Skoki Narciarskie 2002 (RTL Skispringen 2002) - ideas for mouse issue
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Hello,
I’m not sure if this is legit for discussion here, but I decided to give it a go, maybe you’ll have any suggestion or idea what can be done here or simply delete it.
So Skoki Narciarskie 2002 (RTL Skispringen 2002) is a game developed around 2000/2001 by German studio VCC. There is a problem with the mouse „disappearing” during menu activities (it sometimes disappears during the actual gameplay too). This is something that definitely happens in Windows 10, but not in Windows XP (I tried to use VM with XP installed and the pointer was always present on screen during game – I can show it if required).
Obviously I tried to use compatibility mode but this does not help. I tested both Intel HD Graphics 5500 and Nvidia GeForce 940M graphics card that I have.
So what I would like to ask – is it possible that there are some settings inside DxWnd that could help me solving this issue? I don’t think changing anything related to „Mouse” section helps as this is more related to how game renders mouse rather than how mouse events are processed I guess. I haven’t messed around with it yet so I’m rather looking for idea which one could be helpful to begin.
I attach logs (as described somewhere here previously on what to check before doing it) and video: https://youtu.be/11q7lVZ2Kb4 to show, what I mean.
Demo of the game (that has the same issue) can be downloaded here: http://data.interia.pl/gry/dema/Skoki2002Demo.exe however I don’t think anyone is going to waste disk space for it or to investigate it further.
Thanks.
The problem looks interesting (this is not necessarily a good news, on the contrary it is a very bad news in most cases!). The game uses directinput to control the mouse position, but completely fails to detect where the mouse is, so the cursor is not invisible, but simply positooned miles away from the window coordinates!
But you're lucky because I bumped my head on a similar case recently, and the same recipy seems to work well enough. Try importing the attached export file, it includes some Mouse & Input flags but, most of all, it has the "Input:ForceAbsoluteAxis" flag set.
With these settings the game works well enough. The only problem that I saw is that the cursor appears bound to the left and bottom of the screen so that some areas are not reacheable. But it is sufficient to move the mouse up and left beyond the window borders to reach the whole window afterwards.
Maybe we could do better than this, I'll give it a try, but in meanwhile this should make the game playable.
Last edit: gho 2019-09-14
Thanks for you help.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether any hardware can impact it (or either version of OS), but it still seems to be the same after applied config - see the video please: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDVsVXyJ1-U . I mean, the mouse behaves more "static", but the result on that options menu is the same.
So still after going into options menu with these sliders, pointer "flies away" or "becomes invisible" while buttons are highlighted - or maybe I did not understand your hint correctly.
The movie shows a significant progress: while with default configuration the mouse was moved outside the window, then both invisible and not working, with the new configuration the mouse cursor works, buttons can be clicked and react somehow, but sometimes the cursor is not visible. It seems a progress and in effect I was able to make one ski jump (with very bad results, but that's not the cursor's fault).
I'll try to understand a little better what's going on. Just in case, would you be able to give me a game copy? I'm not 100% sure that the demo is fully identical to the full game.
Thanks a lot, obviously there is a huge progress but "missing" mouse pointer is something that is most frustrating as in career mode you literally waste time trying to click on something - but since game was "prepared" for Polish/German "gamemarkets" and literally everyone forgot about it, hardly anyone was looking to any solution at all (apart from getting VMWare + Windows XP to see it working).
Yes, I have two copies of that game (one is a dir with installer only but it's probably no-cd already, second is a full cdd/img package I downloaded some time ago), just need to find time and good network speed to transfer it to Google Drive maybe - hopefully it should be ready either on Monday or Tuesday.
You said the magic words ... you know, if it's a game bug it is of little or no interest, but if it is a compatibility issue (you said that on XP it works ...) that makes it really interesting ;)
BTW DxWnd can't manage programs with Win95/98 compatibility, but it can manage programs with XP compatibility. What happens if you set the compatibility for Windows XP sp2 or sp3 and then run the game with DxWnd?
Please, send the links via PM (private mail) and possibly compress the files with a password (to be sent together with the links), so that it won't be anything like sw piracy.
Ok, links sent, I'll try to check the WinXP compatibility with DxWnd - do you mean setting it via standard "Windows compatibility mode" or should I use the "compatibility" section in DxWnd?
I mean setting it via standard "Windows compatibility mode".
Thanks for the links, please hold them for a little since I'm now behind a restrictive firewall, I'll download the files this evening from home.
Yeah, so I tried using WinXP Compatibility and nothing really changed (I didn't record it however). I decided to show you how it looks like in VMWare + WinXP (just as question may arise, why I did not use Virtualbox - it does not start there at all): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Uz4G4oMsnA
I got a weird surprise!
Thanks to your files, now I got a CD image and a smaller setup archive. I decided to try the latter to save some space, so I run Setup.exe on my Win10 64. Once completed, I hooked the executable ski2002.exe to DxWnd with default options and ... it worked perfectly! The mouse works and never disappears. The only tuning required to improve the mouse handling was setting "Mouse / Mouse clipper" to "ON" position.
I still don't know if the difference is because the different platform (my previous tests were on Win7 64) or because this executable was patched, but I'll find out ...
update:
I tested again the game demo on Win10 64, here it works perfectly, no need of any trick of the sort!
I wonder if by chance MS added some ficx to the buggy dinput control with the latest Windows patch. Tomorrow I'll try again on Win7.
Last edit: gho 2019-09-16
Hmm, so I must be doing something wrong, because I also use Win10 64 (1903, 18362.356) + Intel HD Graphics 5500 / NVIDIA GeForce 940M and I always get that cursor error. Seems that I have to go with testing it on some other specs that I have...
Maybe the problem is in the video card capabilities? I should be able to find something by comparing the logs of my two systems.
Well, I tested the game on 4 machines - each has the same OS (Win 10 64bit 1903) but two of them have no issues with mouse pointer. I think I'll need to pick up specs of each machine and provide you maybe. One question that I have now is - do you think that nGlide installed can affect the way how game utilizes the mouse pointer? Sounds stupid but that's something I consider now.
Uhm... now that you mention it, my troublesome Win7 machine has nGlide on board.
Tomorrow I'll try to follow also this track.
Well, I'm quite sure all of my machines have NVIDIA graphics cards and only one has some old+outdated 9600GT, while others have newest Game Ready Drivers. Still, dgVoodoo can fix the cursor issue on my main PC as I tested it as well, but I decided to bother you with this damn game.
Another surprise: I just repeated the tests on the Win7 computer and the game demo, but today everything is working ok with default configuration plus mouse clipper ON.
I was so amazed that I tried the test with a few older DxWnd releases, but always with the same result, the game works with cursor visible and perfectly controllable in all situations.
I don't know how to explain this fact. The only thing that is coming to my mind is this: I made some tests before with Heretic II, a game that breaks the AERO desktop composition. Maybe the video mode after this event is not the same as before?