Hi everyone,
I have been fiddling recently with the video files in Privateer 2, and was amazed at how much cleaner and better-quality they are when viewed in a video player than in the game itself, which insists on interlacing them. Since Priv2 has some very stylish cinematics, I think it's a real shame that the quality isn't higher.
With that in mind, I would love to see a project come together that tweaks the game to present the cinematics in the highest possible quality that we can manage with the resources at our disposal. I doubt we could get it to the level of, say, the WC4 DVD, but I think it could be improved enough to make the effort worthwhile.
There are two levels of reworking that I can immediately see:
1. Hack the dark.exe file to bypass interlacing. In my opinion, the difference between the original video files without interlacing and the in-game version with interlacing is enormous -- this alone would make the cinematics eminently more watchable. I have some programming experience, but in web applications. It's possible that I could find my way to doing this myself if I was given some guidance and advice by others.
2. The VHS-sourced files at wcnews.com are another step higher than the files in the game. Once we successfully bypass the interlacing code, we could take the quality to the next step by modifying the game so it looks for these video files in a folder on the user's hard drive, instead of going to the files on the cd. Once again, I don't know how to do this, but it's possible I could blunder my way into putting the code together if people could provide some tips and pointers.
If anyone has suggestions or advice, or if others have also been working on similar mods, please chime in. I think Privateer 2 would really benefit from work on the cinematics.
I have been fiddling recently with the video files in Privateer 2, and was amazed at how much cleaner and better-quality they are when viewed in a video player than in the game itself, which insists on interlacing them. Since Priv2 has some very stylish cinematics, I think it's a real shame that the quality isn't higher.
With that in mind, I would love to see a project come together that tweaks the game to present the cinematics in the highest possible quality that we can manage with the resources at our disposal. I doubt we could get it to the level of, say, the WC4 DVD, but I think it could be improved enough to make the effort worthwhile.
There are two levels of reworking that I can immediately see:
1. Hack the dark.exe file to bypass interlacing. In my opinion, the difference between the original video files without interlacing and the in-game version with interlacing is enormous -- this alone would make the cinematics eminently more watchable. I have some programming experience, but in web applications. It's possible that I could find my way to doing this myself if I was given some guidance and advice by others.
2. The VHS-sourced files at wcnews.com are another step higher than the files in the game. Once we successfully bypass the interlacing code, we could take the quality to the next step by modifying the game so it looks for these video files in a folder on the user's hard drive, instead of going to the files on the cd. Once again, I don't know how to do this, but it's possible I could blunder my way into putting the code together if people could provide some tips and pointers.
If anyone has suggestions or advice, or if others have also been working on similar mods, please chime in. I think Privateer 2 would really benefit from work on the cinematics.
