Kilrathi saga owners: beta testers needed

WC2 seems to crash on me on quit, regardless of whether I use the hack dll or not. Crash occurs in AcLayers.dll, which seems to have something to do with the windows compatibility modes... so, I guess I'll just rule that one out.
 
The full bilinear also does an afterimage effect when going into an autopilot sequence - the ships swing by the screen and drag phantom images after them.
Not disruptive, rather neat.. - gives an impression of high velocity.
 
The full bilinear also does an afterimage effect when going into an autopilot sequence - the ships swing by the screen and drag phantom images after them.
Not disruptive, rather neat.. - gives an impression of high velocity.

That's the separate "old lcd" mode which you can toggle on and off with f8 regardless of the normal/bilinear/halfnhalf setting.
 
Working on WC2 is irritating, as the game is unstable, crashes sometimes, audio stutters, and controls feel unresponsive.

In any case, the current (0.3) version has the following issues with wc2 that I've already solved:
- Alt-tabbing doesn't work (crashes on return)
- Some screens are not viewed (game updates framebuffer but does not wait for retrace)
 
Also notices the keys I picked for configuration overlap those of the games. Oops. Any suggestions which keys I should use instead?
 
I'd rather not use combination of keys if possible..

WC2 has some busy loops with no event polling. It's amazing just how much "worse" the WC2 port is compared to WC1. This causes some issues, including the fact that the "old LCD" simulation gets a bit buggy on some screens (like the ones where you get to stare at a door for some seconds).. I could solve that by creating a separate thread for rendering, but that would be a slight overkill, I think.

That reminds me, WC1 also skips message polling on the autopilot flybys. So it's not all that perfect either =)
 
Ha, the only keys not mapped as far as I can tell are H,I,Q,U and Z. Maybe I should just ditch the keys and do a config file instead.
 
Okay, new version.
http://iki.fi/sol/zip/ddhack04.zip

- wing commander 2 compatibility
- configuration moved to ddhack.cfg file
- couple new 'oldlcd' modes: subtleoldlcd and veryoldlcd.

Veryoldlcd is rather trippy:
ddhack3.png


Read the ddhack.txt for instructions on configuration options.
 
Alright, WC1 and WC2 launch without 256-mode. I had to experiment with the comp settings.
But all I have now is black screen with music and sound.
 
Likewise with ddhack 0.4 - I get sound and a nice black screen (I can control behind the scene, even getting to the simulator death) then eventually the crash. I've just upgraded my graphics drivers so will check again and let you know :)
 
Looking at wc3 now - and it's doing some weird stuff. I get calls to my ddraw.dll, but it manages to draw to screen around it somehow. Fun. Maybe I'll have to wrap GDI too =)
 
By the way, if someone gets better result with older version of ddhack, please tell me. I'm assuming from the "black screen" people that all versions result in the same behavior - I haven't changed anything that should(tm) break the graphics output.
 
So I tested the hack again in xp with updated drivers - no difference, still just get a black screen.

However, it works fine on the same system in windows 7 (I know that was the aim of this anyway), I would say that aside from graphical glitches during the intro and when being hit by enemy fire (damage to armour) the game works fine for me anyway in win7 but the patch fixes those issues. However, the game becomes a little laggy with the patch (obvious enough really). I would say though that the LCD effect is really irritating! (I know you can turn it off, but I'm not sure why anyone would want it on!)

Anyway, its a good bit of kit, just would be interesting to know what's stopping it working in xp
 
Anyway, its a good bit of kit, just would be interesting to know what's stopping it working in xp

I'll have to try it again on my netbook, to see if I've managed to break it for XP somehow.

In other news, now that I know how wc3ks can be gotten to work on win7, I really, really would like to get ddhack to work with it - no way I'm killing explorer to play a game =)

Unfortunately, it's doing something totally weird, and I haven't yet figured out what's going wrong with my wrapper. And I mean wrapper, not the ddhack - just a dll that takes whatever comes from the application and passes it forward to the real thing.

Without the wrapper I can run the game (with palette problems as usual), but with it it goes and crashes. If I use ddhack (not the current released version, but something new), I get a black screen with the logo, and the game manages to draw something onscreen, bypassing ddraw completely. Why doesn't it have the decency of crashing like the wrapper does, I have no idea.

Anyway, turned my wrappers and ddhack off, killed explorer and tried the game. Tried a simulator mission. Can't seem to control the fighter with mouse, and sometimes the screen blinks to the mission map and back. Is this normal?

Oh, and the default options for ddhack are normal point-sampling with no "old lcd" stuff at all - just delete the example config file.
 
Anyway, turned my wrappers and ddhack off, killed explorer and tried the game. Tried a simulator mission. Can't seem to control the fighter with mouse, and sometimes the screen blinks to the mission map and back. Is this normal?

As for the mouse, did you remember to enable it? Sometimess the games default to joystick or keyboard so even though the mouse works on the carrier you have to choose mouse in the inflight options menu and save the settings (alt+o). I don't have any suggestions about the map thing though.
 
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