Neverwinter Nights WORKS on a v5/5500 and win98. I have seen many people asking how to get NWN to run on the V5. There is some misinformation going around that it's not possible 'cause NWN needs openGL 1.2 and the V5 drivers only have opengl 1.1 ICD. THIS IS NOT TRUE. NWN runs fine with the 1.1 ICD, provided you start it in just the right way... :-) Here is a recipe that makes the game work for me - I hope it works for you too. However, I don't guarantee anything... If it doesnt work for you then I'm sorry for getting your hopes up. However maybe you can use some of the information here to work out a solution. The critical points when NWN starts up seem to be the transitions between the splash screens --> movie --> game screen. Under most situations, you end up with either a crash or just a blank screen at the end. I see a lot of people here reporting a "blank screen" after the intro. I was getting that too, until I stumbled on a recipe that works around it. After some trial and error (about 2 days worth), I think I have a reliable way that gets the game loaded and working. I have experimented with variations on this recipe, and ONLY ONE METHOD WORKS. If I had access to the NWN source code, I could probably figure out why, but I don't :-( This recipe is specifically for a V5/5500 on win98. It might work on other systems, but I don't know. My CPU is an AMD duron 1Ghz (actually it's my wifes machine :-)) Drivers ======= You NEED the x3dfx-1.08.04 drivers. I mean it. I experimented with others, and they all failed except for this one. The filename is x3dfx_V5_Win9X_1.08.04.exe, available from any good voodoo site - try www.voodoofiles.com. * You should leave the settings for this driver on their defaults until you have got it working - I have found that changing the driver settings can stop the game from loading. I'm looking into it now to see which settings are causing problems. Ok - got that driver installed and working? Good... (ps I tried the "underground" beta 1.09 driver, and it didnt work - blank screen syndrome.) I assume that you have directx 8.1 installed. NWN offers to install it, but I didn't need to because I already had it. I have my desktop running as 1152x864x32. This may not be a factor, but I thought I'd mention it just in case there's something magic about starting NWN from that resolution :-) Install the game, up to the point where it has run the nwconfig program - it will probably suggest 800x600 mode. Accept this and then quit out without starting the game. This will create the nwconfig.ini and nwn.ini files. This is the first hurdle to pass - if you don't have the 1.08.04 drivers installed then nwconfig will either crash or complain that it can't find any OpenGL drivers. (Sometimes I have seen the first game menu come up without text on any of the buttons. This seems harmless, and will be correct the next time you start the game.) To get a working cursor, you HAVE to change the "Enable HardwareMouse=1" line in nwn.ini to "Enable HardwareMouse=0". Do that before continuing. Now, to start the game... pay close attention. Good and Bad ============ There are 2 different ways that NWN can start up - the "good" way and the "bad" way. If it starts the "good" way then you will end up with a working game. If it starts the "bad" way then you'll end up with either a crash-to-desktop of the dreaded blank screen of death. You can tell them apart because of the way the splash screens behave when you start the game. I'll descibe them both here so you know what to look for: The "good" startup will NOT show the white ATARI splash screen, and it will show the Bioware Dragon and other splash screens off-centre. i.e. The game will still be running at your desktop resolution when it shows the splash screens, so they will be displayed as 800x600 in the top left corner of the screen. The "bad" startup shows all the splash screens (including the ATARI one) centered properly, and the game will have already switched resolution to 800x600 (or whatever you have chosen). When this happens you have no choice but to reboot. NWN will not start up if you see this sort of behaviour. When you see a "good" startup, DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING until the movie starts. If you press a key, or click the mouse prior to the start of the movie then you will just end up with the blank screen syndrome or no mouse, and you'll have to kill it with CTRL-ALT-DEL and start again. When the intro movie starts playing, press the SPACE bar. You should see the game screen come up, with a working mouse. The game is running successfully. IMPORTANT! Don't let the movie play to completion, or the game will crash to desktop, and you'll have to reboot before you can try again. Obviously the V5 has had its internal state scrambled by something that happens at the end of the intro movie, and pressing SPACE while the movie is playing skips past it. That's it. Hope it works for you. It's made me very happy. *NOTE* I have sometimes had the game quit to desktop after showing the bioware dragon splash screen. To fix this, try running the nwconfig.exe from the NWN directory, and make sure you press the "scan" button and then the "test" button. It should show a blank screen and then return ok. After accepting the suggested recolution, try running the game again as per the instructions above. It should be ok now. If nwconfig complains that you don't have a valid OpenGL driver installed, reboot and try again :-) Clearly there is some part of the V5 which is not being reliably initialised. I'm sure the correct fix would only be a few extra lines of OpenGL / Glide startup code... p.s. You'll have to turn off the shadows and stuff in the video config for it to be playable, but it still looks very nice. I'd suggest you get something faster than my 1G duron though :-( regards, Bird -------------------------- Notes on performance -------------------- You need a fast system to use the V5 for this game - I guess that's because a lot of the features are being done by the host CPU. My initial tests were done on a system with a 1Ghz duron, and the speed was borderline ( around 10fps, sometimes lower). When I dropped the V5 into my main gaming rig (1.5Ghz athlon, ASUS A7V333 Mb, DDR333 RAM) the framerates were fine - around 20fps and higher. To make the game playable however, you have to run at 800x600 with the video slider set to "fast". This disables all the environment video effects etc, but the game still looks ok without them. I improved my performance another 20% or so by playing with the 3dfx control panel, enabling HSR, mip mapping, triple-buffering etc. It's worth experimenting a bit to see what you can get. By comparison, my main gaming rig usually has a GF4-4600, and with the game running at 1152x864 with all video options enabled, I get around 20 - 30 fps. Sure it looks better, but IMHO the game is just as playable on either card PROVIDED YOU HAVE A FAST MACHINE. Don't bother trying to play this on a p2-400 if you have a Voodoo5 :-)