Prophecy Movie Upgrade Patch Released (October 24, 2006)

The skipping bug was definitely there, thanks for reporting it. It didn't show up on my main machine (which still runs XP), which is why it went unnoticed, but after testing it on a Vista machine i did manage to reproduce this problem. Here is a new DLL that should fix this, i'm sorry for the inconvenience.

Also, the new DLL should no longer need the "disable desktop composition" option under the Compatibility tab.

Regarding the resolution issue, i think it's very likely this issue is fixed on the latest version of the OpenGL driver (currently on development). One of the developers should be able to tell you more, though.

Mario
 
Youre new file solved the skipping bug. Tried it with Vista. Great.

Two things left:

1) Videos don't use my whole 16:10 screen. Solution?

2) There's no interlacing...any idea how to tun it on? Do I have to change the mpeg2 decoder?


EDIT: Solved interlacing problem. ffdshow helped a lot...
 
Sordid said:
Youre new file solved the skipping bug. Tried it with Vista. Great.

Two things left:

1) Videos don't use my whole 16:10 screen. Solution?

2) There's no interlacing...any idea how to tun it on? Do I have to change the mpeg2 decoder?


EDIT: Solved interlacing problem. ffdshow helped a lot...
Click to expand...

There isn't visible interlacing in MPEG2 files. Not entirely sure why you would want to turn it *on* though it's true that with the black lines your eye tends to fill in the missing info providing the illusion of greater detail. Second, the videos are hard-coded 4:3. It's the nature of the original transfer as opposed to anything we've chosen. You could theoretically crop the vobs and reencode them all... That might do the trick. Alternately ffdshow might have zoom option.
 
My fault...I meant DEinterlacing...and that's a problem of non progressive video. Don't think about black lines video games uses in the 90s...this is something else :)

I tried to reencode...but visual quality always suffers. A zooming option would do the trick...I'll have a look...
 
On my PC there are some visible interlacing artifacts when the movies are playing within the game that are much less noticeable when playing the VOBs with a media player software (ie Media Player Classic or Windows Media), is that what you're refering to, Sordid ?

I'll try to play with the codec's settings a bit, see if the problem's there.
 
PopsiclePete said:
On my PC there are some visible interlacing artifacts when the movies are playing within the game that are much less noticeable when playing the VOBs with a media player software (ie Media Player Classic or Windows Media), is that what you're refering to, Sordid ?

I'll try to play with the codec's settings a bit, see if the problem's there.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I meant. Used ffdshow to use another codec which would allow me to turn on deinterlacing but I'd prefer a solution which would only affect the games vobs. Perhaps there's a way to modify the WCP dll to use a specific codec...
 
I don't see any interlacing artifacts in either of my systems, either XP or Vista. Still, i will try uninstalling the codec pack i currently have installed and install ffdshow only, to see if i can reproduce the issue you are reporting. If i can, maybe i can tweak the WCP DLL a bit further.

Also, regarding the zoom option: the aspect ratio of WCP movies does not match your monitor (after the encoded black are cropped by the DLL, it is aproximately 2:1), so you will most likely see the movie centered with small horizontal black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. Is this what you are referring to? Personally i am satisfied with this solution, as it is a best fit to the screen without cropping the movie or changing the aspect ratio. However, i wouldn't mind adding a zoom option to the WCP DLL. Keep in mind however that this functionality would end up either stretching the movies vertically (changing the aspect ratio) or cropping small vertical sections of the movie in order to make it fit. I imagine this is what DVD players do, although i usually don't play much with these functionalities. I'll look into this, but let me know if you have any thoughts.
 
I'm having trouble running the OpenGL patch. After I click install, I get a dialog saying "Wing Commander Prophecy or Secret Ops must be installed for OpenGL-WCP to be installed. Please install Prophecy or Secret Ops and try again".

I do have the game installed and it does run. I'm guessing it's looking for a registry setting that might be absent or something?

I did have to reinstall the game after I upgrade to Windows 7, but the install didn't exactly look like it was working too well. It kept saying there was nothing in drive A and weird stuff like that. I was only reinstalling to the same place that it already existed, so I wasn't too concerned, as I just wanted WCP to *think* it had been reinstalled so it would offer the option to start the game, rather than just offering the option to install it when I fired up the Prophecy shortcut.

Now I'm thinking that didn't go to plan. Perhaps there's a registry key or something I can manually add that will fix the issue with the OpenGL installer?

Thanks.
 
HCl said:
I don't see any interlacing artifacts in either of my systems, either XP or Vista. Still, i will try uninstalling the codec pack i currently have installed and install ffdshow only, to see if i can reproduce the issue you are reporting. If i can, maybe i can tweak the WCP DLL a bit further.

Also, regarding the zoom option: the aspect ratio of WCP movies does not match your monitor (after the encoded black are cropped by the DLL, it is aproximately 2:1), so you will most likely see the movie centered with small horizontal black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. Is this what you are referring to? Personally i am satisfied with this solution, as it is a best fit to the screen without cropping the movie or changing the aspect ratio. However, i wouldn't mind adding a zoom option to the WCP DLL. Keep in mind however that this functionality would end up either stretching the movies vertically (changing the aspect ratio) or cropping small vertical sections of the movie in order to make it fit. I imagine this is what DVD players do, although i usually don't play much with these functionalities. I'll look into this, but let me know if you have any thoughts.
Click to expand...


First of all: thanks for the answer.

I'll try to explain my point but it won't be easy english being not my native language :)

I don't wanna have a "pan and scan" option. As you said, no real movie fan should use such an option. Atm your dll presents the videos with black bars at the top and at the bottom but also on the left and on the right. I wanna get right of the latter ones. I hope you understand: I do want correct aspect ratio so blakc bars must be! I just wanna get rid the of the ones on the right and left side of my screen...

Try the VOBs in VLC player and chose the option "crop 16:10" (assuming you have a 16:10 display). Imo that's the perfect way presenting them...


Did I make any sense? :)
 
Following on from my post above, my problem is now fixed. I tried re-installing the game using compatibility mode in Windows 7, and the installation proceeded in a much more healthy fashion (although it still moaned about drive A: initially, despite being installed from CD-ROM).

Anyway, after re-running the install, I was able to run the OpenGL install. And wow, it looks amazing!! Nice work. :)
 
Derailed, glad it is working now! Indeed, you need to complete the installation procedure, the game will not run without a few register keys added at installation time.

Sordid, thanks for the explanation. Something is going on there, as you should not be seeing those black bars on the left and on the right of the video, the DLL is set to present the movies using the full screen / window width. I'll run a few tests in as similar set of conditions as possible, please let me know the following:

- What resolution did you set on the OpenGL patch? Does it match your monitor native resolution?

- What MPEG2 codec do you have installed?

- Does this happen both in full screen and windowed mode?

Thanks!
 
HCl said:
Derailed, glad it is working now! Indeed, you need to complete the installation procedure, the game will not run without a few register keys added at installation time.
Click to expand...

That's the funny thing... The game was running fine, but the OpenGL installer wasn't finding it. So, whatever was missing from the game installation wasn't critical enough to stop the game working.

You've got some skills there. Awesome stuff you keep coming up with. :)

BTW, in case it's of any benefit to anyone else who wants to run WCP on Windows 7, after running the WCPEP, OpenGL Setup, and then copying in the OpenGL-compatible DVD DLL, I found that there was no audio on the VOB playback in the game. (This was on a fairly vanilla Windows 7 Ultimate installation that I installed just the day before.) So, I installed ac3filter, and then the audio worked fine.
 
I've tried running it on my W7 64-bit system, but the same thing happens. I can run the game with Direct3D selected, but as soon as I select OpenGL, I get memory exceptions.

I'm starting to suspect that the cause is in the incompatibilty of the OpenGL patch and 8 GB of RAM. Anybody got it working with 8GBs?
 
HCl said:
Sordid, thanks for the explanation. Something is going on there, as you should not be seeing those black bars on the left and on the right of the video, the DLL is set to present the movies using the full screen / window width. I'll run a few tests in as similar set of conditions as possible, please let me know the following:

- What resolution did you set on the OpenGL patch? Does it match your monitor native resolution?

- What MPEG2 codec do you have installed?

- Does this happen both in full screen and windowed mode?

Thanks!
Click to expand...


- Resolution set to 1920x1200 which is my native resolution.

- Used libmpeg2 via ffdshow

- Happens both in full screen and windowed mode
 
ijozic said:
I've tried running it on my W7 64-bit system, but the same thing happens. I can run the game with Direct3D selected, but as soon as I select OpenGL, I get memory exceptions.

I'm starting to suspect that the cause is in the incompatibilty of the OpenGL patch and 8 GB of RAM. Anybody got it working with 8GBs?
Click to expand...

Just 4GB on mine, but your scenario is very easy to test... Just pull out 4GB and try again. ;)
 
Sordid, i managed to reproduce the issues you're having. Installing mpeg2dec seems to correct both issues (the codec pack i had installed included mpeg2dec, which is why i never encountered these problems in the first place).

(Do a search on the CIC for mpeg2dec, you should find a download link quickly.)

I put up a new version of the WCP DVD DLL which specifically loads mpeg2dec if it's installed on your system, you can download it here. This way, you will be able to use mpeg2dec for WCP and some other MPEG2 codec for playing DVDs regularly.

Hope it helps!

Mario
 
Bad news...mpeg2dec removes left/right bars...but by simply STRETCHING the video. Black bars on top and bottom stay the same and the video ist just stretched to the left and rifght which gives wrong apspect ratio. I should habe mentioned I tried mpeg2dec in the past (great for WC 4 DVD) but dropped it for WCP because of this issue. If you don't believe me I'll try to make screnshots but much easy: Use VLC player, choose "crop to 16:10" and compare to your ingame videos...you'll see the difference!
 
Derailed said:
Just 4GB on mine, but your scenario is very easy to test... Just pull out 4GB and try again. ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, it sounds easy enough if it was my desktop. But, I'm working abroad and only have this laptop to use and there are no easy access panels to remove two sticks of RAM like I had on my previous HP one. I'd have to disassemble some parts before reaching the screws to remove the bottom plate and I don't have any tools here so I might end up scratching this somewhat expensive thing and I wouldn't do that just now :)

I will check on my desktop during Christmas holidays, if nothing.
 
I seem to have got the DVD video working with Open GL. I am having a problem though with the video being off ratio. Meaning that it is stretched a little bit and I have Gray bars above and below the videos. Also in flight there are black boxes around the videos

Also want to know if there is any way to turn the volume up on the videos?

Also since I installed the Open GL on Secret Ops too, it has not been working.I have tried switching it back to glide wrapper and any other renderer but no go. I haven't tried reinstalling it just because I want to make sure nothing will happen to Standoff.
 
Ok, why can't I get this to work?

I use vista/x64.
I install Prophecy, run it. Everything works fine. Now I unzip the contents of wcpep_Release1.zip into /prophecy and the .vob files into /prophecy/movies. Last step: I copy the latest wcphr.dll from this very thread into /prophecy and overwrite the one from the EnhancementPackage. Now I run the game again, talk to Hawk and...see a grey screen for like one second, then I end up in the ready room, as if the video had been played.
I tried different compatibility modes, subtitles on/off, everything. I'm very close to alt-tabbing after every mission and just watch 'em in VLC. :mad:
 
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