MoroseTroll on 1/7/2007 at 14:15
It is perfectly known, that Thief 1, Thief 2 and System Shock 2 do not support 32-bit videomodes though it would be great. In fact it would lead to disposal of the annoying color artefacts peculiar to 16-bit videomodes! Unfortunately, these games were released very much for a long time, and hardly probable publishers will release corresponding patches.
If to try to set “game_screen_depth” parameter to 32 in a file “cam.cfg”, we shall receive the message that the necessary videomode has not been found. It is obvious, that in a code there is a corresponding blocking which, however, easily hacks. However after that games stop the work with the error message. Most likely, the code of these games simply is not intended to work with 32-bit videomodes though as it seems to me, they can to force be made it. What do you think of this invention?
242 on 1/7/2007 at 14:32
I think it's absolutely impossible until one gets access to source code.
MoroseTroll on 1/7/2007 at 14:47
Probably. But, maybe, here there will be skilled hackers who are familiar with DirectX 6&7. Eventually, maybe, somebody from ex-LGS even will hint how to.
It seems to me, I know a name of one guy which was responsible for hardware rendering in the Dark Engine. I would like will ask him about the help, but I do not know how :(.
242 on 2/7/2007 at 07:45
Quote Posted by MoroseTroll
Probably. But, maybe, here there will be skilled hackers who are familiar with DirectX 6&7. Eventually, maybe, somebody from ex-LGS even will hint how to.
It seems to me, I know a name of one guy which was responsible for hardware rendering in the Dark Engine. I would like will ask him about the help, but I do not know how :(.
Try to google his name and find email from an article, resume etc..
MoroseTroll on 2/7/2007 at 14:36
Well. In T1's credits.avi I have seen an inscription: "Hardware Rendering & D3D Support: Kevin Wasserman".
I have tried to find this guy and, apparently, he now works in Mad Doc Software, but I could not contact with him, because I don't know his e-mail.
I'm still not assured, who exactly was responsible for hardware-rendering. Is somebody knows something?
SiO2 on 3/7/2007 at 08:42
A Direct3D7 wrapper would do the trick, I believe. Wine has a D3D7 wrapper and there's a Direct3D8 opensource wrapper out there. Though they both convert to OpenGL calls, something along those lines would be able to intercept all the api calls and do things a bit different. Upgrading the backbuffer to 24bit (the other 8bits are reserved for stencil in 32 bit mode) and converting all textures to 16/32bit on-the-fly may get rid of the horrible dithering issues with some video cards (most nvidia cards, by the looks of it).
MoroseTroll on 3/7/2007 at 13:27
Interesting idea... I'll take a look. Thanks :)!
bikerdude on 3/7/2007 at 13:46
Quote Posted by SiO2
Atheres a Direct3D8 opensource wrapper out there. Though they both convert to OpenGL calls and converting all textures to 16/32bit on-the-fly may get rid of the horrible dithering issues with some video cards (most nvidia cards, by the looks of it).
Hmmm this could potentially get T2 looking right on nVidia 8x00 cards perhaps... You mention a wrapper, does it exsist for windows aswell..?
biker
nb. while googling I found out about the alky project, supposedly it will allow you to play DX10 games on Xp.
SiO2 on 3/7/2007 at 14:54
There are Windows dlls for Wine available from the Wine website, so it should work for Win32 as well (since Windows - even Vista - supports OpenGL). Wine is opensource so you can even grab the source code as well.
I'd sure love to get my nvidia 8800 card playing nice with Thief2! Nasty horrible taffin' undithered shadows... :grr:
