it looks great (sure it's low res, but the environments are gorgeous). The game is fantastic, certainly one of my favorites this year.
I am still using the 5.13 drivers, so maybe that has something to do with it (didn't want to upgrade to 5.25 because of the SS2 problems, and now I'm just being lazy).
Chris

[surferpop]

P3 550 @616
outcast @ 512x384
g400 max
No problems
Looks good considering it's not accelerated.

p.s. 5.30 drivers

[This message has been edited by surferpop (edited 20 October 1999).]