Muzman on 10/11/2007 at 19:46

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Could some kind soul wing me a copy of NV's fixed Shock2.exe?
It will help with a little project and I missed the window on that one.
(I would mention my email rather than make people dig for it, but I believe that's a bad idea).

Muzman on 10/11/2007 at 20:28

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Even better.
Thanks muchly.

Muzman on 10/11/2007 at 22:57

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Groovy.

I got SS2 to work and it was fine (I can't really talk about the interface since I was running with the no interface patch), the Z clipping on the weapon arm not withstanding, looked great.
I couldn't get game mode to work in shocked though. I set ddfix ini to 1024x768 then tried to enter game mode at that res (trying the setting at 16 and 32bit, though that probably doesn't do much) and the game appears to hang; screen goes black like the renderer is initialising and it just sits there. I get bored and kill the process after a couple of minutes. (sigh worthy, as that's exactly what I wanted to work)

...
remind me: am I supposed to be running any of these things (Thief2.exe, Shock2.exe, Dromeds etc) in any sort of compatability mode? (I thought I got it to work by turning it off all of them, but I'm not sure that was it)

...
Ok I got it. I had cleaned out and did a new install of SS2 (deleting a lot of my stuff in the process. Who put this moron in charge?). Strangely compatibility mode on Dromed.exe (shocked) came back after the install, when I had turned it off on the previous copy (wich was, of course deleted). It works after I turned it off.

Here's a pickle: ddfix works fine in the game, great even (give or take the odd crash when looting bodies and z clipping). Dromed game mode looks exactly the same as it used to. Is this what NamelessVoice was talking about earlier?

...
Ok, more updatem. I figured out that dromed was probably making its own ddraw calls rather than going through shock2.exe. So I changed the first reference to ddraw.dll in Dromed.exe to ddfix.dll via mr hex editor and now all is good (well, transparencies and dithering are all good which is all I'm looking at at the mome).
Is it just me who's had to do this? Is everyone elses' dromed game mode just peachy with this patch (window oddness notwithstanding)?

bob_doe_nz on 12/11/2007 at 06:18

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Hmm, one thing I have noticed with videos is that when you move the mouse anywhere, while watching the videos, it runs at full speed, with no choppiness.

And another problem.
I installed the texture fix, tested it, and it worked fine. Then I tried to install and then run a fan mission. At which point it crashed. I reverted back to Thief2 and it is still crashing.

Edit:
Oh, I'm using Darkloader.

Seems to be a certain FM. Cult of the damned, that was released not too long ago.

Switched to Thork and it's working fine.
Switched back to T2 and it's fine.
Back to COTD and it crashes.

Can someone please verify that I am / am not the only one having this problem

Ahh screw it! I'll just play on my laptop.

Muzman on 15/11/2007 at 02:01

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I got it working on Thief2 thanks to some advice on which patch to use to sidestep Safedisk and I had a quick blast through. Some notes:

Firstly it looks very nice now and runs very smooth by and large. I guess this is the virtue of having an 8800 that it gives me no grief to run it at 1600x1200 with 8x AA (reckon 16x would work, Timeslip? :cheeky: ) and AF in Vsynch. As it should be with a seven year old game I guess. There is a bit of crunch in some of the usual suspect areas (the ship in Shipping, parts of the Bank) as the frame rate drops below 85, so I suppose confirming that this wrapper is making life difficult somewhere along the line.
Sometimes what I think is sounds caching causes the odd hiccup; but this is likely down to my onboard sound unit sucking. 3d sound used to be a bit flakey before but now seems pretty happy. Not sure if this has anything to to with anything.
The textures are a bit weird and is more widespread than just doors. Its not all textures but, depending on the level, it can be most of them. Bilinear filtering is off on many a wall and other places. I wonder if its not something to do with the file format being slightly different on some textures, or palettes or something. One for those more expert than I. It does seem somehow specific.
And I haven't tested this but I think most if not all textures are being rendered a tiny bit larger than they should be, like one percent, causing slight misalignments etc. Even where the bilinear filtering is working the pixels seem larger than I remember. But this could be largely hazey memories of the game on a smaller screen at a lower res etc.
Possibly related or non existent point; but were the transparent decals and textures - as seen on balustrades, foliage, blood etc- were they always so jagged at the edges? It's like their alpha has been crushed so any semi transparents or edge details have been lost creating hard and rough transitions to transparency (pretend I know what I'm talking about, ok?). Again, this could be rose tinted memory getting in the way.

Has there always been a guard on patrol outside the Bank who can run faster than a haunt? I dunno if this has anything to do with ddfix but it freaked me out.

Something I noticed in System Shock 2 as well (not that it's officially being fixed), the water is still rough. Can't remember if this was just in the editor (or if it was always like that), but its odd as everything else was aces.

Anyhow is all pretty darn good so far and very playable/usefull.