GWX 3.Gold or Knight’s Cross?

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by Hooston

I have run GWX KC on my daughter's Nvidia 4070 based machine.
If I set the compatibility mode for sh3.exe to Windows XP (64 bit I think) I got a CTD after about 5 minutes. No problems with compatibility mode to Windows 7 (as recommended). i guess this is DirectX 9 related?

It is - the new Intel GPU cards can't handle dx9 natively.

[Hooston]

The widescreen mods use a directX wrapper (d3d9.dll plus d3d9.ini) to override the display mode set by sh3.exe and force it to the one required by the mod.
The wrapper used by GWX KC seems a bit limited as it does not allow running in a window or scaling the display to fit a low resolution monitor. Maybe "sub-optimal" was seen as a good thing in this context
We are now getting CTD's with intel GPU's.



There's a whole bunch of directX wrappers out there, which go from directX 9 to directX 12 or OpenGL or Vulkan and can preumably force the display mode as well. As a general rule we are not pushing the boundaries as regards performance so we do not necessarily need a super efficient solution.


I was thinking about trying a directX to Vulkan wrapper. This might give folks a few more options (but might not sit happily with very old hardware). Has anyone tried this?


Can I ask where the GWX guys got the wrapper from? it does not seem to have any copyright/ownership details in the dll file.

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by Hooston

The widescreen mods use a directX wrapper (d3d9.dll plus d3d9.ini) to override the display mode set by sh3.exe and force it to the one required by the mod.
The wrapper used by GWX KC seems a bit limited as it does not allow running in a window or scaling the display to fit a low resolution monitor. Maybe "sub-optimal" was seen as a good thing in this context
We are now getting CTD's with intel GPU's.



There's a whole bunch of directX wrappers out there, which go from directX 9 to directX 12 or OpenGL or Vulkan and can preumably force the display mode as well. As a general rule we are not pushing the boundaries as regards performance so we do not necessarily need a super efficient solution.


I was thinking about trying a directX to Vulkan wrapper. This might give folks a few more options (but might not sit happily with very old hardware). Has anyone tried this?


Can I ask where the GWX guys got the wrapper from? it does not seem to have any copyright/ownership details in the dll file.

Good question. I'm not a dll guru. From what I understand, part of the problem with the Intel cards is that they use the open source dxvk (directx to vulkan) in their drivers and it is part of the cause of the issue. I suspect it is also why I've had issues trying to get Dragon Age Origins to run.

If you're able to recommend a wrapper (dx to vulkan, dx9 to dx11 or 12), I'm certainly willing to replace the existing dll and ini and give it a go.

[Hooston]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

If you're able to recommend a wrapper (dx to vulkan, dx9 to dx11 or 12), I'm certainly willing to replace the existing dll and ini and give it a go.

It's not quite that simple. We need to add the functionality that overrides a display mode change call from sh3.exe to force 1920x1080 as in the present d3d9.dll code. i don't think that would be too difficult but it would probably require tweaking the open source code and recompiling. We also need to be able to call it from 32 bit code, which I don't understand at the moment.
There are a lot of old folk on this forum like me with ancient hardware that will not support Vulkan. It's probably better to use a directX to OpenGL wrapper. I think a good starting point is the wineD3D package that is used by the Linux wine software to convert directx calls to openGL. it's been twenty years since I did this stuff but I will take a look.
in terms of the Intel graphics issue I think it's one of those things that gets patched fairly quickly, so the problem will probably go away with a driver update at some point.

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by Hooston

It's not quite that simple. We need to add the functionality that overrides a display mode change call from sh3.exe to force 1920x1080 as in the present d3d9.dll code. i don't think that would be too difficult but it would probably require tweaking the open source code and recompiling. We also need to be able to call it from 32 bit code, which I don't understand at the moment.
There are a lot of old folk on this forum like me with ancient hardware that will not support Vulkan. It's probably better to use a directX to OpenGL wrapper. I think a good starting point is the wineD3D package that is used by the Linux wine software to convert directx calls to openGL. it's been twenty years since I did this stuff but I will take a look.
in terms of the Intel graphics issue I think it's one of those things that gets patched fairly quickly, so the problem will probably go away with a driver update at some point.

Got it. Unfortunately I've an OEM Intel cards from Dell, so they don't patch as fast as Intel patches the generic drivers... That and it being a very old game means less likely to be patched.