How to improve DOS WC4 movies?

M

MCROCOP

Rear Admiral
I would like to have better quality in the movies without that horrible interlacing but i'm talking about the DOS version because i like to run the game in retroarch, is there any way to do that?
 
Well, the short version is that this is almost impossible in the foreseeable future.

As I know, there are two paths to getting the DOS version to fulfil this requirement:

1. Modify DOSBOX core in Retroarch to support playing high quality video, and then do a special hack for WC4 so that DOSBOX can monitor the action of playing videos and play the high quality video natively at the right time, maybe in an overlay.

2. Implement high quality video software decompression under DOS, and modify WC4's EXE so that it has the ability to play high quality video.

Of the technical difficulties contained in these two paths, only "Let DOSBOX playing high quality video" is considered to be within the expected level of difficulty. All the rest are extremely difficult technical challenges. All the rest are extremely difficult technical challenges.
 
Last edited:
EmuMusicFan said:
Well, the short version is that this is almost impossible in the foreseeable future.

As I know, there are two paths to getting the DOS version to fulfil this requirement:

1. Modify DOSBOX core in Retroarch to support playing high quality video, and then do a special hack for WC4 so that DOSBOX can monitor the action of playing videos and play the high quality video natively at the right time, maybe in an overlay.

2. Implement high quality video software decompression under DOS, and modify WC4's EXE so that it has the ability to play high quality video.

Of the technical difficulties contained in these two paths, only "Let DOSBOX playing high quality video" is considered to be within the expected level of difficulty. All the rest are extremely difficult technical challenges. All the rest are extremely difficult technical challenges.
Click to expand...

thanks for the info, but there's no way to insert the movies of the dvd version of the game in the dos folder and make it read them instead of the old ones?
 
MCROCOP said:
thanks for the info, but there's no way to insert the movies of the dvd version of the game in the dos folder and make it read them instead of the old ones?
Click to expand...
That's what the two paths I mentioned above do.

We know, dvd version contains MPEG2 videos. Even we convert them to MPEG1 format, which is suitbale for mid 1990s CPUs, how to make them playable in the game? Modify a DOS program to let it play video without source code is extremely difficult.

And trust me, even you have the source code, it is still very difficult since it is something DOS.

I am not sure if you have any relevant memories. In the mid to late 90's it was necessary to purchase a hardware decoder to play DVDs on a PC.

If back in the day you independently completed a program that could play MPEGs or even video discs under DOS, congratulations, you could have sold it for a good price.
 
MCROCOP said:
thanks for the info, but there's no way to insert the movies of the dvd version of the game in the dos folder and make it read them instead of the old ones?
Click to expand...

Not in the way you are thinking without someone writing a whole new executable and drivers for the game to run. The DVD version runs basically through DirectX and uses a video overlay to replace the videos with higher resolution ones.

Now that said, there is a way to turn off the interlacing in WC4 videos... but the trick is again to upgrade the dos version to the win95 version and add a switch to the run line to toggle the -no_interlace mode to removed the black lines. You can also use the -true_color switch to use 24bit color mode.

However by upgrading to the win95 version you're kind of half way to the DVD version
 
AD said:
Not in the way you are thinking without someone writing a whole new executable and drivers for the game to run. The DVD version runs basically through DirectX and uses a video overlay to replace the videos with higher resolution ones.

Now that said, there is a way to turn off the interlacing in WC4 videos... but the trick is again to upgrade the dos version to the win95 version and add a switch to the run line to toggle the -no_interlace mode to removed the black lines. You can also use the -true_color switch to use 24bit color mode.

However by upgrading to the win95 version you're kind of half way to the DVD version
Click to expand...

that sounds good, i can try running the game in my dosbox pure installation of windows 98, do you know where i can find that upgrade?
 
MCROCOP said:
i've did it but it gives me the error of xanlib.dll missing, that file is in the upgrade and i created an iso with all the files but when i open it inside windows 98 xanlib is missing... so weird
Click to expand...
xanlib.dll is in the win 95 upgrade zip. Copy it to your WC4 folder along with the wc4w.exe file and then run it (wc4w).
 
ChrisReid said:
xanlib.dll is in the win 95 upgrade zip. Copy it to your WC4 folder along with the wc4w.exe file and then run it (wc4w).
Click to expand...

yes i noticed it but the problem is that when i open the zip with all the files inside windows 98 the file is not there for some reason
 
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