Anyone have luck running this one in a window? I'm aware that some others have got Sonalysts other game, Dangerous Waters to work with dxwnd to run in a window. Basic attempts of just selecting run in window checkbox doesn't seem to work. Fleet Command does have a window switch on the exe but the colors and screen are off using the built in windowed mode. Tried this mode and w/o the windowed mode switch with dxwnd and so far no luck.
Thanks for help.
Thanks. Games on sale on steam for $2
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Thanks for reminding of this game. The IS executable of the CD has a weird PE format and anything over XP doesn't recognise it as a valid executable. Anyways, I am installing it on my 98 PC and transferring it to main to get a valid DxWnd configuration.
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Hmm the game is problematic. First it wants Windows 9X to play, that I could bypass with ISP and DxWnd Fake Version. Now there are exceptions that crash the game. With the patch, it can't find geographic database, more to go...
Last edit: BEEN_Nath_58 2022-04-09
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The game uses glide as the preferred renderer, then withdrawing to ddraw in case glide libs are not available. Nowadays nobody still has a genuine 3Dfx card in the system, but there are several glide wrappers, like nGlide and dgVooDoo. The problem is that DxWnd can require different settings depending on the presence and type of glide wrapper, so I would expect that the successful configuration may not work in all possible cases.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
The notes for the game does go into some 'detail' about what the posts mention about glide, d3d. For the windowed mode, it does go into some detail about switches for forcing d3d. I'll paste below:
A. Display
1) Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering
It is recommended that Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering be DISABLED or set to
APPLICATION CONTROLLED from your video card's settings page. When these settings
are enabled outside the game, visual anomalies may occur.
In general, if you find a visual problem in the game, make sure you have the latest
drivers installed for your video card. The NVidia and ATI download sites are
listed below.
2) Windowed Mode
If you having graphical/display difficulties, you can run the game in "windowed" mode
(as opposed to typical "fullscreen mode") via the use of command-line parameters.
Open (or create) a shortcut to Fleet Command and insert -windowed and -d3dprim at the
end of the Target field. These parameters tell the game to run in "Windowed Mode" (-windowed)
and to use the "Direct3D Renderer" (-d3dprim) as the primary display device.
When using these command-line parameters, be sure to insert them AFTER the quotes:
IMPORTANT: Your desktop color-depth must be set to 16-bit (as opposed to 32-bit) in order to run
Fleet Command in "windowed" mode. In order to change the color settings, right-click on the Desktop,
select "Properties", and then select the "Settings" tab. Select 16-bit "Color quality" from the
dropdown menu.
I have tried these settings with dxwnd and w/o and get same result, uploaded snap. W/o -windowed switch, it runs full screen in dxwnd even with dxwnd configured to run in window.
The attached image looks like an overlapping of settings of colour depth. Go to executable properties and change, if it exists, the color depth from 16 bit to the option unticked. If that doesn't help, then rename the executable to something like "AAAA.exe" and see if it helps by bypassing shims if they exist.
BTW can you get the executable size and a photo of the game folders? Since you had it in Steam, things may be different!
Last edit: BEEN_Nath_58 2022-04-10
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I had tried to 'modify' the color depth to what you specified. Couldn't find untick option. There was the video tab that has the 'initial virtual color setting'. Added snap of that. I tried setting default, 16bpp, 8 bpp, same results as screenshot I uploaded previously. I have added the folder contents for the steam version to the following post reply. Let me know if it's drastically different from original cd version. Note, without the -windowed switch on command line, dxwnd still launches full screen fine even though dxwnd is set to run windowed only.
The image shows a mismatch between 16 and 32 bit color depth.
You may try to set "Video / 16 bit color mode" and use "Hook / Inject suspended process" to ensure that the setting is valid from the beginning.
I used this export file where the -d3dprim option was set in the "Hook / Arguments" field while the window mode was enforced by DxWnd. The game expects the CD to be always in the same drive from where it was installed, so I also remapped today's drive (F:) to be mapped to the yesterday's drive (G:). If you don't change the drive letter all this would be useless.
Tried that config you uploaded. It kept it the same except changing the paths for the 'fleet command.exe' file and I set the folder location. Other than that, kept it the same. Still loaded full screen. I didn't use the -windowed option. The steam version folder contents are as follows. Obviously the steam version doesn't require the cd for the game to run. Thanks for your suggestions about using hooks. Wasn't sure what that was for.
File contents of the steam version:
mmm... who knows what Steam guys did to the game. look at the original game (with official patch):
-a---- 09/04/2022 19:56 1765376 Fleet Command.exe
on my computer the exe is about twice the size of the Steam game release. I suspect that the executable could be compressed with some UPX method. If this is true, then a "Hook / Hot patch" flag would be necessary.
If you don't mind and just to satisfy my curiosity, could you upload here your executable version?
Another interesting try (BE SURE you do that after you backup your game folder) could be to replace "Fleet Command.exe" with the non-Steam release, I think it could work better with DxWnd.
Uploaded zipped copy. Game is on sale on steam for $2. The other sonalysts games are also on sale for very cheap. Dangerous Waters, 688, sub command. Wonder if the stripped cd check is the reason why the file is smaller. In any case, the game is very old now but still very interesting in this day and age... I did try adding the 'hook / hot patch' checkbox and the program still launched in full screen, not a window. Didn't try the -windowed switch. Let me know what you think about steam's exe.
As I suspected, the program PE shows only one linked dll, that is kernel32.dll, with only 4 procedure entries. The game was compressed and encrypted by Steam people, so DxWnd can't make its job.
Technically, the compression method is original, it doesn't seem one of the the usual UPX methods that leave other dlls exposed but with 0 entries. Maybe this is the reason why the "Hot patch" flag doesn't succeed.
If you want to test your luck you may replace the executable with the non-Steam original release that I sent you, but this way you may lose other patching works of the Steam release. Be sure to backup your game files before.
I did try the non steam version of the exe someone uploaded. Thanks for that btw. I got the dialog box for please insert the cd. I guess I won't know if this version will work. Well, playing full screen isn't terrible but it does make it harder to refer to the manual for this type of game. Also, it seems steams version of a lot of games may not work the same in dxwnd. That's good to know too.
Thanks to all who helped out.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Anyone have luck running this one in a window? I'm aware that some others have got Sonalysts other game, Dangerous Waters to work with dxwnd to run in a window. Basic attempts of just selecting run in window checkbox doesn't seem to work. Fleet Command does have a window switch on the exe but the colors and screen are off using the built in windowed mode. Tried this mode and w/o the windowed mode switch with dxwnd and so far no luck.
Thanks for help.
Thanks. Games on sale on steam for $2
Thanks for reminding of this game. The IS executable of the CD has a weird PE format and anything over XP doesn't recognise it as a valid executable. Anyways, I am installing it on my 98 PC and transferring it to main to get a valid DxWnd configuration.
Hmm the game is problematic. First it wants Windows 9X to play, that I could bypass with ISP and DxWnd Fake Version. Now there are exceptions that crash the game. With the patch, it can't find geographic database, more to go...
Last edit: BEEN_Nath_58 2022-04-09
Oh nevermind, got it.
Thanks for the file. I tried it and it launches full screen and not in a window. Thanks for trying.
There's an interesting technical problem about this game discussed here: https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/general/thread/678da4be84/?page=1#c0e4
The game uses glide as the preferred renderer, then withdrawing to ddraw in case glide libs are not available. Nowadays nobody still has a genuine 3Dfx card in the system, but there are several glide wrappers, like nGlide and dgVooDoo. The problem is that DxWnd can require different settings depending on the presence and type of glide wrapper, so I would expect that the successful configuration may not work in all possible cases.
The notes for the game does go into some 'detail' about what the posts mention about glide, d3d. For the windowed mode, it does go into some detail about switches for forcing d3d. I'll paste below:
1) Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering
It is recommended that Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering be DISABLED or set to
APPLICATION CONTROLLED from your video card's settings page. When these settings
are enabled outside the game, visual anomalies may occur.
In general, if you find a visual problem in the game, make sure you have the latest
drivers installed for your video card. The NVidia and ATI download sites are
listed below.
2) Windowed Mode
If you having graphical/display difficulties, you can run the game in "windowed" mode
(as opposed to typical "fullscreen mode") via the use of command-line parameters.
Open (or create) a shortcut to Fleet Command and insert -windowed and -d3dprim at the
end of the Target field. These parameters tell the game to run in "Windowed Mode" (-windowed)
and to use the "Direct3D Renderer" (-d3dprim) as the primary display device.
When using these command-line parameters, be sure to insert them AFTER the quotes:
IMPORTANT: Your desktop color-depth must be set to 16-bit (as opposed to 32-bit) in order to run
Fleet Command in "windowed" mode. In order to change the color settings, right-click on the Desktop,
select "Properties", and then select the "Settings" tab. Select 16-bit "Color quality" from the
dropdown menu.
I have tried these settings with dxwnd and w/o and get same result, uploaded snap. W/o -windowed switch, it runs full screen in dxwnd even with dxwnd configured to run in window.
The attached image looks like an overlapping of settings of colour depth. Go to executable properties and change, if it exists, the color depth from 16 bit to the option unticked. If that doesn't help, then rename the executable to something like "AAAA.exe" and see if it helps by bypassing shims if they exist.
BTW can you get the executable size and a photo of the game folders? Since you had it in Steam, things may be different!
Last edit: BEEN_Nath_58 2022-04-10
I had tried to 'modify' the color depth to what you specified. Couldn't find untick option. There was the video tab that has the 'initial virtual color setting'. Added snap of that. I tried setting default, 16bpp, 8 bpp, same results as screenshot I uploaded previously. I have added the folder contents for the steam version to the following post reply. Let me know if it's drastically different from original cd version. Note, without the -windowed switch on command line, dxwnd still launches full screen fine even though dxwnd is set to run windowed only.
Thanks for your help.
The image shows a mismatch between 16 and 32 bit color depth.
You may try to set "Video / 16 bit color mode" and use "Hook / Inject suspended process" to ensure that the setting is valid from the beginning.
I used this export file where the -d3dprim option was set in the "Hook / Arguments" field while the window mode was enforced by DxWnd. The game expects the CD to be always in the same drive from where it was installed, so I also remapped today's drive (F:) to be mapped to the yesterday's drive (G:). If you don't change the drive letter all this would be useless.
Last edit: gho 2022-04-10
Tried that config you uploaded. It kept it the same except changing the paths for the 'fleet command.exe' file and I set the folder location. Other than that, kept it the same. Still loaded full screen. I didn't use the -windowed option. The steam version folder contents are as follows. Obviously the steam version doesn't require the cd for the game to run. Thanks for your suggestions about using hooks. Wasn't sure what that was for.
File contents of the steam version:
mmm... who knows what Steam guys did to the game. look at the original game (with official patch):
on my computer the exe is about twice the size of the Steam game release. I suspect that the executable could be compressed with some UPX method. If this is true, then a "Hook / Hot patch" flag would be necessary.
If you don't mind and just to satisfy my curiosity, could you upload here your executable version?
Another interesting try (BE SURE you do that after you backup your game folder) could be to replace "Fleet Command.exe" with the non-Steam release, I think it could work better with DxWnd.
Uploaded zipped copy. Game is on sale on steam for $2. The other sonalysts games are also on sale for very cheap. Dangerous Waters, 688, sub command. Wonder if the stripped cd check is the reason why the file is smaller. In any case, the game is very old now but still very interesting in this day and age... I did try adding the 'hook / hot patch' checkbox and the program still launched in full screen, not a window. Didn't try the -windowed switch. Let me know what you think about steam's exe.
Well sad things at my end
As I suspected, the program PE shows only one linked dll, that is kernel32.dll, with only 4 procedure entries. The game was compressed and encrypted by Steam people, so DxWnd can't make its job.
Technically, the compression method is original, it doesn't seem one of the the usual UPX methods that leave other dlls exposed but with 0 entries. Maybe this is the reason why the "Hot patch" flag doesn't succeed.
If you want to test your luck you may replace the executable with the non-Steam original release that I sent you, but this way you may lose other patching works of the Steam release. Be sure to backup your game files before.
Last edit: gho 2022-04-11
I don't have this game, but this exe (in Fleet Command.zip) is definitely compressed. PEncrypt, PECompact, or something like that.
I did try the non steam version of the exe someone uploaded. Thanks for that btw. I got the dialog box for please insert the cd. I guess I won't know if this version will work. Well, playing full screen isn't terrible but it does make it harder to refer to the manual for this type of game. Also, it seems steams version of a lot of games may not work the same in dxwnd. That's good to know too.
Thanks to all who helped out.