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.

[BIZaGoten]

So does anyone know how to turn on the fireball cheat? I wanted to have some fun with that again.

[Charlie]

sorry if this is a dumb question but are you running off the original disk? i only ask after a bad experience with toca2

[Jan Banan]

Yo just wanted to say thanks for this, works great!

[XTwo]

Ohh, thanks a lot for this! Was about to buy the rare and hard to find US Playstation version for $30 because of the problems the old PC version has on Win8. Thanks for this!

[Adam]

thank you

[Hououin Kyouma]

Witaj Silent. Od kilku godzin zmagam się z wyzwaniem uruchomienia spatchowanego CMRa na moim nowym laptopie - ASUS ROG G771JW. Tutaj mam kartę Nvidia 960M. Na starszym lapku z wbudowaną Nvidia 340M nie było problemu - natomiast tutaj zauważyłem pewne różnice. Gdzieś wyżej w komentarzach kolega też spostrzegł brak niektórych elementów - nie renderują się. Dotyczy to pasków w "pitstopie", wskaźnika na prędkościomierzu analogowym, kresek oddzielających menu. No - te w picie by się raczej przydały. W moim przypadku powoduje to wbudowana karta graficzna Intel HD Graphics 4600. Po jej wyłączeniu gra odpala się na awaryjnym chipsecie Microsoft Basic Display Driver - który oczywiście żadnej mocy obliczeniowej nie ma. Gra nie wykrywa grafy Nvidii. Przestawianie jakkolwiek czegokolwiek w panelu Nvidia nic nie daje - gra karty nie widzi. Usiłowałem też bawić się ACT, ale bez skutków. Nijak nie mogę do karty dotrzeć. Sugestie?

[Silent]

Rzeczywiście, już kilka osób potwierdza że na kartach Intela część GUI się nie wyświetla, ale z tego co wiem to ten błąd występuje też na czystej grze. Chętnie spróbowałbym to naprawić, ale nie mam dostępu do żadnego laptopa z kartą Intela więc trochę ciężko naprawić coś takiego po omacku.

A co do zewnętrznej karty:
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3733

wygląda na to że nie da się tego obejść bez przenoszenia gry na Direct3D 9, a to byłoby bardzo czasochłonne.

Próbowałeś pobawić się z dgvoodoo? Jako wrapper do d3d11 może pomóc.

[Hououin Kyouma]

Aye aye, mon capitaine - wrapper pomógł. Bawiłem się wcześniej wrapperem tylko, gdy gra wcale się nie uruchamiała - patrz Pro Rally 2001. No ale CMR2 o niebo lepszy ^^

[Silent]

Hey, so this issue is an original game bug and it seems to happen only with Intel GPUs (is this a notebook?) and since I don't have access to any PCs with those I can't identify this bug :-(

You could try dgvoodoo - the non-English posts above yours concern exactly the same issue and here using this wrapper helped!

[FeliXtreme04]

:D

[grogfella]

Hey, thanks a lot for the patch OP, playing CMR2.0 with it on my PC has been a blast and Rally mode runs almost flawlessly.

However, Arcade mode is a little buggier now: There's really huge FPS drops whenever there's several cars on screen so it's a little sticky to control, and on top of that the AI cars seem like they're way faster than they should be, to the point where Intermediate difficulty is almost impossible for me. Can anyone confirm if Arcade mode is busted, or am I just bad at the game?

Either way, I would appreciate some improvements to Arcade mode performance in the next patch. Just a heads-up.

[Catnipz0r]

I think the author wrote something about DX7 being crippled on Windows 7 and especially W10 and that's where the stutters and general weirdness comes from IIRC.

[Silent]

Yep exactly. You could try using dgVoodoo with the game and see if it helps.

[Hungry Manticore]

You need to use dgVoodoo 2, it will fix the problems.

[grogfella]

Yup, dgVoodoo did the trick, the framerate doesn't tank anywhere near as hard on Arcade mode!

The AI drivers still seem crazy fast, to the point where I'm always at least five seconds behind on Intermediate difficulty, while in Rally mode I can go well past 10 seconds faster than anyone else on the same difficulty. Is anybody else finding Arcade mode way harder than it should be, or do I just suck?