1. V5500Util.zip Driver
2. readme.txt File Contents

readme.txt Driver File Contents (V5500Util.zip)

Voodoo Game Launcher

Author: Ross Elliott
Contact: RossDElliott@yahoo.com
WebPage: http://www.geocities.com/rossdelliott/

If you have any suggestions, bug reports, requests, etc., then please feel free
to contact me at the address above. I also frequent the newsgroup 3dfx.news.voodoo5
and can usually be reached there as well. If you current news server does not have 
this group, you can access it directly from 3dfx's news server at news.3dfx.com

Topics
======
TWEAKING THE REGISTRY
WHAT ARE ALL THESE SETTINGS?
KNOWN ISSUES AND FUTURE FEATURES
REVISION HISTORY

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TWEAKING THE REGISTRY
=====================
The Voodoo Game Launcher only makes adjustments to the 3dfx Display portion of
the registry. It only makes changes that the 3dfx Tools would make. 
No other changes, additions, or modifications are made. (I hate programs that 
needlessly mess with the registry!) 


WHAT ARE ALL THESE SETTINGS?
============================
Here is a brief description of all the 3dfx Advanced Settings and what they do. 
(Blatenly taken from the 3dfx Tools help file)
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3D Filter Quality 
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The display image can be filtered by averaging pixel values. By using this
overlay filter, the image quality for full-screen 3D applications can be 
improved. Selecting the High option will average more pixels than the Normal 
option, resulting in a smoother but blurrier image, while the Normal option 
averages fewer pixels for a sharper image. The High setting uses two adjacent 
horizontal pixels from a line and the two pixels on the line below (a 2x2 box 
filter) to create one output pixel. The Normal setting uses four adjacent 
samples on a line (a 4x1 linear filter) to create one output pixel. 

Automatic - Select this option to allow your system's software to use video 
filtering as needed. 

Normal - Select this option to use the 4x1 linear filter. 
High - Select this option to use the 2x2 box filter for a sharper video image. 

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Alpha Blending
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This is used to enable dither subtraction on the destination color during alpha
blending. When dither subtraction is enabled, the dither matrix used to convert 
24-bit color to 16-bit color is subtracted from the destination color before 
applying the alpha-blending algorithm. Enabling dither subtraction is used to 
enhance image quality when performing alpha-blending. This is ignored when 
32-bit color rendering is selected. 

Automatic - Select this option to allow your system's software to use dither 
subtraction as needed. 

Sharper - Select this option to enable dither subtraction for a sharper image. 
Smoother - Select this option to disable dither subtraction for a smoother 
image. 

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Anti-Aliasing
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Two or four sub-samples are used per pixel to fill-in the jagged edges of lines 
and smooth the appearance of curves for a more pleasing and realistic visual 
image by taking multiple samples of a scene and blending them together. Enable 
AA, or increase from 2-sample AA to 4-sample AA, to improve image quality. 
Disable AA, or reduce from 4-sample AA to 2-sample AA, to improve 3D performance. 

Single chip only (compatibility mode) - Select this option to use only one of 
the VSA-100 chips on your Voodoo5 card with no AA support if it may be required 
for troubleshooting or debugging purposes. 
Fastest Performance (no Anti-Aliasing) - Select this option to use both of the 
VSA-100 chips on your Voodoo5 card for the absolute highest possible frame rates 
with no Anti-Aliasing support enabled. 
2-sample AA (improved image quality) - Select this option to use both of the 
VSA-100 chips on your Voodoo5 card with 2-sample Anti-Aliasing enabled for a
good balance between high performance and improved image quality. 
4-sample AA (best image quality) - Select this option to use both of the VSA-100 
chips on your Voodoo5 card with 4-sample Anti-Aliasing enabled to provide the 
absolute best possible image quality from your Voodoo5 card. 

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Anti-Aliasing Toggle Key
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Setting the Anti-Aliasting (AA) toggle key for your Voodoo4/5 is an enhanced
feature intended only to demonstate the difference between no AA and Full Scene
Anti-Aliasing (FSAA). Before you continue it is important to understand what
this command is actually doing.

This key is ONLY for demo purposes. DO NOT USE IT IN BENCHMARKING because your
scores WILL NOT INCREASE when toggling AA on and off. The reason for this is
that in order to do any type of AA, you must allocate enough memory for
resolution, color depth, AA samples, buffers, etc for an BEFORE you begin. It
is very bad to change this in the middle of an application, which a true AA
toggle key would do.

Turning on and off the toggle key here will only change the algorithms we use
to calculate AA and WILL NOT free up more memory, which would mean faster
performance.

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Maximum Buffered Frames
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This allows you to limit the number of pending swap buffers to 0, 1, 2, or 3. A 
higher number of pending swap buffers can slow the system's response to input as 
all of the pending swap buffers are processed before the system proceeds to the 
next operation. Higher swaps leads to potentially higher frame rates, but at the 
same time increasing latency (waiting for the card to draw the frame). 

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Depth Precision (16 and 32 bpp)
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This feature optimizes the precision used for depth calculations in 16-bit modes
to improve performance, especially at higher resolutions. This optimization 
could also produce some display artifacts or visual defects in some programs.

Disable - Select this option to use normal depth precision. 
Fast - This setting provides optimized depth precision, and may produce some
       visual defects in some programs. 
Faster - This setting provides maximum depth precision optimization for faster
         performance, but it may produce more visual defects. 

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Glide Splash Screen
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The 3dfx Glide logo screen appears when a program starts that uses the Glide API. 

Enable - Select this option to allow the Glide splash screen to be displayed 
when your Glide programs start. 
Disable - Select this option to prevent the Glide splash screen from being 
displayed when your Glide programs start. 

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Legacy Compressed Textures
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This enables an OpenGL extension for compressing legacy textures in FXT1 format.
Selecting this option can provide more effective use of texture memory and may 
increase performance. 

Enable - Select this option to allow legacy textures to be compressed in FXT1 
format for better performance. 
Disable - Select this option to maintain legacy textures in their original 
compression formats. 

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Level of Detail Bias
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This control changes the Level of Detail (LOD) bias used for MIP mapping. Moving
the slider control will either add or subtract a bias from the LOD computed 
during MIP mapping, making textures appear either sharper or blurrier. Adding 
bias can result in improved visual detail, but may reduce performance 
accordingly. Also, excessive bias can result in texture aliasing.

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MIP Map Dithering
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Enabling MIP map dithering will cause the hardware to blend between pairs of MIP
map levels to produce a full continuum of texture levels. This can result in 
much smoother texturing. However, this can also decrease performance because 
dithered MIP Maps cannot be multi-textured. 

Disable - Select this option to disable MIP map dithering. 
Enable - Select this option to enable MIP map dithering. 

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Rendering Color-depth
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The rendering color-depth determines the number of colors available for 
rendering the 3D graphics. 16-bit-per-pixel, or 16bpp, produces a maximum 
palette of 65,536 colors, which can result in color banding or other visual 
anomalies in some cases. 32-bits-per-pixel, or 32bpp, can produce a palette with
many millions of colors available for rendering, resulting in smoother color 
gradients and shading without color bands or other color-related artifacts. 
Setting this option to "Force 32bpp Rendering" causes older Glide applications 
to render using 32bpp even though they were not originally designed to support 
32bpp rendering under Glide, resulting in improved image quality over 16bpp 
rendering. 

Software Controlled - Select this option to allow the software to choose to 
render 3D graphics using either color-depth. 
Force 32bpp Rendering - Select this option to force software to render 3D 
graphics using 32-bits-per-pixel for color-depth. 

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Triple Buffering
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Enabling Triple Buffering will allocate a third frame buffer. This frame buffer
can increase performance by enabling the hardware to render at the same time 
that the 3D application performs other tasks. However, the additional frame 
buffer required for this uses up video memory that could otherwise be used for 
storing textures. Enabling Triple Buffering could hurt the performance of your 
3D applications that use a lot of textures. 

Disable - Select this option to disable Triple Buffering. 
Enable - Select this option to enable Triple Buffering. 

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V Synch
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This feature synchronizes a game’s maximum 3D rendering frame-rate to the 
vertical refresh rate selected for the current display mode. With a 75 Hz 
vertical refresh rate, for example, a game with V Sync enabled would not be able
to render frames faster than 75 times a second, which can result in pauses or 
lags in the on-screen action as the rendering is delayed to synchronize it with 
the next screen refresh. 

Disable V Sync to allow a game to render frames as fast as it can, even if that 
rate exceeds the screen’s current vertical refresh rate. This can produce a more
fluid and continuous gaming experience, but it can also allow for some screen
tearing or artifacts under certain conditions.

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Z-buffer Optimization
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This entry enables an extension for optimizing the use of the Z-buffer. 
Selecting this option will allow for more effective use of the Z-buffer and may 
increase performance. 

Enable - Select this option to optimize the use of the Z-buffer for improved 
performance in some applications. 
Disable - Select this option if any of your applications show display problems 
while using the optimized Z-buffer setting. 


KNOWN ISSUES AND FUTURE FEATURES
================================
At this time, the Voodoo5 Game Launcher does not reset your Glide/OpenGL/Direct3D
settings after a game is run. This will be changed in a future version and option
will be added to enable it.

Since The Voodoo4, Voodoo5-5500-PCI and Voodoo5-6000 have not yet been released,
I do now know if this program will work with any or all of these cards.

REVISION HISTORY
================
Version History 
0.9 
-Initial Release

0.91 
-Added tray icon and menu "hot list"

0.91a - Tray menu now launches game (duh...stupid mistake) 

0.92 
-Force 32bpp Rendering setting was not being adjusted properly 
-LOD Bias in Glide not saving properly 
-Added Anti-Aliasing Toggle Key for Glide and Direct3D (Ctrl-Alt-A) 
-Added option to load on Windows Startup 
-Added minimize on startup command line parameter "/min" (i.e. run "v5launch.exe 
 /min")
 
0.93 
-Added Windows2000 support 
-Settings.cfg file is no longer case sensitive 
-Fixed Direct3D LOD setting. It was using an incorrect environment string. 
-Changed Glide AA-Toggle key to "NumLock" since "Ctrl-Alt-A" was not behaving
 properly. 
-Added option to add command line parameters to game. 
-Added ability to edit renderer, game path, game name and icon. 
-Synched settings with 3dfx tools, to now the display properties will show to
 current settings. 
-Redesigned "Edit" form. 
-Added user ability to change program/tray icon. Copy an icon into the same
 directory as the program and name it "v5launch.ico" 
-Added functionality to run game via a shortuct. Modify an existing shortcut
 to read "<program dir>\v5launch.exe /run "MyGame.Exe". 
 Example: C:\Utils\V5Launch.exe /run "C:\Games\Quake III Arena" This will start
 the program, load the defined settings for Quake III Arena, run the game and 
 close the program. 
 
0.94
-Add menu option to automatically generate a shortcut to a game using the "/run" command line paramater
-Added icons to tray popup menu.
-Added Default icon when no icon is available for game program.
-Fixed a problem with the tray popup menu lingering a little longer then it's supposed.
-Fixed problem where game list was not refreshing after changing some settings (icon, name, etc.)
-Fixed dupliate entires being created when the "Title" of the game was changed in the edit form.
-Removed the Delete option on the popup menu when no icon was selected
-Updated the readme.txt with information on all the settings.

-0.95 - Not Released (well, it was, but it's long story...heh) 

-0.96 
-VSynch option was being reset when renaming a title. 
-Added dialog to change application icon rather then do it manually. 
-Added an option to reset to the previous settings when a game is finished. (Under Edit->Options) This
 option has no impact on gameplay. I took an average of 10 Quake timedemo's with this option on and
 off and they averaged out to essentially the same numbers. 
-Fixed problem of Direct3D AA Toggle Key not working 
-Add View styles to game list (Small Icons, Large Icons, etc) 
-Remove "Renderer" Options. Program now sets both D3D and Glide settings to be the same. This solves 
 some problems where it's not readily apparent what API a game uses...besides, it was dumb idea to
 begin with <grin> 
-Got rid of awkward "Add New Game" dialogs and replaced it with the "Edit" menu. This also allows you 
 to add the game and configure all your options in one step 
-Added Gamma support (Thanks to everyone who requested it...keep it up!) 
-Added VERY Preliminary Voodoo3 support. I haven't had a chance to fully test it (my machine with the 
 Voodoo3 is all the way in the other room...obviously you can understand the problem of getting up and 
 going over to it...I'll have this fully working by the next release, so I'd appreciate as much 
 feedback on this as possible...) 
 
0.96.1
-Fixed "1.30 is not a valid integer" bug on international (non-US) versions of Windows.
-Added card select option at startup in case you still have old drivers stored in the registry. 
 This will fix the problems some users with a Voodoo5 had that the program thought they had a Voodoo3.

0.96.2
-Fixed an error in ntdll.dll problem with Windows2000

0.97 - August 5th, 2000
-Fixed an error with Triple Buffering and Rendering Color Depth. This was affecting the 3dfx Tools
 settings as well.
-Fixed an error with 3dfx Tools and Anti-Aliasing settings. This was causing the Anti-Aliasing tab
 to be "messed up".
-Tweaked Voodoo3 support. Settings and Options now are more organized.
-Updated LOD settings so that they are -2..2 to be compatible with the 3dfx Tools. NOTE: You may
 have to modify your previous game settings to make sure they are compatible with this new numbering
 scheme.
-Added option to change LOD Range. The default is -2..2 (with 1/4 increments). You can now set them
 to anything (they will still be in 1/4 increments however)
-Added save/delete presets option so you can more easilty create a preset template for your settings.
 Previously, you used to have to modify the settings.cfg file with a text editor.

0.97.1 - August 6th, 2000
-Fixed a bug in the ZBuffer settings where they would not always get set properly.

0.97.2 - August 6th, 2000
-Fixed a problem in settings the "Maximum Buffered Frames" option.
-Fixed an problem when creating a new item and getting the error message "Path cannot be empty!"
 even though the information was already entered.

0.98 - August 31st, 2000
-I believe I've fixed all bugs concerning the 3dfx Tools program not displaying any values or displaying
 them incorrectly.
-Fixed Voodoo5 5500 PCI support!
-Added an option to just set configuration without actually running a game. Just check the "Config Only"
 box and you're set!

0.99 - September 05, 2000
-Fixed LOD Bias problem where the correct value wasn't being set correctly.
-Added logging option accessible under the Edit-Options menu. This will create a log of the key functions
 performed and save them to a file called v5launch.log in your program directory.
-Reworked a lot of the internal code to make things more efficient and clean to look at (mainly for me
 and whenever I decide to release the code so it's not too embarassing...)

0.99.1 - September 06, 2000
-Fixed problem where only RGamma was being set and not BGamma or GGamma (Thanks again David!)
-Fixed a little glitch with the 3dfx Tools Settings where the right value was not being set.
-Added Mip Map Dithering and Maximum Buffered Frames to Direct3D options. 

0.99.2 - 
-Fixed Save Preset error when "Program" does not exists in Settings.cfg
-Added "Override Key" to settings.cfg

1.0 - October 3rd, 2000
-Gamma options are loaded properly from a preset if the are not equal.
-Added new "Depth Precision" options to Glide/OpenGL. You must have the latest Windows9x/Windows
 ME drivers! It does not currently work with Windows2000.
-Added full support for Voodoo4 and Voodoo 5 6000 and their Anti-Aliasing options.
-Added Vertical Synch to 3dfx Tools Glide options. (Only available in latest Windows9x drivers)
-Added new Toggle AA keys and added them to the 3dfx Tools Options (Again, only available in 
 latest Windows9x drivers)
-Added update routine in case user is updating over an older version of the game launcher. (In
 this case, the AAToggle= command in the game.dat file was changed to both glAAToggle= and
 D3DAAToggle= to enable greater choice of options.)