Hi, I would like to play this game in windowed mode but when I start with dxwnd it always stays in full screen, the game also has a known problem with the cutscenes, I would like to know if dxwnd can fix this too, thanks.
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Curious game, I got it working but with some warnings.
1) the game is protected so it can't run without a proper crack. Of course, the following instruction may also depend on the selected crack, there could be more than one ...
2) early injection ("Hook / Inject suspended process") alone is not enough. I had to add "Hook / Hot patch" to force the game in window
3) following the crack instructions you need to rename the movies folder (for instance as _movies) or the game will hang at startup
Once done this the game works though with some problems. I list the ones I noticed, but there could be others
a) the game doesn't like "Main / Hide desktop background", it locks
b) the game prevents print-screen functionalities
Ok, that's it, the game can work with the attached export.
Nice reading there. And the silent patch reveals that DxWnd could try to apply a similar approach to fix the game movies without need to patch the game engine.
Things that seems relevant for the patch are the following:
* emulation of DirectDraw OVERLAY capabilities
* decoding of YUY2 format
* wrapping of DirectDraw7 methods
So, while the combination of silent patch + DxWnd may provide a fully working and windowed game, I will try to make an integrated patch in DxWnd as well. Who knows that it may be useful in some other game?
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I have known since long overlays aren't supported anynore, but never saw a game fail because of it. I sometimes thought Overlay issues are fixed by the SETEXCLNOCOOPLEVEL tweak, but maybe I was wrong. I will test this game at home.
I wonder if it's possible to just reimplement the overlay (and I assure recreating it isn't the easiest thing, probably the hardest challenge you'll ever face)
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I believe that even in WinXP the overlay features are not for granted, so in theory a well-coded game should check for the OVERLAY capabilities before using them, and this is proably the reason why not many games are impacted by this change on Vista+.
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I got an archive org ISO too (probably the same one, there's no much choice) but there was no mention to a fixed installer and the installer in the DVD doesn't work. Where did you get the EA installer?
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Well, I have to say that the installation in Win10 was a bit strange. First I set all the exe's in root CD to WinXP compatibility (just to be sure). I ran autorun.exe and entered the required information that was listed on the game page in the web archive. Then the installer wanted to restart PC. Still not installed. After restart I ran command line as administrator and started autorun.exe, without this procedure the game could not access the folder I chose. Then the game installed. If I interrupted the installer in the folder selection, I had to repeat the entire process, including restarting the PC.
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i use daemon tools to avoid those windows issues where shims don't activate, I don't know if this is the case here, that was and is still happening in ULTRAISO, with Ultraiso I can't install a single InstallShield game without heavy property changes in file.
EA installer, I think it was for the Sims 2 prompted a system restart too but since I moved to Alcohol 120 and DAEMON tools I never had such a problem...
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So, while the combination of silent patch + DxWnd may provide a fully working and windowed game,
SilentPatch seems to be a proxy and unfortunately I couldn't find a good DxWnd+SilentPatch profile, this combination always crashed my system (Win7) or the game wouldn't start at all.
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That's strange because here (on Win11) everything worked almost all right and with DxWnd default configuration.
I used the lonebullet crack (I'm not sure he's the author, but I found the crack on the lonebullet website) plus the silent patch (that is an injection through the dinput8.dll proxy) and it worked. Did you unpack also the files in the silent patch subfolder? I suppose so ...
The only trouble is that the movie player doesn't handle correctly the windowed mode and when you minimize/restore the game window the player may not recover and stops working.
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OK, it seems my patched exe was completely different. However, the game still doesn't work here with DxWnd. Either the game doesn't run at all, or it's not hooked up.
Hmm I see it. The game has an entry in the Ms shim database here in Win7, but NoSHIMs only partially helps.
Either the game starts in a window and then switches to fullscreen and starts constantly switching between this two states (then the system crashes) or it silently quits.
To be continued tomorrow.
Last edit: huh 2022-11-16
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Either the game doesn't run at all, or it's not hooked up.
I have had this problem on Windows 7 a lot, the game doesn't get hooked on first Run but it does on 2nd run. Anyways, this game doesn't run yet.
The only trouble is that the movie player doesn't handle correctly the windowed mode
The game is now using D3D9 instead of D3D7 in the videos. To be honest, D3D7 has caused DxWnd the most issues, and without hardware overlay support in Windows or DxWnd, you probably have to tweak his modded (or Renderware D3D9) Direct3D9, which may deviate a lot form the traditional one.
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sorry for my inactivity but i didn't receive the notifications, anyway i was already aware of the patch but unfortunately i get strange behavior when i run the game with the patch like the crash when changing the resolution or when i try to create a new character.
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Under EnableOverlays, create a DWORD key and link it to your full path of game (X:\gamefolder\godfather.exe), as an example and put the value to 1. let me know how it works out
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I had to recreate the key from Direct3D because it was completely non-existent (probably deprecated) so the problem hasn't been solved, I have the Italian version of the game and I think the problem comes from the crack, with the cracked executable I can't enter the name while with a "maxi mini image backup" mounted with daemon tools i can insert the character name but i get the crash problem when i try to change the video settings with the silentpatch, so when i want to change the options i have to start the game without silentpatch.
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The reason the SilentPatch was made is because the game uses a feature called "Hardware overlay", which was very well supported until Windows XP and ran on the old DirectDraw techniques such as DirectDraw7.
Since Windows Vista, the support of Hardware overlay became problematic; to my understanding, the people thought that Vista depreciated overlay while I believe the problem was because of badly supported DirectDraw drivers. In fact, Windows 10 still supports overlays on a Nvidia 900 series card as see in the thread: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=91216
So we have cleared the first hurdle, hardware overlay is supported by Windows 10.
Now the next part, how do you get HW overlay support?
The registry key doesn't exist because Windows doesn't do anything about hardware overlays anymore on its own. On Windows Vista/7, the key isn't present, but the applications still run when HW overlay is supported by the driver.
Since you are on Windows 10, you'll need the registry key. I have sent you some things on the PM, that's what I used on my successful HW overlay test of Windows 7 and what I recommend to test with.
Suppose your game is in: "D:\Games\Godfather". Considering that the executable is "godfather.exe", the 32-bit DWORD key at "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Direct3D\Shims\EnableOverlays" should have Value name: D:\Games\Godfather\godfather.exe Value data: 1
Run the game with administrator privileges.
Your result could be a key to some facts, if it works then Windows 10 supports HW overlays while Windows 11 doesn't, and if your test fails, Nvidia since GF 10 series don't support HW overlay in drivers anymore. In case of failure (which I hope doesn't happen), if you want to help us, you can back your result with some screenshots of where you put the key and the game directory so that any mistake can be rectified.
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thank you for sending me the stuff you used, to test on my windows 10 system i uninstalled my italian version and used your same stuff and unfortunately it keeps crashing without silentpatch during the movie, the difference is that in the american version the movie starts playing the initial sound compared to the Italian one, but with the same result, here I attach a backtrace from dxwnd that maybe could be useful in some way and a picture of how I set the key to activate the overlays:
P.S: reading the discussion on vogons, when i start dxcapsviewer.exe the entry "DDCAPS_OVERLAY" is not activated even though i created the key in the registry.
the difference is that in the american version the movie starts playing the initial sound compared to the Italian one,
This is little difference compared to my version, but it is enough to say that DDCAPS_OVERLAY isn't there on an RTX card. If you want to check with one more guarantee, you can use this tool:
You need to download the executable, and then create the registry key linked to the executable just like you did with godfather.exe. Even after doing that, if you get an error saying that hardware overlay isn't supported, you got your answer.
In the same vogons thread, you can see Dege saying that having Hw overlay is possible through dgVoodoo2, so his dgVoodoo2 could be the solution, but we will have to wait.
About your crash with the patch, the only good explanation I have listening to the sideeffects is "it was created for the English game".
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Hi, I would like to play this game in windowed mode but when I start with dxwnd it always stays in full screen, the game also has a known problem with the cutscenes, I would like to know if dxwnd can fix this too, thanks.
Curious game, I got it working but with some warnings.
1) the game is protected so it can't run without a proper crack. Of course, the following instruction may also depend on the selected crack, there could be more than one ...
2) early injection ("Hook / Inject suspended process") alone is not enough. I had to add "Hook / Hot patch" to force the game in window
3) following the crack instructions you need to rename the
moviesfolder (for instance as_movies) or the game will hang at startupOnce done this the game works though with some problems. I list the ones I noticed, but there could be others
a) the game doesn't like "Main / Hide desktop background", it locks
b) the game prevents print-screen functionalities
Ok, that's it, the game can work with the attached export.
would it be possible to play this game by running the movies with dxwnd as well?
The movies for this particular game are non-trivial to fix, Silent wrote a fascinating blog post about how they debugged and rewrote the movie player
https://cookieplmonster.github.io/2018/05/18/fixing-the-godfather/
https://cookieplmonster.github.io/2018/05/18/fixing-the-godfather-pt2/
Are you already using silent patch? It won't help with windowing but it sorts out the movies and some stability issues.
Nice reading there. And the silent patch reveals that DxWnd could try to apply a similar approach to fix the game movies without need to patch the game engine.
Things that seems relevant for the patch are the following: * emulation of DirectDraw OVERLAY capabilities * decoding of YUY2 format * wrapping of DirectDraw7 methods
So, while the combination of silent patch + DxWnd may provide a fully working and windowed game, I will try to make an integrated patch in DxWnd as well. Who knows that it may be useful in some other game?
I have known since long overlays aren't supported anynore, but never saw a game fail because of it. I sometimes thought Overlay issues are fixed by the SETEXCLNOCOOPLEVEL tweak, but maybe I was wrong. I will test this game at home.
I wonder if it's possible to just reimplement the overlay (and I assure recreating it isn't the easiest thing, probably the hardest challenge you'll ever face)
Amazing how much work these people put into this patch. Thumbs up.
I believe that even in WinXP the overlay features are not for granted, so in theory a well-coded game should check for the OVERLAY capabilities before using them, and this is proably the reason why not many games are impacted by this change on Vista+.
Damn, it seems almost impossible to find a way to install the game on Win11. Any suggestion?
How are you installing? I simply got an archive org ISO that uses the EA installer and it installs
I got an archive org ISO too (probably the same one, there's no much choice) but there was no mention to a fixed installer and the installer in the DVD doesn't work. Where did you get the EA installer?
Well, I have to say that the installation in Win10 was a bit strange. First I set all the exe's in root CD to WinXP compatibility (just to be sure). I ran autorun.exe and entered the required information that was listed on the game page in the web archive. Then the installer wanted to restart PC. Still not installed. After restart I ran command line as administrator and started autorun.exe, without this procedure the game could not access the folder I chose. Then the game installed. If I interrupted the installer in the folder selection, I had to repeat the entire process, including restarting the PC.
i use daemon tools to avoid those windows issues where shims don't activate, I don't know if this is the case here, that was and is still happening in ULTRAISO, with Ultraiso I can't install a single InstallShield game without heavy property changes in file.
EA installer, I think it was for the Sims 2 prompted a system restart too but since I moved to Alcohol 120 and DAEMON tools I never had such a problem...
@gho
SilentPatch seems to be a proxy and unfortunately I couldn't find a good DxWnd+SilentPatch profile, this combination always crashed my system (Win7) or the game wouldn't start at all.
That's strange because here (on Win11) everything worked almost all right and with DxWnd default configuration.
I used the lonebullet crack (I'm not sure he's the author, but I found the crack on the lonebullet website) plus the silent patch (that is an injection through the dinput8.dll proxy) and it worked. Did you unpack also the files in the silent patch subfolder? I suppose so ...
The only trouble is that the movie player doesn't handle correctly the windowed mode and when you minimize/restore the game window the player may not recover and stops working.
OK, it seems my patched exe was completely different. However, the game still doesn't work here with DxWnd. Either the game doesn't run at all, or it's not hooked up.
Hmm I see it. The game has an entry in the Ms shim database here in Win7, but NoSHIMs only partially helps.
Either the game starts in a window and then switches to fullscreen and starts constantly switching between this two states (then the system crashes) or it silently quits.
To be continued tomorrow.
Last edit: huh 2022-11-16
Hmm, it's the same on this Windows 7 here too.
I have had this problem on Windows 7 a lot, the game doesn't get hooked on first Run but it does on 2nd run. Anyways, this game doesn't run yet.
The game is now using D3D9 instead of D3D7 in the videos. To be honest, D3D7 has caused DxWnd the most issues, and without hardware overlay support in Windows or DxWnd, you probably have to tweak his modded (or Renderware D3D9) Direct3D9, which may deviate a lot form the traditional one.
sorry for my inactivity but i didn't receive the notifications, anyway i was already aware of the patch but unfortunately i get strange behavior when i run the game with the patch like the crash when changing the resolution or when i try to create a new character.
There is a slight chance you'll be able to bypass the requirement.
Read the post:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=1119845#p1119845
Under EnableOverlays, create a DWORD key and link it to your full path of game (X:\gamefolder\godfather.exe), as an example and put the value to 1. let me know how it works out
I had to recreate the key from Direct3D because it was completely non-existent (probably deprecated) so the problem hasn't been solved, I have the Italian version of the game and I think the problem comes from the crack, with the cracked executable I can't enter the name while with a "maxi mini image backup" mounted with daemon tools i can insert the character name but i get the crash problem when i try to change the video settings with the silentpatch, so when i want to change the options i have to start the game without silentpatch.
I will send you some details when I get home. By then I would like to know a few things:
Windows version
Graohics adapter name
Windows 10 x64 with 22H2 update
RTX 2070 Mobile with 526.98 driver (latest)
Let's start:
The reason the SilentPatch was made is because the game uses a feature called "Hardware overlay", which was very well supported until Windows XP and ran on the old DirectDraw techniques such as DirectDraw7.
Since Windows Vista, the support of Hardware overlay became problematic; to my understanding, the people thought that Vista depreciated overlay while I believe the problem was because of badly supported DirectDraw drivers. In fact, Windows 10 still supports overlays on a Nvidia 900 series card as see in the thread:
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=91216
So we have cleared the first hurdle, hardware overlay is supported by Windows 10.
Now the next part, how do you get HW overlay support?
The registry key doesn't exist because Windows doesn't do anything about hardware overlays anymore on its own. On Windows Vista/7, the key isn't present, but the applications still run when HW overlay is supported by the driver.
Since you are on Windows 10, you'll need the registry key. I have sent you some things on the PM, that's what I used on my successful HW overlay test of Windows 7 and what I recommend to test with.
Suppose your game is in: "D:\Games\Godfather". Considering that the executable is "godfather.exe", the 32-bit DWORD key at "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Direct3D\Shims\EnableOverlays" should have
Value name: D:\Games\Godfather\godfather.exe
Value data: 1
Run the game with administrator privileges.
Your result could be a key to some facts, if it works then Windows 10 supports HW overlays while Windows 11 doesn't, and if your test fails, Nvidia since GF 10 series don't support HW overlay in drivers anymore. In case of failure (which I hope doesn't happen), if you want to help us, you can back your result with some screenshots of where you put the key and the game directory so that any mistake can be rectified.
thank you for sending me the stuff you used, to test on my windows 10 system i uninstalled my italian version and used your same stuff and unfortunately it keeps crashing without silentpatch during the movie, the difference is that in the american version the movie starts playing the initial sound compared to the Italian one, but with the same result, here I attach a backtrace from dxwnd that maybe could be useful in some way and a picture of how I set the key to activate the overlays:
P.S: reading the discussion on vogons, when i start dxcapsviewer.exe the entry "DDCAPS_OVERLAY" is not activated even though i created the key in the registry.
Last edit: DADDY 2022-11-30
This is little difference compared to my version, but it is enough to say that DDCAPS_OVERLAY isn't there on an RTX card. If you want to check with one more guarantee, you can use this tool:
http://www.angelcode.com/dev/overlay/
You need to download the executable, and then create the registry key linked to the executable just like you did with godfather.exe. Even after doing that, if you get an error saying that hardware overlay isn't supported, you got your answer.
In the same vogons thread, you can see Dege saying that having Hw overlay is possible through dgVoodoo2, so his dgVoodoo2 could be the solution, but we will have to wait.
About your crash with the patch, the only good explanation I have listening to the sideeffects is "it was created for the English game".