Another interesting case: Riverworld.
The game itself is a real pain, I can hardly think of any reason to play it instead of one of the more recent and better strategy games.
But AbandonwareFrance claims that you need a 1998 OS to have a chance, and I don't think so (at least, I hope)...
The first oddity was that the SETUP.EXE doesn't work, unless you run it from a debugger (I used OllyDBG, as usual), and in that case you have some chances to install the game successfully.
After that, the DirectX game version suffers (to begin with) of badly formed 3D triangles, a problem in common with some other oldies, if I recall correctly.
Well, let see what will come out of some research ....
In the meanwhile, enjoy some nice old-fashioned textures extracted from the game.
The game has a dedicated engine for 3Dfx-glide and Ddraw, and the Ddraw engine behaves differently depending on the presence of 3D capabilities. The following screenshots are taken under different conditions, and what they all have in common is a bugged handling of polygon vertices. That makes me think that the problem is not in the graphic rendering, but rather in the scene calculations: this is not a good news, if 3D coordinates are bugged in origin, there's no way to fix them ... should I look for some floating point exception or something alike?
Old topic, but for the benefit of people Googling, and maybe Gho: this is probably copy protection. A bad disc image / ripped game or a bad drive/virtual drive software triggers this.
Unfortunately, the vogon's post doesn't work for me: I got the MyAbandonware image, mounted it with Daemon Tool Lite and the result (either with or without DxWnd) doesn't change:
@MrPepka: if the game works ok on your computer, that could be a great chance to try to understand why. My guess is that some lack of graphic capabilities may force your d3d to avoid using some extended feature. Flags like "DirectX(2) / Set minimal caps" don't work here because the flag cheats the calling application, but the d3d layer is not using the ddraw interface to know how good is your card, so in my case keeps using some dangerous feature.
Would you send me a log of the game (run t just a few seconds, I only need the video card capability dump) using these flags?
I am posting the correct logs. However, the version of the game from the Świat Gier Komputerowych newspaper also has a defect in the form of broken graphics if the disc image with the game is not mounted
Curiosity. Ripping music tracks from the game disc to the folder where the game is installed (to the Music folder), changing the track names to correct and turning on CD-Audio in the DxWnd options mean that the game never displays the intro at startup (even if the image of the game disc is mounted under the correct letter!), and when starting a new game, the game always crashes. Are these also some elements of poor copy protection?
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My current configuration has the CD image mounter on drive X: and CD audio emulation enabled. No DxWnd fake CD drive yet. This way the game shows two intro movies (the first one with Cryo logo, the second with the intro story - see screenshots), both skippable with ESC key and goint to the game main menu. Up to then, everything is ok, but as soon as the 3D gameplay starts I see all sorts of artifacts.
The intro is displayed if I have mounted the game disc image, but if I put music ripped from the game disc in the game installation folder and turn on CD-Audio in DxWnd options, then the intro does not even show when I mount the game disc image. I always mount the image of the disc under the letter J and the game always detects it there, so the fact that the game does not play the intro after putting music into the folder with the game is strange for me
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Update: just for curiosity I copied the CD files on a cd subfolder, unmounted the CD image and enabled DxWnd fake CD device. The result was the same, both intro movies perfectly playing.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
My CD was installed from CD drive X:, so I used the same letter for the fake CD after unmounting the disk image on the same drive. In effect, if I change fake CD drive letter, the intro are not visible. It seems that the game remembers where it was installed from.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I reinstalled the game and checked it all over again. The conclusions are as follows:
Turning on FakeCD (you need to set the drive letter to the one from which you installed the game, and enter the label of the disc and next to the drive letter add the famous ?\cd and, of course, to the game installation folder to throw the entire contents of the disc into the cd folder), the intro plays, but the graphics are broken in the game. Interestingly, throwing the ripped music into the game folder into the Music folder and turning on CD Audio in DxWnd gives the same results (the intro plays, but the graphics in the game are broken)! Only disabling FakeCD and CD Audio in DxWnd and mounting the ISO with the game in the CD emulator makes the intro and the graphics in the game display correctly. My head will explode!
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I have come to similar results. I assume that the game has protection based on soundtracks.
Maybe "hack track frames" would help. I don't have time to try today.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Oh, my!!! You're damnedly right!
Mounting the .cue/.bin image with daemon tool gives me a perfect result too.
What a diabolic protection schema, you need the original CD or a perfect copy to make the game working. Think that I got my CD track ripped from the very same .cue/.bin files.
Well, the log of operations could give us some hint about a possible mcihack.txt setting, if this is where the problem is.
In the meanwhile, we can meditate about the fact that this .cue/.bin files are impossible to mount with WinCDEmu. Probably because of this weird .cue file (here an extract):
FILE "Riverworld.bin" BINARY
REM ORIGINAL MEDIA-TYPE: CD
CATALOG 0000000000000
REM SESSION 01 (*)
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
REM LBA: 0
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 01 28:31:55
REM LBA: 128380
This is a morning protocol with a CD(RW).
I see a line here
mciSendCommand>>: MCI_STATUS cb=0 ret=0x1 item=0x1(LENGTH) track=0
but that's probably not all and there will be some other checkings.
Got it!!
Huh's guess was right, the game makes a check on the overall CD length in msec units. To make it working you need to add the "Hack track frames" flag and this mcihack.txt content:
[msec]cd=4788001
By the way this game used some flags in a peculiar way, not properly managed by DxWnd logging statements. A fixed version of dxwnd.dll will follow, but it won't be necessary to make the game working properly with CD tracks emulation.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Would you believe this? With some OpenGL renderer, bilinear filtering and fake fullscreen mode the game gets a much better aspect. Maybe someone could even try to play it ...
And also the glide version (with some glide emulation) works ok, it looks even better. The screenshot here was made using nGlide emulation, probably dgVooDoo2 should behave very well too.
Do you use this on Windows 10? since I tried it on an old windows XP 32bit laptop, the game now finally runs, but very iffy, it regulairly crashes and it won't load the second map, also for me the water and the ground are graphically completely screwed. but on Windows XP the dgVooDoo2 don't want to install .
Another interesting case: Riverworld.
The game itself is a real pain, I can hardly think of any reason to play it instead of one of the more recent and better strategy games.
But AbandonwareFrance claims that you need a 1998 OS to have a chance, and I don't think so (at least, I hope)...
The first oddity was that the SETUP.EXE doesn't work, unless you run it from a debugger (I used OllyDBG, as usual), and in that case you have some chances to install the game successfully.
After that, the DirectX game version suffers (to begin with) of badly formed 3D triangles, a problem in common with some other oldies, if I recall correctly.
Well, let see what will come out of some research ....
In the meanwhile, enjoy some nice old-fashioned textures extracted from the game.
Last edit: gho 2018-09-03
The game has a dedicated engine for 3Dfx-glide and Ddraw, and the Ddraw engine behaves differently depending on the presence of 3D capabilities. The following screenshots are taken under different conditions, and what they all have in common is a bugged handling of polygon vertices. That makes me think that the problem is not in the graphic rendering, but rather in the scene calculations: this is not a good news, if 3D coordinates are bugged in origin, there's no way to fix them ... should I look for some floating point exception or something alike?
Old topic, but for the benefit of people Googling, and maybe Gho: this is probably copy protection. A bad disc image / ripped game or a bad drive/virtual drive software triggers this.
A good image of the game and Daemon Tools or Virtual CloneDrive avoids this issue. PowerISO and WinCDEmu apparently don't. See:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=60104
Unfortunately, the vogon's post doesn't work for me: I got the MyAbandonware image, mounted it with Daemon Tool Lite and the result (either with or without DxWnd) doesn't change:
I checked this game under DxWnd and I have no problems with it (I run the game from the XWORLD.exe file, i.e. from the ddraw render). My copy of the game is from the Świat Gier Komputerowych magazine - https://archive.org/download/redump_pc_S-2/Swiat%20Gier%20Komputerowych%203-01%20%28Poland%29%20%28En%2CFr%2CDe%2CPl%29%20%28Disc%201%29.7z
I'll give this a try too, maybe the Polish (or Czech?) version of the game behaves better.
Great result: the game is still bugged, but in Polish. As far as I could tell, this is the only game that behaves better on MrPepka's computer .... :(
Last edit: gho 2021-08-30
@MrPepka: if the game works ok on your computer, that could be a great chance to try to understand why. My guess is that some lack of graphic capabilities may force your d3d to avoid using some extended feature. Flags like "DirectX(2) / Set minimal caps" don't work here because the flag cheats the calling application, but the d3d layer is not using the ddraw interface to know how good is your card, so in my case keeps using some dangerous feature.
Would you send me a log of the game (run t just a few seconds, I only need the video card capability dump) using these flags?
Here you go, logs from the game
I am posting the correct logs. However, the version of the game from the Świat Gier Komputerowych newspaper also has a defect in the form of broken graphics if the disc image with the game is not mounted
Curiosity. Ripping music tracks from the game disc to the folder where the game is installed (to the Music folder), changing the track names to correct and turning on CD-Audio in the DxWnd options mean that the game never displays the intro at startup (even if the image of the game disc is mounted under the correct letter!), and when starting a new game, the game always crashes. Are these also some elements of poor copy protection?
Do the intro movies display for you gho, or does the game not detect the disc at all?
My current configuration has the CD image mounter on drive X: and CD audio emulation enabled. No DxWnd fake CD drive yet. This way the game shows two intro movies (the first one with Cryo logo, the second with the intro story - see screenshots), both skippable with ESC key and goint to the game main menu. Up to then, everything is ok, but as soon as the 3D gameplay starts I see all sorts of artifacts.
The intro is displayed if I have mounted the game disc image, but if I put music ripped from the game disc in the game installation folder and turn on CD-Audio in DxWnd options, then the intro does not even show when I mount the game disc image. I always mount the image of the disc under the letter J and the game always detects it there, so the fact that the game does not play the intro after putting music into the folder with the game is strange for me
Update: just for curiosity I copied the CD files on a cd subfolder, unmounted the CD image and enabled DxWnd fake CD device. The result was the same, both intro movies perfectly playing.
What letter did you set FakeCD to in DxWnd?
My CD was installed from CD drive X:, so I used the same letter for the fake CD after unmounting the disk image on the same drive. In effect, if I change fake CD drive letter, the intro are not visible. It seems that the game remembers where it was installed from.
I reinstalled the game and checked it all over again. The conclusions are as follows:
Turning on FakeCD (you need to set the drive letter to the one from which you installed the game, and enter the label of the disc and next to the drive letter add the famous ?\cd and, of course, to the game installation folder to throw the entire contents of the disc into the cd folder), the intro plays, but the graphics are broken in the game. Interestingly, throwing the ripped music into the game folder into the Music folder and turning on CD Audio in DxWnd gives the same results (the intro plays, but the graphics in the game are broken)! Only disabling FakeCD and CD Audio in DxWnd and mounting the ISO with the game in the CD emulator makes the intro and the graphics in the game display correctly. My head will explode!
I have come to similar results. I assume that the game has protection based on soundtracks.
Maybe "hack track frames" would help. I don't have time to try today.
Oh, my!!! You're damnedly right!
Mounting the .cue/.bin image with daemon tool gives me a perfect result too.
What a diabolic protection schema, you need the original CD or a perfect copy to make the game working. Think that I got my CD track ripped from the very same .cue/.bin files.
Well, the log of operations could give us some hint about a possible mcihack.txt setting, if this is where the problem is.
In the meanwhile, we can meditate about the fact that this .cue/.bin files are impossible to mount with WinCDEmu. Probably because of this weird .cue file (here an extract):
Last edit: gho 2021-08-30
This is a morning protocol with a CD(RW).
I see a line here
mciSendCommand>>: MCI_STATUS cb=0 ret=0x1 item=0x1(LENGTH) track=0
but that's probably not all and there will be some other checkings.
Got it!!
Huh's guess was right, the game makes a check on the overall CD length in msec units. To make it working you need to add the "Hack track frames" flag and this mcihack.txt content:
By the way this game used some flags in a peculiar way, not properly managed by DxWnd logging statements. A fixed version of dxwnd.dll will follow, but it won't be necessary to make the game working properly with CD tracks emulation.
Would you believe this? With some OpenGL renderer, bilinear filtering and fake fullscreen mode the game gets a much better aspect. Maybe someone could even try to play it ...
And also the glide version (with some glide emulation) works ok, it looks even better. The screenshot here was made using nGlide emulation, probably dgVooDoo2 should behave very well too.
Last edit: gho 2021-08-31
Perfect! :-)
I'll try it tonight.
Do you use this on Windows 10? since I tried it on an old windows XP 32bit laptop, the game now finally runs, but very iffy, it regulairly crashes and it won't load the second map, also for me the water and the ground are graphically completely screwed. but on Windows XP the dgVooDoo2 don't want to install .