First post, by xcomcmdr
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hello,
I have a problem :
Resident Evil 2 on some hardware displays black boxes around background objects on some screens near the end of the game
Sometimes it's even in front of the player character.
It doesn't happen on all hardware (on a eeePC with an AMD GPU it doesn't happen), but so far happens on every PC with nVidia hardware.
Now, to be able to run the game I use DDRawCompat otherwise it won't start.
On Windows 10, I have to had admin mode on top of that.
But most importantly, I tried every value possible for the "Display Driver" value (value stored inside HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\CAPCOM\RESIDENT EVIL 2\), and 0xe (which is "Rendition V2200" in the game's CD launcher) is what I use. There's around 15 different values possible, but only a few work. And when they work, they all have the same behavior (apart from software mode, which is value 0x5 and 0x7).
But anyway, I have the dgVodooo patch for this game (applied on the French release I have).
However, videos don't show with dgVodooo, even in windowed mode.
I have managed sometimes to have the game run in a tiny window, and then the videos will display in an even smaller window. It works that way, but it's difficult to see anything.
So, bascially, I have three options :
1.Wait for dgVoodoo2 to support fullscreen (VfW ?) video playback on games such as this one. I'm not impatient, the black boxes problem isn't present for 80% of the game and it doesn't prevent the player from finishing the game.
Besides, if one enables software mode the problem goes away. But so does the smooth rendering of 3D objects from when hardware acceleration is enabled.
But I wonder if "vfW fullscreen" (if the game uses VfW to render videos, which I'm not even sure) a planned feature ? And if help (mainly testing) would be welcome by Dege ?
2.Find a way around the problem. But I don't know what to do. I had the idea of some sort of VfW -> DirectShow Wrapper, like Gulikoza did years ago with it's MCI -> DirectShow wrapper for Wing Commander 4.
But I don't know at all if that's doable. I looked around and it utterly confused me.
Oh, playing a file with DirectShow seems simple enough. At least, according to the documentation's sample. But it's the "what calls to wrap and how" that seems to be the hardest part.
For example :
- Media Foundation seems to have replaced DirectShow (which replaced VfW, which replaced MCI... Long story, ain't it ?). But the documentation is nowhere to be found, and the SDK samples seem to have been removed.
- If I run RESIDENT EVIL 2 with API Monitor it seems to use... DirectShow interfaces, like iGraphBuilder:RenderFIle. So if dgVooodoo needs a game to use DirectShow for videos to work, why does RE2 seems to use DirectShow ? Does Windows wraps the calls ? And why then it doesn't show ? Are there other requirements ?
- To compare, I tried Resident Evil 3 with dgVoodoo2. The videos worked fine. It seems to use functions from MSACSM32.DLL like acmStreamOpen. Are they DirectShow interfaces too ?
- On top of that, I never even used DirectShow / VfW APIs. They seem utterly complicated.
And finally, option 3) Use software rendering. But the 3D models become ugly.
Anyway, thank you for reading this far. I don't know if this post will have replies, but I'd like to say once again how much I love dgvoodoo2 :
- It fixed Commander & Conquer : Tiberian Sun (yes there is the CnCNet patch and their own wrapper, but I wanted to play without the CD without losing the video cutscenes, and the good ol' NOCD + dgVoodoo2 combo made it come true)
- It fixed Tlon : A Misty Story (an obscure game, with malformed AVI files that I had to fix with ABC AVI Tag Editor). It doesn't run on Windows XP, but it does run on Vista/Seven/10 thanks to dgVoodoo2. 😀
- It fixed Drakan ! Especially the fullscrreen mode.
- It fixed MechWarrior 3 ! I love that game !
- And of course, it fixed the mighty Metal Gear Solid (once the executable was patched) 😀
And countless other games. 😁
Thanks for reading !
(Oh, and I can try to provide screenshots of this small problem if you'd like)