Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron - Win10 issue
Window hooker to run fullscreen programs in window and much more...
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This game runs on win10, however, the colors are corrupted (almost like negative colors...) and there are 2 black blocks on the screen that it prevents playing the game. I have tried many different combinations of settings on dxwnd, however no success yet. Could anyone check it out?
Last edit: gho 2021-01-21
It seems some oddity of either D3D8 or SDL libraries, probably it won't be possible to fix the issue by simple configuration, it will be necessary to fix the code. I'll try to investigate.
** update **
The problem dosn't depend on DxWnd, it is visible also when the game runs in fullscreen mode! This will make it a little harder, since I have no reference behavior to compare with. Gosh! It looks as a good challenge.
Last edit: gho 2021-01-20
It is really okay if it only even works properly on fullscreen. Just not the graphics issue :/
Hello There!
Man I really want to play the Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron game but I don't know where to download it from. I downloaded the game from like 3 different places but it didnt even open. Can you PLEASE provide me with the link or with the website you downloaded the game from.
Thank you!
MyAbandonware seems a good source. You can use the search field to locate it exactly, but I'd bet that all the 3 sources you got were ok. In any case, you'd better append your posts to the end of this thread, or they will be very hard to locate and read.
Wow! I was wrong!! The trick is hooking binkw32.dll: probably the black stripes on screen are the background rendered through bink movie sequences using the wrong color depth.
This (see the attached .dxw file) is a working configuration, though probably it should be possible to build a simpler one. Import the file, update the game path in the configuration and cross your fingers.
Unfortunately, did not work for me, hmm.
Uhm... there's something strange. Returning to the previous bad configurations the game still works ok. It is as if something changed that made it work no matter what. It could be a change in the desktop video mode or who knows what? The problem is that I can't be sure it will work also on your computer now...
I found it. You can fix the game by going to the options and select a video quality different from "Best" ("Better" is good). When set to "Best" the game uses textures to render the scene and makes some error. Changing the option uses a more conventional but correct way and the problem disappear.
I tried it, but now the game does not launch. What did you set the compatibility mode?
No compatibility mode, that would interfere. You can use my original exported profile, or if you prefer a more compact solution do this:
1) configure the game "game.exe" with default DxWnd settings (just drag & drop the executable over the DxWnd window)
2) set "Hook / Inject suspended process" flag. For some reason the game needs early hook.
3) run the game only from the DxWnd interface (otherwise the early hook won't work) by double-clicking the game icon
If I remember well, this should work, but in any case this evening when back home I will send you an updated export and DxWnd release, just to be sure.
Oh thanks ! Yes it works now, but there is another problem now, it is windowed but pretty small res - so it is not playable much, and it does not go full screen whatever i do
--i think i somehow fixed it, but might not be the best configuration.
Last edit: Mamba 2021-01-21
Did you try the stretched window mode with the "Main / Desktop" DxWnd setting?
Unfortunately the game doesn't have a setup to chose a different resolution, so inevitably stretching to full screen can't have a good quality.
I checked full-screen only, and it somehow worked
beware, the "fullscreen only" flag means another thing and is supposed to facilitate to bring the game into window mode.
This configuration could be better.
I tried this just now, it does not launch the game for me
Please, run the game with Logs configured as in the attached screenshot and return the dxwnd.log file to me posting it here (better if compressed) ....
For some strange reason, I do not get a log file, hmm.
A possible reason is that the game folder is write-protected. In such a case the dxwnd.log file should be created in the DxWnd folder. You can try to see if you find it there.
I checked it there as well, but, still no files. I will try again a bit later
Hi! I know this thread is a bit old now but I stumbled upon it trying to find a solution as I too am having issues trying to run the game on Win10.
I was reading through this thread trying to follow along with the steps you provided, however I am not at all familiar with how to navigate DxWnd.
I've tried literally everything I could think of to get this game running on my computer with no luck. I'd love to play this nostalgic game again so if you have the time to guide me through the process, I would sincerely appreciate it! :)
Sadly, because of the Windows continuous changes, the operation can be not that easy. Anyway the best way to get close to a valid configuration is this one:
Ok I followed all of the steps here and it worked!
When starting the game, I did encounter the black bars that make the game unplayable. However, when I changed the in-game graphics settings from "Best" to "Better" and restarted the game, it seems to work just fine now. Only issue is that instead of black bars, now there are black boxes behind text or obscuring text (I've attached screenshots to show what I mean).
Not sure if there is a way to fix that but the game is playable at least :)
I also had to change something in the "Update/Modify" menu because the game window was in the upper left hand portion of my screen and I wanted it to be centered:
Main -> Position -> Change "X,Y Coordinates" to "Desktop Center"
Thank you for the help!! :)
I made some more research about this game in "best" mode, but it seems that the problem is not about the rendering software, a dump of the game textures shows that only the backgroud textures are created with bad format and from there on the software can't do anything.
It seems a game bug, probably the game could work correctly on a Win7 machine where you can set the desktop to 16bit color mode.
Windows 7 changes color to 16 bit mode to run the game. When I use DxWnd, and even if I enable 16 bit color mode, it works same as on Win11.
But if I run directly on Win7 the textures are fine. Similarly if I change screen resolution to 16 bit color it can window the game with correct texture color on DxWnd window.