RoyBatty wrote:

I bought Glidos finally, I love it for TR with the mp3 soundtrack and JC's texture packs.

I'm having a few issues with it that I was wondering if you could address.

1ST, it always centers the window in windowed mode to wherever the launcher is located on screen, on my 16:10 24 inch monitor I have to move the launcher to the top left corner in order to play TR in 1600*1200.

Yeah. At least you can solve it by moving the launcher. Probably I should centre the window on first opening, and for subsequent openings use the position when it was previously closed.

2ND, if I'm running in full screen mode and I ALT-TAB, when I go back into the game it's just a black screen.

Presumably that's with the Direct3D option. It's quite some hassle to get Direct3D to recover from ALT-TAB. One day maybe.

3RD, if I want to play it vanilla, I can't get the CD checks to work at all... I own a couple different versions of the game, an original re-release version , and the version which came in the platinum pack. I can't get either one to work with the 3dfx patch. That goes for TR gold also.

You can disable the check by deleting the check file in the "Executable" config tab.

Ok also I have a suggestion request I want to bounce off of you, being a huge TR fan, I was thinking about the cut scene's. The ones on the PC version are horrible quality with the escape play. Now I've ripped the PSX ones from my original PSX disc to uncompressed AVI files. (I plan to re-compress them, but want to speak to you about it first.) How difficult would it be to make an addon that played these better quality cut scenes?
And if possible, what codec would be easiest for you to implement to play them?

I've wondered about that before. Would be nice, but I've never managed to think of a way to trigger playing them.

For the cut scenes, couldn't you just intercept the code which sets up the file names to load into escape play? I don't have any way to really look at protected mode code in dos... maybe I can run the program in the free version of IDA and look at it a bit. Or maybe there is an easier way by hooking dos4gw.

I've already re-encoded the cutscene's with xvid and mp3. They came out to about 124 megs total. I could put them up somewhere if you want to look at them. I antialiased and resized them to 640*416 (originals were 320*208) and they look really nice.

RoyBatty wrote:

For the cut scenes, couldn't you just intercept the code which sets up the file names to load into escape play?

Hmmm, yeah that could work. Interesting.

I've already re-encoded the cutscene's with xvid and mp3. They came out to about 124 megs total. I could put them up somewhere if you want to look at them. I antialiased and resized them to 640*416 (originals were 320*208) and they look really nice.

Yeah, I'd like to see them. Really, anything for which there is a DirectShow filter is good, preferably one that Windows comes with as default. What was the original encoding? Keeping the original resolution might be best. That way there's just the one scaling process at play back.

the original encoding was mpeg1 I think, I used some program to take the videos off of the psx version cd in uncompressed format so it would make editing them or filtering them easier before re-encoding. I'll have a look at using a DirectShow filter, but most any system can play xvid and mp3. I upsized them because 320*208 is tiny, and they look horrible with most up scalers. That's why I used avisynth to do it, and to get rid of some of the jaggedness with AA (which I think I will do again a different way). I used lanzcos4 to upsizing as it is nice and clean. I'll re-encode them again today or tomorrow with a different AA method which is less fuzzy, and make 2 packs with original res and upsized.

RoyBatty wrote:

the original encoding was mpeg1 I think, I used some program to take the videos off of the psx version cd in uncompressed format so it would make editing them or filtering them easier before re-encoding. I'll have a look at using a DirectShow filter, but most any system can play xvid and mp3.

Windows Media Player renders via DirectShow, so in a way I mean any format that WMP can handle on a freshly installed machine. There are DirectShow filters for xvid, but I don't believe they are distributed with Windows. On the other hand, I'm not completely sure about mpeg1 even, but I think it's more likely to be present.

I upsized them because 320*208 is tiny, and they look horrible with most up scalers. That's why I used avisynth to do it, and to get rid of some of the jaggedness with AA (which I think I will do again a different way). I used lanzcos4 to upsizing as it is nice and clean. I'll re-encode them again today or tomorrow with a different AA method which is less fuzzy, and make 2 packs with original res and upsized.

Oh right. I get it.

I did a little research and WMP doesn't support xvid or much anything else any good out of the box. It does support mpeg1 but I'm not going to encode to that old crappy codec. It doesn't even support mpeg2 which I would use... it does support mp3, but I don't know how good the support is. Most people install codec packs and what not to view videos ... I think it wouldn't hurt to have a link to the xvid codec as a requirement. As for the mp3 playing... I dunno you'll have to try my encodes on a standard installation. Sometimes the volume levels are all messed up, the audio is distorted etc.

RoyBatty wrote:

I did a little research and WMP doesn't support xvid or much anything else any good out of the box. It does support mpeg1 but I'm not going to encode to that old crappy codec.

Give it enough bits and it'll do a perfectly good job. As far as I know, there's no quality issue with mpeg1. You'll just get bigger files for a given quality. Isn't the main addition in mpeg2 the handling of interlacing, which I'd imagine we don't need anyway.

It doesn't even support mpeg2 which I would use... it does support mp3, but I don't know how good the support is.

mp3 support seems to work fine for the audio packs.

Most people install codec packs and what not to view videos ... I think it wouldn't hurt to have a link to the xvid codec as a requirement.

I guess not, but it is one more hassle for users. Many people find the whole idea of installing Glidos a bit scary.

Really? Glidos is so easy to install... 🤣

Well... hrm I could give you raws, but they are gigantic (like 2 gigs), so I don't think that would work to well... hrm I'll see about mpeg1 then, but I don't think there is any free version for encoding.

ffmpeg ?

ffmpeg and mpeg1 will not work due to the frame rate and resolutions. They are strict in the specs for video display and the odd resolutions (320*208 or 640*416) and 15 FPS won't encode.

However they look great and work well with XviD and mp3, and even decode on an old slower system (P333 or so) running anything from win98 to XP.

I'm just going to push on XviD because it's been in use for ages (and even decodes on most stand alone players and portable devices) , it's a well accepted and used standard for many many years.

ok, I re-encoded the video, and uploaded it for you to look at.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8NKIDKRP

feedback plz.

requires the XviD codec to playback in your favorite media player. (I use MPCHC)

XviD is open source, and released under the GPL license.

Woo! Nice. So much better than the ones on the PC cd.

I wanted to try a comparison with the the original PS1 versions, but I couldn't find anything that would play them.

Yeah, I think they look great, and are about the same size as the PC ones. The PC ones are horrible IMO. 😁

Hopefully you can do something with them, would be so nice to have a completely nice version of TR on PC. =]

RoyBatty wrote:

Yeah, I think they look great, and are about the same size as the PC ones. The PC ones are horrible IMO. 😁

I compared your processed ones with the original PS ones, and I can see the improvement. Yours look less pixelated. The colours in yours are a little washed out, but it's only very slight. Overall, yours are definitely better.

Hopefully you can do something with them, would be so nice to have a completely nice version of TR on PC. =]

Yeah, I hope so. I have a plan at least.

Can you post a screen shot comparison of the color washing? I can mess with the saturation a bit and make them as close as possible. I didn't change the colors at all during the encoding so it might be an artifact from XviD. I tried to keep the bitrate rather low so they will decode without a monster CPU. However if this made the color a tad washed, I can adjust for that with avisynth by upping the saturation a bit before encoding.

Ah I shouldn't worry for now. They do look pretty superb. Let's see if I can make Glidos acutally use them first.

Any luck on this yet? =]

Sorry, just haven't had a chance to try yet. It's definitely on the list though.