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First post, by GabrielKnight123

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I have the GOG bought version of GK2 and it is patched so that the scan lines are removed, is there a way to re enable them? Im using GOG's version so I can copy the whole game to the hard drive and play it in dos. There is a gk2.ini file with "enable_black_lined_video=false" making this to "true" does not work and this file is called from Scummvm by the looks of it because the shortcut the GOG installer makes on the desktop has ""C:\Games\Gabriel Knight 2\scummvm\scummvm.exe" -c "..\gk2.ini" gk2".

Reply 1 of 4, by GabrielKnight123

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I found a web page here: https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/9751 that says to move or rename 6 files in the patch folder but if you rename all 6 I found that the start and prolog buttons are missing to start the game you can only restore or quit so just rename 11.HEP, 11.SCR, 36.HEP and 36.SCR to get all the buttons back, the web page mentions that doing the renaming can cause problems but I didnt run the game in Scummvm so I didnt see any problems when using dosbox 0.74. I'm going to run this game in real dos but I'll make a quick batch file so I can swap between scan lines on and off.

https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/9751
You may try moving/renaming 11.SCR, 11.HEP, 34.SCR, 34.HEP, 36.SCR and 36.HEP in the PATCHES directory to restore the original video playback code, which will make the toggle work, but this isn’t really supported and may cause other problems.
I am still evaluating whether this is something that we can/should deal with. Unconditionally forcing black-lined video when the option is enabled would incorrectly render if someone chooses to use “little movie” mode, and I don’t know if there are other places in the game (or in other SCI32 games) that intentionally did not use the black-lined video flag even in “big movie” mode. Also, games provide brightness boost information in conjunction with the black-lined video flag to try to partially mitigate the fact that the black lines make the video darker; if the calls don’t include brightness information, then the videos will render too darkly if we force it on.

Reply 3 of 4, by leileilol

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The original purpose is to skip video writes on higher resolutions to render FMV faster on computers then, however for many games of the era, it's part of their original experience and identity.

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 4 of 4, by Serious Callers Only

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Gabriel Knight 2 scanlines are hardcoded into the video driver. 'Removing' them is done by a patch that replaces - or adds - some small files (not the videos)

http://www.sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/Pat … tml#NoInterlace

Read the readme.
In short, this can work if the files added are removed and the files overwritten are replaced.

However, it's possible that GOG was smarter than just dumping and overwriting files. SCI has a 'patch directory' in a early example of a virtual filesystem that overwrites files 'in memory'. In many installs the patch is the same dir as the root of the game, but it doesn't have to be. if so, deleting those files from the patch file dir might work without side effects.

It can also make the game unusable *shrug*.

Personally i think you have the right idea, some of the video in GK2 is kind of bad and the scanlines disguise that effectively. Scummvm may or may not already have a patch to turn them on and off in the game options, sounds like something they'd try.