Hello guys.

I am reading a series of books (The Expanse by James S. A. Corey) that has several elements awfully similar to EoC and I was compelled to dust off my old CDs and give it a second try (It is really is the best combat space sim, along with IW-1, AND I never finished it).

To my surprise, the game installed and ran with very few problems (the solution to the ones I had were a simple google search away). Another great surprise was finding this active community of users more than a decade after the game's launch and the fact that it is holding surprisingly well in terms of eye candy!

HOWEVER (there isn't always some?) I have some questions about customizing the game a little.

To keep things organized I will ask them in their own thread, beginning with the one that is bugging me more.

I've looked all around and it seems that the DirectX 8 driver for the game is, indeed, a myth, right?
I mean, I saw a lot of people talking about how nice it is but there is a lot more whom just got to crash the game by enabling it. That is my case, whenever I enable it in the Flux.ini and then toggle it on in the config, the game just crash straight to the desktop with Flux.log complaining it can't initialize the graphic engine.
As someone pointed already, it seems to me actually a case of placebo effect. People activated it on the Flux.ini but NOT in the game config and thought it was working. The subjective perception about the graphics enhancement (mostly about light and shading) is another clue it might not be really working.
Can I put it to rest or am I actually missing the good Dx8 stuff?

Sorry for the long babbling and the imperfect english but I was really glad to see I'm not alone here!

Cheers.

Hi,

DirectX 8 was planned but never fully implemented into the game.
However.., with DirectX 8 enabled you will notice a difference in the take-off and landing cinematics as there is a better lighting effect, also the base screens will look nicer.
Inflight you won't notice any difference though, at least I didn't see any.

Well, guess I can live with that (or without that, in this case).

Thanks!

Unless it causes the game to crash or cause other problems I don't see any reason to turn DirectX 8 off.

Sure,

The problem is I don't think it is working at all.
When I enable the two DirectX 8 lines on Flux.ini

[icOptions]
directx8_available = 1
use_directx8 = 1

it doesn't actually turn it on ON THE GAME ITSELF, it just enable the DirectX 8 check box in the configuration menu. I think for Dx8 to work Flux has to be modified to show:

graphics_device = dx8graph.fcGraphicsDeviceD3D

instead of:

graphics_device = dx7graph.fcGraphicsDeviceD3D

and it only happens when you check the Dx8 box in the game config screen.
When I check the box, the game works during that same session but I don't think it is using Dx8 right way. I think when you check it, it only change the Flux.ini and the game needs to be restarted to make use of the above command.
When I restart the game (now with graphics_device = dx8graph.fcGraphicsDeviceD3D in Flux) it does't run. Flux.log says it can not initialize the graphic engine.
I think a lot of people is bypassing that step (enabling Dx8 inthe game config screen) because they didn't know it is there (it only appears in the more complete version of the config, when there is no game loaded) and that is why I talked about the placebo effect.

Anyway, I guess it's only a kind of philosophical nerdish discussion at this point, but I like philosophical nerdish discussions, so...

Cheers

Well, to enable those things which I mentioned I only ever changed the "0" to "1" in [icOptions], to change the graphics_device = dx8graph.fcGraphicsDeviceD3D is probably a variable the gamecode does not recognize, might as well try dx11graph.fcGraphicsDeviceD3D for totally awesome graphics. =P

I noticed that too. Im not really sure what people are talking about when they say it looks better with directx 8. The game doesn't even start if you tick the direct x 8 box in the in game options menu. So its obviously the placebo effect. Basically:
if the flux.ini file displays graphics_device = dx8graph.fcGraphicsDeviceD3D INSTEAD OF graphics_device = dx7graph.fcGraphicsDeviceD3D, then the game will not launch.