3DFX WORKAROUND FOR PATCHED VERSION U1.0

The current unpatched versions of HardWar do not have support for most modern video accelerator cards. This has vexed pilots with these cards since HardWar's release.

There does seem to be some hope to this situation, though. Ouch (Loyal and GREEDY pilot) first told me he had gotten 3dfx to work by setting HardWar to run in "windowed" mode (available under the "Misc" tab of the Main Launch Screen). I tried a few attempts at this and couldn't get it to work. Ouch had forgotten some of the step he'd taken, but it had worked.

Enter another Loyal Pilot, Matt Stryker. He played with the same "windowed" idea and got the game to run under 3dfx, too. He also remembered everything he had done to get things to work. He posted this to the bulletin board where I picked it up, tried it, and got it to work on two different systems.

This work around really seems to work and HardWar pilots everywhere owe Ouch and Matt Stryker their undying gratitude. You should let them get off the first shot in the next online dogfight you have with them. Then kill them and take their stuff -- It's still HardWar.

The box below presents the step-by-step 3dfx workaround. The only thing you might need (assuming you have the 3dfx video card installed) is the file HARDLUCK.EXE. This is the HardWar cheat file and can be obtained from Software Refinery. Just go to their HardWar section and then to their "Cheats" page. Download the file HARDLUCK.EXE. Run the program and check the checkbox to add a tab to HardWar's Main Launch Screen. This tab is called "Misc" and is needed to "window" HardWar.

3dfx WORKAROUND   STEP 1 --  Right-click a blank space on your desktop and select properties from the pop-up menu. Now select the "Settings" tab.   STEP 2 --  Go down to the "Color" dropdown box and select "High Color (16-bit). Look at the box to the right and make a note of what your resolution is -- i.e. 800x600. Now click the "Apply" button if you've made changes and let Windows do its happy dance until the setting take effect.   STEP3 --  Now open HardWar's Main Launch Screen and click the "Misc" tab. If you don't have this tab you need to go to Software Refinery's HardWar "Cheats" page and download and install HARDLUCK.EXE.   STEP 4 --  Check the "Windowed" box under the Misc tab. This seems to let HardWar take better advantage of Windows   STEP 5 --  Now click the "Display" tab on the Main Launch Screen. Select "3dfx" in the "Rendering" drop-down box. Now select whatever resolution you had set in the Windows Display Properties in step 2.   STEP 6 --  Now exit HardWar and then restart it. Launch a game as you regularly would. You may get a spam screen from your 3dfx device. This is good. If you get errors, click through them and see how the game looks for yourself. The game looked and played better on both of the systems I tried this on and the 3dfx was definitely enabled.   TROUBLESHOOTING --   If there are any problems, try exiting the game, double-checking your settings, and rebooting your machine. If tinkering around doesn't help, just go back to Direct3D. it ain't all that bad. You just hate to have an expensive accelerator card you can't use.