VOGONS


First post, by Zuupertronic

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I've tried to use dgvoodoo 2.63.1 and wip70 with anarchy online's old engine that uses directdraw. Everything seems to work at first until you get past the character select screen. Shortly after the game starts loading it crashes to desktop. Checking with the debug layer the following was observed:

[3276] DirectDraw::CreatePalette (this = 00B4F8A0, dwFlags = 100, lpDDColorArray = 008FE400, lplpDDPalette = 14FF0E34, pUnkOuter = 00000000)
[3276] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: DirectDraw (00B4F8A0)::CreatePalette: Unsupported palette type is required. Only palettes with 256 entries are supported (DDPCAPS_8BITENTRIES). Also, flags DDPCAPS_PRIMARYSURFACE and DDPCAPS_PRIMARYSURFACELEFT cannot be specified on creation, those flags are handled implicitly through the object lifetime, depending on whether the object is attached to the primary surface or not.

This log message seems nonsensical to me, is it supposed to be indicating that a unsupported pallet type was passed into it?
Which type was passed that is unsupported, what are the values for the flags mentioned in the log message etc.

Is this something that can be resolved?

Reply 1 of 10, by Dege

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The message may be misleading, but I think it means either the palette type is unsupported (non-8 bit palette like 1, 2 or 4 bit) or the game specified one of the flags mentioned which is compatible with MS DDraw but not with dgVoodoo DDraw.
I guess the flag is the problem so it could be resolved.
How can I run this game to test?

Btw, thx everybody for the feedback. I cannot do a lot of testings&fixings these days but I'm going to look into the reported problems.

Reply 2 of 10, by Zuupertronic

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You can make a free account by going to https://www.anarchy-online.com/ and registering in the top right, "Play for free."

You can download the client from here: http://update.anarchy-online.com/download/AO/ … yOnline_EP1.exe this will download and install the proper version. After that it's simple, you launch the game, sign in, create a character regardless of proffession and then after that it'll crash if your using dgvoodoo.

Thanks for looking into this!

Reply 4 of 10, by Dege

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Zuupertronic wrote on 2020-02-09, 18:40:

Were you able to investigate the issue preventing anarchy online from working?

Yes, I forgot about it. The problem were the palettes not the flag. The game creates some 1 (or 2) bit palettes but doesn't try to attach them to any other DDraw object.
So, it's a perfectly valid DDraw driving pattern, I fixed dgVoodoo and the game seems to be working fine.
I don't know when to release it though because currently that's the only change in the 2.6.x repo.

Reply 6 of 10, by DannyRalph

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Dege wrote on 2020-02-14, 19:30:

I release my latest fix as a little patch for testing purposes. Update the files of 2.63.1 from this zip:

http://dege.fw.hu/temp/AnarchyOnline.zip

I just wanted to send a massive thanks to Dege for sorting this problem! I first tried dgVoodoo with AO a couple of years ago and had the same problem with crashing.

This fix means I can finally play my favourite game with decent frame rate again!

Reply 8 of 10, by Eilhan

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Is there any chance that performance could be improved on the "new" client for Anarchy Online, by any chance? It crawls to a standstill on login and character selection, and any in-game situation where you aren't facing a wall or small parts of a room. (I think it's based on DX9).

Tried the debug version, and the most visible error message is this:
[dgVoodoo] ERROR: Direct3DDevice9 (067116F8)::CreateVertexShader: Creating vertex shader (vs.3.0) has failed.

If you want to give it a try, go to www.anarchy-online.com and click "DOWNLOAD", then "TRY NEW ENGINE".

-Eilhan