cybertoolzz on 10/10/2003 at 19:29

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hoping some of u dos grus can help -

i can run uw1 just fine all speech and sound work but the gamma/brightness is way too dark. i'm not talking about in the view window from within the game - the whole game is quite dark. i know it's my monitor going out - i have the bright/contrast maxed on the monitor.

i have ss1 also but that game has a gamma slider which gives enuff brightness to see, so ss1 plays great (omfg - i can't believe how great these old games are NOW - even compared to the newest games of today! i have played ss1 thru 3 times in a row ;-)

uw1 is the other true classic game and i just need to get some brightness in the game.
i have tried about 12 diff apps to increase gamma in a dos game from within Win9x but none of them work; Powerstrip, Advanced Gamma Corrector, Scitech Display Doctor, etc. these gamma correction utilities work fine for games running under Win9x but none of them allow adjustment WITHIN a dos session running under Win9x.

i know i could just go buy a new monitor and i need one neway but i need to solve this little challenge - somebody has to know how to do this. i have seen quite a few ppl asking the same question w/o an answer.

1. is there a switch, command line, cfg file setting in uw1? i see the uw.cfg in c:\uw1\data but there is very little to go on in that cfg file.

2. does anybody know WHO the developers of uw1 are? names and where they might be contacted? the 'Acknowledgements' screen lists all the ppl who worked on the game - anybody know if these ppl are still around? i know Blue Sky Prods. became Looking Glass Studios - if i can contact the programmers maybe i can find some infos on command line or in-game hot keys that control the gamma.

3. this can't be that difficult - somebody has to know where to get a util that allows gamma correction in a dos-based game. i've even tried finding a level editor/compiler so i can fix the game myself - but haven't found one yet.

Win95
ATI Rage PRO current drvrs
celery 466
64mb pc100

cybertoolzz on 11/10/2003 at 03:14

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thx diagnull

good tip with the shades.dat file - that effectively removes ALL shading - but the whole game is still very dark - from the very first screen incl the Origin then Blue Sky then title screen - the whole thing is still quite dark. the map screen is so dark i can hardly see where i have been.


i del shades.dat, light.dat and lights.dat - no real help but i can see where i'm going in the view screen just slightly better when shades.dat is deleted.

here's what i tried - installed dosbox and powerstrip - run pstrip and step up the gamma - run dosbox and i now have GAMMA CONTROL in a full screen dos session while running uw1. i can increase/decrease the gamma inside the game - issue solved!

but running these 2 apps has caused another issue - game is very choppy - sound chops and movement is slow/choppy. tried the dosbox ctrl hotkeys to speed up/slowdn cpu and increase/decrease page skips - can't find a good value that runs the game smoothly....

But i have fixed the dark issue!!