First of all, my system specs are:
AMD athlon 500 mhz
windows XP
512 sdram
voodoo3 3000 (16 mb)

this is my older computer; soldat runs fine on my good one. anyway, when I start the game normally, i get the error about direct x 8 not working or something (and I have just installed direct x 9.0b and new voodoo drivers). Then, if i select force software in the setup window, it lets me get to the game menus without any errors, but when I start a game i get a black screen. the game is running fine because i can hear the sounds going on, and when i click i hear myself shoot, but i just cant see anything. I havent really seen this exact problem on the forums yet (ive only seen stuff about pink screens or the directx 8 error), so if anyone could help me out id appreciate it. thanks.

ok, here's the deal:

Software mode doesn't work.

Also, you said "new voodoo drivers", do you mean you got some 3rd party drivers? (eg. 3dfx are dead :P)

I believe that some of the newer 3rd party voodoo 3 drivers will run with Direct X 9.

However, you cannot use software mode.

yea I got the newest 3rd party drivers i could find that (looked like) they were for voodoo3. the names are so weird now, sometimes i can't tell. anyway, I didn't realize the option "force video software" meant software mode. thought it meant it somehow forced the game to use my video...drivers. :\ anyway, thanks for the help. Ill just try different drivers till I find some that work with the game.

You might want to try some of these drivers (I have had to hunt down some myself for Voodoo 3/5 cards).

Dozer Voodoo 3/4/5 Drivers 1.0 Xp 1.0
http://www.voodoofiles.com/6344

CA Voodoo3/4/5 winXP/2k drivers 1.08.00-XP
http://www.voodoofiles.com/4979

3dhq Voodoo3 Windows 2000/XP drivers 1.09 Beta 7
http://www.voodoofiles.com/8611

Good luck!

wow, thanks a lot man.
the third one is what I just got the other day, but I'm going to try the other two.

by the way, I turned off software mode and took my hardware accel settings one notch down, and now the game works in windowed mode. when i put it in full screen though, I get the directx 8 error. anyway, going to go try those drivers.