Hello - I've just installed Tachyon the Fringe (was released 2000 - 2001 by NovaLogic) on my netbook in VMWare Player under Windows 98SE guest. The game installed without a hitch, but when I clicked "start" on the game's startup menu to play-test it, I got a blue screen Fatal Exception message.

Why is this happening and how do I fix it?

VMware Player Fatal Exception error message


I intend to play Tachyon The Fringe without 3D acceleration in my netbook.

Thanks in advance.

When I had the game installed on my old Dell Dimension 8200 (which I ordered brand-new in Nov. 2001) the game's graphics ran ok but sort of jerky, IIRC. My old Dell Dimension has Windows XP Home OS, and my netbook has Windows XP Home_sp3 as its host OS.

Since it's supposed to work in XP, have you tried it outside your VMware Player?

It may not like the virtual video card in VMware.

Jenny, (and Inland, if you read this), the game installed ok in my netbook's Win XP host, but the splash screen never came up when I put the CD in the external DVD drive (as it did when I installed it in VMware Player earlier today), and I had to click on "autorun" on the CD menu to get it to install.

Then when I tried to see how it plays, I clicked on "play" on the game's menu and the video test came up - it said something like "this will test your video", and "press OK". After I clicked on "OK", I saw a message, "No 3D cards were detected on your system" - yet the game can be played without a 3D card (as it says on the back of the jewel case).

So I clicked on "Video setup" on the game's menu, but nothing happened at all. So I pressed CTL + ALT + DEL to shut everything down, and the Task Manager came up. I selected "End Task", some windows closed down but then a short video of the game's intro played onscreen, along with the display of a purple window showing 2 screenshots - "text links"- enabled, and "no text links" - disabled. I tried to enable "no text links" but nothing happened.

Is there any way to get this game to be played without 3D accelerator support in my netbook under the Windows XP host OS?

Thanks in advance.

I don't know if the game requires a 3D card or not.
Try checking the game folder and see if there's a configuration file you can open with Notepad and edit. If you find a configuration file and it doesn't look like English when you open it (with Notepad), don't bother trying to edit it. But if you see something you can understand like
"acceleration=on" you can try changing it to "acceleration=off"
Or if you see
"acceleration=hardware" you can try changing it to
"acceleration=software"

Another possibility is to try 3danalyze, which is supposed to emulate a 3D video card.
http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/tools/3d_analyze/index.php

You mean a program to fool the computer (or game) into thinking it's using a 3D card just as DOSbox fools the computer (and DOS games) into thinking it's running DOS?

I looked some stuff over on the page you linked me to, Jenny, but you lost me there - I don't really understand what I'm d/l, or what I'm supposed to d/l, or where to find it.

the 3d card this game calls for include the ge force - but i see no links to d/l any ge force thingy - explanation and help, please?

That's actually not how VMware works - you really need a 3D card in order to enable the option.

Inland, Jenny suggested playing the game in my Win XP host, so I installed it into my netbook's host OS.

You click the link for "Latest Release" and get
http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/tools/3d_analyze/download/
Then you click where it says "3D-Analyze 2.36" to download it.


Well you're not going to get a Geforce, but you might get something the game will accept as a 3D video card. If the game needs Transform and Lighting, 3danalyze can emulate that.

Ok, I just d/l this thingy that you linked me to Jenny, but FYI, the game's jewel case says nothing about T&L, but it does say "All major 3D cards supported with Direct 3D, including: 3dfx Voodoo 2 & 3, Riva TNT 1 & 2, Ge Force."

Thanks, Jenny - I'm going to go ahead with trying this thingy that you linked me to on my game - but not really sure where/how to install it on my netbook?

If the game works with an old Riva TNT or Voodoo card, then T&L isn't necessary.


You can't download a video card.
It's a solid object.
You can download drivers for a video card, but they won't do you much good if you don't have the card.
There are 3dfx emulators like this one
http://dfxemu.tripod.com/
for emulating Voodoo cards' 3dfx capability. But your game says it works with Riva TNT or Geforce, which don't have 3dfx. So it doesn't use 3dfx.

Software like 3danalyze emulates 3D capablity, so it might help if the problem is that your video card (or onboard graphics) doesn't have the 3D capability the game is looking for. 3danalyze was created many years after your game was published, so the game wouldn't tell you about it on the jewel case (any more than an old DOS game would tell you about DOSBox on the jewel case).

Considering the age of the game, it's possible your crash was due to a hyperthreading/dual-processor/multi-processor problem. So you might try setting affinity to a single processor.

Tried to d/l the .exe from the tripod site you linked me to, Jenny, but got to this page instead can't d/l the .exe from tripod - virus warning?
What gives??

Regarding the possibility of hyperthreading, I have a thread here in glitches where I'm discussing HT in Wing Commander Prophecy on my netbook's XP host - but I'd like to try this 3D stuff first to see if I can get it going.

I'm not sure why you wanted to download the 3dfx emulator after I told you it wouldn't help with your game because your game doesn't use 3dfx. But you can probably find something similar with a Google search. The Tripod page may or may not be due to a virus. Sometimes the packers that people use to compress their exe files register as virus even though they're not. (Virus makers use the same packers so antivirus that detect by signatures may produce false positives if they're getting their signature from the packer. For example ***UPX*** is a popular packer and files compressed using UPX are sometimes mistakenly recognized as a virus by antivirus.)

Whether it's a virus or not, the 3dfx emulator wouldn't do your game any good because the game isn't strictly for a Voodoo card, and hence does not use Voodoo's 3dfx.

Anyway, the 3danalyze is a completely different program and you get it at
http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/tools/3d_analyze/download/
I have no trouble downloading that.
And I uploaded it to virusscan.jotti.org and ***the results*** were clean.

User's Guide for 3d-Analyze is here
http://www.3dfxzone.it/news/puntatore.php?uid=3701

I d/l this yesterday. Not sure where/how to install it in my netbook so the game will see it.