I've Created a WC4 HD Video Pack

ODVS said:
Thank you :) Sadly, as Pedro mentioned, there currently isn't any way to play these back in-game - they're more a techinical Proof of Concept at the moment. I will be making them available to download soon, though, so any interested Wingnuts will be able to browse through/watch them. I also live in hope that someone more skilled in software modding/development than I will find a way :^)
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Well, they still look great! Even just watching them on their own will look amazing. Looking forward to setting aside some time soon. :)
 
This looks pretty sweet!

I'm trying to play Prophecy. I installed the GOG version, then followed the Install enhancements guide on pcgamingwiki. I put the Prophecy 3.0 video pack in the game's 'movie' directory.

I can play them just fine on my pc using PotPlayer, so I believe there shouldn't be any codec issue. (I did run the installer for K-Lite, but it said that a similar or better codec was already installed, so I figured it was unnecessary).

But when I try to have the game play them, I just get a black screen, no audio, and I have to hit ESC to skip to gameplay. I believe the various enhancements are setup correctly since the DVD pack plays correctly. I've tried renaming the mp4s to VOB but with the same result.
 
Pies said:
But when I try to have the game play them, I just get a black screen, no audio, and I have to hit ESC to skip to gameplay. I believe the various enhancements are setup correctly since the DVD pack plays correctly. I've tried renaming the mp4s to VOB but with the same result.
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Hi @Pies - thank you for the compliment!

I'm afraid I'm at a bit of a loss as to why you're having issues... however, that's the power of a community!

@Saturnyne, @Panther1.0, @CactusJon, @gr1mre4per, @TylerOwenUK, @AD, @Bandit LOAF, @Pedro and @DefianceIndustries - I believe you guys have either had similar issues that you've overcome or have a better understanding of the various patches than I do. Can anyone weigh in and help @Pies out?
 
ODVS said:
Hi @Pies - thank you for the compliment!

I'm afraid I'm at a bit of a loss as to why you're having issues... however, that's the power of a community!

@Saturnyne, @Panther1.0, @CactusJon, @gr1mre4per, @TylerOwenUK, @AD, @Bandit LOAF, @Pedro and @DefianceIndustries - I believe you guys have either had similar issues that you've overcome or have a better understanding of the various patches than I do. Can anyone weigh in and help @Pies out?
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I've not had much luck, HCl never open sourced the WCP movie code, just WC4 so I don't know what the issue is. At one point he did change his patch to work with OpenGL, but recent versions have been temperamental.
I considered adapting the DivX patch to play back other types of video as that doesn't use a seperate window and should be more stable; but that only overrides the video, audio has to be in WCP format.

So many potential projects, so little time. Hopefully HCl will feel the modding bug again sometime.
 
What helped me was doing the following, IN THIS ORDER:
  1. Install the game from GOG.
  2. Delete or move the Glide wrapper files to another folder. The files are: nglide_config.exe, glide.dll, glide2x.dll, and glide3x.dll
  3. Unzip the Enhancement Pack into the game's directory, but do NOT run install.exe, and do not overwrite prophecy.exe
  4. Copy the DVD DLL into the game directory, and overwrite the file when asked.
  5. Unzip the HD movies into the game directory, in their own folder called 'movie'
  6. Install the OpenGL Patch
Hope that all made sense. Good luck.
 
Saturnyne said:
What helped me was doing the following, IN THIS ORDER:
  1. Install the game from GOG.
  2. Delete or move the Glide wrapper files to another folder. The files are: nglide_config.exe, glide.dll, glide2x.dll, and glide3x.dll
  3. Unzip the Enhancement Pack into the game's directory, but do NOT run install.exe, and do not overwrite prophecy.exe
  4. Copy the DVD DLL into the game directory, and overwrite the file when asked.
  5. Unzip the HD movies into the game directory, in their own folder called 'movie'
  6. Install the OpenGL Patch
Hope that all made sense. Good luck.
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Same result after following this. :\ thanks though.
 
Pies said:
Same result after following this. :\ thanks though.
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Sorry to hear that, @Pies

You mentioned previously that you didn't install K-Lite because it said you had a newer codec already installed. Does that mean you haven't installed/run the Codec Tweak Tool?
 
ODVS said:
You mentioned previously that you didn't install K-Lite because it said you had a newer codec already installed. Does that mean you haven't installed/run the Codec Tweak Tool?
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I had not. But I have now. I ran the General 'Fixes' process and it found some old/missing references to clean up. Anything else worth doing with the tool?
 
Pies said:
I had not. But I have now. I ran the General 'Fixes' process and it found some old/missing references to clean up. Anything else worth doing with the tool?
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Did you follow this post and make sure your h.264 renderer is set to "Microsoft"?
 
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Pies said:
yep, both 32-bit and 64-bit h.264 are on Microsoft.
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Out of curiosity, which directory did you install the game to? If you alt-tab out of the game when it's supposed to playing a video are there any dialogue boxes giving any permissions error messages?

What type of machine are you running this on? Are you running multiple monitors? I'm kind of wondering if there's any common hardware threads between people with issues. Also, on some older machines the load times for the h.264 files can also be very long even when they play quite quickly in windows itself.
 
@ODVS - thanks for your continued work. I've found a small little "bug" in my tests: For some reason activating passthrough for AC-3 in the audio decoder options (in my case LAV filters) muted video playback in WCIV (even though my default "soundcard" is HDMI output and my AV receiver decoded AC3 just fine). Decoding AC-3 in software works fine then.

WCP was unaffected by this.
 
TylerDurd0n said:
@ODVS - thanks for your continued work. I've found a small little "bug" in my tests: For some reason activating passthrough for AC-3 in the audio decoder options (in my case LAV filters) muted video playback in WCIV (even though my default "soundcard" is HDMI output and my AV receiver decoded AC3 just fine). Decoding AC-3 in software works fine then.

WCP was unaffected by this.
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Hi @TylerDurd0n - thanks for that.

I suspect that's down to the video playback being entirely handled in software, with no hardware accelleration for video or audio. That's really down to how it's been patched.
 
AD said:
Out of curiosity, which directory did you install the game to? If you alt-tab out of the game when it's supposed to playing a video are there any dialogue boxes giving any permissions error messages?

What type of machine are you running this on? Are you running multiple monitors? I'm kind of wondering if there's any common hardware threads between people with issues. Also, on some older machines the load times for the h.264 files can also be very long even when they play quite quickly in windows itself.
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D:\Games\Wing Commander Prophecy (C is my SSD, while D is an HDD).
There's no messages when alt-tabbing.

windows 8.1, single monitor.
 
Pies said:
D:\Games\Wing Commander Prophecy (C is my SSD, while D is an HDD).
There's no messages when alt-tabbing.

windows 8.1, single monitor.
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Thanks. I'm trying to get a sense of what is breaking here. How long are you waiting for the videos to load and what kind of CPU and GPU are you running?

Some programs in Win 8 and 10 do have issues if they aren't installed in the program files directory, but I honestly don't think that should make any difference here (but you never know... this is Windows after all).
ODVS said:
Hi @TylerDurd0n - thanks for that.

I suspect that's down to the video playback being entirely handled in software, with no hardware accelleration for video or audio. That's really down to how it's been patched.
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The way the game handles the DVD video (and the hd upgrades) is that for all intents and purposes the video is in a separate window than the game itself. I suspect for at least some of the problems the main game window is refusing to give priority to the video window since the game's built in player is just staying black. I don't have any solutions, but It's possible.

I have another program though that plays video onto a second monitor as well as within it's window. If I move the first window to the second monitor, the video continues playing in the window and the second monitor video seems to auto-minimize and I lose sound completely from the video until I restore the second-monitor video playback instead of the main window (which should be controling the other video... it makes no sense)
 
AD said:
Thanks. I'm trying to get a sense of what is breaking here. How long are you waiting for the videos to load and what kind of CPU and GPU are you running?
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I waited about a minute before giving up. My rig is pretty solid, it can handle pretty much any current-gen game I've thrown at it at max settings without complaints.
 
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