VOGONS


First post, by liqmat

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I have both the Terminator: Future Shock & Skynet original CDs and dumped them to ISO for convenience to play in DOSBox. Both work fine, but Future Shock has a graphics issue I can't seem to figure out. If I run Future Shock through the Skynet graphics engine (which you can do from the Skynet menu) the game looks fine, but has that Skynet look to it and I prefer Future Shock in its native graphics engine (darker sky, grungy look). I am getting these artifact looking lines through the roads in the game which appear and disappear at random as you move your character almost like a geometry problem. Attached a photo. Anyone else come across this? I have tried different graphics settings, cpu cycles, etc. in the conf file with no luck. Tried different SVN builds as well. Also, the game is patched to the latest build v1.30. Not a game breaker, but definitely an irritating atmosphere killer.

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Reply 1 of 9, by liqmat

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After watching a few Youtube videos of the game in DOSBox it looks to me like this is a common problem with this title. It seems it is just the road texture that has the issue. This does not seem to be an issue if you run the game on a DOS machine. Seems like a DOSBox emulation problem as far as I can tell.

Reply 2 of 9, by ripsaw8080

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I wonder if it's similar to the issue seen in Carmageddon, where the rendering engine blits with the FPU because it's faster on real hardware, and limited precision is then problematic. What is your host CPU and OS, build of DOSBox, and core setting?

Reply 3 of 9, by liqmat

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i7-3610QM
Windows 7 64
r4023
auto (tried others as well)

Like I said Skynet does not display this issue when running Future Shock through it's upgraded engine in 320x200 or 640x480. Only Future Shock has the issue in its native engine. Call me crazy, but I prefer Future Shock in its original 320x200 graphics engine.

Reply 5 of 9, by ripsaw8080

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The glitch appears in all versions of TFS, include the pre-release demo. It varies between obvious and subtle, I guess depending on the texture(s) involved, and the mouselook seems a good way to make it appear.

I see the same glitched lines when I run the game in the WinXP NTVDM, so the flaw is apparently not restricted to DOSBox. Maybe it relies on the FDIV bug in early Pentiums... just kidding. 😉

Anyway, will need someone with a period-correct system for 1995 to confirm the presence or absence of the glitch.

Reply 6 of 9, by liqmat

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ripsaw8080 wrote:

The glitch appears in all versions of TFS, include the pre-release demo. It varies between obvious and subtle, I guess depending on the texture(s) involved, and the mouselook seems a good way to make it appear.

I see the same glitched lines when I run the game in the WinXP NTVDM, so the flaw is apparently not restricted to DOSBox. Maybe it relies on the FDIV bug in early Pentiums... just kidding. 😉

Anyway, will need someone with a period-correct system for 1995 to confirm the presence or absence of the glitch.

As usual, thanks for taking the time for looking into it. I have a good resource where I can obtain very old PC hardware at very cheap prices so I will see if I can cobble something together. Probably a mid-range 486 or original Pentium for testing unless someone can beat me to it which would be great as well. I just do not remember seeing those artifacts back when the game was released in 1995. I think I was running it on a DOS 6.22 machine with about 32MB RAM, Pentium 90 or 100 and some sort of ATI ISA graphics card. Anyway, I'll look into to it. This was easily in my top 5 games at the time and I never finished it.

Reply 7 of 9, by liqmat

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Picked up a Gateway 450 in almost new condition for basically nothing. Intel P-III 450MHz, 448MB RAM, two video cards (AGP & PCI), 40GB HD, etc. Installed DOS 6.22 and appropriate drivers. Guess what. Lines in the road are still there and are a glitch in the game. Blows me away I never noticed this before. Back in 1995 I must have just been too enamored with the game to notice. Probably why Bethesda upgraded the engine a bit in Skynet because those glitches disappear when you run Future Shock in the Skynet engine either @ 320x200 or 640x480. Now I have to figure out if I can somehow get the dark sky from Future Shock into Skynet instead of the dark blue Skynet introduced. Will PM you ripsaw with some additional info.

Reply 8 of 9, by ripsaw8080

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liqmat wrote:

Now I have to figure out if I can somehow get the dark sky from Future Shock into Skynet instead of the dark blue Skynet introduced.

Extract the file in the attached archive into SkyNET's GAMEDATA subdir, that should give you pure black skies.

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It's a palette data file that I pulled out of the MDMDIMGS.BSA file and then modified the entry for the sky color, which the game will use in preference to the one inside the blob file.

Reply 9 of 9, by liqmat

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ripsaw8080 wrote:
Extract the file in the attached archive into SkyNET's GAMEDATA subdir, that should give you pure black skies. […]
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liqmat wrote:

Now I have to figure out if I can somehow get the dark sky from Future Shock into Skynet instead of the dark blue Skynet introduced.

Extract the file in the attached archive into SkyNET's GAMEDATA subdir, that should give you pure black skies.

skycol.zip

It's a palette data file that I pulled out of the MDMDIMGS.BSA file and then modified the entry for the sky color, which the game will use in preference to the one inside the blob file.

As usual ripsaw, you never cease to amaze! Thanks for taking the time to do this. I always hated that dark blue sky change in Skynet.