WC4DVD from GOG will not play!

thom ellis

Petty Officer
I bought the GOG WC4, I've followed every step recommended in the home page post, and still when I click on the WC4DVD icon the screen goes dark with no other activities.

before the post on the home page I had made the mistake of downloading the mpeg2.dll and dxmci.dll and with it installed I at least and one of the context choices pop up and a little bit of sound... but not much. it still froze. I currently have NO antivirus and firewall is off, I've installed the K-lite pack, no good.

I am attaching me DXDiag.txt SOMEONE PLEASE help me get this game working.
 

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  • DxDiag.txt
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You should completely uninstall your copy of the game - make sure you use the add/remove programs option to make sure the registry entries are deleted as well. Reinstall and follow the steps on the homepage to see if that helps you.
 
Thanks for posting the directx info. We're looking into it.

Any further info you can give about your system and the crash would be helpful in finding the root of the problem.

Just to be clear, this is a laptop running vista?

Can you tell me if setting the cpu core affinity makes any difference?
 
My laptop is running windows vista home premium X64. I uninstalled WCIV, deleted every mention of it from the registry and reinstalled it (K-lite pack is installed) and when I right click on the icon and run as admin ic comes up to a black screen. no errors come up, it just freezes. I set affinity to CPU 0, no good, CPU1... no good. Both... no good.
 
It would be useful to have some more information regarding codecs.

Please download Insurgent (http://www.cccp-project.net/download.php?type=cccpi) and run a Test Render (Tools -> Test Render) on one of the WC4 VOB files and post the output here, so we have an idea of which codecs are being loaded when a movie is played.

It should look something like the below (from my EEEPC 901, running XP Pro):

Code:
File: I:\Wing Commander IV\vob\SC_0010A.vob
 
Filter 0: Video Renderer
Filename: C:\WINDOWS\system32\quartz.dll
Filter CRC: 5C293E20
Date: 2011-11-03 | 15:28:36
Filter 1: Default DirectSound Device
Filename: C:\WINDOWS\system32\quartz.dll
Filter CRC: 5C293E20
Date: 2011-11-03 | 15:28:36
Filter 2: DScaler Mpeg2 Video Decoder
Filename: C:\Program Files\K-Lite Codec Pack\Filters\MpegVideo.dll
Filter CRC: A322EE47
Date: 2006-08-20 | 17:40:52
Filter 3: ffdshow Audio Decoder
Filename: C:\Program Files\K-Lite Codec Pack\ffdshow\ffdshow.ax
Filter CRC: 1F6B0636
Date: 2012-03-22 | 19:00:00
Filter 4: MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
Filename: C:\WINDOWS\system32\mpg2splt.ax
Filter CRC: 43789624
Date: 2008-04-14 | 01:12:42
Filter 5: I:\Wing Commander IV\vob\SC_0010A.vob
Filename: C:\WINDOWS\system32\quartz.dll
Filter CRC: 5C293E20
Date: 2011-11-03 | 15:28:36
 
File: C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Wing Commander IV\vob\SC_0010B.vob

Filter 0: Video Renderer
Filename: quartz.dll
Filter CRC: CRC Unavailable.
Date: ERROR: File Not Found.
Filter 1: Default DirectSound Device
Filename: quartz.dll
Filter CRC: CRC Unavailable.
Date: ERROR: File Not Found.
Filter 2: Microsoft MPEG-2 Video Decoder
Filename: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msmpeg2vdec.dll
Filter CRC: 6BD94F84
Date: 2009-04-11 | 02:28:21
Filter 3: ffdshow Audio Decoder
Filename: C:\Program Files (x86)\K-Lite Codec Pack\ffdshow\ffdshow.ax
Filter CRC: 1F6B0636
Date: 2012-03-22 | 14:00:00
Filter 4: MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
Filename: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\mpg2splt.ax
Filter CRC: 226F2C3B
Date: 2010-12-29 | 14:26:47
Filter 5: C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Wing Commander IV\vob\SC_0010B.vob
Filename: quartz.dll
Filter CRC: CRC Unavailable.
Date: ERROR: File Not Found.
 
Apparently DirectShow is using the MS MPEG2 decoder. Your mileage may vary, but i find ffmpeg to be more stable. Lets try to make DirectShow use the ffmpeg decoder and see if it helps.

The simplest way to acheive this is probably to uninstall the K-Lite codec pack and re-install it again in Advanced Mode. During installation in Advanced Mode, under "Select Components" choose the following options:

-DirectShow Video Decoding Filters
-- MPEG-2,DVD
--- ffdshow (libmpeg2)

-DirectShow Audio Decoding Filters
-- AC3
--- ffdshow (liba52)

Once installation completes, run Insurgent again. If all went well, you should see ffdshow being used instead of msmpeg2vdec.

Try then running WC4 and let us know if things improved.
 
could this problem be with the Quartz.dll which the system is saying "file not found" for? (it IS there, I checked).
 
Could be... although if the Quartz DLL were unavailable, i don't think DirectShow would be able to generate the filter information at all.

You could always try running regsvr32 quartz.dll, wouldn't hurt.

Other possibilities i can think of: maybe DirectShow is attempting to render the video using GPU acceleration and something is going wrong. I would suggest the following:

- Go to the Catalyst Control Panel, and turn off any options related to DXVA.
- Also try turning off Triple Buffering and full-screen anti-aliasing to see if it helps.

Also, are you using any software for customizing the Windows desktop? (eg. WindowBlinds). These are known to cause problems in some games.

I'll try doing a fresh install of Vista in my spare laptop, see if anything else comes to mind.
 
yeah.... this just aint happening

I know this is frustrating, and I wish there was a simpler way to figure this out. Just to be sure though, you did make sure to switch compatability mode to win98? Is 'dissable desktop composition" still checked?

Does checking "run as administrator" on the game compatability tab make any difference?
 
Yes... I have followed every suggestion relating compatibility mode, Codec packs, you name it.
The short cut by default is set to win 98, disable desktop composition and to run as an admin.
 
The "ERROR: File not found" in Insurgent doesn't mean anything. In my freshly installed Vista machine I get the same output for the quartz dll, but everything works fine.

Just to clarify: when you say the screen goes dark, what happens exactly? Does the computer stop responding completely and you have to reboot your computer? Do you manage to alt+tab to another window or to kill wc4 with task manager? Do you hear any sound at all?
 
I can do Alt-Tab to get to other applications or CTRL ALT DEL to open task manager to close out the WC4DVD.exe process. No sound... but I don't have to reboot.
 
When it goes black, if you press ESC several times and then the up or down error, you don't get either a missing movie error or hear audio of either "help him out" or "straighten him out" ?
 
Hmm this makes me wonder if your problem is actually OpenGL related instead of codec related... Let's try pursuing this possibility.

Try downloading GLView and save a XML report, so we have an idea of your OpenGL driver capabilities.

(I'm attaching a GLView report here in case it proves useful for comparison at some point)
 

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  • glview-Intel 945GM.xml.txt
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Thanks for the file, going through it as I type this.

Do you get a wc4_debug.txt file in the game folder? If so, please post it here. If not let me know, i'll post a new DLL with a few extra debug messages so have an idea if OpenGL is initializing properly.
 
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