Wing Commander Prophecy DVD Movie Upgrade Windows 10 (GoG)

T

Triumphus

Rear Admiral
Hi all,

How are you? Has anyone had any luck getting the WCP DVD quality movie upgrade working for WIndows 10?

I installed everything (enhancement pack, opengl patch, highres movies in the MOVIE folder, etc) but when I run the game, and try to go to any scenes, it just shows a black screen with no sound and then kicks me to the next room in the game after I hit escape.

Anyone had any luck with this? Can someone walk me through what to do after fresh install of Prophecy from Gog to get these MUCH better looking DVD movies? Thanks!
 
AD said:
If you are sure you have mpeg2 and ac3 codecs installed and set up, it's possible -depending on which version of the opengl patch you have installed - that you need to update your opengl patch to a newerversion https://www.wcnews.com/news/2013/07/21/new-version-of-wcp-opengl-patch-released
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply! I am still having a hard time with this as there are so many different install methods and files out there. Which works best for Windows 10 and the GoG version of Prophecy? What is the exact order to install all of these? How do I set up the game and with which files, etc?

As far as the MPEG2 Decoder and the AC3 filter, I have some issues as well. When I try to install the AC3 filter, it gets flagged as malware by my anti-virus. When I try the MPEG2 Decoder, I get the error in the picture attached.

Thanks for any advice or help you can offer on this problem! I am playing through the Wing Commander games with my daughter for the first time (for her) and want the quality as good as possible to make the experience better for a new Wing Commander recruit!

Here is what I am doing so far:

1. Fresh install of GoG Version of Prophecy. Game works perfectly on fresh install but movies look crappy.

2. Downloaded High Res Movie Packs and extracted them all to a folder I created called "movie" in the GOG/WCP base directory.

3. Unzipped the enhancement pack into the /WCP folder. Moved the files
data.tre (cd1)
- gf.tre (cd1)
- gf2.tre (cd2)
- gf3.tre (cd3)
into the /patch directory of the enhancement pack folder.

4. Run the "install" file on the enhancement pack and chose 1920x1080 Direct 3d.
After hitting ok there is no indication that it worked etc. Install screen just closes. Assuming it worked?

5. Run the VOB patch. (copy the new .dll into the base /WCP directory).

6. Run the OpenGL_WCP_setup.exe file. This seems to install correctly (but asks if I want to set up the settings twice during install).

7. Cross Fingers.

8. Run game, movies are blank with no sound. Still can hit escape but it takes me to a new room in the ship. Game itself also crashes before getting to space.
 

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Triumphus said:
Hey all,

Just checking in to see if anyone can clear this issue up. Thanks!
Click to expand...
I'll try to follow the steps you lined out and see how it does on my machine.
I'm running Win 10 Pro, Version 1803.

Just started downloading all the assets, will take me a day or two, though, to find the time to run through
 
Ok, downloading and installing went way quicker than expected.

While I can't seem to run the patched game due to "Looking for CD1", I might have done something wrong myself.

But the guide here might help you: https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/DVD_Movie_Upgrade_Patch
Main differences in that guide to what you tried:
1) don't run the installer from HCl's Enhancement Pack. Just extract.
2) run the OpenGL Installer before copying the DVD patch .dll file
3) take the DVD patch dll file that's provided (on top right-hand side) in the link I pasted. There seem to be various versions, this one should work with the OpenGL patch.

Hope that helps.

btw: any hint anyone, what makes the game not aware of being the Gog-version? (ie no CDs)
 
Found out some more:

Triumphus said:
6. Run the OpenGL_WCP_setup.exe file. This seems to install correctly (but asks if I want to set up the settings twice during install).
Click to expand...
Because one is for Prophecy, the other one is for Secret Ops.

Btw, the Enhancement Patch exists in two different versions.
One comes with a replacement for prophecy.exe, which renders the GOG-version unusable.
Unfortunately, both contain a readme file that states that this is Version 1.

So, I got it working, but DVD movies won't play full-screen.
I'll let you know once I found the reason for that.
 
delMar said:
So, I got it working, but DVD movies won't play full-screen.
I'll let you know once I found the reason for that.
Click to expand...

I'm going to assume you mean it's pillarboxed, though it's quite possible this isn't the issue. The original VOBs are hardcoded in a 4:3 letterboxed aspect ration meaning hte top and bottom black bars are baked into the video itself. When properly displayed without stretching on a 16x9 monitor, not only will there be black above and below the video, there will be black on each side. IIRC the original DVD patch for the WC4 GOG release was done to apply a bit of a zoom to make the videos touch the sides of a 16:9 monitor. I don't remember if this was also done for the prophecy release but I feel like we did do that. However it's quite possible that other patches and so on don't fix this issue.

Here's a picture I grabbed from the net:

4x3_four_side_black.png
 
thanks @AD

actually, the video just plays on the top left-hand side of the 1920x1080 screen.
probably in its native resolution.
so it's lacking the scaling and the zoom.
 
I had the same issue. After deaktivating the compatibility mode and aktivating admin and DPI-Skaling, everthing is fine. Maybe look for aktuel Codecs too.
 
Hi all,
Sorry for the late reply! So, I used these tweaks in the install method:
"But the guide here might help you: https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/DVD_Movie_Upgrade_Patch
Main differences in that guide to what you tried:
1) don't run the installer from HCl's Enhancement Pack. Just extract.
2) run the OpenGL Installer before copying the DVD patch .dll file
3) take the DVD patch dll file that's provided (on top right-hand side) in the link I pasted. There seem to be various versions, this one should work with the OpenGL patch."

It seems to work! The video is playing now and audio is ok.

Only problem I am having now is I am getting major tearing on the movies (really pronounced lines and tears, especially it seems when there is motion on the screen.)

Anyone know how to correct that?

Thank you heartily for your assistance on this issue so far! It is very much appreciated! Glad that I can play this game in the glory it was meant to be played in.
 
Triumphus said:
Only problem I am having now is I am getting major tearing on the movies (really pronounced lines and tears, especially it seems when there is motion on the screen.)
Click to expand...
I'm not sure, but this might be caused by interlaced video? However, I have no solution for this.

Another recommendation on gaming experience would be the Model Upgrade Pack. This upgrades an increasing number of ships and other models to high-res textures and more eye-candy.
I've just learned that this is built on top of the OpenGL-patch, so it's more or less a drop-in replacement for that.
It also allows you to set the FPS to 60.
 
delMar said:
I'm not sure, but this might be caused by interlaced video? However, I have no solution for this.

Another recommendation on gaming experience would be the Model Upgrade Pack. This upgrades an increasing number of ships and other models to high-res textures and more eye-candy.
I've just learned that this is built on top of the OpenGL-patch, so it's more or less a drop-in replacement for that.
It also allows you to set the FPS to 60.
Click to expand...

This sounds way more like a vsync proplem... basically the game is drawing frames at a different rate than your monitor. Most modern games have options to force Vsync to on... it can sometimes have a slight performance hit but it prevents the screen tearing issue.

In a game as old as Prophecy and Secret Ops I doubt any performance hit from vsync would be noticable, but I also don't remember if the enhancement pack has an option to turn it on. If it doesn't, you should be able to go into your video card settings and force it on.

I'm running an AMD card so I'll use that as an example. I would right-click anywhere on the desktop, and then click "AMD Radeon settings" (nvidia cards would probably have some kind of "geforce settings" option), and then when the radeon settings window opens I owuld click the gaming tab. When the Gaming tab opens you can either create a profile for prophecy specifically, or just click the "global settings" option. The global setting page is pasted below. You will see the "wait for verticl refress" option in the second row. Clicking that gives to several options for setting Vsync on or off.

option.
radeon.png
 
Out of interest were source videos for prophecy ever recovered? What was the source used for the DVD?
 
Pedro said:
Out of interest were source videos for prophecy ever recovered? What was the source used for the DVD?
Click to expand...
The Prophecy DVD was contracted the same way the WC4 DVD was. The only difference was that for whatever reason the prophecy disks never made it into the DVD-Rom bundles. A copy of the disk was recovered and is the source of the Prophecy DVD upgrade. The company that did the conversion for the DVD-ROM originally would have had access to the original source files. Prophecy was shot on Digital Betacam (http://www.filmlook.com/news/98summer.html). What has happened to the original digibeta tapes is unknown at this point but resolutionwise it's probably not that much better resolution than what's on the DVDs as native resolution of NTSC Digital Betacam is 720x486.
 
AD said:
The Prophecy DVD was contracted the same way the WC4 DVD was. The only difference was that for whatever reason the prophecy disks never made it into the DVD-Rom bundles. A copy of the disk was recovered and is the source of the Prophecy DVD upgrade. The company that did the conversion for the DVD-ROM originally would have had access to the original source files. Prophecy was shot on Digital Betacam (http://www.filmlook.com/news/98summer.html). What has happened to the original digibeta tapes is unknown at this point but resolutionwise it's probably not that much better resolution than what's on the DVDs as native resolution of NTSC Digital Betacam is 720x486.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I knew most of that but not the format of the source.
Obviously it's not ideal, but still the difference between letter boxed widescreen and true widescreen - I have a few really old letterboxed DVDs around which remind me that the difference is not insignificant - it'd be a nice find, but I suppose not monumental or worth holding out for.
It might be worth trying to deinterlace or even up res the videos slightly offline though. I must admit whenever I've had issues with the playback being interlaced almost every time I've replayed the games.
 
Pedro said:
Thanks, I knew most of that but not the format of the source.
Obviously it's not ideal, but still the difference between letter boxed widescreen and true widescreen - I have a few really old letterboxed DVDs around which remind me that the difference is not insignificant - it'd be a nice find, but I suppose not monumental or worth holding out for.
It might be worth trying to deinterlace or even up res the videos slightly offline though. I must admit whenever I've had issues with the playback being interlaced almost every time I've replayed the games.
Click to expand...
I haven't tried to figure out how to get the game to recognize them but I did deinterlace (actually I beleve it's telecined and not strictly just interlaced IIRC) all the prophecy vids for when I converted them for the holovids page. The dolby logo isn't that great a quality in general deinterlaced or not, but the rest of the movies look decent I think. I might eventually play around with a few things as there might be some ways I could improve it (changing it to proper 24 fps instead of NTSC rates for example) - https://download.wcnews.com/holovids/wcp/index/

Most of the software decoders can be set to do deinterlacing on the fly so that you can have less awful looking movies in-game but they dont really do a great job on telecined footage (3 progressive frames and then two interlaced frames). There's usually a codec setup tool with codec packs that allow you to force deinterlacing on.
 
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delMar said:
thanks @AD

actually, the video just plays on the top left-hand side of the 1920x1080 screen.
probably in its native resolution.
so it's lacking the scaling and the zoom.
Click to expand...
It has been sometime. Does anyone know how to resolve deMar's issue with the movies playing in the top left corner? I am having it as well. All codecs are accounted for.
 
No and after experimenting with codecs I'm left with the same issue. We're working on an alternative but it may be some time before we get to implementing it.
 
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