VOGONS


First post, by Honour_Freedom

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An introduction to this game:

Honor & Freedom is a 3D real time strategy game. (The original version released in August 1999) […]
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Honor & Freedom is a 3D real time strategy game. (The original version released in August 1999)

The players need to excavate resources, construct base, produce weapons, and protect themselves by controling 3D air-force and ground-force units in order to defeat the enemy; there're also specific missions in each assignment.

Human and Robot are the two races in the game; they have complicated weapon systems individually. They have different specialties in varieties of ground and air forces; however, those characteristics are also restricted to each other. Players could constitute them to be an irony army as they wish.

This game has an outstanding 3D characteristic. The sky, mountain and water make players be personally on the scenes. The vivid fighting scenes and varieties of special effects in the game will sure give players a surprise.

In addition, this game is also a test of players' abilities, for each player needs his own strategy. AI combines and optimizes many programmers' strategies; it will bring players many troubles!

[*]3D Mode: Using DirectX 5.0 as the bottum, all basing on the ImmediateMode pattern, fully utilizing the optimization and characteristics of 3D graphics card, giving a convulsive visual effect and an unimaginable feeling that 2D game never has.
[*]Real Time Strategy: To render, order and perform in real time, you need to face a mightiness opponent-the computer and an even mightier opponent-your enemy.
[*]Battle Online: Supports 4 players at the most in Internet online game. Challenge proficient players in different areas.
[*]Artificial Intelligence: AI has annoyed type, crazy type, conservative type, and aggressive type. Each type will give you a hard time to deal with.
[*]Varieties in Methods: You can choose to be either the Human or the Robot. Each army has its own characteristics, they patch up and restrict each other at the same time. The more powerful weapon system and mighty weapon will produce with the upgrading of the base.
[*]System Minimum Requirement: PII 233, 32M Ram, 2nd generation 3D acceleration card, 4M display memory, 4x CD-ROM, WIN95/98, DirectX 5.0 or higher

In each fighting moment and each real time strategy game, it might be bloody and cruel, we do hope you still keep a virtuous heart no matter you were the evil Robot or the rebellious Human in the game.

The original game supported Windows 95 and 98. We can now play this game on Windows 10.
[*]By installing the official patch version 1.6.2 (released in January 2001), the game could support Windows Me/NT/2000/XP.
[*]On Windows Vista or above, we need D3DRM.DLL.
[*]On Windows 7 SP1 or above, we need IPXwrapper to support a game on local area network.
[*]On Windows 8 or above, the screen gets stuck once you select anything in a game, if you launch JMain.exe directly. We need to use Windows compatibility "16 bit color", and use parameter "start JMain.exe -window" to launch the game.
[*]On Windows 8.1 or above, we need to enable Windows feature: Legacy Components - DirectPlay.

But the game still has issues with modern graphics cards. We find it hard to select a unit by left-click the mouse. When we select a unit and right-click on the screen, the unit doesn't move towards where you clicked, but moves to the bottom of screen. When you try to build a structure by a "Human Constructor", the green mouse pointer, indicating the position to build, does not appear.

The attachment 屏幕截图(9).png is no longer available

The game worked well with most 3D graphic cards before 2002, and ATI graphic cards before 2010. But it has mouse issues on almost all graphic cards these years.

I tried dgVoodoo 2.54, and I found the mouse behaves a bit differently. When I used a "Human Constructor" to build something, the green mouse pointer appeared sometimes, but sometimes disappeared. When I selected a unit and right-click on the screen, the unit sometimes moved correctly, and sometimes moved to the bottom of screen.

Another issue with dgVoodoo 2.54 is that the game crashes when a game finished.

I love Honor & Freedom very much and hope that one day we can play this game perfectly on Windows 10 on modern hardware. And I think dgVoodoo 2 will most probably fix the mouse issue in Honour & Freedom.

Last edited by Honour_Freedom on 2018-01-21, 17:26. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 10, by ZellSF

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Honour_Freedom wrote:

The game worked well with most 3D graphic cards before 2002, and ATI graphic cards before 2010. But it has mouse issues on almost all graphic cards these years.

How did you figure this out? Did a lot of people test this with different graphic cards? I'm just wondering why you're so sure it's rendering related.

Reply 2 of 10, by Honour_Freedom

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ZellSF wrote:

How did you figure this out? Did a lot of people test this with different graphic cards? I'm just wondering why you're so sure it's rendering related.

Sure. I've been administrator of Honor & Freedom Baidu post bar, and administrator of Honor & Freedom QQ group, for many years. Hundreds of people tested the game. Old ATI card and old version of drivers may work. (Old ATI card and latest version driver may not work)

Reply 3 of 10, by Peixoto

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Honour_Freedom wrote:
ZellSF wrote:

How did you figure this out? Did a lot of people test this with different graphic cards? I'm just wondering why you're so sure it's rendering related.

Sure. I've been administrator of Honor & Freedom Baidu post bar, and administrator of Honor & Freedom QQ group, for many years. Hundreds of people tested the game. Old ATI card and old version of drivers may work. (Old ATI card and latest version driver may not work)

Ouch

Reply 4 of 10, by Dege

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Yes, I can confirm the crash. I don't yet know though if it's a bug on game side (double releasing and object) that MS DX survives or one on dgVoodoo side.

Reply 5 of 10, by Dege

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This game suffers from 2 problems:

- dgVoodoo crashes when quitting a mission because the game double-releases some textures (the facepalm-technique again... 😁), altough I was able to workaround this on dgVoodoo side, will be included in the next WIP.
- The game allocates its z-buffer through D3DRM which checks for the supported formats (8, 16, 24, 32) and chooses the best available one. The game code however clearly assumes 16 bit because the code reading back z-buffer values for mouse cursor positions addresses and works with 16 bit entries.

The situation is the same as for Micro Machines 3. It worked for old cards supporting 16 bit as a maximum bit depth for z-buffers but not for newer ones.
The only solution I could come out with for the mouse problem was patching D3DRM to force 16 bit z-buffers. It's a special patch only for this game.

Reply 6 of 10, by Honour_Freedom

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Dege wrote:
This game suffers from 2 problems: […]
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This game suffers from 2 problems:

- dgVoodoo crashes when quitting a mission because the game double-releases some textures (the facepalm-technique again... 😁), altough I was able to workaround this on dgVoodoo side, will be included in the next WIP.
- The game allocates its z-buffer through D3DRM which checks for the supported formats (8, 16, 24, 32) and chooses the best available one. The game code however clearly assumes 16 bit because the code reading back z-buffer values for mouse cursor positions addresses and works with 16 bit entries.

The situation is the same as for Micro Machines 3. It worked for old cards supporting 16 bit as a maximum bit depth for z-buffers but not for newer ones.
The only solution I could come out with for the mouse problem was patching D3DRM to force 16 bit z-buffers. It's a special patch only for this game.

Wow, that's great. Thank you Dege! 😘

Reply 7 of 10, by tenyuhuang

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Dege wrote:
This game suffers from 2 problems: […]
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This game suffers from 2 problems:

- dgVoodoo crashes when quitting a mission because the game double-releases some textures (the facepalm-technique again... 😁), altough I was able to workaround this on dgVoodoo side, will be included in the next WIP.
- The game allocates its z-buffer through D3DRM which checks for the supported formats (8, 16, 24, 32) and chooses the best available one. The game code however clearly assumes 16 bit because the code reading back z-buffer values for mouse cursor positions addresses and works with 16 bit entries.

The situation is the same as for Micro Machines 3. It worked for old cards supporting 16 bit as a maximum bit depth for z-buffers but not for newer ones.
The only solution I could come out with for the mouse problem was patching D3DRM to force 16 bit z-buffers. It's a special patch only for this game.

Hi Dege, thanks a ton for the patch!
FYI the game also has issues on a real Voodoo 2 setup. An early version of the game will return "Windows cannot create new DCs" from the bundled 3D test program and refuse to load into the menu; while a later version (1.62) will, all texts in the menu will disappear, rendering the game (almost) awkwardly unplayable.

Not sure if these issues are related?

PS: SLI doesn't work. Must disable SLI to see anything at all.
PPS: There's nothing useful in the log file either.

Reply 8 of 10, by Dege

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No, I don't think so.
Window DC's and depth buffers are separate things, having nothing to do with each others.

I think it's due to a poor or buggy 3Dfx driver implementation. 🙁

Reply 9 of 10, by tenyuhuang

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People reported to have it running flawlessly on Voodoo 1. I wonder what could have made the difference... 😵

Reply 10 of 10, by Honour_Freedom

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tenyuhuang wrote:

People reported to have it running flawlessly on Voodoo 1. I wonder what could have made the difference... 😵

Try disabling triple-buffer.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Humansoft\Honour & Freedom]
"Primary"="0"
"No Triple"="1"