Even with correct player I don't think it'll work. Seems like not all MCI is backwards compatible with win9x...

Here's the first test version 😁. Attached is a debug build of dxmci and modified executables to load it. The game starts at my place and tries to open the movies through directshow but it obviously fails since they are CD version 😜. But it should load mpeg2 (make sure you have a mpeg2 codec installed). The debug version of the dll will create c:\graph.log and it will also print some debug messages that can be captured with debugview. I will need both logs incase it does not work.

gulikoza wrote:

Even with correct player I don't think it'll work. Seems like not all MCI is backwards compatible with win9x...

Here's the first test version 😁. Attached is a debug build of dxmci and modified executables to load it. The game starts at my place and tries to open the movies through directshow but it obviously fails since they are CD version 😜. But it should load mpeg2 (make sure you have a mpeg2 codec installed). The debug version of the dll will create c:\graph.log and it will also print some debug messages that can be captured with debugview. I will need both logs incase it does not work.

Guilkoza,

First of all, I have to say, YOU ARE THE MAN! 😀

It works, for the most part, after I played with the compatibility settings a bit. It runs with no compability options checked. If you try to use Windows 95 or 98 compatibility, it crashes most of the time.

There are 2 major problems:

1) The video quality is very poor - not sure why this is. The videos look like they have a checkerboard-type grid behind them, and a bunch of noise, when they play via the EXE. If I play them in media player, I don't see this.

2) After it finishes playing a video, it minimizes the program. This then messes up the program, especially if it's trying to play another video immediately after. If I click on the game in the taskbar it remaximizes and I hear sound, but don't see video (however I do still see the checkerboard pattern).

I've attached the two output files.

This is awesome, at least I was able to see the first video before it minimizes (an ad for Dolby Surround) 😀

It looks like it's using ffdshow to play the movies, that's why it keeps minimizing I think, because ffdshow keeps installing itself in the systray...gonna see if I can do anything about that.

EDIT: That's not true, I uninstalled ffdshow and a lot of the other codecs I've picked up over the years. Now I think it's actually using the GPL codec on your home page, but it's still doing the minimizing thing (and the poor video quality).

EDIT #2: I tried a bunch of other things but so far the results are the same. I also noticed that the D3D executable doesn't work at all. It plays the first second of the first movie, then crashes.

Yeah I've seen the checkboard grid too...this must be from the game (or the patch) not the movies.
In my next step I'll try to build a dummy dvd with SFA game data and some mpeg2 movies to see if they play. But this will take a bit of time since I am currently busy with my exams...Stay tuned 😁

Good luck on your exams! 😀

I sent you a message via email, let me know if you don't receive it.

My mail is down at the moment (server connection problems) 🙁

PM 😁

Some progress report...
I'm having some problems building a working graph...file is played ok if I select render file in graphedit and correct graph is built, but dxmci's call to RenderFile() function fails. I'm gonna need some time to debug this (wc4 still works fine)...

I'm not sure what that all means, but thanks for the progress report! 😀

For DirectShow to play a file it needs a graph with filters. For instance, a simple DShow graph may contain a source filter that knows how to read a file from disk or network, a decoder filter and a render filter that displays the media file. The source filter is connected to decoder filter and this one is connected to the render filter. This is called a graph 😁
When one needs to build a graph, it is impossible to know which filters the user's computer has, so directshow provides a mechanism that automatically adds and connects filters to the graph. Why this works in the case of wc4 but not sfa, I don't know at the moment...

Just a question: Would your method (MCI -> Direct-Show-Wrapper) theoretically work for all old games with DVD-Video? If I understand correctly, now you have to adapt this for each game.
Would it be possible to write a special driver which redirect all MCI-DVD-Calls, independent of a special game or program?

Anyway, thanks a lot for your efforts! I very much enjoyed playing WC4 with your patch, which allowed me to finallly play the DVD with full video support.

Well, winmm.dll is rather large, dxmci (which replaces winmm.dll for selected games) only implements a small subset of functions the game needs, some of which are handled by the dll itself (video part) and some are forwarded to the real winmm. It is much easier to patch the game executable to load dxmci instead of winmm (note how the name is the same length, so it's just a simple correction with a hexeditor 😀) then creating a driver or a system hook.
It also makes it easier to create, since you only need to support the playback the way the game uses it, instead of fully supporting MCI standard. A complete MCI implementation would probably make sense if MCI was completely broken in 2K/XP, but it seems to work for the most part except the dvd playback. I wonder how it will be in Vista 😀

Well...some slight progress, but I haven't had much time to look into this 🙁

As a bonus, when the new version is out, it will probably support even some other games (I cannot say which ones at the moment 😉)

Just wanted to bump this, I've been watching it for a month or two waiting for an updated fix! 😀

Sorry guys, nothing definitive yet. The videos do play, but that checkerboard background keeps blending with the video no matter what I do. I've been thinking to try to completely hide SFA window and play in my own window, but then I have troubles making the game recognize ESC keypresses and resuming after the video ends...

My biggest problem is that the game minimizes after each video. This makes it near impossible to get past the 6th mission (When the Venturi first appear).

Also, I'm unable to create my own mission. Each time I try to do so I'm asked to insert CD1 however I own the DVD version.

Edit: I don't mind the checkerboard in the background.

Bump for great justice.

I feel terribly bad about this...I thought the biggest problem was video playback, but instead it's all these problems with windows and background...I simply haven't had the time to figure out anything. The direct3d version will even crash at my place 🙁
I thought of trying to use the VMR for playback (instead of current default video renderer), but that has other problems 😀
I have it on my todo list...something will happen eventually 😜

Haha...life is really funny sometimes 😀
I thought of using VMR9 yesterday before I went to sleep (just before I read jcgamo88's bump post 😜) and it seems to help. The software version still has the same problems, but D3D version does not crash with vmr9! And there's no checkerboard and no minimizing! 😁 (I probably should have done this from the start...who wants to use the software version anyway??). There's only 1 minor problem I still have to solve (hopefully it won't be my next nightmare 😜) - the ESC key seems to stick somehow...if you skip one movie, all the later movies will also skip...

YAY! Thanks a ton. If only I knew howto do such things I wouldn't need to bother you.

What? What happened? Is this thread still active?

What? Progress????? I'm downloading the file right now! 😀