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dgVoodoo 2 for DirectX 11

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Reply 3300 of 3949, by Loney974

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Regarding refresh bug in Commandos 2:

Loney974 wrote:
I'm encountering another issue regarding windowed mode. I've noticed that when switching to windowed mode (ALT-ENTER), the game […]
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I'm encountering another issue regarding windowed mode. I've noticed that when switching to windowed mode (ALT-ENTER), the game does not refresh properly (cf. screenshot). More precisely, I have to move the mouse cursor to "reveal" the menu or the game map, square by square.
I believe it has to do with desktop composition (DWM) somehow, because applying the following compatibility mode fixes the issue, at the cost of reduced performance :
a) [Windows 7] "Disable desktop composition"
b) [Windows 8/10] "Reduced color mode" => 16 bits mode.

Commandos2_dg_Voodoo2.54_windowed_mode.png

Dege wrote:

Sorry, I forgot about this: I was going to try it myself but the game always crashed for me for some reason, I should reinstall it.
Anyway, since updating the window area is totally in the hands of DX11 (DXGI), I hardly thinks its a dgVoodoo bug. My tip it's caused by the compat mode.

Osprey wrote:

I can confirm that behavior with Commandos 2 in v2.54 and WIP36. It doesn't happen when the game is run without any wrapper and it doesn't happen with aqrit's wrapper, so it's definitely dgVoodoo. I've tried changing nearly every setting in dgVoodooCpl.exe, so it doesn't appear to be correctable with any setting.

Dege, applying a compatibility mode is a workaround for windowed mode to work properly, otherwise the game works fine natively with dgvoodoo2 in fullscreen mode. As Osprey said, since there isn't any bug when the game is run without any wrapper and it doesn't happen with aqrit's wrapper, I also believe this problem is a side effect of dgvoodoo2.
By the way, my tests are based on the GOG version of Commandos 2 + dgVoodoo 2.54/WIP37, installed on Windows 10 and powered by an Nvidia GPU (GTX 1060). Should you need more information to dig in, feel free to let me know.
Thanks for your help.

Reply 3301 of 3949, by CoolGamer

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Dege, please take a look at "Star Wars Rebel Assault 2" windows version when you have the time. There is no installation, just copy the contents of the first CD to a folder on your harddisk. Game executable RA2START.EXE calls DSETUP.DLL which in turn tries to access a missing procedure entry point in Kernel32.dll named SUnMapLS_IP_EBP_12. Apparently this deprecated procedure entry point only existed in windows95/98's kernel32.dll, and no longer exists in Windows 7 and up. As a result, the game crashes before it loads ddraw.dll. If you can patch the game executable, we should be able to enjoy this game through dgVoodoo. Game executable size is only 140kb, so hopefully it shouldn't be a big deal to reverse engineer it for you. 😀

Reply 3303 of 3949, by CoolGamer

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Dege wrote:

Isn't there an old Kernel32 to new Kernel32 instead? 😁 😁 😁

🤣. I laughed so hard when I read that.

I look forward to the next WIP with the debug layer, new features and game specific bug fixes. The order of development is up to you.

Is it possible to add Super Sample Anti Aliasing (SSAA) to dgVoodoo? I saw SSAA in the 2013 game named "The Cave" (steam version) and it looks really very good. SSAA was added to the game through one of the later game updates and was called "super high quality anti-aliasing" method in the change-log.

Wikipedia says that SSAA was the earliest, easiest and best looking form of antialiasing used by early graphics cards but was later dumped by gpu manufacturers due to high computation cost required relative to MSAA. Is it easy to add SSAA to dgVoodoo?

Reply 3305 of 3949, by galneon

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CoolGamer wrote:

Wikipedia says that SSAA was the earliest, easiest and best looking form of antialiasing used by early graphics cards but was later dumped by gpu manufacturers due to high computation cost required relative to MSAA.

Not actually true--it's just not as exposed as it used to be. For example, I think the Nvidia cpl only offers MSAA now. If you use Inspector, however, you can select up to 4x4, or combined SS + MS modes. I haven't had an AMD card in a long time so I don't know if the cpl there exposes it anymore, but I'd be shocked if it couldn't still be forced through some means. There's also DSR and the AMD equivalent which offer non-integer-locked downsampling--similar result if you select an integer multiplier and whatever the magical number on the sharpness slider is.

Main reason anti-aliasing quality took a dip was the prominence of deferred rendering engines (think Far Cry 1) where you couldn't enable proper anti-aliasing at the same time as HDR, or not without forcing it in a way that causes glitches. Then came garbage like FSAA which was popular because of how light the performance impact was...

Supersampling through driver settings is still there for those who want to use it in a supporting D3D-based engine. Load up an older D3D8 or 9 game that runs well native, force 2x2 or 4x4 through Inspector or the AMD equivalent, and spoil the hell out of yourself. Newer games sometimes have a supersampling slider which effectively does the same thing--Shadow of Mordor and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter to name two I've played. The Witcher 2 has an infamously performance-intensive version as well (my GTX 970 couldn't handle it beyond 35-40 FPS).

Reply 3306 of 3949, by CoolGamer

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I saw SSAA for the first time in the game "The Cave", and it looked really good. That's why I requested it. 😀 But only if it is easy to implement for Dege.

I looked at the Nvidia control panel and I don't have SSAA. I only have regular (MSAA) and CSAA. I do have the AntiAliasing Transparency options with "2x-8x supersample" options. I don't know if combining MSAA or CSAA + AntiAliasing Transparency is identical to the SSAA algorithm or not.

Keep in mind that we will get TXAA when Dege implements Nvidia Gameworks DLLs usage into dgVoodoo 😀 . TXAA is supposed to be the absolute best at a reasonable performance hit, based on Nvidia marketing materials. But, GameWorks DLL integration will probably take a while. For now we need to settle with MSAA (and maybe SSAA if it is easy). 😀

On a seperate note, I have a question regarding the new debug layer:
Dege, when the debug layer is ready, will the debug logs help you to resolve issues that you were not able to replicate on your machine? As you might remember, "Evil Dead Hail to The King" worked on your machine but it did not work on mine. Also Star Wars Racer worked on some computers (like mine) only when fast vid memory access was enabled, but it worked fine on yours without fast vid memory access. Please keep those issues in mind as you develop the debug layer.

I also have a bug report. LucasArts Adventure Pack Games (Steam Versions) do not work via dgVoodoo. These are Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones The Last Crusade, The Loom and The Dig. Please note that the Steam versions of these games are the native windows ports made by LucasArts in 2004. They all use ddraw.dll. Games work fine natively. They crash to windows without an error when I try to play them via dgVoodoo. I am sure that it is a simple bug.

Last edited by CoolGamer on 2017-10-25, 01:00. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3308 of 3949, by galneon

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CoolGamer wrote:

I looked at the Nvidia control panel and I don't have SSAA. I only have regular (MSAA) and CSAA. I do have the AntiAliasing Transparency options with "2x-8x supersample" options. I don't know if combining MSAA or CSAA + AntiAliasing Transparency is identical to the SSAA algorithm or not.

Just to be perfectly clear, SSAA support is still there--it just isn't exposed through the control panel. Nvidia Profile Inspector is necessary to enable it. It exposes all (known) hidden driver settings for per-game or global overrides.

galneon wrote:

Supersampling through driver settings is still there for those who want to use it in a supporting D3D-based engine. Load up an older D3D8 or 9 game that runs well native, force 2x2 or 4x4 through Inspector or the AMD equivalent, and spoil the hell out of yourself.

Reply 3309 of 3949, by Staniol

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Hi All,
just one short question, is it possible to use only the Dx7 wrapper part and bypass the DDRAW?
Janes FA-18 has a strange way of handling the 2d menu, but 3d works perfectly with dgvoodoo2.
Without DgVoodoo, menu works perfectly, but 3d doesn't start, game is throwing an exception when entering the 3d world.
I hope its not a stupid question, but if it is, I will at least know it. 😁
Thanks in advance.

Freedom of speech is our birth right, but the privilege of being heard needs to be gained.

Reply 3310 of 3949, by Myloch

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Dgvoodoo2 + RockmanX leads to weird behavior, it seems to not care at all about cpl settings and it keeps running at blurred ultralow resolution and even disabling the watermark does nothing, it stays active.

"Gamer & collector for passion, I firmly believe in the preservation and the diffusion of old/rare software, against all personal egoisms"

Reply 3311 of 3949, by ZellSF

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Myloch wrote:

Dgvoodoo2 + RockmanX leads to weird behavior, it seems to not care at all about cpl settings and it keeps running at blurred ultralow resolution and even disabling the watermark does nothing, it stays active.

Make sure you don't have different compatibility modes set on the game and dgvdooocpl. Also make sure you don't run them with different privileges (run as admin).

Reply 3313 of 3949, by Dege

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Myloch wrote:

Dgvoodoo2 + RockmanX leads to weird behavior, it seems to not care at all about cpl settings and it keeps running at blurred ultralow resolution and even disabling the watermark does nothing, it stays active.

It's one of the cases where the spec-release version of dgVoodoo with the debug layer is going to be useful: where the config file is loaded from, if succeeded at all, which dgvoodoo dll's are loaded, etc., it all can be checked out by the log.

Staniol wrote:
Hi All, just one short question, is it possible to use only the Dx7 wrapper part and bypass the DDRAW? Janes FA-18 has a strange […]
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Hi All,
just one short question, is it possible to use only the Dx7 wrapper part and bypass the DDRAW?
Janes FA-18 has a strange way of handling the 2d menu, but 3d works perfectly with dgvoodoo2.
Without DgVoodoo, menu works perfectly, but 3d doesn't start, game is throwing an exception when entering the 3d world.
I hope its not a stupid question, but if it is, I will at least know it. 😁
Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately no, DDraw+D3D must be the same implementation, you cannot mix dgVoodoo with MS DX.

@everybody: when I finished the debug layer, I'll check out the reported problems and ideas (including other threads too).

Reply 3314 of 3949, by Staniol

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Dege wrote:
Staniol wrote:
Hi All, just one short question, is it possible to use only the Dx7 wrapper part and bypass the DDRAW? Janes FA-18 has a strange […]
Show full quote

Hi All,
just one short question, is it possible to use only the Dx7 wrapper part and bypass the DDRAW?
Janes FA-18 has a strange way of handling the 2d menu, but 3d works perfectly with dgvoodoo2.
Without DgVoodoo, menu works perfectly, but 3d doesn't start, game is throwing an exception when entering the 3d world.
I hope its not a stupid question, but if it is, I will at least know it. 😁
Thanks in advance.

Unfortunately no, DDraw+D3D must be the same implementation, you cannot mix dgVoodoo with MS DX.

@everybody: when I finished the debug layer, I'll check out the reported problems and ideas (including other threads too).

@Dege: Thank you for the answer!
I tried to check some things but as far as I see, it looks like FA-18 2d implementation is using some windows built in gui elements and those are causing the issue.
I must admit, its working to some extent with dgVoodoo, but cannot stay in fullscreen because of the behaviour mentiond before, causing screen refresh/focus and mouse handling issues.
Just let me know if you need help in understanding the issue, but I also understand its a rare problem, so no issues if you don't have the time or don't see benefit in fixing it, I will try to find other workarounds.
Thank you for the great work so far, I enjoy dgvoodoo with F22-TAW without any flaws!

Freedom of speech is our birth right, but the privilege of being heard needs to be gained.

Reply 3315 of 3949, by CoolGamer

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I have another bug report. Robo Rumble GOG version has DirectX5 and 3dfx Glide modes. "Bump Mapping" and "Scroll Mode" settings of the display options are not available when playing the game via dgVoodoo in DirectX and Glide modes. The game comes with nGlide pre-installed. When I played the game via nGlide, I saw that "Bump Mapping" was available but "Scroll Mode" was unavailable. I don't know what "Scroll Mode" is.

I also noticed that scaling the resolution to "Max" via dgVoodoo looks better in Directx mode when compared to Glide. Maximum resolution on my laptop is 1366x768. Inferior scaling in glide mode might be due to the difference in game's glide and directx engines, but I wanted to report it just in case.

If you get an Indeo Codec error when you run the game, just open a command prompt at the game directory and write the following:
regsvr32 ir50_32.dll

EDIT:
There is also an issue with Crime Cities GOG version in Glide mode. The game has OpenGL, DirectX and Glide modes and comes with nGlide pre-installed. I could not get the game to start with dgVoodoo in Glide mode with default settings. It gets stuck in the bluescreen. The game launcher supports multiple resolutions and has a Test mode that tests the renderer. nGlide only works up to 800x600 resolution. I got the game to work natively using system DirectX and also with dgVoodoo DirectX in 1366x768 resolution. The game looks just like the city scene in FinalReality Demo.

Last edited by CoolGamer on 2017-10-26, 16:21. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3316 of 3949, by daniel_u

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Hi Dege,
Here's an issue where some shadows dont display well in Splinter Cell. You can see the missing shadows on the wall mostly between the doors. Last pic is taken with a GF4.
It was tested with DgV 2.53 and DgV 2.54(you can read all about it in the Dgvodoo Splinter cell thread)
When i tested for an instant i could see the correct shadow.(angle related stuff)

Shadow issue here:(happens with 4800 preset also)
d7EDcQY.png
Correct shadow:
93mAajO.png