What are the System Requirements for RVGL?

Report issues or bugs in RVGL or ask for help regarding any Re-Volt topic.
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Sauss-Ente
Posts: 34
From: Behind the forest

What are the System Requirements for RVGL?

Unread post by Sauss-Ente » Sun Oct 15, 2023 2:17 pm

Looks like RVGL is running on my newer Windows XP (from 2007), which is nice. I'd like to get it running on an older XP system from 2001 as well, but an error occurs "program can't be initialised" and RVGL doesn't start. What are the minimum system requirements? Also, have any tests been made on Windows 98?
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agg1401
Posts: 120
From: Kayseri

Re: What are the System Requirements for RVGL?

Unread post by agg1401 » Mon Oct 16, 2023 3:39 am

Hello.

For RVGL to work, your graphics card must support OpenGL.
Turkish Re-Volter.

:re-volt: :re-volt: :re-volt: :re-volt:
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Sauss-Ente
Posts: 34
From: Behind the forest

Re: What are the System Requirements for RVGL?

Unread post by Sauss-Ente » Tue Oct 17, 2023 3:24 pm

I'm trying this with an 20-year-old ATI Radeon 9600, supporting OpenGL 1.1. It should work in theory.

Error message:
The application could not be initialised (0xc0000005).
(loose translation)

Might be a Windows error on that particular machine.

Odd question, does RVGL have a DirectX mode or some kind of fallback? And does it have some kind of debugging option, protocolling what it's doing?
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Sauss-Ente
Posts: 34
From: Behind the forest

Re: What are the System Requirements for RVGL?

Unread post by Sauss-Ente » Thu Oct 19, 2023 4:31 pm

On another computer (of around 2007 with only some unknown onboard-graphics), this time a fresh Windows XP installation, but without any graphic drivers. So the generic VGA driver is used, which says it can use OpenGL 1.1. However on starting Re-Volt, an error message comes up "Unable to inistialise OpenGL 2.0"! So Re-Volt requires at least OpenGL 2.0? Anyone tried to run RVGL on that old hardware?
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Huki
Developer
Posts: 399

Re: What are the System Requirements for RVGL?

Unread post by Huki » Wed Oct 25, 2023 12:46 pm

The current RVGL builds require at least Windows XP with the latest service pack applied (that is SP3 for 32-bit, or SP2 for 64-bit). Even if we are to build the game binary for an older Windows version, possibly one or more dependencies (eg, SDL2) will still have the XP requirement. So running on Win98 is not possible unless we build the game itself and all of its dependencies with an old compiler toolchain.

Now coming to OpenGL, the game provides two different renderers: a modern shader-based renderer that requires at least OpenGL 2.0, and the older fixed function renderer that requires OpenGL 1.1. If you're getting the "Unable to inistialise OpenGL 2.0" error, it means the game attempted to initialize the shader-based renderer. Although, upon failure the game should automatically fall back to the OpenGL 1.1 renderer. This isn't what happens?

RVGL also ships with a Direct3D translation library called ANGLE. This however requires at least Direct3D 9 support on the hardware.

Lastly, I'm curious whether your hardware is older than this one: ;)
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=49626
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Sauss-Ente
Posts: 34
From: Behind the forest

Re: What are the System Requirements for RVGL?

Unread post by Sauss-Ente » Sun Nov 12, 2023 10:27 pm

Funny coincidence... when racing on the popular mod track being called "Quake!", there is my exact machine on the floor! A Deskpro with a Pentium 3 (1 GHz). Nice detail.

I tested Windows XP on a 400 MHz Celeron as well. Performancewise, that kind of machine would be better of with Windows 9x. But SDL2 requires Windows XP indeed. Sorry, can't go into testing RVGL on that old piece as it's a tight installation and only has some 1999 onboard graphics chip.

OpenGL 1.1 fallback sounds good, but it seems that Pentium 3 machine requires a different graphics card. The currently used Radeon 9600 plays everything else, but not RVGL. The problem is somewhere else, like a driver issue maybe, maybe this thing has no good OpenGL support. And the other computer has many parts of a company being called "VIA", rather the opposite of high-performance or games. Even after being installed cleanly, it feels like 7 years older than it actually is. Anyways, those are projects for another time, if it's really worth looking into.
We can conclude that nearly any Windows XP computer with an optimised graphics card could run RVGL, that's how it looks. So a good achievement for RVGL.
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