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BPP oddity

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First post, by 1CC960

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For some reason, running Midtown Madness 1 & 2, and Driver You Are The Wheelman through DGVoodoo, they refuse to run in 32 bit color - only 24 bit. I have Interstate '76 & Interstate '76 Nitro Pack running in 32 bit color fine through DGVoodoo. Should mention I'm on Windows 10 Pro 22H2 with a Nvidia GPU.

Reply 1 of 16, by ZellSF

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Do the games even support 32-bit natively?

There's also likely zero difference between 24-bit and 32-bit.

Reply 2 of 16, by 1CC960

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ZellSF wrote on 2024-01-19, 22:12:

Do the games even support 32-bit natively?

There's also likely zero difference between 24-bit and 32-bit.

Yes, I have a friend with a different hardware setup than me and any Midtown Madness screenshot he takes, the bit depth shows as 32 bit. Very oddball stuff.

Reply 3 of 16, by ZellSF

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I tried Midtown Madness, I can't see any setting for color depth at all? Where are you seeing it?

Reply 4 of 16, by 1CC960

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Take a screenshot through Shadowplay/Fraps/w/e, check the bit depth in the Windows properties.

Reply 5 of 16, by ZellSF

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Screenshots should always be 24-bit.

24 bit = 8 bits each of Red, Green and Blue
32 bit = 8 more bits for alpha

How are you expecting the alpha bits to be in a screenshot, and how are you expecting to see that on your likely 24-bit monitor?

Reply 6 of 16, by 1CC960

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midtownmadness.exe_Screenshot_2024.01.18_-_18.56.23.06.png?ex=65bc31a7&is=65a9bca7&hm=5528a36e0f3db1481564341159ac75bf6ce5910938a2d0fc1550129b7ceaa431&
Hard to see, but the reflections on the windows of the car have that "below 32 bit" look to them. The color banding with prominent green/purple.
Also here, the skybox - the color banding is very evident:
midtownmadness-exe-Screenshot-2024-01-19-17-58-56-38.png

Reply 7 of 16, by ZellSF

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The skybox is unlikely to use transparency, so whatever is causing the banding has nothing to do with 24-bit vs 32-bit. Again, those 8 bits are transparency bits. Probably unlikely to even be used.

It's possible the game is running in 16-bit color however and that's causing banding. dgVoodoo renders everything automatically in 32-bit, so if dgVoodoo was running correctly that should be impossible, enable the dgVoodoo watermark to make sure it's actually running.

Reply 8 of 16, by 1CC960

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Yup. it's working correctly. Apparently that skybox actually looks like that in that specific mod - Revisited 3. One of the mod preview pics showing night time has it looking like that.
Night-Dashboard.jpg
There is tons & tons of banding in this image everywhere, actually.
I did notice the settings menu resetting my textures to "High" instead of "Very High" when I exit a session and go back into the graphics options menu though.

Reply 9 of 16, by BEEN_Nath_58

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1CC960 wrote on 2024-01-19, 19:18:

For some reason, running Midtown Madness 1 & 2, and Driver You Are The Wheelman through DGVoodoo, they refuse to run in 32 bit color - only 24 bit. I have Interstate '76 & Interstate '76 Nitro Pack running in 32 bit color fine through DGVoodoo. Should mention I'm on Windows 10 Pro 22H2 with a Nvidia GPU.

They are running in 32-bit color. dgVoodoo2 doesn't even render by default with 24-bit color only. Judging by your next comments, a screenshot can't take note of the last 8-bits for alpha. The banding exists in 16-bit color rendering as dithering is not supported by dgVoodoo2 but I can't say why this is here, it could be dgVoodoo2 isn't loading properly. Also as ZellSF said I can't see the dgVoodoo2 logo either.

Secondly, the modder didn't say if the pic is taken with/without dgVoodoo2 so you can't make an assumption if "color banding" is a "feature".

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058

Reply 10 of 16, by 1CC960

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It's related to the custom 3d skybox model that Revisited v3 implements
here's the sky at night without Revisited 3:
tr-Screenshot-2024-01-20-00-26-30-62.png
Looks perfectly normal.

Reply 11 of 16, by BEEN_Nath_58

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1CC960 wrote on 2024-01-20, 05:28:
It's related to the custom 3d skybox model that Revisited v3 implements here's the sky at night without Revisited 3: https://i.p […]
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It's related to the custom 3d skybox model that Revisited v3 implements
here's the sky at night without Revisited 3:
tr-Screenshot-2024-01-20-00-26-30-62.png
Looks perfectly normal.

This one doesn't have color banding... 32bit color I guess

previously known as Discrete_BOB_058

Reply 12 of 16, by Hamof

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Remember that 6bpp(18 bit) is 24 bit when including the alpha channel, which is why sometimes old games will make the distinction between 24 bit and 32 bit instead of 18 and 24. Is that what's happening here?

Reply 13 of 16, by 1CC960

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Yeah, MM1 keeps resetting my textures to High, shadows to Vehicle Only, and it only lets me run it through DirectX mode in DGVoodoo - glide is unrecognized and boots the game in software mode with screwed up text and it crashes on loading screen trying to go ingame.

Reply 14 of 16, by Darkstorm

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I don't know much about this game, but if user settings are stored in registry then you should run game as administrator, because since probably Windows Vista, Microsoft came up with the UAC, where you can't save changes in specific folders, nor registry without providing administrator rights.

Reply 15 of 16, by 1CC960

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It also won't let me remap my controls...this is really screwed up. I'll remap them, go ingame and they're back to how they were before I remapped them.
Settings are stored in the "players" folder
Deleting the cfgs and allowing the game to create new ones appears to have fixed that - I think the textures still reset to below AGP though.

Reply 16 of 16, by Dege

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How to run MM1 in 24/32 bit mode? I could only test OpenMM1 but I couldn't see an option for bitpp in the options menu.

Btw, you can use the dbg version of dgVoodoo to see what display mode is set from the application side. For me, OpenMM1:

80	0.748876	11944	OpenMM1.exe	DirectDraw4::SetDisplayMode (this = 09DCCC20, dwWidth = 640, dwHeight = 480, dwBPP = 16, dwRefreshRate = 0, dwFlags = 0x0)

16 bit mode and all the textures was 16 bit as well. Unfortunately I couldn't get into a dark scene to see color banding.

Anyway, dgVoodoo always renders at 32 bit (8 bit for each component, so the quality is 24 bit, extended to 32 bit with 8 extra unused/alpha bits), unless you set option DirectXExt\Dithering to Disabled and the application display mode is 16 bit because then the rendering quality is worsened on purpose.
Also, didn't you install those games under C:\Program Files (x86)\... ? If so then try to install them somewhere else, apps cannot write files into Program Files by default.