Thank you for the new update, Dege. Dark Omen flickering has been fixed and menu cursor looks properly, unfortunately the character window (when someone talks) has inverted colors.

stranno wrote:

No hurry at all. But it would be great to see this game running properly.

Well, yes. I didn't plan it for today but, uhm…, I've just fixed it. 😁
For forced resolution though I had to patch the executable. With forced resolution the mouse visibility counter gets a really high negative value at startup (I don't have a clue why) and the game gets stuck in a cycle incrementing it toward zero.
But now it runs beautifully.

stranno wrote:

Thank you for the new update, Dege. Dark Omen flickering has been fixed and menu cursor looks properly, unfortunately the character window (when someone talks) has inverted colors.

Yes, indeed.
It turned out that Dark Omen doesn't enable the hardware renderer if the resolution is forced. See the CPU/3D option in the Options menu.
The reason is, the game does a test-rendering through the 3D HAL device at startup and reads back the rendered pixels by CPU to make sure the hw renderer is working correctly.
If not, then '3D' is disabled in the Options menu. Forcing resolution through dgVoodoo causes the test to fail because pixels get rendered at slightly unexpected position because of the scaling.

I re-patched the executable, plz try this (and don't forget to enable the hw renderer in the game):

http://dege.fw.hu/Patches/Warhammer_DarkOmen_Patch.zip

The games uses paletted textures and the software renderer attaches wrong palette to some textures that's why 'inverted' colors appears. Use 'ATI Radeon 8500' to avoid that.
The hardware renderer seems to work properly out of the box.

Yes. Now everything seems to work properly. I will try to beat the game this weekend for further report.

Thank you again!

One last request, can you take a look, in the future, to these three problems? I dont know if dgVoodoo2 can do something about Zono's Everest / Head Games' Extreme Rock Climbing sluggish mouse or if a.k.a. Games' Everest is wrong at all. But it could worth a check.

Re: WIP versions

Dege wrote:

Yes, indeed. It turned out that Dark Omen doesn't enable the hardware renderer if the resolution is forced. See the CPU/3D optio […]
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stranno wrote:

Thank you for the new update, Dege. Dark Omen flickering has been fixed and menu cursor looks properly, unfortunately the character window (when someone talks) has inverted colors.

Yes, indeed.
It turned out that Dark Omen doesn't enable the hardware renderer if the resolution is forced. See the CPU/3D option in the Options menu.
The reason is, the game does a test-rendering through the 3D HAL device at startup and reads back the rendered pixels by CPU to make sure the hw renderer is working correctly.
If not, then '3D' is disabled in the Options menu. Forcing resolution through dgVoodoo causes the test to fail because pixels get rendered at slightly unexpected position because of the scaling.

I re-patched the executable, plz try this (and don't forget to enable the hw renderer in the game):

http://dege.fw.hu/Patches/Warhammer_DarkOmen_Patch.zip

The games uses paletted textures and the software renderer attaches wrong palette to some textures that's why 'inverted' colors appears. Use 'ATI Radeon 8500' to avoid that.
The hardware renderer seems to work properly out of the box.

Dege, its possible to add the Mod tab from the DarkOmen community patch into it?

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Warhammer:_Dark_Omen

and again many thanks!

What is Mod tab? A community made mod with an already patched executable?

Dege wrote:

What is Mod tab? A community made mod with an already patched executable?

The link that i posted it from PCgamingwiki is the one made by the DarkOmen Community to load mods ingame without the need of replacing the ingame files all time with backups.
before your patch this was needed to make the game run, and its still was incompatible with modern systems, i believe that they don't even know about what you did.

i think that they would even pay and ship an full fledged old world Empire army with paints to gift you for fixing this game 🤣

Also:
-Bilinear Blit Stretch causes "purple auras" around some artworks
-The patch doesn't automatically recognize the Movies folder inside the game directory even with regedit changes, unless you put the CD.

Many thanks Dege for your continued support towards Dark Omen and also to Deffnator to alerting us to this latest fix. In my help fix guide on the Dark Omen forum, I have suggested using dgvoodoo 2.45 emulator for ages with great success, when I help fans get going but this new fix works really well with the latest dgVoodoo v2.63.

We have a modified EngRel.exe that allows us to hook to new sprite and maps, zoom the camera out etc and offers the Select Mod for new campaigns and multiplayer and allows us to play without the CD. So would be great to incorporate your fixes.

Dark Omen Help fix guide that offers the latest Mod Pack which includes our fixes
http://forum.dark-omen.org/help-section/read- … xes-t111.0.html

Latest Mod Pack
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0xjm5e3xuhdfm33/DO% … 202019.zip?dl=0

Kind regards

Thanks!
I'll go through the installation process and see what I can do there. 😀

Many thanks again Dege for breathing new life into Dark Omen. I've been testing your excellent Vodoo patched Dark Omen. Great in game writing text but trees/terrain shimmer like original. The results are best seen in game as video doesn't capture the differences and please ignore audio as due to recording, so not in game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm39jq1ADWI

However, if modified with the dgVoodoo2_63 to allow Screen Resolution up to 2560x1440 eliminates any shimmering of the of the trees/terrain but sadly corrupts the writing text (which can't be seen in the video below but screenshot shows the bad text a little but best to see for yourself in game). Also use coloured cursors to eliminate a ghosted mouse pointer when using black & white cursor and remember to return options to use black and white cursor afterwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3z9JvwWHlc&feature=youtu.be

Final test showing Dark Omen Mod Pack extreme camera zoom but trees/terrain shimmering like original. So would be amazing to have no shimmering but good writing text running at 2560x1440 screen resolution if possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36ehfXqOh5E&feature=youtu.be

It will be a good test to disable the Mod Pack EngRel.exe from running at its hardcoded screen resolution 640x480, since disabling it in compatibility mode doesn't unforce it. This will then enable Dege's dgVoodoo2_63 to run it at 2560x1440 to eliminate any shimmering of the trees and terrain. However, we will then need to test the good writing text of the menus etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDCz3LENJII&feature=youtu.be

Compared with running Mod Pack at 640x480 that has shimmering of trees and terrain like the original game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgr_EXcsh8M&feature=youtu.be

I followed Aqrit's advice and examined Dege's DARKOMEN.exe with an original EngRel.exe and noted the 7 changes, then applied those changes into our latest Mod Pack EngRel.exe and it worked. Then downloaded Dege's latest dgVoodoo-v2.63 and copied dgVoodooCpl, DDraw.dll & D3DImm.dll into Dark Omen PRG_ENG folder and used the following settings

http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2.html

Dark Omen has never looked so good, running at 2560x1440 and the textures don't shimmer as much, even with the extreme camera zoom out and the 3d talking head portraits also look amazing. The only slight issue is with the text writing that I'm not sure how to correct, if you could kindly help please Dege.

Eternal thanks to Dege and of course Ghabry/Aqrit for the Mod Pack advanced features and deffnator for alerting the Dark Omen community of this latest amazing patch. So if ok please may I combine this into latest Mod Pack and will fully credit your fixes.

Kind regards

**Just tested multiplayer via GameRanger still works with my Dark Omen 2 mod with new maps and Warhammer armies and it now looks glorious, so hopefully I won't ever hear that it looks like Minecraft 🤣