INFO: Common graphic problems with XWA

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Re: INFO: Common graphic problems with XWA

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Kirejara
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Post by Kirejara » Tue Jan 31, 2012 6:08 pm

Hello,
Do today ATI cards work ok with XWA?
Yes! ;)

As you can read in this thread, I am using a ATI Radeon HD5500 (ok, this is no highend-card :roll: ) and thanks to Reimars patch both XWA and XvT are running perfectly.

RFT
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Post by RFT » Mon Feb 20, 2012 12:09 pm

Hi, Having an Issue with XWA and the .BAT files.

I'm on Win 7. graphics card is Nvidia 8800.

I've installed XWA successfully using the MSI workround, and applied the 2.02 patch.

At this stage, XWA will run, and i can fly with the well-documented graphics errors (invisble ships when targeted, invisible laser bolts, etc).

Downloaded the xwahack bundle from the XvT wiki site.

My understanding is that I need to run:
32bitmode.bat
and
fixedclear.bat

to sort the issues, however after running these bat files, XWA refuses to launch. no error message, it just doesbnt; repond to the start menu.

Have I done something wrong?

RFT
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Post by RFT » Mon Feb 20, 2012 1:18 pm

Disregard my message - it looks to have been an issue with the launcher program (alliance.exe) instead of the game itself (xwingalliance.exe) refusing to run more than once per boot. if I run the xwingalliance.exe, the game runs fine.

So, thanks for those fixes!

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Knives
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Post by Knives » Thu May 17, 2012 5:45 am

Has anyone else had to enable dithering in the Config.cfg?? With the Font fix, and the custom DDraw.dll from JKhub.net that Darksaber posted a good link to, and modifying Resdata.txt to put Font.dat & Hud.dat first; add dithering and most of my XWA copy's graphic errors are gone...
Now what did the bugger do with the Ionpulse .opt so it doesn't show up??? Maybe Equipment.lst.....
Watch your 6, its a big target.

pacoraban_ITA
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Post by pacoraban_ITA » Mon Jul 02, 2012 1:42 pm

Hello guys, first of all sorry for my English.
I need help because I installed XWA on my PC with NVIDIA GTX 550 TI and WIN XP 32bit, but it does not work. I upgraded to version 2.02 but this is the result:
http://minus.com/lI3uGgrz9aQ1k

I tried to apply the patch Reinmar. I put the file fixedclear.bat and the file xwahacker.exe in XWA directory but leaves this message:
"" "Detected file as X-Wing Alliance 2.2 with 23 matches
Patched from 7 to 7
Patched from 11 to 11
Press any key to continue. . .

The game is in Italian and also upgrade 2.02: this could be the problem?

Can you help me?
thanks

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Dragon
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Post by Dragon » Mon Jul 02, 2012 3:45 pm

Hi pacoraban_ITA,
place the 32Bit.bat in the XWA directory too.
Then double-click the 32Bit.bat.
This sould solve your problem.
Every story has four sides to it: yours, the others, the truth and what really happend.
"You have failed me for the last time, Admiral."

pacoraban_ITA
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Post by pacoraban_ITA » Mon Jul 02, 2012 6:56 pm

Dragon wrote:Hi pacoraban_ITA,
place the 32Bit.bat in the XWA directory too.
Then double-click the 32Bit.bat.
This sould solve your problem.
Hello and thanks Dragon. ;)
I did what you wrote but the result is:
"""""Detected file as X-Wing Alliance 2.02 with 23 matches
Patched from 0 to 1
Patched from 14 to 16
Patched from 17 to 18
Patched from 19 to 20
Patched from 21 to 22
Patched from 23 to 24
Patched from 25 to 26
Patched from 27 to 28
Patched from 29 to 30
Patched from 31 to 32
Patched from 33 to 34
Patched from 35 to 36
Patched from 37 to 38
Patched from 39 to 40
Patched from 47 to 48
Patched from 49 to 50
Press any key to continue. . ."""""

Why it does not work? :kopfwand: :hilfe:
thanks

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Post by Stryker412 » Sat Jul 07, 2012 3:54 am

I have a question and not sure if it's even an issue or not. I have applied the hack to get 1080 resolution and the game looks great. The only thing is that the graphics when reaching the sides of the cockpit (ships/cargo/etc) disappear if I turn the view towards the area they reappear. It this a side effect of stretching the initial graphic view?

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Dragon
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Post by Dragon » Sat Jul 07, 2012 8:25 am

That shouldn't happen...
Every story has four sides to it: yours, the others, the truth and what really happend.
"You have failed me for the last time, Admiral."

Reimar
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Post by Reimar » Sat Jul 07, 2012 10:15 am

pacoraban_ITA wrote:Hello guys, first of all sorry for my English.
I need help because I installed XWA on my PC with NVIDIA GTX 550 TI and WIN XP 32bit, but it does not work. I upgraded to version 2.02 but this is the result:
http://minus.com/lI3uGgrz9aQ1k
That one is another driver bug that I have no fix for. It affects only NVidia to my knowledge and they have refused to fix it.
I believe both older driver versions and an ATI card are possible ways to avoid it.
Others have reported success with putting a hacked ddraw.dll into the XWA folder, but I am not sure it helps.

Stryker412
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Post by Stryker412 » Sat Jul 07, 2012 5:37 pm

Dragon wrote:That shouldn't happen...
I just loaded up a mission and it seems when ships/asteroids/etc get outside the 4:3 safe zone they disappear. The HUD and backdrops stay fine though.

See my screenshot. You can see the ship on the left is cut off.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j84/S ... 12/xwa.png

pacoraban_ITA
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Post by pacoraban_ITA » Sun Jul 08, 2012 2:45 pm

Reimar wrote: That one is another driver bug that I have no fix for. It affects only NVidia to my knowledge and they have refused to fix it.
I believe both older driver versions and an ATI card are possible ways to avoid it.
Others have reported success with putting a hacked ddraw.dll into the XWA folder, but I am not sure it helps.

Hi Reimar!
Thanks for your opinion.
I also tried to put ddraw.dll in XWA directory, but does not work.
It 's strange.
I installed Win 7 and everything is perfect.

I do not know ........

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bazzelbrush
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Post by bazzelbrush » Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:43 am

Reimar wrote:EDIT: Please simply use the .bat files in the zip file attached several posts further down instead of these manual hacks.

I found a solution torun X-Wing Alliance on my HD 4850. It was quite some effort, so I want to document it here, even though I don't know if you like that kind of solution.
First, I used Linux and Wine (http://www.winehq.org/). Unfortunately, it is known not to work there (http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.p ... n&iId=2916).
Still, that did fix the rendering issues, but it did not react to keyboard input and rendering was very slow.
So next I fixed the keyboard input issue: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8854 - I am not sure if that hackish solution will be allowed in wine, but if you want to do
the modification yourself you only need to replace the dinput.dll.so with a fixed version in your wine installation.
I have no idea if it will work for you, but the dinput.dll.so I finally used is here: http://natsuki.mplayerhq.hu/~reimar/dinput.dll.so
The next issue is that ATI can't write OpenGL drivers if their life depended on it (and wine uses OpenGL), the data is not transferred via DMA, so that background-drawing for the stars etc. is far too slow.
As a first attempt I tried to make X-Wing Alliance render to 32 bit instead of 16 bit, which is a simple change (EDIT: this only makes sense if you can fix/remove the star background somehow, also not sure if the graphics quality is really any better), with a hex editor change
in xwingalliance.exe:
at offset 0x1a90ac (0x5aa0ac in memory) change 0x02 to 0x04
Pattern from: 00 00 f0 3e 01 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 80 3f
to: 00 00 f0 3e 01 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 80 3f

EDIT: or use the xwahacker linked a few posts below like this:
xwahacker xwingalliance.exe -p 1
to fix the starfield you also need the patches 15,17,19,21,23,25,27,29,31.

This change should be optional and breaks e.g. the loading screen and in-game menu, so decide yourself if you want that.

To completely disable the background rendering, this change works under Wine (EDIT: this unfortunately does not work on Windows),
but to try it change in xwingalliance.exe:
at offset 0x10c8c3 (0x50d4c3 in memory) change 0x00 to 0x10
Pattern from: a1 48 33 77 00 6a 00 8d 4c 24 10 6a 00 8b 10 51 6a 00
to: a1 48 33 77 00 6a 00 8d 4c 24 10 6a 10 8b 10 51 6a 00

EDIT: or use xwahacker xwingalliance.exe -p 13

If you'd like to know what it does: it maps the framebuffer read-only into system memory. Luckily this does not crash under wine when the stars etc. are drawn into it.
When the framebuffer is then unmapped, it does not get transferred to the graphics card (which would cause the performance issues), since after all the application
was not supposed to change it.
I know this is very technical, but I hope you can understand the idea anyway and I'll try to find time and look over here to answer any questions about it.
Reimar would you beable to direct me to what I need to get my Xwing alliance to work please? I'm running and AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ 3.01 GHz, 4.00 GB running at 3.25 on a 32-bit OS windows 7 home. My add-on Vid card is a Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT. I'm really very interested in what you have done with the linux set up and the wine system and would like to learn more please as I'm unsure 100% from reading what I really need to do. I do have base Vid card on my PC and I've not used it in about 2 or three years. But last time I did X-wing was working then. So is the away to operate the game with out disconnecting from the new Vid card?

Regards Baz

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Dragon
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Post by Dragon » Mon Jul 09, 2012 9:58 am

@bazzelbrush:

You just need the xwahacker.exe and 32bit.bat from reimars xwahacker.
Place both files in the XWA directory and double-click the 32.bat. That is all.

Her is the download-link: http://www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3008/dow ... .php?id=98
Every story has four sides to it: yours, the others, the truth and what really happend.
"You have failed me for the last time, Admiral."

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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Mon Jul 09, 2012 10:29 am

Dragon wrote:Her is the download-link: http://www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3008/dow ... .php?id=98
The last version of xwahacker is situated at http://sourceforge.net/projects/xwahacker/.

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Dragon
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Post by Dragon » Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:01 pm

JeremyaFr wrote:
Dragon wrote:Her is the download-link: http://www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3008/dow ... .php?id=98
The last version of xwahacker is situated at http://sourceforge.net/projects/xwahacker/.
Ok, missed that one.
Every story has four sides to it: yours, the others, the truth and what really happend.
"You have failed me for the last time, Admiral."

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bazzelbrush
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Post by bazzelbrush » Tue Jul 10, 2012 4:55 am

Dragon wrote:
JeremyaFr wrote:
Dragon wrote:Her is the download-link: http://www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3008/dow ... .php?id=98
The last version of xwahacker is situated at http://sourceforge.net/projects/xwahacker/.
Ok, missed that one.

You my friend are a legend!! thats awesome. I've been playing it most of the morning having a bit of fun. Still needs the font fixes I think. And some of the screen shots of the ships in the mission breifs while spining seem to show like a vizual ecco effect.. Not sure if I've patched the whole game correctly but I have backed up the files before I patched xwing so I can easily revert to the origanel.

all I've done after backing up the files in the origanel folder was to copy all the files that where in the zip file I got from the download. once in there I clicked on 32bitmode and when its screen came up I just hit enter. Than I clicked on fixedclear and when that screen opened up I hit enter again and then started the game...

It worked.. at lest its about 90% lol But I'm happy as.

Any other ideas about fixing the other bit and bods like the vizual ecco and fonts that would be cool. But so far I'm blown away. You Dragon are your a complete genius ;)

pacoraban_ITA
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Post by pacoraban_ITA » Sat Jul 14, 2012 11:14 am

Hello guys,
XWA unfortunately does not work with XP and patches of Reimar. I solved it by installing Win 7.

Reimar
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Post by Reimar » Sat Jul 21, 2012 9:22 pm

pacoraban_ITA wrote:Hello guys,
XWA unfortunately does not work with XP and patches of Reimar. I solved it by installing Win 7.
Please always mention at least the graphics card when reporting such issues. I do not have an XP system at hand to test myself, but I suspect this is related to the NVidia driver issue mentioned before. (EDIT: the graphics card was mentioned in a previous post, it is an NVidia. So it seems a workaround for their bug of "all triangles end in the top left corner" seems to be to use Win7 - Vista probably works as well).
Vista/7 have a new driver model (and thus quite different drivers) so they often don't show the same driver bugs.

pacoraban_ITA
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Post by pacoraban_ITA » Mon Jul 23, 2012 7:55 pm

Sorry Reimar,
I have a Nvidia Geforce GTX 550 Ti.

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Nyine
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Post by Nyine » Sun Jul 29, 2012 2:46 pm

Hello everyone!

This is my first post in this forum. I've been looking around for a place to get help with some problem of mine and this looks the best place to ask around! :hilfe: If someone can help me I'll be more than grateful since I'm a XWA addict :D

Well, my problem is... I used to play in an old laptop X-W, Tie, XvT and XWA with accelerated graphics without problems (applying the proper patches and fixes, of course), but now I got a new laptop and I upgraded recently my OS to Windows 8 RC.

After installing all the games again, I noticed that I cannot use accelerated graphics anymore in any of the games. The problem is always the same: the objects outside the cabin don't appear in any of the games.

This laptop has an Intel HD Graphics 3000 and a NVidia GeForce 630M with drivers 302.80. I have tried everything so far, all patches, fixes, etc. (included Reimar's patch, thanks for your work by the way!) to no avail. I'm aware that RC versions of OSs are not the best for gaming but since eventually most people will end upgrading their system I think that finding a solution would help a lot of people.

Does anyone have an idea of how could I solve this problem? I have been 3 days tinkering around trying to fix it but it's driving me nuts! :irre:

Thanks a lot in advance for any help!

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Dragon
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Post by Dragon » Wed Aug 01, 2012 10:24 am

Nyine wrote: I have tried everything so far, all patches, fixes, etc. (included Reimar's patch, thanks for your work by the way!)
Just make sure that that you didn't missd it. Did you try the 32Bit.bat with the Xwinghacker.exe?
Every story has four sides to it: yours, the others, the truth and what really happend.
"You have failed me for the last time, Admiral."

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Nyine
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Post by Nyine » Wed Aug 01, 2012 2:13 pm

Yeah, I tried. What I find more confusing is that all the games in the series (including X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, XvT and XWA) are giving me the same problem. When 3D acceleration is active... I don't see anything :kopfwand:

EDIT: Somehow it got solved! Aplying xwahacker with "fixedclear" and "32bit" again solved the problem this time. Now I only have a small color issue in the options menu when I'm on a mission but it's just a minor detail. Now the only problem is how to make the other 3 games 3D acceleration work :handy:

Reimar
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Post by Reimar » Sat Aug 04, 2012 10:42 am

Nyine wrote:Now I only have a small color issue in the options menu when I'm on a mission but it's just a minor detail.
That is a known side-effect of the 32-bit patch which is hard to avoid.
Nyine wrote:Now the only problem is how to make the other 3 games 3D acceleration work :handy:
Latest xwahacker from sourceforge includes the equivalent to the fixedclear patch for those, so if that one fixed it, it should work for those as well (note: I heard that it tends to crash on NVidia cards though).

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Nyine
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Post by Nyine » Sat Aug 04, 2012 12:22 pm

Thank you for answering Reimar!

I have tried the latest version of xwahacker (once again, thanks a lot for it) in X-Wing, Tie-Fighter and XvT and for some reason in Windows 8 it doesn't solve the disappearing objects. Well, it's not that they disappear, it's that they don't appear at all :lachtot:

I've read that usually the objects appear and when they enter in your view they disappear but this is not the case. It's like if they were invisible all the time. I wonder if this is a known issue and if there is a workaround for it. :hilfe:

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