Chrome and Chrome SpecForce - Unofficial patch

[AntonioR]

After a lot of work I have released an unofficial "patch" for Chrome and Chrome SpecForce called "Visual Fidelity".

The goal of this "patch" is to enable the games to be played in widescreen resolutions, ultra widescreen, multi monitor setups and in 4K and above by fixing text rendering and FOV issues and properly scaling some HUD elements. Another goal was to increase the visual fidelity of the game by forcing the game to render highest quality assets even when they are far away from the player. Only assets that will actually be changed are the HUD map textures. No gameplay changes have been made !

- The game now natively supports all available resolutions.
- Jackfuste from Widescreen Gaming Forums fixed the ChromeEngine2.dll to use hor+ FOV
(for Steam version of Chrome use the Gold edition file)
- Fixed a bug causing the game to use small font on high resolutions
- I also added a FOV multiplier, so all FOV values can be permanently changed with one single file edit.
- I also wrote a program that increases the scaling factor for text in all external HUD/GUI files
- I added resolution based scaling for text defined in code and some HUD elements like crosshair and hit indicators, so with all these changes the games should be 4K/8K ready.
- I also disabled mouse acceleration.
- High resolution map textures for original Chrome were taken from Chrome Widescreen Mod(Chrome HD Fix) and I made the new ones for SpecForce.
- Optional: improved draw distance, disabled LOD switching

Menu items and HUD elements except the circles will still be stretched, that would require a rewrite of the GUI code and I didn't touch that. I also haven't touched the multiplayer code, but most fixes should be compatible.

You can read the full list of updates on the ModDB page and in the included change log, no need to repeat all of it here. Detailed instructions are also available.

http://www.moddb.com/games/chrome/downloads/chrome-and-chrome-specforce-unofficial-patch

I made a short comparison video, you can check it out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3qSGN8xPpQ

[Musickiller]

That sounds like a great work! Thank you!

[AntonioR]

No problem. If the instructions are unclear or you have any questions, just ask. I'm not very active on Steam, so I have included my email and you can also contact me on Youtube or my blog.

[cyclone]

Hey, nice work. I just reinstalled this game and I'll be given this a try. Curious to see how the LOD tweaks impact performance.

[AntonioR]

Great, be sure to write back. I wrote in the instructions it has a major impact on performance, but it heavily depends on the level. If there are a lot of trees and especially grass FPS can drop by 60%. The LOD tweaks are optional and are for those who have power to spare and want to play the game in its full glory. If you get 150-200FPS or more without the tweaks you should be good. For reference I have a i5-4690k(3.5-3.9 GHz) and a R9 270X 2GB and played at 1440p with 4x AA and had no issues maintaining stable 60 FPS. I've written in the instructions what file does what and how to edit them, so you can use the tweaks you want and/or customize them.

[cyclone]

Ok, I got it working. I was already using a widescreen fix mod so I just added the classes folder and visual fidelity class files to my code.pak file. I'm using the default FOV for the time being. Also using Dege's dgVoodoo 2 D3D8.dll to force 4K resolution and 4X MSAA.
http://dege.freeweb.hu

The game looks really nice now that the jagged tree sprites have been replaced with real geometry that can be cleaned up nicely with downsampling and MSAA. I've only tested the first two levels but performance is a smooth 60 fps (locked with RTSS, Vsync enabled in control panel). Thanks again for breathing new life into an old (but great imo) game!

https://postimg.org/image/eebqyegxj/

https://postimg.org/image/gwxfz32nr/

https://postimg.org/image/a7qwj2hbr/

https://postimg.org/image/5adbxyfcn/

[AntonioR]

Glad to see it works for you. But I highly recommend using the fixed ChromeEngine2.dll to fix the FOV, it is surprising to me you can actually play with such low FOV, I would get a headache. With default you also see less area in the cut-scenes, communicator heads are zoomed in, and Logan's body is cut off in the implants menu. Also with the fix you can make much nicer landscape screenshots covering a larger area :)

http://i.imgur.com/yhICI8J.jpg

If you holster your weapon and turn off the HUD with F12 the game turns into a great wallpaper generator :)

Also that old widescreen fix is not good: it completely replaces the original fonts, you can see circular map in the first level is not replaced by new one, maps are going over the edge of the inner circle, map textures are missing some objects(for example sattelite dish in the Containers level) and are showing some that aren't there(shuttles), it also shows wrong player position in the Code Key level, implant indicators are stretched, the right HUD circle is not positioned properly, you wont be able to select higher resolutions in the options menu, etc...

[cyclone]

Ok, you're right, the higher FOV is much better. Cheers! :)

[Marcin_89]

Thanks for the patch. But why i have something like this: http://imgur.com/t7Kxqp1 ??

[AntonioR]

That motion detector texture is from the old HD/Widescreen mod, did you use anything else from it ?

[AntonioR]

I think I figured it out. If you have previously installed the old "Chrome HD Fix" you will be missing some textures for original Chrome (because the installer would delete them) and the HUD will not render properly. To spare you the trouble of re-installing the entire game, here are the missing textures, read the included "info.txt" to see where to put them: {LINK REMOVED}http://www.mediafire.com/file/fidiisd2zxf2ck6/Chrome_missing_files.rar
I have updated the ModDB page with this info and you can find the download link there, since Steam doesn't want to display it here.

[Marcin_89]

Thanks.
Btw. Shuttle Mission, the forest is glitched i think its LOD fault. When i move its dissapearing..

[AntonioR]

I know, I mentioned it in the included "instructions.txt" under "4. Visual fidelity (optional) -Warning", and I have included the files for the levels where it happens.

[Marcin_89]

Great mod, thank you.
But i have a request. Could you edit an inventory and make it bigger ?

[AntonioR]

I already tried making a program to do it, but failed. You can edit the GUI files to make things bigger/smaller, but the problem is you also need to calculate the new positions of various elements. And since there are many different elements and some positions are relative to the screen and some to each other I never figured out the correct solution.

BTW, I believe the author of the old "Chrome Widescreen Mod" made a full editor to edit the GUI, but all the download links are dead on his blog. I'm not sure if he ever released the editor to public. I tried contacting him 2 months ago, but he never replied to my email. Maybe someone here has it if he released it.

EDIT: Ignore the text above, I completely misunderstood. I thought you wanted bigger inventory GUI, but you probably wanted to be able to put more items in the inventory. I ran out of space on my hard drive and had to delete some stuff including Chrome and SpecForce. I may look into it some other time.

[-|Nur|-]

Nice work! Makes a rather bad game at least a bit more enjoyable.

For the record, initially the game crashed on startup after having installed the mod, but I was apparently using the wrong dll file: the Steam Chrome seems to be the "Gold" version or whatever while I thought it was vanilla (and used the corresponding dll file).