kai2: You were very kind to help and I won't forget that!
Well, I am certainly interested in getting this game to work as well. Not sure if we have the same version of the game, as said my version is the one that came with the "Strategy First SFI Super Bundle" that included something like 29 games, many many many years ago. I guess the game has disappeared from any digital stores after that. I wouldn't be surprised this version is making rounds in "abandonware sites" etc. as it is in a convenient DRM-free installer, pretty much like GOG games.
With my version, I did see some "mod launcher" at some point, so it may be this version has some unofficial patch or mod already, but it still seems to have issues on modern hardware. For the life of me I don't recall where I saw that mod launcher. The installer contains five files, setup.exe and setup-1.bin setup-2.bin setup-3.bin setup-4.bin.
Yesterday I googled a lot probably visiting the same sites you've visited, and things I've learned (lots of drama included!):
- By default the game tries to install itself under Program Files, and naturally you should not install it there, at least if you are going to use mods. I installed it under C:\Games\
- The reason the textures are so low resolution is because the game can't correctly identify modern graphics cards, thinking they have less that 128MB of memory. Hence it lets them use only the lowest quality textures. Yesterday I did find some instructions how to allegedly fix that, I saved the bookmark to my home PC and have to check it there. It was about changing some values in some of the game's config files, changing some "0"s to "-1" or something... I haven't tested it yet whether it works.
- The problem with widescreen resolutions is a well known issue, and probably the best way to overcome that is to use the third-party mods, or play the game in 4:3 resolutions.
- This game seems to have (had) quite a big cult following, considered as one of the very best tank sims apparently, at least those related to WWII.
- The game originally appeared in Russia(n) (or Ukrainian?), and was later (2008?) ported to English. That is why many of the sites and discussion appears in Russian.
- The original developers were ripped off by the publisher (not getting most of their money etc.), hence the lack of official patches and support. Apparently the original developers did make some updates on their own, without being paid.
- Later the third-party fixes and mods took over, apparently the most important being "STA". It seems the version to look for is "STA 1.2"; there have been never mods too like STA 3.3 and maybe even newer but if I understood right some company wanted money for them, and STA 1.2 is "good enough" and should be totally free.
- The reason links to most of the important mods like STA have disappeared is apparently that the maker was Ukrainian while the forum mods were Russian. Then the whole war in Ukraine took over and they couldn't be buddies anymore, apparently the mod maker removed any links to his mods from the sites. At some point (like 2017 or 2018) the STA 1.2 mod was offered in the bittorrent network, but even those links have disappeared.
- I tried to install and play the game also on my old Windows XP PC which has an old ATI Radeon X800 Pro graphics card, but the game ran very poorly on it and had lots of display issues. Maybe it is too old for this game, having only 1GB of RAM etc. Some forum discussions said though that this game was originally designed for Windows XP SP2, but I don't think the main issues with the game are with the Windows version, but how the game identifies and handles newer graphics cards and their drivers.
Judging by the screen captures, it makes lots of sense trying to find that STA mod (and possibly some other mods) because they really seem to overhaul the game's graphics and add lots of other stuff too. I looked at those pictures and it really seemed like a totally different game to what I have, LOL.
I will keep searching at least to that STA 1.2 (or possibly newer like 3.3) mod, but I am a bit concerned of downloading some unknown files from unknown sites.
Oh, and apparently dgVoodoo2 doesn't help with this game, apparently the game already uses so new DirectX/Direct3D that dgVoodoo2 doesn't even get activated with the game, or something. I don't get the dgVoodoo2 watermark with the game like I get with some older Direct3D/X games. I think dgVoodoo2 is meant to help with older games than this.
