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.

[grogfella]

UPDATE: For reference I looked at some footage of the Playstation version of CMR 2.0, and I can confirm it's much easier than the PC version. Just by comparing the best CPU time on the Italy course on Intermediate difficulty, you can see there's a whopping 14-second difference between the PC and PS1 versions. Has the PC version always been this much tougher than the PS1 version?

Here are the screenshots so you can see the difference for yourself:
http://imgur.com/gallery/8CIRP

[Gagi]

Patch works just fine accept I can't ALT+TAB at all. Everything else is fine, runs great on Win 10. Thanks! :)

[Dragunov]

Patch works incredibly well, but why does the game always return to default configuration when I start the game, I just want to keep my configuration as is

[t3h_G04T]

Have you tried running it as an Administrator?

[Mystic Monkey]

so the game support wheels and does this patch address the no brake deadzone option?

[olku]

I recommend turning off cubic environment mapping. That will boost the performance a lot. Also you will have to use a DirectX wrapper, i myself recommend dgVoodoo 2.
Here is an article about these wrappers that make old games run well on modern systems: http://www.swat3lastresort.info/index.php/fix-framerate-problems

[HIROHD]

My dream is Colin 2005 on Steam...

[Silent]

Believe me, so is mine! If I was given an opportunity, I'd gladly singlehandedly handle adapting all 5 games so they run fine on Win10 and integrate Steam...

[alvaritoteam]

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong but I'm getting graphical glitches. The sky or the mountains in the background continously blink and I can only play in windowed mode. Alt+tab doesn't work for me and if I activate the borders to make it bigger the game crashes. Also Window = 0 crashes the game. Here are my specs:

OS : Windows 10 64-bit
CPU : Intel Core i7-7700K 4.20 GHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
RAM: 16 GB

I read that if graphic settings are at low you can get graphical glitches so I changed them to high, but did nothing, Apart from that haven't touch any other graphic settings


Okay, dgvodoo solved the graphical issue but alt+tab still wont work and the game still crashes when window = 0 or borderless = 0 and maximizing it. Any ideas?

[olku]

If i recall correctly, having cubic mode on can cause glitches like these. @alvaritoteam

[Dobri]

Fantastic

[Florinescu]

Thanks man, working.

[mage.stig]

Tried to get this working, but I keep getting this error:

"CMR2 File Load Error. Loading failed!
Make sure you have specified a correct region in SPCMR2.ini file.
Installed regions can be found in CountrySpecific directory.
If the error presists despite selecting an installed region, your game istallation might be corrupted or it's not Full.
NOTE: Currently, SilentPatchCMR2 only supports Full game installations."

I've re-installed CMR2 twice (the full version), selected Europe in the .ini file, but the error still presists. However, the game runs just fine from the original shortcut, but not the SilentPatch one.

[Cpt. Sourcebird]

It works nicely for me, but for some reason it has a flickering skybox.

[Totempkoff]

I don't know if this post is available yet, but, I have a problem during playing the game, in other post of other page shows this graphic glitch or bug like this https://imgur.com/a/7i1dK and I have the same problem too, what do you think could be the problem? Thank you.