Windows compatibility help with an old game.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

One of the reasons I have maintained a working Windows 7 game is there is an older game called Race Driver GRID (the original first one) that I enjoy playing sometimes. This is one of those older games that had a pre-written "list" of supported video cards in the game's files. When we play the game on later or newer systems with a video card not in the list it defaults to 1280x720, low graphics, makes all the graphics blurry and fuzzy with no LOD/Detail, disables all graphics settings in the graphics menu, etc.

This was a steam game. I say was because it was de-listed from the steam store at some point in time. I do own the steam version here on Steam and you can view it's community forums here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/12750/discussions/

So what I need help with is this: At one point years ago I had found something either in google or searching the game's forums that we can edit the pre-defined list of video cards for the game by opening one of the game's files with notepad and it says something like "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780" and just directly edit that to whatever our current video card is showing as in Device Manager like "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti", save the file and then our current card will be identified and the game will work, enable all graphics settings, look correct and work.

Currently my older Windows 7 computer uses a GTX 780 Ti and that's in the list and I boot that system when I want to play this game and it works. But I would like to be able to use it on my newer computer with my 3070 Ti and Windows 11. All I have to do is figure out which file to edit and where to put the entry in.

I've tried searching their forums on steam and I couldn't find it. I tried searching in google, I couldn't find an answer there. I tried searching each one of their files and I couldn't find it. I tried getting Windows to text-search the game's entire folder and even on an NVME drive the search just ran for like 10 hours and couldn't find anything in the game's folder, eventually I had to stop it and go to sleep.

I wonder if someone could help me figure out how to do this and get this game working? It's something old that has been nagging at me for a long time.

[Thermal Lance]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Komarimaru:

Początkowo opublikowane przez BOTThermal Lance v1.0 RC2:

Okay its a DX9 game.

Maybe try using DGVoodoo2. Fairly recently it added support for DX9. Maybe you can use it to spoof an older card.

Bit like I did to play mechwarrior 4 on this computer.

Interesting.... I play Mechwarrior 4 no issues with a native install on my machine, hmm...

Wonder what the difference is between us, where you needed a layer to play.

It kept whining about me using an unsupported graphic card. IDK if it makes a difference but it was MW4 Mercenaries. I used dgvoodoo to make it believe I was using some generic videocard and it ran.

Not sure what was up but the computer I was using is the old brick.

i5-3470
GT 1030

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

I was going to add a comment about this game in this thread: There are descriptions like posted above to edit a couple files and get the game to "run" at 1080p but all of the game's textures are fuzzy and blurred out with no detail. If it's someone new to the game that has never played it "way back when", they wouldn't know anything was wrong. But I have (and still do) play it on the original hardware it was designed for and I can see the difference in textures and it looks awful. So yeah that works and we can get it to run at 1080p, but it doesn't look right because it doesn't know my GPU.

[( ( < < <🤖> > > ) )]

i probably dont notice it looking bad... coz it looks ok to me for a 2008 game on win 11..

never had to play around with anything...

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Komarimaru:

Get the fix on Pcgamingwiki

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/2579-race-driver-grid-6-8-thread-cpus-fix-resolution-fix/

Steam messed up the ordering in this thread and I didn't see your post when I was typing my latest then when I posted my recent one my comment was on page 1, your comment didn't show, then I refreshed it and everything re-ordered suddenly. Anyway I see it now. And wow thanks! I had no idea this existed. I will try this a little later tonight after I go get some food in a moment.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Qbert ⭐:

Just tried using a GTX 1060 and did quite good with textures, also no input lag
https://imgur.com/a/WkFcEpy

I will do some tests in the morning at 1080p, almost 2 AM here lol

The problems I saw even when I had my 1080 Ti was some of the graphics settings wouldn't apply. Like higher resolution, anti-aliasing, etc. You can select em in settings, click apply, the game restarts, then nothing changed.

[Kage Goomba]

Początkowo opublikowane przez BOTThermal Lance v1.0 RC2:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kage Goomba:

Ahh Mechwarrior 4 - takes me back.
I miss those days.

MechWarrior 2. Now -I- miss those days...

Eeeey - I started there you know :)

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Komarimaru:

Get the fix on Pcgamingwiki

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/2579-race-driver-grid-6-8-thread-cpus-fix-resolution-fix/

I downloaded and ran their fix for the steam version which seems to actually be working and have the game running correctly. But for some reason the game isn't registering inputs from my keyboard in the game. I can go in the options menu and change key bindings, press something on the keyboard to change the accelerate key and it looks like it applies correctly then when I get in a race and press that key .. nothing happens. It's so weird. I'm not sure about what to do with that.

[Thermal Lance]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kage Goomba:

Początkowo opublikowane przez BOTThermal Lance v1.0 RC2:

MechWarrior 2. Now -I- miss those days...

Eeeey - I started there you know :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnscgQK7mUY

Instant nostalgia.


OKAY, No more derailing from me. Sorry OP, sometimes I get carried away.

Good luck.

[Komarimaru]

Początkowo opublikowane przez 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Komarimaru:

Get the fix on Pcgamingwiki

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/2579-race-driver-grid-6-8-thread-cpus-fix-resolution-fix/

I downloaded and ran their fix for the steam version which seems to actually be working and have the game running correctly. But for some reason the game isn't registering inputs from my keyboard in the game. I can go in the options menu and change key bindings, press something on the keyboard to change the accelerate key and it looks like it applies correctly then when I get in a race and press that key .. nothing happens. It's so weird. I'm not sure about what to do with that.

Uh, not sure, I've always used a controller for it.

https://youtu.be/8NgWbnckUi8

When it finishes doing the youtube compression, I show all the settings, resolution etc there. But using a controller.

[Komarimaru]

Początkowo opublikowane przez BOTThermal Lance v1.0 RC2:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Kage Goomba:

Eeeey - I started there you know :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnscgQK7mUY

Instant nostalgia.


OKAY, No more derailing from me. Sorry OP, sometimes I get carried away.

Good luck.

I present..
https://youtu.be/mpNVDnNqYRQ
With the mektek patches as well for balance and new mechs.

[Thermal Lance]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Komarimaru:

Początkowo opublikowane przez BOTThermal Lance v1.0 RC2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnscgQK7mUY

Instant nostalgia.


OKAY, No more derailing from me. Sorry OP, sometimes I get carried away.

Good luck.

I present..
https://youtu.be/mpNVDnNqYRQ
With the mektek patches as well for balance and new mechs.

This is indeed the version I tried to run.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Komarimaru:

Uh, not sure, I've always used a controller for it.

https://youtu.be/8NgWbnckUi8

When it finishes doing the youtube compression, I show all the settings, resolution etc there. But using a controller.

I figured it out. It was my steering / granularity settings under advanced controls. It must of been an old driver profile from years ago. I figured it out and it works now. Looks like the fix you found is perfect. So that's it! It works great in Windows 11 now. Thanks for finding that. <3

[Komarimaru]

There's always an easy fix to get older games to run on modern hardware and operating systems. I've yet to not be able to run a game well on current hardware and Windows 10 and 11.

So for future reference for anyone curious.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home
Is your friend. You love it, you look up games before buying them etc. And a massive resource to get even ya old legacy games working better than before.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

And for some reason I came up with a brainstorm moment that didn't occur to me over the past few years, but I figured it out. I just searched the entire game folder in windows explorer for all *.xml files and looked at each one, one-by-one to find it and I found it.

So about the textures. For my my Steam is installed in D:\Games\Steam, so for me I went in this folder: D:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Grid\system and opened a file named hardware_settings_ratings.xml

I scrolled down to find the <graphics_card> section and just copy-pasted one of the existing entries and then after duplicating it I modified it to add a new entry. So now part of my file looks like this:

<restrict_if name="name" op="str_str" value="GeForce 9">
<restrict_set name="rating" default="3" />
</restrict_if>

<restrict_if name="name" op="str_str" value="GeForce RTX">
<restrict_set name="rating" default="3" />
</restrict_if>

<restrict_if name="name" op="str_str" value="Radeon X13">
<restrict_set name="rating" default="1" />
</restrict_if>

Which the "GeForce RTX" entry is my own, and "3" is the maximum graphics quality setting, so with this entry I'm telling the game to switch to the maximum graphics setting when it detects an Nvidia RTX video card. If someone had a GTX card they would edit it to say GeForce GTX for example. If you want to be doubly sure you could go ahead and type out the whole string like we see in device manager in windows. I tried it and put in: "GeForce RTX 3070 Ti" and that worked too.

[Komarimaru]

Hmm, the fix should have defaulted to max as I showed in the video of Ultra. Quite odd that. did you have files previously left over per chance? I had to bust out my DVD and re-install it with my USB Bluray drive. Why my horrible driving since don't think I've played the game in uh... well over a decade at least.

Edit:
Ya, it already did those changes for me, weird.
https://i.imgur.com/NoSDwI1.png