Wing Commander IV menu and Game upscaling problems \ VOGONS

Wing Commander IV menu and Game upscaling problems

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First post, by Deffnator

Posted on 2019-12-04, 23:44

Deffnator Offline

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This an old issue with Dgvoodoo2 that is shomehow "fixed" with Jari Komppa/Sol's ddraw patch, which applies only for the original non DvD release and Dos-to-Win official patch.
Usen using Dgvoodoo's ddraw.dll, Wing commander IV menus, cutscenes and menus doesn't upscale well, the game gets stuck on the upper left side of the screen.
The good lads from the Wing Commander CIC made an patch for the DvD release that is on GoG, the EXE was patched to support newer renders but ddraw and legacy Directx is still buggy with upscaling.

Dege, it is possible to look at it as you did with Dark Omen?

Reply 1 of 3, by Dege

Posted on 2019-12-15, 14:09

Dege Offline

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I tried the DVD version. The menu screens are GDI-rendered, so enabling GDI hooking in dgVoodoo helped.
The videos however didn't get render. Blank screens even in windowed mode, I should have installed a game patch containing the needed decoder (there are tons of patches, I got lost amongst them).
However, since the videos are rendered in a separate window, I guess they wouldn't have appeared in fullscreen either, even if I had the decoder.
I didn't check what technology it is rendered with (I think the game is too old for DirectShow).

Reply 2 of 3, by xcomcmdr

Posted on 2019-12-15, 14:28

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It's... complicated.

The DVD Version was for owners of Windows 95 and a MPEG-2 decoding card.

Old patches floating around remove this limitation and allow the game to use a software decoder.

It uses VFW. It needs a third-party MPEG-2 Decoder, not shipped with Windows. ffdshow-tryouts (VFW variant) probably works. In the past, I used a GNU GPLed MPEG-2 VFW Decoder.

The missions use Direct Draw, and that's where the game really struggles with modern OSes, hardware, and dgVoodoo. For that I used a wrapper made for this game, but ever since Windows 10 Creators' Update, it's broken.

It would be very nice if dgVoodoo worked with this game, indeed.

Anyway, the GOG release of the DVD Version is probably a good starting point. It uses the DVD Patch + a MPEG-2 Decoder, and some custom DDRAW wrapper (DDHACK, IIRC : https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/DirectDraw_Hack), plus compatibility options.

Here is the old GPLed MPEG-2 Decoder : https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/GPL_MPEG-2_decoder_filter
It worked on Windows XP back in the day, still works on Windows 10 IIRC.