Battlezone 1

So, decided to get back into Battlezone 1. Grabbed the 98 all in one installer on the site and installed it onto XP SP3 instead of Windows 7 due to the whole Indeo video/audio problem with 7 that would stop the video's playing and a few little odds and ends showing up (call me a perfectionist). Tossed in my old BZ1 disk for music sake for while I was playing and messed around for a good hour or so screwing with the video settings. Ran into one problem I can't for the life of me work out and that from what I've seen, nobody has an answer to, probably because it hasn't come up, I don't know, but anyway.

The problem is that for some reason beyond my comprehension, a lot of the things that should be a particular colour are coming up black. I.e, a lot of the things on the minimap are coming up black.


They might be a bit hard to see, might have to view the image location to see them best, but here are two pics anyway.

As you can see, I've got an odd problem for sure. I see this happen with the white, bit of green (scrap, navigation lines from my ship and non directly controllable buildings like hangers namely) and red (enemy units) on the minimap, as well as the red of the HUD when an enemy is targetted. Also, worth mentioning is the dark transparent background behind the mission objective text is non existent and as that second picture shows, so is a fair chunk of the satellite view. Now for some tech details.
OS: XP Home SP3 32bit
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E7300 @ 2.66GHz
Ram: 2GB DDR2
Video Card: Nvidia 8400 GS 512MB -- Updated with the latest driver I could find off the Nvidia site, 169.21 forceware.

One other noteworthy thing is that this ONLY happens when the 3D card option in the graphic options is enabled. I've messed with every video option I could think of and nothing. I could live with the 3D card setting off if it came down to it but let's face it, Battlezone is so much prettier with it enabled, so any advice or solutions would be much appreciated.

Never seen anything like it. Was the problem there with the defaul render.cfg settings from Bz98 installer?

Try experimenting with Nvidia control panel settings.

The problem was already present with the standard settings. On top of it, I've changed every single option in the nvidia control panel and haven't seen any difference at all from it. Oddly enough, the problem doesn't occur in Windows 7. Only that stupid block radar problem happens that has no solution. I can't for the life of me work out why it hates XP and the Nvidia 8400 GS, it's practically a fresh XP install. I've only installed things like sound/video drivers, decoders, Firefox, etc. Makes no sense for it to act like it does but... well it does.

i have had that radar s***, dunno what i ddi 2 fix it

Well so far I haven't worked out a fix irritatingly. Really screwed for trying to play Red Odyssey since the 3D Card option is forced to be on.

Does this also happen with the Experimental Builds?

I used to get this with my old Nvidia 6200, except the radar blips were dark green. I think I totally uninstalled my video card drivers, and then re-installed it with the latest driver. Obviously, you tried that. IIRC, Nvidia Control Panel lets you force AA up to 8x(?). I do not recommend anything more than 2x since BZ only uses DX3 for now, and it probably isn't a pretty sight if you force anything higher than that. I remember this was an issue with my Homeworld (DX6?) last year.

In the start menu, under Battlezone 1998/Troubleshooting, you have shortcuts for BZ and RO in Win and SW mode.

To be honest I wouldn't know if it happens with the experimental builds. My net is usually epicly capped and I can't download anything really. And yeah I've tried reinstalling the video drivers and all and there's no real difference. Not even slightly.

Also thank you Mr.Spock! Forgot about that completely. Too bad I can't see the chinese in 3D Card action but well, guess there isn't much to be done since nobody seems to have an answer.