dgVoodoo 2 for DirectX 11

[AngryLittleAlchemist]

Can someone help me? I'm completely new to this forum and I know this thread isn't about one game specifically but I really need help ...

My copy of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow will not work with the widescreen patch. I did everything I possibly could, I reinstalled the game countless times, installed the widescreen fix countless times, I even manually installed Voodoo separately and put it into the folder and even got the game to run cracked because I heard it was the fault of the DRM.

I'm by no means a technical person so that might have all sounded like gibberish. If so, I am sorry. Let me just get to the point to be more clear ...

Here is the error I get every time :
History: UObject::StaticAllocateObject <- (NULL None) <- UObject::StaticConstructObject <- UGameEngine::Init <- InitEngine

It probably sounds like this is unrelated, but this only happens when I use Voodoo/the D38D.ll file (I forget the name, that might be the wrong name but hopefully you get the point)

I desperately need help. If anyone can offer some thanks.

[Arklay]

Strange, the last version of dgVoodoo v2.55.2 according to windows defender has a virus called "Trojan:Win32/CryptInject", anyway with the dgVoodooWIP48, gabriel knight 3 has now white textures




And with jedi knight 2 dark forces there is a sorta of a regression about the fps, from 30 fps now i've 25 fps, with windows xp fps were at 60

[Dege]

Strange, the last version of dgVoodoo v2.55.2 according to windows defender has a virus called "Trojan:Win32/CryptInject"

It's not strange, it only shows the stability and reliability of AV detection algorhytms. The binary changes a bit and voila, suddenly it becomes infected.

GK3 however works fine for me with 2.55.2.

[alberthamik]

2.55.2's download has a password on the zip file, though the spec release works alright. I am meaning to try out the original pre-patch release of Requiem, but at the moment the game will just crash when I try going ingame for the 3DFX.exe, regardless of voodoo version set, and input is completely lost when attempting the D3D version.

On an unrelated subject, I've been attempting to use dgvoodoo with older versions of Thief: The Dark Project, Thief Gold and Thief II. I've had mixed to reasonable results with the former two, but Thief II as is will not act correctly on screen changes from the menu to ingame, sometimes just crashing, and in Thief II's case there's been documented problems for years with it's fog not being rendered on modern GPUs or with modern DirectX.

This had been fixed with a community made directx wrapper titled ddfix, but ddfix carries it's own issues with regards to capturing the game. It wouldn't be a big deal except that the older versions of the Thief games have gained interest again recently with the thief speedrunning community, where the modern fan patched versions of the game have fixed alot of the older engine issues, but also fixed exploits of use to runners.

It's rather hard testing the game in demo form, as Thief 2's demo is based on an older engine that does not have fog and is effectively a different engine from the final game, and it was never even technically released, and most downloads of it today are fanmade versions using the new engine.

[lowenz]

Why do not simply use NewDark for T1(G) and T2?

[alberthamik]

Why do not simply use NewDark for T1(G) and T2?

I clarified that already, the newdark engine fixes common issues pertaining to capturing the game, but it also changes a lot of physics properties and miscellaneous things that end up making it a bit slower for Thief II (in the case of Thief/Gold, that's a bit more of a contentious situation as the main fan patch used introduces it's own quirks that end up making it almost competitive with the old dark engine for speedruns). Being able to capture Thief II with 1.18 or even the original 1.07 release has been difficult for getting more runners into the game, as DDFIX tends to have odd quirks with OBS or Xsplit.

The main issue simply seems to be how the game transitions between window modes, and also possibly a conflict with stuff like it's broken fog. I'd be willing to share more info with the developer if they need any testing done. ddfix, for all it's problems, is open source and is a ready reference for some of the useful fixes it applies to the old dark engine for Thief II.

[ZellSF]

2.55.2's download has a password on the zip file, though the spec release works alright. I am meaning to try out the original pre-patch release of Requiem, but at the moment the game will just crash when I try going ingame for the 3DFX.exe, regardless of voodoo version set, and input is completely lost when attempting the D3D version.

On an unrelated subject, I've been attempting to use dgvoodoo with older versions of Thief: The Dark Project, Thief Gold and Thief II. I've had mixed to reasonable results with the former two, but Thief II as is will not act correctly on screen changes from the menu to ingame, sometimes just crashing, and in Thief II's case there's been documented problems for years with it's fog not being rendered on modern GPUs or with modern DirectX.

This had been fixed with a community made directx wrapper titled ddfix, but ddfix carries it's own issues with regards to capturing the game. It wouldn't be a big deal except that the older versions of the Thief games have gained interest again recently with the thief speedrunning community, where the modern fan patched versions of the game have fixed alot of the older engine issues, but also fixed exploits of use to runners.

It's rather hard testing the game in demo form, as Thief 2's demo is based on an older engine that does not have fog and is effectively a different engine from the final game, and it was never even technically released, and most downloads of it today are fanmade versions using the new engine.

1: The password is dege, listed on the front page. It's there because virus scanners flag the files (false positives) which leads to Dege's web page being delisted from Google and blocked by malware filters.

2: Have you applied single processor affinity to the .exe? When you're running an old legacy version of the software, you have to look up what the old compatibility fixes were... dgVoodoo2 only deals with rendering, it's not a generic compatibility fixer.

3: dgVoodoo2 does not like overlays (FRAPS, MSI OSD, etc...) with some games. Thief 2 is one of them.

4: Fog does work, but you might need to change dgVoodoo2's Videocard setting. The default mission files apparently also have broken fog, so you need to download fixed files. Read here: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.p ... 731&page=2

No clue why 3DFX rendering crashes for Requiem (nGlide works, native ddraw+dgVoodoo2 works, dgVoodoo2 windowed works, dgVoodoo2 fullscreen doesn't), but Direct3D rendering works fine here, no input issues.

[alberthamik]

In regards to Requiem, I've been trying to help out some friends with capturing the game, as well as myself. nGlide works great with the game, but when it comes time to capturing it, it's an absolute nightmare. Requiem's bizarre coding of it's interface can sometimes take the mouse out of the window, and sometimes for certain people the game just doesn't want to run with native ddraw for menus and they are having bad luck with wrappers, even dgvoodoo2 and nGlide. Many more people report something about the game not having enough memory or something on starting it up. Requiem's problems are well beyond the scope of dgvoodoo 2, so yeah it isn't likely that these problems will get solved quickly, if ever.

As for Thief II, I am aware of it's myriad of famous issues, and I have already accounted for the main ones (CPU affinity for example). The fog part admittedly is not something I was the most worried about, I was simply bringing it up as I wasn't aware you could actually get it working. I'm going to test it out some more to see what was causing the game to intermittently crash sometimes. Thanks for the info there.

EDIT: So one thing I'm noticing upon start is that Thief II will start up in a windowed mode at the top-left corner of my screen. Going into gameplay corrects this. I solved that by changing dgvoodoo 2 to windowed mode, strangely. You were correct, changing the videocard brings back fog. OTOH, I died and the game crashed attempting to load up the "death" movie. This game is well known for it's (in the past) issues with video playback, and using dgvoodoo 2 they just get skipped, but regardless the game reacts by crashing upon trying to load the death video (though it seems to act fine with the briefing video, I assume because it's in a windowed state the game doesn't freak out from this). Another problem, and this is probably just due to me having default resolution settings, is upon pausing my mouse is confined to a small portion of the topleft of the screen.

Also, forgot to say thanks for the info on the locked zip file. I had missed that.

[ZellSF]

In regards to Requiem, I've been trying to help out some friends with capturing the game, as well as myself. nGlide works great with the game, but when it comes time to capturing it, it's an absolute nightmare. Requiem's bizarre coding of it's interface can sometimes take the mouse out of the window, and sometimes for certain people the game just doesn't want to run with native ddraw for menus and they are having bad luck with wrappers, even dgvoodoo2 and nGlide. Many more people report something about the game not having enough memory or something on starting it up. Requiem's problems are well beyond the scope of dgvoodoo 2, so yeah it isn't likely that these problems will get solved quickly, if ever.

There's already plenty of ways to get Requiem working. Capture might be worse (though in my experience Nvidia's capturing tools deals nicely with games that switch modes), but that's why many streamers have separate capture and gaming boxes.

EDIT: So one thing I'm noticing upon start is that Thief II will start up in a windowed mode at the top-left corner of my screen. Going into gameplay corrects this. I solved that by changing dgvoodoo 2 to windowed mode

Should not happen. Does not happen here on 1.18. Make sure you've added Thief 2 under "Config folder / Running instance", edit its config and set it to "Full Screen" and "Application controlled fullscreen/windowed state", also make sure no compatibility modes are applied to thief2.exe and that it isn't patched for use with ddfix.

OTOH, I died and the game crashed attempting to load up the "death" movie

It will do that if you as I mentioned have any overlay software, or anything that could behave like it. Close all third party software and try again. Death movies play fine here.

Another problem, and this is probably just due to me having default resolution settings, is upon pausing my mouse is confined to a small portion of the topleft of the screen.

The default resolution settings is to display the game 1:1 and should not introduce any mouse issues.

If you however change the "Scaling mode" and/or "Resolution" setting you probably need to uncheck "Capture mouse". Alternatively you can edit dgVoodoo.conf and set "FreeMouse" to true.

[alberthamik]

It will do that if you as I mentioned have any overlay software, or anything that could behave like it. Close all third party software and try again. Death movies play fine here.

I don't know of any overlay software on my system. Is there a way to check for such things?

There's already plenty of ways to get Requiem working. Capture might be worse (though in my experience Nvidia's capturing tools deals nicely with games that switch modes), but that's why many streamers have separate capture and gaming boxes.

Well it is very much difficult for most people to capture this game, what with it being on PC, only being playable with the 3DFX version (the D3D version does work, but it has miscellaneous glitches that rear their ugly head in runs), and in regards to the streamers comment, that applies mostly to console runners. Most major FPS runners I personally know only run and capture from one machine, and the exception I know of merely does that because they had the equipment beforehand as a console runner. But anyways, I guess it's just impossible for anyone ATM to really know exactly why Requiem acts as it does on certain systems.

Though I had issues trying to capture it, playing it has been smooth sailing. But virtually everyone I've mentioned it to has had problems getting it to run, and our attempts to use dgvoodoo 2 went nowhere. Last time I got dgvoodoo 2's glide wrapper to work and not crash, the UI would be scrubbed off the screen, it was really weird.

[ZellSF]

It will do that if you as I mentioned have any overlay software, or anything that could behave like it. Close all third party software and try again. Death movies play fine here.

I don't know of any overlay software on my system. Is there a way to check for such things?

Not really. I would kill all third party software to make sure none of them are conflicting, then start them again one and one until the crashes start. Assuming all FMVs crash, that is. Do they? Do they work under ddfix?

Thief 2 1.18 runs relatively stable here, FMVs at all, so I don't think it would be a dgVoodoo2 issue.

[ZellSF]

Of course I say that having only tested with death/success movies, so I tried copying the story movies and it starts crashing 100% of the time when selecting new game. This seems to be a regression since 2.55 works perfectly. Windowed mode also works perfectly (sort of like Requiem?). Three logs attached if Dege wants to read, Thief 2 running with movies in fullscreen (and crashing), Thief 2 running with movies in windowed mode (and running fine) and Thief 2 running with no movies (except lose/win ones, also runs fine).

[ZellSF]

Tortuga: Pirate Hunter seems to work perfectly. Resolution forcing is too glitchy to use though.

Braveheart has a flickering menu and crashes when going into any submenu, this being the last thing in the log:

[8404] [dgVoodoo] WARNING: DirectDrawSurface (09EFFB38)::Lock: Failed, HRESULT: DDERR_SURFACEBUSY

DxWnd and WineD3D doesn't crash (but DxWnd has invisible cursor and WineD3D doesn't clear the screen properly). I would link you to the demo, but the demo does not do the same thing. Oh and the intro doesn't work (but not for any new reason, I'm sure).

I decided to try Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds again, because even though I was pretty sure 3D was software rendered I wanted to check if resolution forcing would work (it does not). I figured out the game does work, but has problems with resolution enumeration, so it needs dgVoodoo2 to limit enumerated resolutions. IgnoreException compatibility shim somehow seems to help start this game properly, but it will crash again whenever resolution changes (I'm not sure that's exclusive to dgVoodoo2 though). More annoyingly, it shares a problem with RIM - Battle Planets: Dropping mouse clicks quite often.

[lowenz]

Bloodrayne (1)

Got a strange problem! Forcing the V-Sync via dgVoodoo2 or with the render.ini option I got 50 FPS and not 60 FPS (Monitor is set to 60 Hz).
Why?

I'm playing @1920x1080 (hand-modded ini).

[ZellSF]

Baldur's Gate crashes when starting a new game (has no one tested this before or am I missing something?). This sounds suspicious:

00000154 6.29490137 [9476] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: DirectDrawSurface (0563DF08)::Lock: Invalid rect to be locked: rect is either intersects surface boundaries or not aligned properly for a compressed format.
00000155 6.29491806 [9476] [dgVoodoo] WARNING: DirectDrawSurface (0563DF08)::Lock: Failed, HRESULT: DDERR_INVALIDPARAMS
00000156 6.29608965 [9476] [dgVoodoo] INFO: DirectDrawSurface (0562AE80) Primary surface (a flipping chain) is released because this head elem is released.

Works fine natively. Another case of "I'd link you to the demo, but it behaves differently".

Obviously not an important title (plenty of other options for getting this game running perfectly), but maybe a dgVoodoo2 bug that needs fixing?

[lowenz]

Bloodrayne (1)

Got a strange problem! Forcing the V-Sync via dgVoodoo2 or with the render.ini option I got 50 FPS and not 60 FPS (Monitor is set to 60 Hz).
Why?

I'm playing @1920x1080 (hand-modded ini).

More strange: using crosire d3d9 wrapper OR dgVoodoo2 forcing the windowed mode -> 30 FPS

[alberthamik]

Thanks ZellSF for checking further into that and logging your results. I think I'll test out older dgvoodoo builds to confirm the regression is definitely at fault for everyone. In regards to Requiem, I'm still hunting for more info in regards to an issue practically everyone but me has been getting, pertaining to the game crashing with something along the lines of an "out of memory" message, that some people have reportedly been able to bypass by just spam clicking the exe until it starts for them, only for it to crash sometime later on.

Requiem is such an annoyance for me, since I've been trying to get more people to check it out. The people selling it on GOG and Steam don't seem to care.

[Osprey]

Dege, if I may, I'd like to suggest making the password for the archives more noticeable on the website. I think that notice at the top of the main page could do with being put at the top of the downloads page, as well, since some people may click on the link to the downloads page before reading the notice or may've been given only the link to the downloads page. Also, I think that it'd be good to repeat the password right next to the latest non-WIP, non-debug version, since that's what most users will be clicking on, with something like:

dgVoodoo v2.55.2 - for regular usage (released: 07.06.2018; password is "dege")

Besides reducing frustration for many users, this would help those of us who regularly promote dgVoodoo's usage to not worry about people that we direct not seeing the password and not having to tell them each time what it is. Thanks for listening.

[Dege]

Ok, Osprey, you're right. I'm going to flag that zip with the password.

[kjliew]

Dege, you may also consider how to make dgVoodoo2 not to advertise itself as virus threat. I think the way that you coded dgvoodoo2 make it susceptible of virus threat from heuristic scanners point of view, similar to most EXE packers and self-modifying codes. Today's signature-less scanners are mostly behavioral checkers, if the code behaves like a virus, then it will be quarantined until its true nature can be analyzed. The antivirus industry always has the mindset of "it's better be sorry than to let-go a zero-day outbreak".

I remember you had talked about this before and you did something special to prevent the reliance on flavors of MSVCRT, and that is causing the false positives from virus scanners. Personally, I think not having dgVoodoo2 advertised as virus threat is more critical than MSVCRT dependencies.