Colin McRae Rally 2.0 - Patching the game for modern standards

[Silent]

Hey there! First of all, note it's NOT a topic about the mobile port remastered CMR, but rather about the original PC title.


Having messed around with numerous games by now, I decided to go back to one of the first games I ever played and attempt to adapt it to modern standards more.

What got fixed?

• The game now handles ALL aspect ratios properly. That means the game will not be horribly stretched when playing in widescreen anymore.
  
• The game now defaults to borderless windowed mode. This change gets rid of a DirectDraw bug on Windows 8 and newer, which would make the game run in a window even if fullscreen is requested, also affecting performance negatively. Fullscreen borderless windowed mode does not have any of these issues, and looks identical to real fullscreen. Both windowed and borderless can be toggled via SPCMR2.ini file.
  
• When playing in windowed mode (borderless or not), the game can handle Alt+Tab properly now.
  
• All dependencies on registry keys have been removed. This makes the game fully portable and also fixes an occasional issue, where the game would not launch without Administrator privileges (due to an incorrect way the game was reading registry keys).
  
• Logging has been removed for good (since it would never log anything anyway). The game used to create a log file in C:\ which would often make the game require Administrator privileges to run.
  
• Regions can now be switched via the INI file. Depending on the game version, it has different region directories included in CountrySpecific directory. Now, if you have more than one region installed, you can easily switch between them.
  
• Field of View can now be adjusted via the INI file. You can select any value in 30.0 - 150.0 range.
  
• Support for non-Full installation methods has been removed. On the plus side, the game will never ask for a CD now.

Some screenshots for you to check:
http://i.imgur.com/4mdV2aV.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Qys9Cky.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/shrl8oJ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/IWkgjgr.jpg

A short gameplay video showing the game in proper 16:9:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0HMeN27Rcw


Download:
https://cookieplmonster.github.io/mods/cmr-2-0/#silentpatch

Cheers!


...is anyone still posting in those boards? I don't know, but let's find out.

[Hungry Manticore]

The problem that Windows 8 has with old games (the ones that use DirectX 1-7) can easily be fixed in most cases by using MS Application Compatibility Toolkit and applying the NoGDIHWAcceleration patch. Nevertheless, I'm glad you fixed this problem your way, so that the game can be minimized :) Also the widescreen fix looks great. I'm waiting for the release.

[Silent]

Indeed, I'm aware about the fact ACT helps with those issues. Still, I wanted the patch to be out of the box, without requiring users to do anything by themselves. Plus, I don't think making the game be able to Alt + Tab in fullscreen is worth the effort (the game seems to be unable to handle a device lost event), so fullscreen borderless windowed feels like a better solution :D

Plus this way it doesn't ignore colour correction! On my end, this causes f.lux colour correction to still apply when playing the game.

[shadow118]

Any progress on the patch? I've wanted to replay the old CMR2 for a long time, but the lack of widescreen support has kept me away form that. There was a guy in the Codemasters forums, who posted some fixes, but that was some time ago and the the topic, he linked, seems to be dead. He was talking about DDRAW and ACT, how/where do I get those? Also read about the 1080x1080 fix, but I can't make such a resolution in the Catalyst control panel

[shortcat]

Oh my god why do people care about black bars.
As for perfrmance - for me game runs fine, maybe because Windows 8.1 contain compatibility patch to run it in borderless windowed mode?
For AMD you need 3rd party tool to create resolution.
P.S. Waiting for the patch too.
P.P.S. Thanks Silent for great GTA SA patch.

[shadow118]

Originally posted by shortcat:

Oh my god why do people care about black bars.
As for perfrmance - for me game runs fine, maybe because Windows 8.1 contain compatibility patch to run it in borderless windowed mode?
For AMD you need 3rd party tool to create resolution.
P.S. Waiting for the patch too.
P.P.S. Thanks Silent for great GTA SA patch.

The black bars I could live with (alhough I'd rather prefer widescreen), but it's the 30 fps that ruins it the most.
How did you get it to run as borderless?

[Silent]

That's plenty of feedback ^^

Honestly, there hasn't been too much progress lately. This has never been my main point of attention and now it's got put aside even more due to some events.

I guess I will have to assemble what I have now and just out a 'test' version.

[shortcat]

Originally posted by shadow118:

The black bars I could live with (alhough I'd rather prefer widescreen), but it's the 30 fps that ruins it the most.
How did you get it to run as borderless?

I'm sorry, I was wrong. Just checked with fraps and it's 22-25 fps.
What I mean is I can see the window borders all the time game is running. Still after alt-tab game screen goes to black after sinlge frame.

[shadow118]

Originally posted by shortcat:

Originally posted by shadow118:

The black bars I could live with (alhough I'd rather prefer widescreen), but it's the 30 fps that ruins it the most.
How did you get it to run as borderless?

I'm sorry, I was wrong. Just checked with fraps and it's 22-25 fps.
What I mean is I can see the window borders all the time game is running. Still after alt-tab game screen goes to black after sinlge frame.

For me it won't even let me Alt+Tab. Just nothing happens. And Fraps also doesn't work with it for some reason. It feels like it's at 30 or slightly below. After playing CMR2 for a little while, DiRT Rally with it's 60 fps felt super smooth :D

[Silent]

If ddraw stuff is "fixed", the game actually goes up to 75FPS on my end (which is my vsync cap). Performance still feels a bit worse than it was on my Vista before (which has no problems with ddraw) :(

[Silent]

I figured out the aspect ratios! :D

Also found a reliable way to change Field of View, going to expose it as an INI option.
http://i.imgur.com/1ADC7kq.jpg

Now that aspect ratios work properly, I can release it. Expect a release very soon :)

[Silent]

Released!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46581994/SilentPatch/silentpatch_cmr2.zip

Refer to the ReadMe file for a full changelog.

[shortcat]

Nice work!
A little bug report: window appear cropped (only central area are visible) if I don't check "Disable display scaling" in app compatibility properties.
Also, after alttabbing it goes like this: http://i.imgur.com/Hu1x8qL.jpg

[Silent]

Playing with Window=1? Also, I believe that scaling issue also happens without the patch. Just check the option.

[shortcat]

Yep, default settings, it does happen with Window=0 too. Can't test without the patch since I didn't save the exe, but at the time I was playing I used Windows 8 with "XP Scaling" enable so bug did not occur.

[Silent]

Still, I probably can't do anything with the scaling, so just check the option. And as for Alt + Tabbing, I unfortunately have no idea. Device lost event shouldn't occur there when playing in windowed, yet apparently it does.