Dege wrote:

GoG

GoG version of Giants is DX7 only (->gg_dx7r.dll)

Dege wrote:

Thanks!! :cool: The good news is those bugs are fixed. Both were related to shader constants, I found a bug in a basic functio […]
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lowenz wrote:

Partially fixed :D […]
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Dege wrote:

- Fixed the vertex shader fog problem appearing in Chrome and Chrome Specforce

Partially fixed 😁

See the tree bark:

Thanks!! 😎
The good news is those bugs are fixed.
Both were related to shader constants, I found a bug in a basic function and a sort of lack of compliance to the DX8 shader reg interval specifications. This could explain other things like the weapon in Pariah but I didn't checked it yet. Could the game be saved in Pariah somehow? Or it offers only checkpoints through an autosave mechanism?
I also have problems with SP/SP2 savegames. I download one from the net and try to load that into the game with no effect. Nothing happens. 😕

Awesome, this made my day. Looking forward to next version. Thanks!

Dege wrote:

Also tried JHGP and it crashes. This game tries to use execute buffers in very obscure way, no wonder why it crashes (bad creati […]
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There's a demo of JHGPC here (needs Win98 mode applied to do anything), but it crashes natively and shows a black screen with dgVoodoo logo then crashes with dgVoodoo: https://archive.org/details/JohnnyHerbertsGra … ldChampionsDemo

Also tried JHGP and it crashes. This game tries to use execute buffers in very obscure way, no wonder why it crashes (bad creation paramters, heavy buffer overwriting).
My only tip is that memory overaddressing on Win98 caused no problem in practice and it worked after all.
I don't see much chances for this, maybe a torturer patching could help. 😀

I've been playing about with the game a fair bit. I was unable to get my old Pentium4 to work with Win98SE, as the Gainward 7800GS+ wasn't recognised, even with drivers that should support it. So I turned to ykhwong DOSbox with Win98SE installed and Glide emulation doing the D3D... and that worked! However it was limited to 800x600 res in-game with no anti-aliasing, as it's only low-end Voodoo card emulation.

Coming back to Win8.1, I've managed to get the game working by applying ACT fix IgnoreException, the game will boot and can be played (in 1280x1024) with hardware acceleration disabled in game. In dgVoodoo2 it runs super smooth without D3D. But you're right, as soon as hardware is enabled, the game crashes when booting, with lots of buffer overflows.

What's a torturer patching? Any other ideas?

Ok found it my bad

Firtasik wrote:

Carmageddon TDR 2000: crashes on startup. […]
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Carmageddon TDR 2000: crashes on startup.

However, the game works when "Run in a window" is checked and "Mip Filter" is set to "None" in the game options (TDR2000.exe -setup).

...

It crashes when Carma's resolution is higher than 640x480.

Carma's 640x480 Bink FMVs do this. The game starts in full screen (1600x1200) just fine without them.

lowenz wrote:

Dege wrote:

GoG

GoG version of Giants is DX7 only (->gg_dx7r.dll)

Then it must be a patched version. I have a gg_dx7r.dll in Giants folder, and looking inside the dll it links to D3D8.dll.
Size of gg_dx7r.dll is 163840 bytes, date is 2008.09.18.

Could you try the newest D3D8 build plz?

http://dege.fw.hu/temp/D3D8.zip

I would like to release a new dgVoodoo version but also would like to fix at least Pariah for that. (The last release occured last summer... 😀 )

After that, I'd like to address remaining rendering bugs and other general issues.
(I haven't forgot improving fast memory access, GDI interaction, Jedi Knight, etc.)

VirtuaIceMan wrote:

I've been playing about with the game a fair bit. I was unable to get my old Pentium4 to work with Win98SE, as the Gainward 7800 […]
Show full quote

Dege wrote:

Also tried JHGP and it crashes. This game tries to use execute buffers in very obscure way, no wonder why it crashes (bad creati […]
Show full quote

There's a demo of JHGPC here (needs Win98 mode applied to do anything), but it crashes natively and shows a black screen with dgVoodoo logo then crashes with dgVoodoo: https://archive.org/details/JohnnyHerbertsGra … ldChampionsDemo

Also tried JHGP and it crashes. This game tries to use execute buffers in very obscure way, no wonder why it crashes (bad creation paramters, heavy buffer overwriting).
My only tip is that memory overaddressing on Win98 caused no problem in practice and it worked after all.
I don't see much chances for this, maybe a torturer patching could help. 😀

I've been playing about with the game a fair bit. I was unable to get my old Pentium4 to work with Win98SE, as the Gainward 7800GS+ wasn't recognised, even with drivers that should support it. So I turned to ykhwong DOSbox with Win98SE installed and Glide emulation doing the D3D... and that worked! However it was limited to 800x600 res in-game with no anti-aliasing, as it's only low-end Voodoo card emulation.

Coming back to Win8.1, I've managed to get the game working by applying ACT fix IgnoreException, the game will boot and can be played (in 1280x1024) with hardware acceleration disabled in game. In dgVoodoo2 it runs super smooth without D3D. But you're right, as soon as hardware is enabled, the game crashes when booting, with lots of buffer overflows.

What's a torturer patching? Any other ideas?

My tip is that D3D impl of Win95/98 slightly(?) differs from the NT-based versions. There are two possibilites:
- Either figuring out the game internals, how it handles the execute buffers, what it exactly wants to do, and then patch it to make it compatible with NT-version D3D, if possible at all
- Or reverse engineering the parts in question of 95/98 version of D3D3 and make dgVoodoo to be compliant with that.

I did the reverse engineering on Win7, so dgVoodoo has a DX implementation nearest approaching to an NT-based MS DX version.

I've found a little glitch; in Grand Prix Championship 2, with 2.45 the textures seemed to be banded in colour (game uses 16 bit […]
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I've found a little glitch; in Grand Prix Championship 2, with 2.45 the textures seemed to be banded in colour (game uses 16 bit colour), but in latest WIP13 the bands are gone. This is the GOOD bit. The BAD bit is that there are yellow/blue lines on the edge of distant polygons when anti-aliasing is turned on in dgVoodoo, which were not present with the 2.45 version.

So to recap: 2.45 = worse textures, better anti-aliasing
WIP13 (and 11.3) = better textures, worse anti-aliasing

Is there a sweet spot? 😀

UPDATE: tried the game on my old Pentium4 with GeForce 7800GS+ and the graphics were as per 2.45, banded and good anti-aliasing. So I'll stick with that I think!

I forgot about this. I don't have an idea what can cause that difference but would like to check it later.

Then it must be a patched version. I have a gg_dx7r.dll in Giants folder, and looking inside the dll it links to D3D8.dll.
Size of gg_dx7r.dll is 163840 bytes, date is 2008.09.18.

Afterburner+RTSS show me "DD" as DirectX version -> DirectDraw (on Windows 7 64).

http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/ … atch-1497-beta/

This patch adds gg_dx8r.dll.

I also got the GOG version. It uses DirectX 8 out of the box.

teleguy wrote:

I also got the GOG version. It uses DirectX 8 out of the box.

Can you check with RTSS? 'cause I read DirectDraw, not D3D8.

Dege wrote:

http://dege.fw.hu/temp/D3D8.zip

*Chrome working!
*Republic Commando working!
*Splinter Cell 3 - Versus working! (!!!!!!!!!)

Now testing Pariah.

🤣, I'll recheck 😐

Pariah is WORKING right, now! No more white saturation of weapon skin!
Dege, unleash the new version! 😁

Here's my Giants setup (GoG version 1.4 / Win 7 64 system / no unofficial patch)

DD:

As reported before, installing the 1.5 unofficial patch and switching to D3D8 renderer + dgVoodoo D3D8 + Landscape Bumpmapping (that's the culprit) here's the (wrong) result:

Disabling the Landscape Bumpmapping -> correct rendering

lowenz wrote:

Here's my Giants setup (GoG version 1.4 / Win 7 64 system / no unofficial patch)

Mine says 1.4 as well.

GoG build of Commandos 3 now goes ingame, but with a lot of rendering errors.

Color palette issues (like it has natively actually, but with DxWnd it's fixably with 16-bit color compatibility mode), spiky polygon syndrome, some background tiles are too bright for whatever reason.

Firtasik wrote:

http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/ … atch-1497-beta/

This patch adds gg_dx8r.dll.

Thanks!
I applied that patch to my copy of Giants, now I can switch between D3D7 and D3D8, and indeed, the landscape appears wrong with D3D8.
Mine is not red but a mixture of red and black patches. 😀

I've fixed the bug:

http://dege.fw.hu/temp/D3D8.zip

However I found one in the DX8 renderer of the game (unrelated to the terrain).
In pre-DX8, one had to tell the D3D draw methods how many VERTICES they want to render.
In DX8, number of the PRIMITIVES has to be given to the draw methods.

When Giants renders a screen quad by 2 triangles, it calls DX7 with 6 vertices to draw.
The DX8 renderer passes to the drawing method that same 6, resulting in drawing 6 triangles... When somebody ported it from DX7 to 8, it escaped his notice.
Unfortunately it can result in flashing extra waste polygons in the game. I cannot do anything with that, the game should be patched instead.
I don't really know why it works natively.

One more observation: In GoG version, the DX8 renderer dll is renamed to gg_dx7r.dll, and no DX7 renderer is available. Also, it looks like there are some other hackings in the game because, for example, I cannot see the bank of the river (neither via dgVoodoo, nor natively) at the beginning scene but only a black area. The terrain also looks somewhat uglier compared to the patch that Firtasik linked here, not to mention that bump mapping bug doesn't come with that.

ZellSF wrote:

GoG build of Commandos 3 now goes ingame, but with a lot of rendering errors.

Color palette issues (like it has natively actually, but with DxWnd it's fixably with 16-bit color compatibility mode), spiky polygon syndrome, some background tiles are too bright for whatever reason.

It's only the GoG version? It would be nice to test some day to see the reason.