Just thought I'd pass this along in case there were some folks who had missed it...

I was pleased to discover that version 1.005a runs fine in GLIDE, software, ddraw, and D3d...providing you use the configtool.exe from the 1.0034a disk version of the game. nGlide supports GLIDE 3.0 very well under D3d, but both the D3d & GLIDE versions of 1.005a run very slowly compared to 1.005a running in either software or ddraw 2d...! Loading and saving games is near instantaneous for me while those operations are comparatively *very slow* under D3d/GLIDE. I can recall from purchasing the disk version years ago how *slowly* the game loaded and saved under D3d--which killed my interest in the game at the time. I recall that subsequent patches up to 1.0034a lead to progressively faster D3d loads and saves, but still--running the game in software/ddraw is *much* faster all the way around. So much so that it begs the question of D3d support in this game in the first place!...;) Why?

Interesting thing is that I can see pretty much no difference at all visually between software/ddraw and D3d/GLIDE--the major difference is the performance of the game in its running frame-rate & saving and loading operations as I mention above.

I would recommend this configtool.exe version (the 1.0034a version) to everyone playing the 1.005a version of the game. True, it only supports resolutions up to 1024x768, but you can edit the resulting config.div file and change that to whatever you want easily enough.

I know that Raze had mentioned that the 1.005a version of the game removed the software rendering/ddraw/GLIDE support--but actually all of those things still function fine in the 1.005a version of the game (and engine) as far as I can tell--it's only the newer configtool.exe released with 1.005a originally
that only supports D3d. Raze said something about the newer game version (1.005a) not properly supporting some software/ddraw effects as the reason why the newer configtool.exe was chopped down to only support D3d. However, software mode seems identical in terms of image quality, and as I said in saving and loading and simply playing the game the software/ddraw modes are far, far faster. Also--playing in software/ddraw mode eliminates all of the stuttering I noticed with the D3d/Glide version of the game.

It was also surprising that the 1.0034a configtool.exe doesn't make any entries in the config.div file that relate to the game running in d3d or GLIDE or software or ddraw--evidently that information is stored in the init.cfg or the config.lcl files--but neither of those files is readily editable as is config.div.

Having lots of fun tinkering with the game (and playing, of course)...;) The software/Ddraw mode is the way to play the game, imo.

There is a download link for the disk version configuration program in this post, if anyone else want to try it with the old GOG release (1.005). The configuration program for the anthology version (1.006) was updated to include Software mode as well as Direct3D (but not Glide or DirectDraw).

Honest, the GLIDE mode works in 1.005a...;) It works so well, in fact, that it runs with nGlide (a GLIDE D3d wrapper), even. However--not much point in emulating GLIDE here since it is identical in appearance and performance to D3d, and has the added disadvantage of not supporting any game resolutions above 1024x768 (at least, I could not get a higher res to run under the GLIDE version.)

I think the software mode is superior to the ddraw mode, as well, and I have noticed some very slight visual differences between D3d and software/ddraw, wherein D3d looks better. But they are very slight differences and you'd have to be looking for them to notice them--the much improved load/save times and game frame rate of the software mode more than makes up for any visual difference, imo...;)