Weird colors in DirectX 7 game (Windows 10)

[Nexie mergie]

Hello, I'm new to using DxWnd and I wanted to ask if there's any setting to fix these really saturated colors when I'm trying to run the game on windows 10?
I think it's using DirectX 7 and it looks good on windowsXP or 7~

I tested some settings but I'm not sure where to look exactly, any help would be great, thank you!

[huh]

What game?
It is important to state this, possibly the version and language.

[Nexie mergie]

"Tävlingar på Rosemond Hill", and I think in english it's "competition at rosemond hill", a game from 2001/2002
and I don't know the version sadly, I don't think it's written anywhere

[gho]

There is something at Internet Archive looking for "Let's Ride! The Rosemond Hill Collection", it should include a COMPETITIONS AT ROSEMOND HILL game.
About the bad colors, I suspect it may depend on the "DirectX(2) > Set 16BPP RGB565 encoding". You can try to switch that flag.

[Nexie mergie]

I tried to switch it on and off and nothing has changed, still these weird colors
I was trying to run the collection from internet archive some time ago and I encountered the same issue
Recently I bought an original CD in swedish, but both of these versions have the same problem on newer windows versions

[gho]

The game runs with the cooperation of three executable files, probably it's the missing synchronization that cause some trouble ...
Try importing the attached configuration that enables the "Shared Hook" between processes. The configuration is not perfect but it is good enough to test the game colors:

[Nexie mergie]

"Shared Hook" setting unfortunately didn't fix anything
I know this forum isn't about it, but I tried using DgVoodoo 2.83 and the game doesn't have these bright colors anymore, but is quite dark and possibly has some weird graphics bugs

I can play it on my windows XP without any issues, but I'm curious if it's possible to run it on my modern, main PC since it would be much more comfortable than using my old XP laptop

[Nexie mergie]

I'm gonna mention that this game runs on simple renderware 3 engine and I can't install is normally on my win10 PC, probably because of securom DRM
That's why I installed it on winXP and just moved the folder to win10, and I might be missing some configuration files actually, and I'm gonna check if there's any more files hidden outside the game's directory

[gho]

The english version has no securom protection, the CD protection only checks for the presence of a CD with inside the Lor.ico file and possibly (but not mandatory) the cutscene folder.
Are you sure that there is a securom protection? I ask because in that case installing on XP and moving to Win10 woundn't please the securom at all, unless the protection is only on the installer.
I installed the game (english release) with no problems on my Win11 by running SETUP.EXE ....

[huh]

@Nexie mergie
I tried the English version of Competitions at Rosemond Hill and Rosemond.exe doesn't seem to have any protection except maybe a simple check as @gho wrote.
The attached picture shows how it looks in Win7 when I start the game without DxWnd. The problem is replicated here because it was not solved with DxWnd. I will look into it.

P.S.
Don't have an Nvidia graphics card?

[huh]

@gho
Here is the log, maybe you can find something there?
I haven't been successful yet...

This is what it looks like when I turn off HAL and TnL HAL, but then the game is unplayable because of its slowness.

[gho]

Now that I know how to do, I tried to force the game to use the nvidia chipset, but curiously nothing changed, the rendering is still good enough.

@Nexie mergie: a problem that I can't replicate is always a bad problem. Have you tried to use DxWnd + dgVoodoo ?

[Nexie mergie]

I tried using these two programs together but even if dgVoodoo fixed these bright colors, now all textures were really saturated and dark, and I couldn't figure out how to fix it with any of the programs
I tried running both English and Swedish versions on my PC and both of them have the same issue
The game works good on WinXP, and it also worked properly on a Win7 laptop when I tested it a long time ago

[BEEN_Nath_58]

Now that I know how to do, I tried to force the game to use the nvidia chipset, but curiously nothing changed, the rendering is still good enough.

You have a notebook, you can't. I already explained it to you back in 2021.

Regardless, how does the game look without using DxWnd at all?

[huh]

Regardless, how does the game look without using DxWnd at all?

https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/general/thread/7a58b0df65/#336f

[gho]

Apparently, here without DxWnd the rendering is ok apart from a few glitches like missing textures (defect2.png) or wrong polygons position (walking in the mus, defect1.png). Both with Intel or nVidia renderer.

[huh]

Now I've tried it on Win732bit with a 6150SE integrated graphics card and it's the same, same bad colors.

[Nexie mergie]

If I remember correctly, when I tested this game (legacy of rosemond hill) some time ago, it was working just fine on my PC, and only the competition on rosemond hill had these bad colors, but I should check it again now to be sure

[gho]

You have a notebook, you can't. I already explained it to you back in 2021.

Well, I'm not sure. With another game I was able to replicate the nvidia problems also in windowed mode, but I'm not 100% sure so I will have to check and report. Does your nvidia panel have the "Don't use optimizations for window games" checkbox?

update: the game was "Trixster", here I was able to fix the movie rendering by fiddling with the video options both on fullascreen and window mode ...

[BEEN_Nath_58]

"Don't use optimizations for window games"

This is applicable in DirectX9 and higher. The game uses DirectX7.
I don't have idea about OpenGL, nor did I find any source on it.

[gho]

we could try to make texture dumps, check the format and compare the images, maybe that could give some hints

[huh]

Here are the textures from the computer with 6150SE, but I don't see any problem there, so I assume it's a problem with some palette, alpha channel, etc.

[gho]

thanks. Iam at the beach now and I can't decompress and see them on my phone (I'll do it later) but the texture filename should tell the format. Are they 8, 16 or 32 bits? If they are 8 bits textures it could be a palette problem, otherwise a weirdinsupported format?

[gho]

The textures appear to be all in R8G8B8 format, a 24bit color format that should exclude any palette involvement.
Since I have not found so far a way to replicate the problem, I can't do more than suggesting a few experiments to carry where the colors are scrambled>

1) in the game options, select a 16 or 32 bit color depth
2) try setting/unsetting the "DirectX > Set texture pixel format"

Is there any change (hopefully for the better) ?

Next thing I'm going to do is to write a fake "blank.exe" program to avoid that the game sets a black window covering the whole screen, pretty annoying in window mode.

[huh]

I've tried that and neither 1) or 2) has any effect on the problem.
If I set 3D - Disable Textures the screen is pure white.

3D Wireframe in attachment.