iconoclast12 wrote on 2025-05-01, 15:01:

...

The links on that site aren't working. You can click on them, but nothing happens.

The links are working but new Chrome versions are not willing to open http links from https sites. You should try to open the links in new window.

Falcosoft wrote on 2025-05-01, 15:49:

iconoclast12 wrote on 2025-05-01, 15:01:

...

The links on that site aren't working. You can click on them, but nothing happens.

The links are working but new Chrome versions are not willing to open http links from https sites. You should try to open the links in new window.

Good to know. I did end up finding the gold patch from the internet archives site as was suggested.

I think at this point I have everything working about as well as it's going to on modern systems.

Just one more issue.. For the nitro pack, I ended up finding an .iso to mount, but for the base game, I have disc 1 and disc 2 but when I try to turn disc 2 into an .iso it refuses to because of the audio tracks apparently.. It wants to make it a .bin and a .cue file, or a .img file, and I cannot, or do not know how to, mount .bin/.cue/.img so that I can run the game without having my laptop tethered to my external cd drive.

I do have imburn and power iso, but I'm no genius when it comes to this..

I do know that in Windows 10 and Windows 11 I can use file explorer to mount an .iso file and fool the computer into thinking I have a disc in the drive.. I've done it with several older games and dos games.. I would like to do the same thing here, if possible.

Put the .cue and .bin in the same directory then use the .cue file as if it were a .iso file. Don't rename the extension, use it like it is.

While users aren't supposed to provide support on things they don't seem to have owned, it's a general knowledge that CDaudio games wouldn't get the audio tracks in ISOs.

Use a different Cd emulator, eg Daemon Tools.

iconoclast12 wrote on 2025-04-29, 19:01:

Is D3D preferred over Glide for this game? Do you know which one runs it better?

D3D mode has lower quality textures and unreadable road signs.

I’ve had similar issues with old games. The GOG version is probably your best bet since they’ve made it compatible with modern systems. As for the original discs, try using compatibility mode in Windows 10 (set it to Windows XP or 98), and maybe running as admin. Sometimes manually patching or using a community fix can do the trick. The registry tweaks might be useful, but I’d be cautious with those. If all else fails, you could look into a virtual machine running Windows 98 or XP and try installing it there.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2025-05-03, 10:38:

I found the problem. Maybe we should continue in a more appropriate thread like: Re: Interstate 76 on Windows 10 (or at least Wi […]
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UCyborg wrote on 2025-05-02, 14:21:

I disable Windows' shims anyway if I got the game patched to not need them. Music magically started working, but it doesn't stop during cutscene playback.

I found the problem. Maybe we should continue in a more appropriate thread like: Re: Interstate 76 on Windows 10 (or at least Windows 7?)

Continuing, unfortunately it comes from the AiO Patch so I need some answers:
1. This game version correctly puts mixer to 100% when using DxWnd sound emulation, unlike the original 1.2 Gold game which maxes out at 49% (definitely wrong in DxWnd but how does AiO fix it?)
2. The sound not stopping in mission is not encountered in the 1.2 Gold game, but only in AiO patch.

I am thinking you patched some specific version of the game instead of just jumping to the 1.2 Gold game. Which one is that?

Btw I was thinking of 30Fps also because it talked of a 30FPS patch here:
https://www.interstate76.com/download/

Good idea.

Strange, did I put the patch out with that aspect broken? Pretty sure it worked back then. Have to investigate. Don't have any notes, so guess I'm comparing from scratch with hex editor. Bleh, I bet a lot of differences will be in heap alloc calls. I was working on Gold version 1.2 binaries, hence the strange glitches that didn't exist in 1.0 version. Handgun shooting sound doesn't play right, you don't hear gas station exploding at the beginning of the mission where you're looking for gas station to refuel.

Regarding 30 FPS, it's definitely popular opinion that it's the correct rate for physics in this game, but it turned out it's not exactly correct. You'd really have to measure on old Pentium.

The music volume only maxing at half, that was the issue with the game's formula that converts number from 1 to 10 (from audio options menu) to DWORD to pass to auxSetVolume.

Generally, it looks like I simplified code calling mciSendCommandA, not sure yet if this in itself is the problem, I noticed going from menus to the mission's cutscene, only MCI_CLOSE is sent, while from mission to cutscene sends MCI_STOP, followed by MCI_CLOSE when the cutscene ends. Surely the latter should implicitly stop playback if device is being closed? DxWnd bug? I'm almost positive it works this way in Microsoft's WinMM.

Heh, I undid zeroing memory in HeapAlloc calls where I've put it before and got crash pretty soon, first time I failed the mission after clicking Replay from mission failed screen. It crashed in stricmp, standard C library function for comparing two strings. There are quite a lot of calls to strncpy specifying 15 for size while others specify 16. I wonder if they meant to use 16 across the board. There'd still be the problem if string being copied exceeded 15 characters as it wouldn't be properly zero-terminated then.

There are some parts where I'm not sure how I came to the conclusion, like there's one part of code that is always called when your weapon hits another vehicle and in one place, I'm taking value with 0ffset 0x10 rather 0x44. Probably accessing the latter crashed at some point, but what actually goes on there?

Another instruction I skipped in one place, a decision to set some variable in a certain way is made based on the result of comparison of certain yet uninitialized (garbage) value in just allocated memory!

I recognized another error which fix isn't in the published patch (unsure when, if executed in practice), one code sequence for reallocating memory is wrong, it calls MSVCRT's _msize to get current block's size, then calls HeapReAlloc with size increased by 4096 from the result of the previous call. This is wrong, this game creates many heaps with HeapCreate, correct sequence would be calling HeapSize with correct specified heap that part of the code deals with. It also assumes pointer to re-allocated block won't change from the original, which is sometimes the case, but not always. _msize is meant for allocated blocks from MSVCRT's allocation routines. You sure got number of ways to allocate memory in Windows.

It's quite amusing how stable this game managed to be under Win9x, with the exception of that fatal mission 12-13 transition.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-05-04, 10:32:

The music volume only maxing at half, that was the issue with the game's formula that converts number from 1 to 10 (from audio o […]
Show full quote

The music volume only maxing at half, that was the issue with the game's formula that converts number from 1 to 10 (from audio options menu) to DWORD to pass to auxSetVolume.

Generally, it looks like I simplified code calling mciSendCommandA, not sure yet if this in itself is the problem, I noticed going from menus to the mission's cutscene, only MCI_CLOSE is sent, while from mission to cutscene sends MCI_STOP, followed by MCI_CLOSE when the cutscene ends. Surely the latter should implicitly stop playback if device is being closed? DxWnd bug? I'm almost positive it works this way in Microsoft's WinMM.

Heh, I undid zeroing memory in HeapAlloc calls where I've put it before and got crash pretty soon, first time I failed the mission after clicking Replay from mission failed screen. It crashed in stricmp, standard C library function for comparing two strings. There are quite a lot of calls to strncpy specifying 15 for size while others specify 16. I wonder if they meant to use 16 across the board. There'd still be the problem if string being copied exceeded 15 characters as it wouldn't be properly zero-terminated then.

There are some parts where I'm not sure how I came to the conclusion, like there's one part of code that is always called when your weapon hits another vehicle and in one place, I'm taking value with 0ffset 0x10 rather 0x44. Probably accessing the latter crashed at some point, but what actually goes on there?

Another instruction I skipped in one place, a decision to set some variable in a certain way is made based on the result of comparison of certain yet uninitialized (garbage) value in just allocated memory!

I recognized another error which fix isn't in the published patch (unsure when, if executed in practice), one code sequence for reallocating memory is wrong, it calls MSVCRT's _msize to get current block's size, then calls HeapReAlloc with size increased by 4096 from the result of the previous call. This is wrong, this game creates many heaps with HeapCreate, correct sequence would be calling HeapSize with correct specified heap that part of the code deals with. It also assumes pointer to re-allocated block won't change from the original, which is sometimes the case, but not always. _msize is meant for allocated blocks from MSVCRT's allocation routines. You sure got number of ways to allocate memory in Windows.

It's quite amusing how stable this game managed to be under Win9x, with the exception of that fatal mission 12-13 transition.

I will forward this to gho.

SO on Windows 98, does this game max sound upto 50% of 100%?

The CDaudio playing situation could be a wildly unique case that was never handled, or maybe never implemented correctly in WinMM so using DxWnd lead to a different behaviour. I think it used to work before.

Another interesting thing is Handle Exceptions crashes with your patch, while it proceeds fine with the original game. It would be interesting to see how DxWnd works in 12-13 transition. If I am not forgetting mission 13 works when ran independently instead of running from mission 12.

Do you have a save upto mission 12 so that I can check there?

Aye, have save for every mission except 13. I might have forgotten the details, but I have in memory that the issue was there even if you had a save, it crashed on loading that particular level. And the only official solution was using i76shell.dll from an older patch, effectively downgrading part of the game.

Interstate76_saves.zip

I remember trying to cover both cases for CD audio, both real CD audio and virtual, but there were some oddities. Guys at GOG.com were also doing some of their own hackery, I tried their winmm replacement once on its own on with mostly unmodified .exe and didn't get any music.

I believe half-volume issue should be present on Win 9x, that code doesn't have any conditions attached. I might try and see if it changes anything in volume mixer on XP next time I boot into it, now that I have Sound Blaster Audigy Rx in my PC, I actually have CD volume in there. Though I imagine most I'll see is moving slider. In the old computer long gone, I remember having an audio cable going from CD drive, analog audio AFAIK. Old games could control volume in this case, when audio went through that cable to the sound card. Not sure about the case of fully digital audio. I do remember Windows 98 having checkbox to enable digital audio on CD drive properties, volume slider was also there, no idea if CD audio volume could be controlled through WinMM for both cases.

Interesting regarding Handle Exceptions in DxWnd, I didn't play with that yet. All I know is that there are still hard to find bugs in this game causing issues. Your post about GTA San Andreas in the other thread makes me wonder if there exists any problem with data files.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-05-04, 13:36:

Aye, have save for every mission except 13. I might have forgotten the details, but I have in memory that the issue was there ev […]
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Aye, have save for every mission except 13. I might have forgotten the details, but I have in memory that the issue was there even if you had a save, it crashed on loading that particular level. And the only official solution was using i76shell.dll from an older patch, effectively downgrading part of the game.

Interstate76_saves.zip

I remember trying to cover both cases for CD audio, both real CD audio and virtual, but there were some oddities. Guys at GOG.com were also doing some of their own hackery, I tried their winmm replacement once on its own on with mostly unmodified .exe and didn't get any music.

I believe half-volume issue should be present on Win 9x, that code doesn't have any conditions attached. I might try and see if it changes anything in volume mixer on XP next time I boot into it, now that I have Sound Blaster Audigy Rx in my PC, I actually have CD volume in there. Though I imagine most I'll see is moving slider. In the old computer long gone, I remember having an audio cable going from CD drive, analog audio AFAIK. Old games could control volume in this case, when audio went through that cable to the sound card. Not sure about the case of fully digital audio. I do remember Windows 98 having checkbox to enable digital audio on CD drive properties, volume slider was also there, no idea if CD audio volume could be controlled through WinMM for both cases.

Interesting regarding Handle Exceptions in DxWnd, I didn't play with that yet. All I know is that there are still hard to find bugs in this game causing issues. Your post about GTA San Andreas in the other thread makes me wonder if there exists any problem with data files.

I can probably try the game next week, to see if Handle exceptions can handle this transition somehow. Just out of lack if maybe.

I recall GOG used a mechanism where they replayed the one song again and again after it finished, unlike the real behaviour. I think I managed to reverse their changes, also I encountered the no sound situation and it was recovered, I have to recover posts from 2 years back.

I76 on XP had some behavioural differences. Maybe regarding the mixer only, where it wouldn't change. On Win98 I was just testing on sound mixer set at 100% for CDaudio.

Which post about San Andreas, I can't recall?

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2025-05-04, 13:57:

Which post about San Andreas, I can't recall?

You linked to this interesting story: https://cookieplmonster.github.io/2025/04/23/ … win11-24h2-bug/

UCyborg wrote on 2025-05-04, 14:26:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2025-05-04, 13:57:

Which post about San Andreas, I can't recall?

You linked to this interesting story: https://cookieplmonster.github.io/2025/04/23/ … win11-24h2-bug/

Very possible, yet I feel very rare for it to happen. Gho is looking into the game since it still doesn't work for him with AiO patch.

I saw the game stops the music if you Replay the mission instead.

strncpy mod with count 15->16, about the same behavior as with specific calls to zero memory, maybe a tiny bit better. Kinda expected TBH... I actually got to the last mission, didn't have the other hacky workarounds applied from the patch, still, it crashed, but I remember in past testings symptoms already showed in the mission before last one where it happened that camera was placed in some random spot on the map and wasn't following the player, camera snaps back when using F1/F2 keys.

I doubt there's a magic checkbox in DXWnd that could work around these bugs. Game craps out near the end even on Windows 9x.

Going by the old saves, you may want to disregard the ones I posted. I suspect they're corrupted and not useful for gaining access to mission 13. Hm, maybe I should repeat the test and make some new saves on the way.

No idea if this says anything, but without those allocation calls tweaked to initialize memory blocks to zero (or strncpy mod), it likes to crash in one particular spot dealing with texture cache. A whole lot of screwing around with nothing to show for it!

UCyborg wrote on 2025-05-04, 21:22:

strncpy mod with count 15->16, about the same behavior as with specific calls to zero memory, maybe a tiny bit better. Kinda exp […]
Show full quote

strncpy mod with count 15->16, about the same behavior as with specific calls to zero memory, maybe a tiny bit better. Kinda expected TBH... I actually got to the last mission, didn't have the other hacky workarounds applied from the patch, still, it crashed, but I remember in past testings symptoms already showed in the mission before last one where it happened that camera was placed in some random spot on the map and wasn't following the player, camera snaps back when using F1/F2 keys.

I doubt there's a magic checkbox in DXWnd that could work around these bugs. Game craps out near the end even on Windows 9x.

Going by the old saves, you may want to disregard the ones I posted. I suspect they're corrupted and not useful for gaining access to mission 13. Hm, maybe I should repeat the test and make some new saves on the way.

No idea if this says anything, but without those allocation calls tweaked to initialize memory blocks to zero (or strncpy mod), it likes to crash in one particular spot dealing with texture cache. A whole lot of screwing around with nothing to show for it!

While I am talking to gho about the game and the music situation, he met another barricade. The game crashes just before starting the Mission:
https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/ge … 3&limit=25#61e3

UCyborg wrote on 2025-05-04, 21:22:

strncpy mod with count 15->16, about the same behavior as with specific calls to zero memory, maybe a tiny bit better.

An absolute useless but common piece of information. With your patch: having the broken EmulateHeap enabled in Windows by default makes the game un-hookable to DxWnd. The base game however hooks fine, although it misses the audio