Darkplaces installation help Required (plz)

[Telomere]

Hi folks, i'm a new member, but an old school Quakeworld player who's trying to get Darkplaces going on Windows 7 64-bit and having some difficulty. I've been following the guide here but alas without much luck. Whenever I run darkplaces.exe, I get absolutely nothing. Just a completely black screen. In fact, I can't even quit out of it once it goes black, I get locked out. Nothing works, I can't reach task manager, an I have to reset the machine.


My folder structure is as follows


First, standard install to c:\games...

-c:\games\quake <- I unarchived darkplaces to here
--c:\games\quake\id1 <- pak0 and pak1 are here



Is there a definitive guide to installing darkplaces? I thought there may be a sticky guide or something here in the forums, but I haven't found one yet.

Forgive me if I'm doing something daft here, but its quite a while since I last played Quake. I recently dusted down a cdr I found with a recorded demo of a friend an I playing from 1996. So I thought it'd be pretty cool to loadup an playback the demo using the latest, greatest version.

Many thanks in advance for any help offered.

[DaniOcampo1992]

Hello Telomere, and welcome to QuakeOne!

The first question I have for ya, does the other Quake clients work properly? (Example: JoeQuake)
Regarding your problem, at first, I supose you have unzipped the DarkPlaces package to you c:/games/quake/ directory..
If that's the case, there's something wrong around there..
What video card do you have? Are their drivers up to date?

[MH]

DarkPlaces works fine on Windows 7 64-bit. It's what I use and I occasionally run DP.

As well as what's suggested above, you could try using a windowed mode. Fullscreen modes are slightly dangerous in that you can try to set one that your video card and/or monitor doesn't support, and - assuming the engine lets you - odd things can happen. Start it up in a windowed mode and you'll get something that works, then switch to fullscreen later on using the video options menu; DP will remember your setting and continue using it in future.

My bet is that what's really happening here though is that you're getting the Windows Firewall "do you want to allow this program to access the internet" dialog. By running fullscreen, DP is putting itself as the topmost window, so this doesn't show. This dialog will however pause DP (or any other program) until you answer it, but as you can't see it you can't answer it, so hence the black screen and apparent lockup.

Running windowed initially will allow the dialog to pop to the foreground, you can then answer it and it will go away forever, and from there you can switch to fullscreen as I said above.

[Telomere]

Hi guys, thanks for the warm welcome.

Well, it seems there is something funny going on.

I installed joequake, when attempting to run the gl version the screen switches to a low resolution and then gives me the error message "joequake-gl.exe has stopped working". Running the normal version works, but its just standard quake.

I tried tenebrae too, which gives exactly the same black screen lockup as dp, so I had to restart the system (halfway through typing this actually :/ )


My video card is a Radeon X1900, a bit older now but surely I should be able to run these without a complete lockup? I just finished playing some oblivion. With the X1900, i'm locked to the legacy drivers "10-2_legacy_vista32-64_wdm.exe" if this is any help.

I'm stumped. It seems if i attempt to run any gl versions it crashes. I've tried uninstalling the video card and reinstalling the drivers, this didnt seem to make any difference. The only thing i can think of, is that I previously had an hd4350 card installed in this machine, which was truly woeful, so I removed it and installed my old X1900 again, windows detected it upon startup, I tried a few games and everything seemed fine



Edit: Ok, little update. I tried DirectQ which DID work. An it used all the high res textures i'd downloaded too. So, it seems I have everything in the right place, it just doesn't seem to like gl.

Further update: Going on MH's advice (Thanks!) I made a shortcut for the darkplaces.exe and set it to run minimized so I could see what was going on, I could see it running on the taskbar as Darkplaces-quake, so it was trying to startup properly but I got "Darkplaces.exe has stopped working" which I was thankfully able to cancel out of.

Any ideas? :/

[LambentHammerBurst]

Do you have a opengl32.dll in your .../quake/ folder? If so, delete it and try again.

[Telomere]

Do you have a opengl32.dll in your .../quake/ folder? If so, delete it and try again.

Nope, no opengl32.dll, thanks tho

[MH]

I'd be shocked if DirectQ didn't work, even netbooks can handle that (it runs great - try it sometime). But it doesn't have all of the graphical goodies that DP brings, so it's not for everyone.

Recent versions of DarkPlaces have a Direct3D driver so they might be worth a try. I'm not sure how experimental it is, or if it's considered stable yet, but I have played around with it a little and it seems OK. Set vid_dx9 to 1 in your autoexec.cfg and it should come up OK.

You can grab an autobuild from here: http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplac...eautobuild.zip

Not really recommended for general use I suppose, but it would help to determine if the cause is something to do with OpenGL that your PC doesn't like or something to do with DarkPlaces that your PC doesn't like.

[MH]

Nope, no opengl32.dll, thanks tho

Incidentally, this file is sometimes hidden depending on which version of GLQuake you originally got, so turning on "show hidden files" might reveal more.

[Telomere]

Recent versions of DarkPlaces have a Direct3D driver so they might be worth a try. I'm not sure how experimental it is, or if it's considered stable yet, but I have played around with it a little and it seems OK. Set vid_dx9 to 1 in your autoexec.cfg and it should come up OK.

You can grab an autobuild from here: http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplac...eautobuild.zip

Not really recommended for general use I suppose, but it would help to determine if the cause is something to do with OpenGL that your PC doesn't like or something to do with DarkPlaces that your PC doesn't like.

Thanks for this suggestion, I tried this version and I get the same black screen scenario, oddly enough this time, it does it even if I create a shortcut and set it it to run minimised

I tried the darkplaces-sdl.exe as well btw, the screen turns black for a sec, and then comes back to the desktop. An I enabled 'show hidden files', definately no opengl32.dll lurking in there.

Sigh.

Well, I think I might try a complete OS reinstallation an get everything back to fresh again, maybe i've been messing with something else recently thats caused a prob, although I can't think what it is. I really appreciate all the help so far guys, time to hit the hay for a while I think, figure this out in the morning.

[Baker]

DirectQ not only gets the high frame rate, but appears to be the most likely to run properly And maybe even the most debugged.

And to think it didn't even exist a couple of years ago.

I'm thinking maybe DirectQ should be the first choice "go to" client. It is strange that we live in an age of "Windows" fragmentation (64 bit, 32 bit, Vista, XP, Windows 7, decent video drivers versus older ones, and on and on). And maybe even IPv6 coming in the next couple of years.

[MH]

Well like I said, it's not for everyone. But then again it doesn't try to be, which is a valid approach, and one that gives some additional luxury in being able to make certain decisions (native APIs, ditching legacy hardware support, etc) which would otherwise not be possible and which can lead to a certain extra layer of stability and performance.

[Baker]

My video card is a Radeon X1900, a bit older now but surely I should be able to run these without a complete lockup? I just finished playing some oblivion. With the X1900, i'm locked to the legacy drivers "10-2_legacy_vista32-64_wdm.exe" if this is any help.

I didn't see this. DarkPlaces does not play nice with Radeons. I had a laptop with one a few years back.

Consider an older ATI card like you have effectively non-supported for the purpose of DarkPlaces. Don't want to bore you with the long version of this, but quite a bit of bad sentiment was felt regarding Radeon cards by some of the DarkPlaces loyalists due to drivers reporting extensions that they didn't have and several other problems preventing DarkPlaces from working on them.

[Telomere]

Hi guys, one fresh windows reinstallation later and i'm back up and running again. Well, when I ran it this time, success! It worked, albeit extremely slowly, it's crawling, and I haven't actually put any larger textures in it yet or anything.

I think I know what may have caused the previous problems but I don't know why it happened. I use virtualbox to do some virtualisation, in that I enabled the 3D acceleration, which is an experimental feature (you have to boot into safe mode just to activate it) It ran fine, but it was a bit after I'd done this that I removed the hd4350 card, and fitted my X1900 back in. I saw something was up when I tried to start virtualbox again later only to be greeted by gl errors. Somehow it's settings messed up my whole system's gl settings, I've no idea what it did.

Its moot at the moment now anyway, because now I CAN run it, but as I said its as slow as molasses. In fact when it started I tried to navigate to the video options an it was stuttering so much that it just crashed out as i got there. Are there any optimisation methods or anything I can do?

I didn't see this. DarkPlaces does not play nice with Radeons. I had a laptop with one a few years back.

Consider an older ATI card like you have effectively non-supported for the purpose of DarkPlaces. Don't want to bore you with the long version of this, but quite a bit of bad sentiment was felt regarding Radeon cards by some of the DarkPlaces loyalists due to drivers reporting extensions that they didn't have and several other problems preventing DarkPlaces from working on them.

Hmm, this ain't good. I feel an upgrade coming on. Whats the best I can hope to do in this situation really then? As what i'd like to do is dig out this old demo of a friend and I playing from years ago, ideally play it through a much better looking version of quake and then save it off as an avi to show him later.

[DaniOcampo1992]

I don't know the x1900.. But if you have the possibility of an upgrade, well, that's a good idea..