VOGONS

Common searches


Nightlong

Topic actions

First post, by Monkeybrains

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I'm trying to play an old Windows adventure game called Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy.
Thing is, when I try to play it on either of my newer computers the graphics are really messed up.
It looks like one part of what should be displayed is copied across the screen and then it has lines through it too.
The computers are running Windows XP and Windows ME and have a Geforce4 Ti4600 and a Geforce 3.
The graphics are fine on my oldest computer though, which is running Windows 95 and has an S3 Trio32/64 PCI, but it runs a bit slow on it.
Is there anyway I can fix the graphics problems I'm having on the newer computers?

Reply 1 of 9, by Harekiet

User metadata
Rank DOSBox Author
Rank
DOSBox Author

Find a nightlong patch on the internet that should fix it for geforce cards, damn game doesn't follow the directdraw specs. Lot's of other old games have similar troubles, assuming that a line in 640x480 is 640 bytes long but it's longer on geforces.

Reply 3 of 9, by Stiletto

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

GeForce cards have a lot of peculiarities when it comes to 3D rendering, too...

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 4 of 9, by Harekiet

User metadata
Rank DOSBox Author
Rank
DOSBox Author

Well it's just those old game programmers never encountered any video cards that had a pitch longer than 640 bytes in 640x480 so they programmed their games cheaply. Not skipping pitch-640 bytes for the next line in videomemory when drawing the screen.

Reply 8 of 9, by Harekiet

User metadata
Rank DOSBox Author
Rank
DOSBox Author

Well don't know i think it might just be that the hardware only likes using multiples of 2 for the x resolution. 320x200 might in fact be 512x200 or something.

If programmers know it's 512 or 1024 you could ofcourse write a bit faster code not using * 640 but shift left 9 or 10, to find the start line of a pixel 😀 Also internally when drawing polygons on the surface it's much easier for the hardware.

As far as i know VESA modes like 640x480 don't have a pitch value so if the geforce can set those up, they should have the correct 640 length. Kinda sux, should be some driver flag to allow it to setup correct direct draw modes too.

Reply 9 of 9, by Snover

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

FWIW, the newer drivers seemed to resolve the problem that Final Fantasy VIII PC had with the background tile misalignment, which, if I might speculate, was likely caused by this same thing. So, potentially, some programs will work correctly now. Maybe. I had something else to say, but I forgot it. Oh, well.

Yes, it’s my fault.