Hello. How can I download Podhacks, or any mod that makes the GOG version run at highter resolutions, or on the other hand, in software /mmx mode? :)
Thanks

Hey, ryuhei64,

You can download PodHacks here:
http://pod.nicode.net/gold/gog/

To make POD run in higher resolutions, you have to use a newer version of nGlide than the one provided with the POD installer. To do that, you must first use PodHacks, and then download a newer nGlide from here:
http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide

Then start the nGlide Configurator (or maybe it was called Configure... sorry, haven't done this in a while) and set the resolution. You can run POD in 1024x768 and higher.

About the software mode... There is a weird way of doing it, which I've described here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/pod/how_to_get_the_old_look_and_feel_of_pod_on_a_newer_os

If you want to try getting the software mode to work, do make a backup copy of your installation folder before doing anything.

Cheers,
Darkriot (aka Stealth)

hi Nico, i'm using PodHacks the latest version with POD2_0 retail gold version. how do i get the redirect audio Track02.wav to play? i cant load any tracks from the .iso file and not sure where to place said mp3/wav in DATA folder.

The audio track is on the retail CD-ROM (mixed mode CD), but often missing on cover mounts and ISOs found on the internet.
The "Track02.wav" (or "Track02.mp3" on Vista and newer) has to be placed into the root directory where the game has been installed (usually C:\UbiSoft\Pod2_0).

hi yes, it worked, just realized it was there in the root all along. thanks for the indispensable app, fixes the stuttering sound/no cd prompts too, much needed for the retail version.

just one more question please, how to play at higher res 800x600 with the gog version, i used podhacks ticked the last option to override glide wrapper for gog but it still is the same res. do i need to use dgVoodoo1.50Beta2? i tried but it didnt run properly. i also tried dgvoodoo 2 but it not work either. i'm on windows 8.1

I didn't try dgVoodoo for ages (I'm running POD on Wine)...
You might try nGlide, rename the glide2x.dll in the game directory to glide2x-gog.dll, and use the nGlide config tool (search for it in the start/app menu) to override the resolution.

Hello, thank you nicode, your hack by renaming the glide2x.dll works perfectly!
Now I can see the 3dfx logo at the beginning of the game, and the game is obviously better.

Just had a look at the readme again...
svn.nicode.net/podhacks/bin/PodHacks.txt

You so did the line length on purpose, making every line end at the same width in the paragraph, right? ;D

You will stumble over this tick in some files :-)

Yeah, also in the format documentations =D Makes you look even more professional ;3

I recently stumbled a bit through the resolution switching code of Pod.

You know DisplayMode=6 or =7 starts Pod in 800x600. However, some check when using Alt+F7 doesn't make you able to toggle back to 800x600, just 640x480, which is bad in case you wanna disable the automatic visibility of far away objects.

There's some check whether Pod goes from 512x386 to 800x600 or just 640x480 which I didn't fully grasp yet - probably some hardware check, maybe not all 3Dfx cards supported 800x600 (it checks a value recorded near a hardware query part and if it's bigger than 960000, which would be 800x600x2... 2 being the buffer count maybe? Still, it should be >= and not > then...)

However, I nopped it out, and could toggle back to 800x600 (if Pod was started without DisplayMode=6 or =7, I have to restart it because nGlide doesn't resize the window correctly and crops away a part of the image then). Not sure if you wanna implement in your PodHacks, or rather patch the check to always return true; here's a screenshot of the code:
http://ray.syroot.com/pod/altf7switchingcheck.png

The patch to nop out the stupid jump is:
0xA5994 74 1D --> 90 90

In case you wondered, the DisplayMode setting goes through some switches until the final resolution is determined:
Ini -> PodInternalRes -> GrScreenResolution_t
2 -> 8 -> GR_RESOLUTION_640x400
3 -> 8 -> GR_RESOLUTION_640x400
4 -> 7 -> GR_RESOLUTION_512x384
5 -> 7 -> GR_RESOLUTION_512x384
6 -> 9 -> GR_RESOLUTION_800x600
7 -> 9 -> GR_RESOLUTION_800x600
else -> 4 -> GR_RESOLUTION_640x480

It looks like UbiSoft forgot to check the hardware when reading the Ini for the first time (thinking it could never be set to 6 or 7 anyway), thus making that 800x600 at startup possible (and probably failing at calling grSstWinOpen on real 3Dfx PCs which didn't support it).

Here's a test video of it on Skyrace and eviH: https://youtu.be/khiyNaV2V9s

Hi nicode,

Not sure if this is a bug, but I've been having a problem with PodHacks 3.9m when Ctrl + Y restart race, will cause a memory error crashing the game.

I've tried some older versions but it still crashes. It sounds like there are overlaps of the countdown sound when crashing.

This is with nGlide 1.05 and PodHacks default settings. My installation is Large MMX + 3dfx.

I've tried disabling each PodHacks setting but does not seem to affect it.

If I disable PodHacks I can restart race without crash/error. But without it, the CD music does not play and I would prefer using PodHacks for its useful settings.

Thanks for the report. I'll have a look at it as soon as I have some spare time (next week or so). Which Windows or Wine version are you using?

Thanks. In the meantime, could you be so kind to send me a zipped crash dump file (see post 20) to nico@nicode.net. So I might have an idea while looking at the call stack before I setup a Windows machine for testing purposes....