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.

[shadow118]

Didn't try Alt+Tabbing, but otherwise seems to work ok. The menus are stretched, but the car on track isn't, so that's good :) And it runs at 60 fps now :) No VSync option, but I think borderless had a similar effect as vsync. Anyways, thanks! :)
Btw, running it on Windows 10 :D
Also, post this in the Codemasters forums, I'm sure they'll appreciate it :)

[Silent]

Good idea about posting it on Codemasters forums, thanks!
http://forums.codemasters.com/discussion/15755/colin-mcrae-rally-2-0-patching-the-game-for-modern-standards

As for the menu, I deliberately didn't touch it. It's stretch-ness is barely noticeable imo due to its clever design. Also, fonts keep proper aspect ratios everywhere, so it's even less of a problem.

[shadow118]

No problem about the menu. It's just that before I had the correct aspect ratio in the menu and a stretched car on track, now it's just opposite, but I'm fine with that :) Only place where it's kinda noticable is when repairing the car

[MAQ]

This is pure awesomeness.

It doen't Alt+Tab on my ancient Win XP PC though, but Ctrl+Alt+Del helps.

[Dashoff]

Thanks. The patch works great ! Colin McRae Rally 2.0 is not the realest but it is the funnest rally game.

[Kotix]

Alt+Tab works on windows 7, great patch! Thank you!

[𝖒𝖆𝖒₿𝖚𝖈𝖔93]

TY it works great on Windows10 just having some sky flickering and some invisible sections of the track does those have a solution?

still thankfull, I finally can play the game in fullscreen (1080p) and looks amazing and very smooth

[Buhaj]

installed the patch, it's awesome - however, for some reason I can't see the bars with car settings in the car set up menu, i.e. I can't see what setting the tyres/engine/etc. are on. Any idea how to solve that?

[shortcat]

İlk olarak Buhaj47 tarafından gönderildi:

installed the patch, it's awesome - however, for some reason I can't see the bars with car settings in the car set up menu, i.e. I can't see what setting the tyres/engine/etc. are on. Any idea how to solve that?

Doesn't your screen look like cropped?

[SimulatorSam]

This is amazing, thank you so much for this!

[Silent]

I gave Colin McRae Rally a try... men, it's probably alright as a mobile title but it indeed isn't too good as a PC game. Still, 1.39€ is a fair price for it - but full price, hell no.

CMR2 is still better :-D

[J3N5T4R]

Thanks fixed lots of probs!

[Bermudas]

hello, my game looks lik 30fps most of the time. Any help? also i cant do fullscreen without the windows around the screen. Thanks.

[Catnipz0r]

Fantastic work, thanks a lot for this Silent!

I installed the game and applied the 1.09 update, but I noticed that your fixed EXE has the version 1.11. Is that just a thing you did or is there another update for the game?

I'm also unable to alt-tab out the game or minimise it (using Window=1 and Borderless=1), and using the task manager only leads to similiar graphical issues like in shortcat's screenshot.

Another thing I noticed is that there is some strange banding or stuttering while driving, seems to be the game running with low FPS. Sadly I couldn't get RTSS to work with this game so I can't actually confirm FPS issues.

Windows 7 64-bit / HD 7970

[Silent]

FPS issues indeed seem to be the case, but I think D3D7 use is to blame.

About the EXE - I left it on 1.11 as is. I dunno if this has ever been an official patch, it's just how the EXE from my game copy was.