This dll version could (maybe ...) fix the problem.
The file in attach should replace the dxwnd.dll file of last release v2.04.80
I cross my fingers hoping it will work ....
No, not yet.
One silly obstacle to finding something is the fact that I don't know how to make a mission that lasts forever unattended: the idea is to start a mission in such a way that nothing happens and go away, waiting for some crash to happen, then collect some log and other hints.
But unfortunately the missions seem to terminate very easily if you don't properly rule your army, and honestly I wouldn't spend that much time to get a possibly null result (I never got such a problem, but possibly because I never played the game long enough).
Do you have any suggestion to build a selfish mission to run at dinner time?
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hello, gho! Any news? Other problem: With Win10 x64 Latest Build(2.04.86) have problem (config from export): When the menu appears, the cursor-hand appears in the upper-left corner. But the real cursor is on the right side of the window. and when I start to move it, the cursor-hand rapidly moves to it and as if disappears outside the screen. And more I can not do anything with the mouse in the game window, the cursor in the form of an arrow is not able to affect the game... (keyboard is work, in fullscreen correct).
P.S. Tried 2.03.87 (message in this topic from 2016-09-23) - the same problem. And in full-screen mode, when running through dxwnd, the cursor works correctly. Tried all checkers on the input tab-does not help. Ready to provide logs if you tell me how to configure them)
P.P.S I switched the dpi of my mouse to the lowest value and was able to observe the movement of the cursor-hand: it just always moves in one direction (right-down) at any movement of the mouse. Reaches the edge of the screen and goes somewhere further, in unknown edges))
Last edit: GenVox 2018-08-21
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
With a new release 2.04.87 I can't start a Theocracy... When you double-click, nothing happens. I think something's broken. Divine Divinity works fine. I'm also still hoping for help with solving problems with the cursor in a Theocracy:) Divine Divinity with the cursor is also okay.
P.S. Oh, Sorry, I had to run DxWnd as administrator. The game starts, but the problem with the cursor remained:(
Last edit: GenVox 2018-09-03
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I keep forgetting to update the expoted configuration setting the "Acquire admin caps" flag... sorry.
The cursor problem is puzzling me, I see nothing of the sort here. You may try to produce and post here a minimal logfile by setting, in addition to the log flags suggested in the tutorial, also "Win events" and "Input" log flag. I'm not sure it will give some clue, but I can't think of anything else.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
The logs show that the game links dinput. It would be useful to repeat the test with logs about that library as well. In effect, I suspect that the problem could be there ...
Please, follow these instructions:
1) for the purpose of the test, set the "Input / Cursor visibility" to "Show": this should make it possible to see the difference between the physical cursor and the logical cursor (the logical cursor is a piece of game texture).
2) set the "Input / Hook dinput" flag
3) run a very short test: this log is going to be even bigger!
4) after you have saved the logfile, you may try to tentatively set a few input flags, like "Emulate mouse relative movement" and "Position message processing"
Also, it could be interesting to have answers to these questions:
a) the cursor moves up only when you move it or even without moving?
b) what cursor moves up, the physical or the logical?
c) do you have some sort of "special" mouse? Special hardware, or customized drivers, or whatever ... what happens if you replace the mouse with a PS2 or USB standard mouse?
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
1) 1_dxwnd.log: "Input / Cursor visibility" to "Show" + "Input / Hook dinput".
2) 2_dxwnd.log: "Input / Cursor visibility" to "Show" + "Input / Hook dinput" + "Emulate mouse relative movement" + "Position message processing"
3) Theocracy_cursor_1.jpg: The position of the cursors immediately after starting the game. Yellow circle outlined with a windows cursor.
4) Theocracy_cursor_2.jpg: The position of the cursors immediately after I slightly moved the mouse up
5) No, GHO, no special mouse: Logitech G102 (usb). Notebook Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E540. No special drivers, I recently installed windows 10 on a formatted disk. Also, the notebook does not have a ps/2 port. I checked with my old usb mouse - nothing has changed. Eh...(
P.S. I also tried to use the touchpad - also nothing has changed.
I'm really puzzled: there are very few methods do programmatically move the cursor, and they are all hooked and logged by DxWnd, but I can see no trace of their calling. In addition I can't see these system calls in the address table, so it seems that the game has no way to move the cursor by itself. Whatever it is, it should be something external.
I would check for the game compatibility options, maybe the desktop settings like DPI scaling, I don't know, but whenever I get some more idea I will send it.
Also, I'm attaching my copy of the game executable, in case it is different from yours ...
Found it! Windows 10 Settings/Display/Change the size of text, apps, and other items: 125% (Recommended) (current value). When I changed the value to 100%, the cursor behavior in Theocracy became correct! But 100% on my monitor - too small and very tired eyes. GHO, will you be able to take this setting into account in dxwdn for correct processing?
P.S. Previously, I somehow did not pay attention: Input/Cursor Clipper/Default or OFF greatly smoothes the effect (but it is still impossible to play): when I move the mouse to the right, the cursor moves twice as fast as when I move the mouse to the left. When I move the mouse down, the cursor moves twice as fast as when I move the mouse up. (game cursor).
Last edit: GenVox 2018-09-05
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
This is the weirdest thing I heard since long time! I can immagine that the DPI settings (I believe we're talking of that) may impact on the mouse speed, but the hell, why should it change one direction only? Probably the game has some responsibility in all this, since I immagine that the problem only happens there and not in all other applications.
I have to find the code spot where the game makes its cursor calculations and see what it's possible to do. It doesn't look easy, but maybe it's interesting and (possibly) apply to other games. I'm curious.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Thank you, GHO, I will look forward to the results:) I think now it looks reproducible. Maybe someone else can change the on win 10 "Change the size of text, apps, and other items" to 125% and confirm this behavior in Theocracy?
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hello. I'd like to ask for your help. I read the forums, downloaded the latest program, set everything up. When I start theocracy you don't react to anything. It does not start the game. Please help.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I assume that you updated the game Path field in the "Main" configuration panel. When you import a configuration from the export folder (and Theocracy has its own configuration file) the hook points to the game pathname where the configuration was created, so you most likely you have to update that field.
If the game doesn't start, a likely reason could be that DxWnd requires administrator's privileges. DxWnd doesn't need this privilege unless it tries to hook a game that has administrative privileges, so either update DxWnd.exe properties or check the "Acquire admin caps" flag. This way the game should at least show some reaction, then if it still doesn't work please return here to this forum.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Dear Forumers! I downloaded the two original Theocracy CD ISO files from here: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/theocracy-did
After trying and failing to launch the game as-is, I downloaded DxWnd and imported the associated configuration file for Theocracy, did not modify any settings, only the Path under Main settings, The same thing happens as Énekes Zsolt posted on 2021-01-02, so in simple terms nothing. System is Windows 10 version 1909 Build 18363.1379.
I tried to extract some other relevant info from the logs, but when I right click Theocracy from the list and click on Log -> View nothing happens. DxWnd runs with administrator privileges.
Any help in this matter is greatly appreciated, and I can provide additional info / screenshots as necessary.
Thank you very much!
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hi.
I'm sorry, but it seems we have to blame Microsoft again. I went through the steps and here's the results on a Win10-64 machine:
1) you install the game inserting CD1, set WindowsXP compatibility to setup.exe and run it to install the game
2) the game executable theocracy-0.6.85.exe is only a launcher for the real game engine theocracy-0.6.85.bin, but the CD protection is not supported on Win10, so you need a crack
3) MyAbandonware has a Theocracy_Fix_Win_EN.exe that is the unprotected game engine, you have to copy that to the game folder and hook it to DxWnd
4) this way the game doesn't still work: some legit operations return an unexpected DDERR_GENERIC error code. This is weird, it didn't happen before, so something must be changed and I strongly suspect it's a broken MS support for legacy DirectDraw.
In short, I'll have to analyze the errors and find some new workaround to the problems. Stay tuned ...
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
One may wonder what's peculiar about Theocracy that makes it so troublesome while the vast majority of other ddraw games work flawlessly. Browsing the logs, here's a possible reason: unlike other games, Theocracy uses ddrawex.dll and in particular DirectDrawCreateEx that you can reach only through OLE using a CoCreateInstance call. This way, the ddrawex.dll is loaded directly from where it is registered in the system (in my case, "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ddrawex.dll") this way bypassing any attempt to help the game with some replacement with a compatible dll in the game folder or through the DxWnd tweaks. In addition, some excellent wrappers like dgVoodoo2 have no support for ddrawex.
Sadly, it doesn't seem an easy problem ...
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Some news, hopefully good.
I tested Theocracy with the different DxWnd releases on Win7 and discovered that the game broke between v2.05.36 (last working release) and v2.05.37 (first crashing release).
This evening I'll repeat the test on Win10. If this will be confirmed, it will give me a very good track to follow to identify the problem's cause.
Let's cross our fingers ...
updated
The matter is not at all simple. The culprit is the handling of OLE objects about the initial movies. Here in Win10 a fix to v2.05.37 requires simply to comment the execution of the DxWnd routine that manages the OLE objects, but this way the movies are not rendered. In addition, commenting the same line in latest DxWnd release does not fix the problem, maybe some additional error was introduced. I need to understand better and move carefully, or I'll risk making more damages in other programs. In the meanwhile, the easy workaround (if you need one) is to download and use DxWnd v2.05.36 for this game only.
Last edit: gho 2021-03-18
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
This new release should fix the Theocracy problems with IDirectDraw3 interface used for the intro movies. On my Win10 now the game shows and no longer crashes, and in addition it no longer needs the "ddraw:ReturnNULLReference" tweak that, honestly, was a little like cheating because I didn't know exactly how the ddraw surfaces had to be treated. Not that now I know much better (this IDirectDraw3 is really strange!!) but at least it works.
The only (sadly BIG) problem is that now the mouse control doesn't work and the mouse jumps to the right-bottom of the screen making the game unplayable. I was trying to find a fix, but I didn't succeed so far.
I was playing with "auto primary surface blit" off.
I don't know what about others, I'll check.
@edit sync off also didnt help.
@edit2 old error still happens!
Last edit: Grab 2018-06-30
This dll version could (maybe ...) fix the problem.
The file in attach should replace the dxwnd.dll file of last release v2.04.80
I cross my fingers hoping it will work ....
I have bad news for you, it still crashes, but less. :P
Any updates?
No, not yet.
One silly obstacle to finding something is the fact that I don't know how to make a mission that lasts forever unattended: the idea is to start a mission in such a way that nothing happens and go away, waiting for some crash to happen, then collect some log and other hints.
But unfortunately the missions seem to terminate very easily if you don't properly rule your army, and honestly I wouldn't spend that much time to get a possibly null result (I never got such a problem, but possibly because I never played the game long enough).
Do you have any suggestion to build a selfish mission to run at dinner time?
Hello, gho! Any news? Other problem: With Win10 x64 Latest Build(2.04.86) have problem (config from export): When the menu appears, the cursor-hand appears in the upper-left corner. But the real cursor is on the right side of the window. and when I start to move it, the cursor-hand rapidly moves to it and as if disappears outside the screen. And more I can not do anything with the mouse in the game window, the cursor in the form of an arrow is not able to affect the game... (keyboard is work, in fullscreen correct).
P.S. Tried 2.03.87 (message in this topic from 2016-09-23) - the same problem. And in full-screen mode, when running through dxwnd, the cursor works correctly. Tried all checkers on the input tab-does not help. Ready to provide logs if you tell me how to configure them)
P.P.S I switched the dpi of my mouse to the lowest value and was able to observe the movement of the cursor-hand: it just always moves in one direction (right-down) at any movement of the mouse. Reaches the edge of the screen and goes somewhere further, in unknown edges))
Last edit: GenVox 2018-08-21
With a new release 2.04.87 I can't start a Theocracy... When you double-click, nothing happens. I think something's broken. Divine Divinity works fine. I'm also still hoping for help with solving problems with the cursor in a Theocracy:) Divine Divinity with the cursor is also okay.
P.S. Oh, Sorry, I had to run DxWnd as administrator. The game starts, but the problem with the cursor remained:(
Last edit: GenVox 2018-09-03
I keep forgetting to update the expoted configuration setting the "Acquire admin caps" flag... sorry.
The cursor problem is puzzling me, I see nothing of the sort here. You may try to produce and post here a minimal logfile by setting, in addition to the log flags suggested in the tutorial, also "Win events" and "Input" log flag. I'm not sure it will give some clue, but I can't think of anything else.
Before starting, I set the mouse dpi to the minimum value. After starting the game moved the mouse up.
The logs show that the game links dinput. It would be useful to repeat the test with logs about that library as well. In effect, I suspect that the problem could be there ...
Please, follow these instructions:
1) for the purpose of the test, set the "Input / Cursor visibility" to "Show": this should make it possible to see the difference between the physical cursor and the logical cursor (the logical cursor is a piece of game texture).
2) set the "Input / Hook dinput" flag
3) run a very short test: this log is going to be even bigger!
4) after you have saved the logfile, you may try to tentatively set a few input flags, like "Emulate mouse relative movement" and "Position message processing"
Also, it could be interesting to have answers to these questions:
a) the cursor moves up only when you move it or even without moving?
b) what cursor moves up, the physical or the logical?
c) do you have some sort of "special" mouse? Special hardware, or customized drivers, or whatever ... what happens if you replace the mouse with a PS2 or USB standard mouse?
1) 1_dxwnd.log: "Input / Cursor visibility" to "Show" + "Input / Hook dinput".
2) 2_dxwnd.log: "Input / Cursor visibility" to "Show" + "Input / Hook dinput" + "Emulate mouse relative movement" + "Position message processing"
3) Theocracy_cursor_1.jpg: The position of the cursors immediately after starting the game. Yellow circle outlined with a windows cursor.
4) Theocracy_cursor_2.jpg: The position of the cursors immediately after I slightly moved the mouse up
5) No, GHO, no special mouse: Logitech G102 (usb). Notebook Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E540. No special drivers, I recently installed windows 10 on a formatted disk. Also, the notebook does not have a ps/2 port. I checked with my old usb mouse - nothing has changed. Eh...(
P.S. I also tried to use the touchpad - also nothing has changed.
Last edit: GenVox 2018-09-04
I'm really puzzled: there are very few methods do programmatically move the cursor, and they are all hooked and logged by DxWnd, but I can see no trace of their calling. In addition I can't see these system calls in the address table, so it seems that the game has no way to move the cursor by itself. Whatever it is, it should be something external.
I would check for the game compatibility options, maybe the desktop settings like DPI scaling, I don't know, but whenever I get some more idea I will send it.
Also, I'm attaching my copy of the game executable, in case it is different from yours ...
Found it! Windows 10 Settings/Display/Change the size of text, apps, and other items: 125% (Recommended) (current value). When I changed the value to 100%, the cursor behavior in Theocracy became correct! But 100% on my monitor - too small and very tired eyes. GHO, will you be able to take this setting into account in dxwdn for correct processing?
P.S. Previously, I somehow did not pay attention: Input/Cursor Clipper/Default or OFF greatly smoothes the effect (but it is still impossible to play): when I move the mouse to the right, the cursor moves twice as fast as when I move the mouse to the left. When I move the mouse down, the cursor moves twice as fast as when I move the mouse up. (game cursor).
Last edit: GenVox 2018-09-05
This is the weirdest thing I heard since long time! I can immagine that the DPI settings (I believe we're talking of that) may impact on the mouse speed, but the hell, why should it change one direction only? Probably the game has some responsibility in all this, since I immagine that the problem only happens there and not in all other applications.
I have to find the code spot where the game makes its cursor calculations and see what it's possible to do. It doesn't look easy, but maybe it's interesting and (possibly) apply to other games. I'm curious.
Thank you, GHO, I will look forward to the results:) I think now it looks reproducible. Maybe someone else can change the on win 10 "Change the size of text, apps, and other items" to 125% and confirm this behavior in Theocracy?
Hello. I'd like to ask for your help. I read the forums, downloaded the latest program, set everything up. When I start theocracy you don't react to anything. It does not start the game. Please help.
I assume that you updated the game Path field in the "Main" configuration panel. When you import a configuration from the export folder (and Theocracy has its own configuration file) the hook points to the game pathname where the configuration was created, so you most likely you have to update that field.
If the game doesn't start, a likely reason could be that DxWnd requires administrator's privileges. DxWnd doesn't need this privilege unless it tries to hook a game that has administrative privileges, so either update DxWnd.exe properties or check the "Acquire admin caps" flag. This way the game should at least show some reaction, then if it still doesn't work please return here to this forum.
Dear Forumers! I downloaded the two original Theocracy CD ISO files from here: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/theocracy-did
After trying and failing to launch the game as-is, I downloaded DxWnd and imported the associated configuration file for Theocracy, did not modify any settings, only the Path under Main settings, The same thing happens as Énekes Zsolt posted on 2021-01-02, so in simple terms nothing. System is Windows 10 version 1909 Build 18363.1379.
I tried to extract some other relevant info from the logs, but when I right click Theocracy from the list and click on Log -> View nothing happens. DxWnd runs with administrator privileges.
Any help in this matter is greatly appreciated, and I can provide additional info / screenshots as necessary.
Thank you very much!
Hi.
I'm sorry, but it seems we have to blame Microsoft again. I went through the steps and here's the results on a Win10-64 machine:
1) you install the game inserting CD1, set WindowsXP compatibility to setup.exe and run it to install the game
2) the game executable theocracy-0.6.85.exe is only a launcher for the real game engine theocracy-0.6.85.bin, but the CD protection is not supported on Win10, so you need a crack
3) MyAbandonware has a Theocracy_Fix_Win_EN.exe that is the unprotected game engine, you have to copy that to the game folder and hook it to DxWnd
4) this way the game doesn't still work: some legit operations return an unexpected DDERR_GENERIC error code. This is weird, it didn't happen before, so something must be changed and I strongly suspect it's a broken MS support for legacy DirectDraw.
In short, I'll have to analyze the errors and find some new workaround to the problems. Stay tuned ...
Thank you for the investigation, I'll check back later :)
One may wonder what's peculiar about Theocracy that makes it so troublesome while the vast majority of other ddraw games work flawlessly. Browsing the logs, here's a possible reason: unlike other games, Theocracy uses ddrawex.dll and in particular DirectDrawCreateEx that you can reach only through OLE using a CoCreateInstance call. This way, the ddrawex.dll is loaded directly from where it is registered in the system (in my case, "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ddrawex.dll") this way bypassing any attempt to help the game with some replacement with a compatible dll in the game folder or through the DxWnd tweaks. In addition, some excellent wrappers like dgVoodoo2 have no support for ddrawex.
Sadly, it doesn't seem an easy problem ...
Some news, hopefully good.
I tested Theocracy with the different DxWnd releases on Win7 and discovered that the game broke between v2.05.36 (last working release) and v2.05.37 (first crashing release).
This evening I'll repeat the test on Win10. If this will be confirmed, it will give me a very good track to follow to identify the problem's cause.
Let's cross our fingers ...
updated
The matter is not at all simple. The culprit is the handling of OLE objects about the initial movies. Here in Win10 a fix to v2.05.37 requires simply to comment the execution of the DxWnd routine that manages the OLE objects, but this way the movies are not rendered. In addition, commenting the same line in latest DxWnd release does not fix the problem, maybe some additional error was introduced. I need to understand better and move carefully, or I'll risk making more damages in other programs. In the meanwhile, the easy workaround (if you need one) is to download and use DxWnd v2.05.36 for this game only.
Last edit: gho 2021-03-18
This new release should fix the Theocracy problems with IDirectDraw3 interface used for the intro movies. On my Win10 now the game shows and no longer crashes, and in addition it no longer needs the "ddraw:ReturnNULLReference" tweak that, honestly, was a little like cheating because I didn't know exactly how the ddraw surfaces had to be treated. Not that now I know much better (this IDirectDraw3 is really strange!!) but at least it works.
The only (sadly BIG) problem is that now the mouse control doesn't work and the mouse jumps to the right-bottom of the screen making the game unplayable. I was trying to find a fix, but I didn't succeed so far.
Perfect. This version fixes an issue with the introductory videos in Whiteout game (also uses ddrawex.dll).
Last edit: huh 2021-03-20
Thank you very much for your efforts in this matter, I'll try an older release of DxWnd but will keep checking back if any news turn up!