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Star Wars™: TIE Fighter Special Editionwrappin' the directstuff(80 posts)(80 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted November 03, 2014
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Eduardo911: what does this wrapper do/provide exactly?
If I'm not totally mistaken, it's a replacement for the game's ddraw.dll, thus intercepting DirectX draw calls made by the game (made for legacy DirectX versions that aren't even compatible with modern OS') and "translating" them into OpenGL draw calls that can a) be improved and tweaked by "the community" (or whoever brave developer choses to invest his spare time into maintaining it) and b) increases compatibility with modern OS' and graphics drivers.

At least that's what the Wing Commander wrappers did I think..
Posted November 03, 2014
Sol, if you're trying to get 3D Acceleration working, you should look at the original release's binaries. I'm 95% certain they hex edited the GOG release so that the 3D Acceleration option does nothing. I just posted about this in another thread but I'll post it here since its really relevant to what you're doing.

I created a guide to get all of the games working on Windows 7 a few years back ( http://savingcontent.com/xwing ) and also updated it for Windows 8 recently so I have a good idea as to why there's no hardware support based on my experiments.

With Windows 7 you could get the games working in 3D accelerated mode using a compatibility patch. However, in Windows 8 this compatibility patch was not compatible if I recall correctly. Furthermore, with XvT and XWA in Windows 8, even if you did get 3D acceleration working it sucked because the framrate was super low.

So I'm guessing they just didn't have a reliable way to get these games working in 3D across Windows 7 & 8 so they hex edited the exe files to disable 3D mode even if you select it.

You may be able to compare the original exe to the gog one to see what needs to change to re-enable 3D acceleration. But there's also other changes (of which I'm not sure what each one does) that they've also made.
Post edited November 03, 2014 by infinityBCRT
Posted November 03, 2014
I still have my xwing and tie 95 cds. i'm sure your work will be useful for those too as well as the gog rerelease.
Posted November 03, 2014
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infinityBCRT: Sol, if you're trying to get 3D Acceleration working, you should look at the original release's binaries. I'm 95% certain they hex edited the GOG release so that the 3D Acceleration option does nothing. I just posted about this in another thread but I'll post it here since its really relevant to what you're doing.

I created a guide to get all of the games working on Windows 7 a few years back ( http://savingcontent.com/xwing ) and also updated it for Windows 8 recently so I have a good idea as to why there's no hardware support based on my experiments.

With Windows 7 you could get the games working in 3D accelerated mode using a compatibility patch. However, in Windows 8 this compatibility patch was not compatible if I recall correctly. Furthermore, with XvT and XWA in Windows 8, even if you did get 3D acceleration working it sucked because the framrate was super low.

So I'm guessing they just didn't have a reliable way to get these games working in 3D across Windows 7 & 8 so they hex edited the exe files to disable 3D mode even if you select it.

You may be able to compare the original exe to the gog one to see what needs to change to re-enable 3D acceleration. But there's also other changes (of which I'm not sure what each one does) that they've also made.
What would happen if you took the tie95.exe from a CD-installed and fully working version and put it in the gog-tie-folder?
Posted November 03, 2014
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Bukkehave1: What would happen if you took the tie95.exe from a CD-installed and fully working version and put it in the gog-tie-folder?
My quess is that the gog executable doesn't include CD check, while the original probably does.
Posted November 03, 2014
but i mean, would it allow for 3d acceleration with the patch? fixing the cd check is possible, id say. We really need to have 3d in this. played through the first 3 missions yesterday and the game is so insanely good. the storyline, the missions etc. but the graphics make them hard to eat through. even for a nostalgic guy like myself.
Posted November 03, 2014
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Bukkehave1: but i mean, would it allow for 3d acceleration with the patch? fixing the cd check is possible, id say. We really need to have 3d in this. played through the first 3 missions yesterday and the game is so insanely good. the storyline, the missions etc. but the graphics make them hard to eat through. even for a nostalgic guy like myself.
We'll see. I'm not promising anything, as I haven't wrapped ancient direct3d:s before.

I also dusted off my ancient sidewider force feedback 2 yesterday and flew a couple of missions =)
Post edited November 03, 2014 by Sol_HSA
Posted November 03, 2014
Yup, that's correct. It asks for the CD with the original exe and it doesn't with the GOG one.
Posted November 03, 2014
Just I would like know simple feature from the last GOG version from this game. Can it be played with the 3D acceleration activated when you have a Nvidia GTX660? the old TIE95 version did not run with this type of graphics card, just with older or the poor Intel graphics cards, in fact, at these days, these poor graphic cards which we can find at many laptop, netbooks and many mainboards from desktop computers, they are the best option for these old games.

However if you are thinking about it, never I could run this and other old games with by example the integrated graphic cards from a AMD A6, a HD 8470D.

Now, can anybody answer my first question?
Posted November 03, 2014
There is NO 3D Acceleration in the gog version. It's flat out disabled.
Posted November 03, 2014
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infinityBCRT: There is NO 3D Acceleration in the gog version. It's flat out disabled.
Oh shit.......without 3D acceleration, the game looks worse than the old TIE Fighter collectors of the cdrom. I see it as a fraud.
Posted November 03, 2014
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Nomada_Firefox: Oh shit.......without 3D acceleration, the game looks worse than the old TIE Fighter collectors of the cdrom
im sure for some people it looks even worse than the 1983 arcade game
Posted November 03, 2014
What GOG did was to include the Compatibility Fix that some of you know about. It can be seen if you install the Compatibility Administrator
For details of what this Compatibility Fix does, see David Moisan's blog

As a side note, this where the alt-tab that Sol_HSA mentioned is blocked.

According to David Moisan, the most important fix that enabled 3D Hardware support is MapMemoryB0000:
"Some applications require that a block of memory be mapped at B0000 as it is on Windows 9x. This compatibility fix will map a block of memory at the B0000 address for the application. Applies to: Windows 95, Windows 98."

The bad news is that GOG confirmed via a support ticket that they have disabled 3D Hardware since they couldn't get it running. No details where provided on this.
Post edited November 03, 2014 by Pvt_Bloody
Posted November 03, 2014
I do not see any improvement in the GOG version and it has a high price for a game with less features and made more of 15 years ago.

About GOG workers capabilities, they are bad because I can tell you how I can run my old version from the TIE95 and 3D acceleration with only a Intel graphics card, a simple Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X4500.
Post edited November 03, 2014 by Nomada_Firefox
Posted November 03, 2014
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Nomada_Firefox: I do not see any improvement in the GOG version and it has a high price for a game with less features and made more of 15 years ago.

About GOG workers capabilities, they are bad because I can tell you how I can run my old version from the TIE95 and 3D acceleration with only a Intel graphics card, a simple Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X4500.
try again with an amd or nvidia and enlighten us, mr. smart guy
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Star Wars™: TIE Fighter Special Editionwrappin' the directstuff(80 posts)(80 posts)
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