Kilrathi saga owners: beta testers needed

Good work... I've downloaded the PCGamer version of WC1 and I installed this little thing afterwards, but I'm having a small problem.

If I have ddraw.dll in the same folder as WC1.exe, all I get is a plain black screen when I start it up.

Here's some information about my system...

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 @ 2.93 GHz
Video Card: NVidia GeForce 9800 GT (512 MB)
Video Card Driver version: 190.38
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition
RAM: 4 GB (Although my OS is 32-bit so it only uses 3.25 GB)
 
Kevin Caccamo said:
Good work... I've downloaded the PCGamer version of WC1 and I installed this little thing afterwards, but I'm having a small problem.

If I have ddraw.dll in the same folder as WC1.exe, all I get is a plain black screen when I start it up.

Here's some information about my system...

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 @ 2.93 GHz
Video Card: NVidia GeForce 9800 GT (512 MB)
Video Card Driver version: 190.38
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition
RAM: 4 GB (Although my OS is 32-bit so it only uses 3.25 GB)
Click to expand...

I get this, but I just have to wait... the game seems to play fine but the load times seem excessive for some reason.
 
The first thing to try if there are any issues is to update video drivers. It's crazy, as the only thing I'm using is OpenGL 1.0 (not even 1.1), but still updating drivers helps.

How long is the wait? AD, can you list your specs so we could try to see if there's some common thing between you two.
 
sol_hsa said:
The first thing to try if there are any issues is to update video drivers. It's crazy, as the only thing I'm using is OpenGL 1.0 (not even 1.1), but still updating drivers helps.

How long is the wait? AD, can you list your specs so we could try to see if there's some common thing between you two.
Click to expand...

Could be that I was just multitasking too much before. Retested it and the load times seemed instantaneous. The only other thing I've noticed is sluggish mouse response in game... but only while on the claw. The spaceflight is nice and responsive.

For future ref... I have a core i7 920 with 6GB ram runing vista 64bit sp2 and an nvidia 9800GTX... I should switch to win7 soon.
 
Great work, Sol - in the years, my eyes got a little tired of the harsh pixelization in the original, so this gives the opportunity to go smoother. Thanks a lot for the effort.

I'm testing the PC_Gamer WC1 version with ddhack03 in Win95 mode on a Dual Centrino 2.53 / 8GB / Win7pro 64bit laptop (unfortunately with Intel Mobile4 graphics), and it all works fine except one thing:

My mouse freezes in half&half mode - freeze is released as soon as I switch into one of the other modes. Mouse movements are stored and are executed at high speed after the switch. This leads to interesting inflight possibilities ;)

Otherwise: Great fun.
 
NVIDIA Geforce 8400 GS
Windows XP
Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 @2.40 GHz
And I've activated the compartibility options. Without them, WC1 does launch with a crash. Same with WC2.
 

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criticalmass said:
My mouse freezes in half&half mode - freeze is released as soon as I switch into one of the other modes. Mouse movements are stored and are executed at high speed after the switch. This leads to interesting inflight possibilities ;)
Click to expand...
The input lag is something I notice sometimes too, but there's little I can do about that. =(.

As for half'n'half mode.. it's a bit heavy. Basically, it needs to copy a 1024x512x32bpp texture over to the graphics card each frame, which is 2 megs. Plus any overhead the graphics drivers may put on it.

@FekLeyrTarg: Looks like you have the 256 color compatibilty option on. You shouldn't need that with this DLL.
 
So when I try and run this with the ddhack installed (version 0.3) I get a crash citing:
AppName: wc1.exe
AppVer 0.0.0.0
ModName nvoglnt.dll
ModVer 6.14.11.9745
Offset 0055c7a1

The game runs fine without ddhack without any compatability settings.

System is:
Athlon II x4 6200+
4Gb DDR2
WinXP sp3

with ddhack, if i select 256 colours the game runs but colour distorted as seen above
if i select 640 by 480 the game crashes again
in windows 95 compatability mode the music plays but i get a black screen (apparent keyboard response though)
same with windows 98
nt4 and 2000 both crash again.

The superpatch for compatability makes no difference either way.

Ooh, I should say I'm using the pcgamer version, not full KS.
 
So I was getting fed up of editing the same post :D

I just tested with the wc1ks from the kilrathi saga (rather than the pcgamer version) and it makes no difference to whether the ddhack works (ie crashes me out)

However, pcgamer's wc1ks would run fine without any compatability stuff, the kilrathi saga wc1ks needed compatability set to win9x or mincemeats patch installing or it crashed itself. Obviously there's a difference under the hood there!
 
Well, I'm stupified =)

I do know that the win95 compatibility mode helps, but all graphics-related (256c mode, 640x480 mode, etc) should not affect things after the hack dll is in use. The game asks the dll to switch graphics mode, which I geefully ignore, and use the full-screen window instead, emulating the 256c mode in software.

If it still does seem to make a difference, there must be something really strange going on inside the game itself. Unless, of course, I've done something stupid (which has been known to happen sometimes)..
 
I'm not sure if there really is a difference - I really think the PC Gamer release is just the WC1 segment of the Kilrathi Saga. Unless there was more than one version of KS released?
 
Wedge, they definitely work with different compatability setups!

Sol, my comment was merely that the 256 colors and 640x480 dont fix it (they shouldn't anyway, since they would stop integral parts of your program from working, namely the upscaling.

it would seem that the issue is with running in xp over win9x but that the hack wont work in win9x mode (kind of makes sense in my head!)
 
I'll have to check my copies, then. It's a bit silly to have the code modified for a magazine CD, but oh well.
 
It is possible that there are multiple versions and no one noticed... or that they updated Kilrathi Saga for a reprint that never happened and that that version wound up on the PC Gamer CD.
 
I checked the issue of PC Gamer that came with the CD, but there's nothing in it to indicate that it was modified in any way - though it does make note that it was taken from Kilrathi Saga in the sidebar.

I'm awful thankful and glad you guys managed to get rights to this - it's really embarrassing to say, but that CD is (was) my only copy of Wing Commander for the last ten years, and I don't think I've played it in almost that long. I always expected it to turn up at the right moment, but it never did (well... not until now!) I first started coming to the CIC around the same time, probably because of it, so that's something to be doubly-thankful for.
 
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