Phoenix Dynasty Online - A tough nut to crack

[Magic Mint]

Hello all, I’ve been wracking my brain for the past three days trying to figure this out, fiddling with things I don’t fully understand. So I finally broke down and figured I could ask for some help.

The problem is as follows, I am attempting to play a rather old MMO called Phoenix Dynasty Online or World of Qin 2. I am running a locally hosted server through a VM and trying to play the game on my host system, however I continuously get the error of “Your hardware does not support 3d Acceleration” Very similar to the issue khan had with “Seal of Evil” (Same developers)

I’ve tried many different things, running the game in Win2000 (3D models do not appear) Running the game in WinVista (Game lags when items are hovered over) and Running it on my host system Windows 10 (Does not support 3D Acceleration).

Now, I believe I’ve gotten the game itself to work using the DXWND settings gho had made for “Seal of Evil” HOWEVER, here’s the catch... The game is run through a launcher that has a four digit verification code you have to type to log in, and SOMEHOW, it detects if DXWND is open, and will absolutely not let you verify. The second you close DXWND though, it has no problems.

So essentially what I am requesting is information on how I can bypass this check and run DXWND essentially as SOON AS the launcher launches the game, or to have it so the launcher cannot detect DXWND.

Thank you so much, sorry for the length of the post. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[gho]

Interesting problem, it would be necessary to know how the frontend detects the presence of DxWnd. If it is listing the process names, maybe an easy solution could be to simply rename the DxWnd.exe file. Otherwise it could be possible to configure a DxWnd proxy (in expert mode, right click on the game entry in the DxWnd panel, then select "proxy" -> "ddraw" or some other proxy mode, so that you can run the game with DxWnd turned off.
If you want, you could send us the necessary files or information to set a testbed and verify which solution works best.
In any case, don't forget to tell us how it goes ...

[Magic Mint]

Well I've given your suggestion a shot (Still attempting) And while it does bypass the launcher detecting it (which is great) I still can't quite get it to work. (Tried ddraw/d3d8/d3d9)

I would love to give you the files, but it's a bit more complicated than that, as you would have to set up a server or something of your own (and quite honestly it's a huge pain in the ass). And my server is localhost only.

However, if at all possible we could speak over discord or something and I could share my screen? I understand if you aren't interested in doing so, but the assistance would be greatly appreciated.

If you would like to speak over discord or some other method, please email me at amagicmint@gmail.com.

And if not, any other suggestions would be much appreciated!

Edit: (After two more hours)
I've managed to come up with a little work around. If I enter the "captcha" hit enter and IMMEDIATELY open dxwnd, I can get it to hook onto the window. So far I've successfully gotten it to the Character Select screen, where everything looks great. But once in game, it's a white screen. UNLESS you press C (opens character window) or M (map) then everything draws properly. But as soon as they close, back to white. How strange.

[gho]

Some things that we may try:
1) post here (or upload where I could reach it) the game executable. It doesn't matter if I won't be able to use it, I could get some hints from its content in any case.
2) enable the DxWnd logging and capture the dxwnd.log file. It should hold precious information about the problems. In DxWnd help there's a tutorial about how to configure the logs.

[Magic Mint]

Absolutely can do! I've also included the client from the official Chinese Retro and Current server. I greatly appreciate the interest in helping me.

If there's anything else I can provide, please let me know.

Thank you.

[gho]

The log is telling some interesting things:
1) there should be some useful information that the client writes to the log files "Log\FW_Client_Assert.log", "Log\FW_Client_Catch.log" and "Log\BF\BF.log". In general, any file with .log extension in the Log folder could be interesting.
2) There was an error while trying to create a profile in the file "Profile\22-11-13 23-00-23.pfl". Are you sure that the "Profile" folder exists and you have writing rights for that folder?
3) The client is using D3D8 and Dinput8. It could be necessary to hook dinput8 (in the "Input" tab check "hook dinput8") and enable 16bit color modes for D3D8 (in "Direct3D" tab try to set "Enumerate 16bit modes" and/or "Emulate 16bit D3D8 backbuffer" flags).

[Magic Mint]

Thanks for all the suggestions!
1) You would not believe how unhelpful they are (I've attached them so you can believe it, haha)
2) Fixed, but didn't help.
3) I already had the Enumerate/Emulate flags set. But I didn't have the input part set! I changed that, but unfortunately it still does not work.

I tried fooling around a bit more but I'm still at a loss. I do have it opening in a window every time though, so the injection is clearly working. It just says my system can't handle THE RAW POWER of 2006 GFX. Haha.

Again though, I greatly appreciate the help.

[gho]

Is this the usual BOT incipit to alert me? Well, thanks, I'm awake.

[gho]

It just says my system can't handle THE RAW POWER of 2006 GFX.

Often, when an old-enough program claims it has not enough resources from a recent computer, it could be an signed integer overflow in the query routines, so that a too big value becomes negative. Please, try to set some (if not all) of the four "Comptibility > Limit ..." flags.

[Vens Karr]

Também tive problemas ao rodar jogos antigos com o DxWnd, especialmente em resoluções modernas. Enquanto procurava outras formas de me distrair, acabei descobrindo as Apostas esportivas BBRBet ********************. Além de apostas esportivas, o site tem uma boa seleção de jogos de cassino online, com pagamentos rápidos e interface bem intuitiva. Vale a pena dar uma olhada enquanto tenta resolver os bugs do DxWnd.

[gho]

Q.E.D.