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dgVoodoo Splinter Cell Games

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Reply 220 of 232, by Yoda1776

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Joshhhuaaa wrote on 2022-04-02, 18:33:
lowenz wrote on 2022-04-02, 16:23:
Joshhhuaaa wrote on 2022-04-02, 02:12:

If there was some easy fix that could be applied to SCCT Versus to replicate how SC1 handles 16:9, that would be amazing but I would assume that is extremely difficult to modify if not impossible to do with these games.

Try to contact ThirteenAG!

https://thirteenag.github.io/wfp#splintercell

He has no interest in doing work for the Versus modes. I've contacted a few people.

Been trying to get widescreen to work with reshade. Cant seem to figure out ENB since I already have what I want formulated which sounded promising a way to make both work alongside one another. Any tips? I see you are the Steam guide guy for the first game.

Also looking at your upscaled videos, im kind of wondering if its even possible to launch texmod through this esoteric modified installer. Thats a huge download sir for a maybe though when im done with my project its going to be moving its way toward 30GBs and thats not including the video upscales of yours. Its a new game at that point. There is probably a better way to sort of install these textures direct into the game like how someone did with Tomb Raider Anniversary. If I was going to program a bot, the priority would be something to fix reshade being at the end of the graphics pipeline if I can help it. Thanks.

Looking for anyone who wants to help. So far one other is working on mission 4 and it is unknown how much he is willing to do.

Since I ended up double posting ill link more photos.

Edit: Im seeing DG Voodoo was fixing something to do with lighting in Chaos Theory? When i tried DG Voodoo last I was stuck in shader model 1.0 which you would think would hurt lighting more than anything. Especially emulating a Geforce 4. Wish DG Voodoo could force the game since its a wrapper to accept BC7 instead of what I can only assume is DXT5? Youd think a wrapper could do something like that especially if the games code allowed for it. The compile times to get in are pretty bad, but maybe if I knew what compression the game used and could just place the .DDS files or whatever it wants into the game properly it wouldnt need to convert the PNG/TPF into what it needs to not slam into the memory walls im at.

Edit 2: I tried your 4k upscaled video pack but it walls us at 1.1GBs max (Instead of about 2.4GBs) for texture buffs. I can also upscale the in game UI so the stuff you didnt do can probably be done too. The catch is its going to need some kind of bot that can overlay the higher resolution video instead of pooling in the actual game code for things to be interestingly running in parallel. I will have to do this with Warcraft III since the dev doesnt even care their shadows flicker with the deterministic real time videos since the depth buffer relies on what we are using with reshade. Id like to use some kind of lossless 4k that just crushes down to 1080 like supersampling if thats what most people have. I imagine the game is old enough having one loop looking for pixel value combinations, or sound pixel combinations would be reasonable if it wasnt entirely in slow python since im noob and not the legendary Dege. That and a lot of the tools already exist but ill have to make them specific to this one game, and probably figure out how to convert a lot of them to C++ extensions so they arent trash. This would take me likely years FYI. Sorry ive strayed a bit off topic but Chaos Theory was never announced, though it probably will be remastered along with the first game. The value of this is it in like 5 years time will run on run of the mill IGPUs that rando college students would have. A 4800U (Todays tech) is a bit higher end for an APU but it has the compute to push the pixels even with my ray marching + path tracing raytracing screenspace only (for now) mod. I have a dirty hack in mind to make it non screenspace only, especially since I can alter FOV in this game. Another question I had, do any of you off the top of your head know what the widescreen patch is talking about in regards to shadow filtering for Chaos Theory? I havent had time to test it, and id probably have to look at side by side screenshots to even tell the difference. Most of the time jacking with it in Unreal does nothing, even when its exposed to the user without this kind of sorcery.

Edit 3: Guy helping project now is looking to find best compression type given we dont know what the engine is actually doing beyond its compressing our PNG TPF into X, im guessing DXT5? Hypothetically we can use the DDS file method somehow and store it as a BC7, and ideally, the game doesnt just convert that to DXT5 again defeating the purpose. You wizards should help. Also there appears to be some evidence texmod TPFs are duplicating stuff? Not too sure about whats going on yet. BC7 didnt work. DX11 only and engine probably wouldnt bite even with DG Voodoos blessing.

Edit 4: I managed to figure out the engine nuance. You guys should check out my work now that its a lot better.

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Reply 222 of 232, by wari0

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Joshhhuaaa wrote on 2022-04-01, 02:30:
Not really sure if this belongs here, but technically it is Splinter Cell related on dgVoodoo2. I'm working on a small widescree […]
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Not really sure if this belongs here, but technically it is Splinter Cell related on dgVoodoo2. I'm working on a small widescreen project for Chaos Theory's Versus mode (it's an entirely separate UE2 build than the single player / coop, and runs on its own executable). It also needs dgVoodoo2's emulation to properly emulate many of the dynamic lights in the game similar to Pandora Tomorrow.

dgVoodoo2 has been very useful and is the only reason this widescreen project is possible. The best way to describe it is we simply zoom into the game as it is the only way to play in "16:9" resolution without the game stretching (in reality, its a higher 4:3 resolution than your native resolution that is zoomed in to crop into 16:9). Inside dgVoodoo.conf, I go to the [DirectX] section, and force a resolution to zoom-in the game. For example, if you have a 1920x1080 monitor, you will put 1920x1440 in the config file. (ResY * 4 / 3)

So here's the game to demonstrate what's going on:

Normal Mode (4:3, 1440x1080):
YAWmqfP.png

Stretched Mode (16:9 1920x1080) - There is no known way to make this game not stretch in 16:9. The single player for SC1-2 do cropping but Versus mode seems to sadly stretch.
etAEIez.png

Widescreen Mode (forcing 1920x1440 in dgvoodoo.conf on a 1920x1080 game.ini then modded the game's HUD to scale down / move into position. FoV modded from 75 to 90.)
EyFAlaJ.png

Widescreen mode looks nearly perfect with only minor problems: because of using this strange method of zooming into the game, we are unable to see the menus entirely obviously, so I was going to see would there be any possible way to implement a way that a keybind like "+" toggles between 1920x1080 and 1920x1440 mode in real-time on the wrapper or would that be impossible? It would be nice to un-zoom into 1920x1080 for when using the main menus:

Normal Menu (un-zoomed, 1920x1080)
XCyFwac.png

Widescreen Menu (zoomed-in, 1920x1440 in dgvoodoo.conf)
xEjWSam.png

This clearly isn't a big dealbreaker, I think the widescreen modification I've managed to accomplish is very good, and I will continue using it even with the slight menu annoyances of it being zoomed in. If there's a simple workaround that would be nice or if it's possible to not make this game stretch when running in standard 16:9 resolutions like the single players do then none of these issues would exist in the first place. Anyways thanks for taking the time to read and I appreciate the hard work in dgVoodoo2.

Also one final note: the latest version of dgVoodoo2 that came out (2.78.1 ) crashes the game when trying to use this zoom-in technique, 2.78 works perfectly fine. I'm not sure if it was intentional and as one might think it's stupid a user could enter a ResY value that's higher than their native resolution but it has been proved to be extremely useful for this case! ScalingMode = centered_ar is also required for this zoom in technique to work.

Hello! Love this game! This topic is the only one I could find for Versus Widescrenn Fix... Thats already something, great job!
Do you have any succes with this stuff? If not, could you tel me pls how to change FOV and HUD for zoomed resolution (1920x1440)?
BTW, cutted lobby is not an issue, cuz one can use Tab key to switch between elements of interface.

Reply 224 of 232, by Joshhhuaaa

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wari0 wrote on 2023-01-15, 19:32:
Hello! Love this game! This topic is the only one I could find for Versus Widescrenn Fix... Thats already something, great job! […]
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Joshhhuaaa wrote on 2022-04-01, 02:30:
Not really sure if this belongs here, but technically it is Splinter Cell related on dgVoodoo2. I'm working on a small widescree […]
Show full quote

Not really sure if this belongs here, but technically it is Splinter Cell related on dgVoodoo2. I'm working on a small widescreen project for Chaos Theory's Versus mode (it's an entirely separate UE2 build than the single player / coop, and runs on its own executable). It also needs dgVoodoo2's emulation to properly emulate many of the dynamic lights in the game similar to Pandora Tomorrow.

dgVoodoo2 has been very useful and is the only reason this widescreen project is possible. The best way to describe it is we simply zoom into the game as it is the only way to play in "16:9" resolution without the game stretching (in reality, its a higher 4:3 resolution than your native resolution that is zoomed in to crop into 16:9). Inside dgVoodoo.conf, I go to the [DirectX] section, and force a resolution to zoom-in the game. For example, if you have a 1920x1080 monitor, you will put 1920x1440 in the config file. (ResY * 4 / 3)

So here's the game to demonstrate what's going on:

Normal Mode (4:3, 1440x1080):
YAWmqfP.png

Stretched Mode (16:9 1920x1080) - There is no known way to make this game not stretch in 16:9. The single player for SC1-2 do cropping but Versus mode seems to sadly stretch.
etAEIez.png

Widescreen Mode (forcing 1920x1440 in dgvoodoo.conf on a 1920x1080 game.ini then modded the game's HUD to scale down / move into position. FoV modded from 75 to 90.)
EyFAlaJ.png

Widescreen mode looks nearly perfect with only minor problems: because of using this strange method of zooming into the game, we are unable to see the menus entirely obviously, so I was going to see would there be any possible way to implement a way that a keybind like "+" toggles between 1920x1080 and 1920x1440 mode in real-time on the wrapper or would that be impossible? It would be nice to un-zoom into 1920x1080 for when using the main menus:

Normal Menu (un-zoomed, 1920x1080)
XCyFwac.png

Widescreen Menu (zoomed-in, 1920x1440 in dgvoodoo.conf)
xEjWSam.png

This clearly isn't a big dealbreaker, I think the widescreen modification I've managed to accomplish is very good, and I will continue using it even with the slight menu annoyances of it being zoomed in. If there's a simple workaround that would be nice or if it's possible to not make this game stretch when running in standard 16:9 resolutions like the single players do then none of these issues would exist in the first place. Anyways thanks for taking the time to read and I appreciate the hard work in dgVoodoo2.

Also one final note: the latest version of dgVoodoo2 that came out (2.78.1 ) crashes the game when trying to use this zoom-in technique, 2.78 works perfectly fine. I'm not sure if it was intentional and as one might think it's stupid a user could enter a ResY value that's higher than their native resolution but it has been proved to be extremely useful for this case! ScalingMode = centered_ar is also required for this zoom in technique to work.

Hello! Love this game! This topic is the only one I could find for Versus Widescrenn Fix... Thats already something, great job!
Do you have any succes with this stuff? If not, could you tel me pls how to change FOV and HUD for zoomed resolution (1920x1440)?
BTW, cutted lobby is not an issue, cuz one can use Tab key to switch between elements of interface.

I don't currently have any widescreen releases out because several months ago I figured out some bugs with the Mercenary crosshair/reticle being off-centered and was offset incorrectly when moving. This was noticeable enough in gameplay so I decided I had to return and figure it out one day. Thanks for having interest, I hope I can fix it for the people interested.

If I ever get to fixing it, I'll let you know here if I remember. If not, keep an eye out on my Steam guide: "Improvements for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory" under the "[VS] Versus Mode Downloads" section, there will be a widescreen fix download if I ever properly fix it. You can add me on Steam if you ever need to contact me, I check these forums kinda on and off.

----
**Update: I managed to fix the Mercenary crosshair/reticle close enough to be happy to release the widescreen patch, it should be up soon on that Steam guide mentioned above. Just doing some testing to make sure there are no other issues.

**Update 2: Here is a release of the widescreen fix public again:
Enhanced SCCT Versus v2.7 (dgVoodoo2.78+Widescreen Fix) [experimental] - https://drive.google.com/uc?id=16Rb1SQbJfNyIi … YCeIEnHLLhhXBTI
You can view the known issues with the widescreen mode and configure your resolution using "dgWidescreen.ini" located in the System folder. It will auto-detect your native resolution.
Do not update to a newer version of dgVoodoo2 for this patch, it breaks functionality for res-forcing above native ResY.

If you are unfamiliar with Enhanced SCCT Versus, it is a modified version of the game that I created that nearly everyone in the active playerbase currently plays on. It includes gameplay fixes/map balance tweaks mostly. Widescreen fix is only supported on Enhanced SCCT Versus.
For a list of changes in Enhanced SCCT Versus from default SCCT Versus: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UQamdT_SS … 1VYxLPBcqhQJFmg

Reply 225 of 232, by EveryUsernameIsTaken

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Hey, does anyone know how were the shaders on those textures disabled? I wanted to do it on the PS3 textures, but only figured out what bytes responsible for the same shaders on those are:
0C 15 4A 01 02 01 0E 01 and 0C 15 4B 01 0E D3 00 02 01 0E 01 for 1_2_Def_Ministry_tex.utx and 0D 15 54 01 01 and 0D 05 37 17 15 41 01 27 05 37 01 for 2-1_CIA_tex.utx.

Reply 227 of 232, by Joshhhuaaa

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Hi everyone, I don't think this has been reported in this thread, so was going to bring attention to an issue with running Pandora Tomorrow at 3840x2160 (4K) resolution while using ThirteenAG's widescreen Fix + dgVoodoo2.

One of the improvements that ThirteenAG's widescreen fix does is improve night vision's render resolution. For those who don't know, night vision was hardcoded to run at 512x512 and would never scale even at higher resolutions in SCPT. ThirteenAG offers an option in his fix for this particular problem:
PostProcessFixedScale = 1 // Game uses 512 by default. Increasing the value makes night vision mode render in higher resolution. If set to 1, ResX will be used instead.

Now, most people are using PostProcessFixedScale = 1, which at 4K resolution, would make night vision render at 3840x3840 instead of 512x512. For whatever reason, when dgVoodoo2 is injected into the game, any value greater than 2892x2892 will instantly crash the game upon startup. So, if you decide to play Pandora Tomorrow at 4K currently, replace PostProcessFixedScale = 1 with PostProcessFixedScale = 2892 and you will not crash.

Pi0rxpA.png

If you delete the dgVoodoo2 wrapper .dll out of your game, this is not a problem to run night vision at 3840x3840, so is this some limitation or bug that can be fixed within dgVoodoo2? This was tested on latest version (v2.8.2) as well as v2.54 as people recommend it in here for SC1/SCPT.

This issue does not apply to playing SC1 at 4K resolution, the widescreen fix for that game does not have a PostProcessFixedScale value.

Reply 229 of 232, by Joshhhuaaa

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Dege wrote on 2023-06-30, 09:44:

Isn't it because of running out of virtual videomemory? SC needs GF4 that has a low amount of video memory by default.
Btw, try the spec release version, to see if the debug layer dumps something useful.

Yeah, that makes sense then, so there's no bug. GeForce4 is typically used for SC1/SCPT and is running out of video memory at 4K . Using a video card that supports 512 MB works just fine.

The dgVoodoo Virtual 3D Accelerated Card seems to render the shadow buffers just fine on SCPT at first look, not sure if minor graphical effects are bugged compared to GF4 though. I'm assuming the GF4 is locked to 256MB VRAM max for a good reason too and can't be adjusted higher? Or does inserting a higher number in the config work with no problem such as:
VideoCard = geforce_ti_4800
VRAM = 512
It appears to fix the crashing using the config updated to 512 MB with the GF4, but just making sure if it's not recommended for any reason.

Reply 231 of 232, by Joshhhuaaa

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lowenz wrote on 2023-06-30, 20:01:

VRAM preset values are just for the sake of real VGAs historical correctness, they're not mandatory

Alright sounds good. Although I noticed that even when cranking the VRAM past 512 MB, I could never get anything above 4096x4096 night vision working on a GeForce 4. It's not a big deal as obviously 4K is only 3840x3840, but I am just curious once we have people at something stupid like 8K (or even some ultrawide resolutions) using 7680x7680 if we've hit a hard limit. The dgVoodoo Virtual 3D Accelerated Card card could do 2 GB of VRAM and achieve 8K just fine but not the GeForce 4.

Reply 232 of 232, by Dege

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Joshhhuaaa wrote on 2023-07-01, 00:44:
lowenz wrote on 2023-06-30, 20:01:

VRAM preset values are just for the sake of real VGAs historical correctness, they're not mandatory

Alright sounds good. Although I noticed that even when cranking the VRAM past 512 MB, I could never get anything above 4096x4096 night vision working on a GeForce 4. It's not a big deal as obviously 4K is only 3840x3840, but I am just curious once we have people at something stupid like 8K (or even some ultrawide resolutions) using 7680x7680 if we've hit a hard limit. The dgVoodoo Virtual 3D Accelerated Card card could do 2 GB of VRAM and achieve 8K just fine but not the GeForce 4.

I can't remember off the top of my head but I think the maximum texture size for the GF4 is 4096x4096, and it's hardcoded unlike the amount of video memory.