Widescreen hack and some other fixes aka AiO Patch

[Arokhs Twin]

Updated on downloads page.

[UCyborg]

You forgot to update the link on the main page. Who knew I would upload so many revisions in the end. I keep finding things to improve.

[Arokhs Twin]

Yeah - updated now. There shouldn't be a direct link on the front page but I've updated the news page.

I could make you an publisher account so you can update the main news page as well if you like?

[UCyborg]

You actually did put direct link to it some time ago on the front page. It's in the side menu, in the section right below Active Clans, outdated now that you put new version up.

I wouldn't mind the having the account, though there won't be any big news anymore since most major enhancements are already done. If I find the will, Ruined Village and Volcano levels still need to be updated for larger view distance.

[Arokhs Twin]

Oh yeah, so I did I've updated it now. I kind of forget things since I don't update or maintain the wordpress based site often.

[UCyborg]

I get you on forgetting things about the main site. But hey, at least we have more up-to date information here on the forums. Well, now you can update the file again. I've put together another update, definitely last one this year. Here's the changelog and download:

• If game window doesn't have the focus, it will run at 20 FPS and sleep when the limit is reached to reduce CPU usage.
• Level Editor 3D engine will idle unless the user is interacting with it instead of hogging the CPU while not doing anything.
• Made game and Level Editor 3D engine's message loops more conventional (PeekMessage called without message filtering).
• Removed DisableProcessWindowsGhosting hack, not needed anymore due to above fix, game will never appear frozen unless it's actually frozen.
• Level Editor in conjunction with 3D engine now appears to run more stable due to message loop fix.

So to conclude, game doesn't waste CPU cycles when they aren't needed. In addition, message loop, which every Windows graphical program must have to process events, has been fixed and along with it, oddities that have occurred because of the way it worked before.

The first oddity, Desktop Window Manager would consider the game unresponsive under certain circumstances and attempt to ghost it, so the previous workaround was to disable the ghosting feature. The feature is described on MSDN and it's generally good to have it enabled.

The side effect of this fix seems to be, I can't get the editor to crash anymore the way I could before. Previously, I could position the camera for eg. in the last part of Wartok Canyons, activate the 3D view and start flying around, mashing the button for increasing fog depth and the crash was guaranteed.

[Arokhs Twin]

OK - updated both links and uploaded to the site

[UCyborg]

Damn, I forgot to test editor's 3D engine in model viewing mode, so I had to update it again. Only dinput.dll in Editor folder was modified, which is responsible for keeping CPU usage down when nothing is going on. So the current version is now 2.43.

[UCyborg]

Just a minor aesthetic update for the editing tools. I've embedded manifest in executables that enables Visual Styles, so whole user interface appearance matches Windows theme, instead of current mostly retro appearance. Mostly because menus for example always look according to the theme, as well as window borders. But elements like buttons, checkboxes, scrollbars, tabs etc. are straight from Windows 95 without that manifest.

[Arokhs Twin]

The version 2.43 is the latest I've uploaded - is this the latest with the UI improvement?

[UCyborg]

Right, forgot to rename it when I uploaded it to Google Drive. It's supposed to be 2.46. Renamed it now. With Google, the name of the file as it appears is independent of the name of the file you upload from your hard drive, unless you don't use versioning feature to keep the same link. If the ReadMe is 24.12.2016, that's how you know you got the latest one.

ReadMe also has the list of known issues now as well so they're written at two places. Interestingly, the CPU usage fix for the editor's 3D engine doesn't work universally. It crashes on Windows 2000. I tested it on Windows 10, XP and 2000 as I don't have anything in between installed anywhere right now, I assume it works on those systems. The technique I use quite simple though so it's surprising it breaks on 2000 in particular.

It's contained in Editor folder in dinput.dll and can be simply be deleted if it doesn't work, but it's nice if it does as it's not really normal thing these days to see application utilizing entire CPU core not doing anything. It's really the only fix that can be buggy. And while it's true that if any, probably very few people would need everything to run properly on very old systems, it's still interesting from technical standpoint.

Other than that, I wish I knew what's the deal with texture previews not rendering correctly when Desktop Window Manager is active when it comes to larger textures. I tried it few months back on Windows NT for laughs (yes, the NT version of Windows 95) and the bug shows there as well. And 'ol NT doesn't even have DWM! There is some trigger on Vista/7 that turns DWM off when the editor is started on those systems so the bug doesn't show there. And it's possible to force it off on Windows 8, though there right portion of the screen may turn black if you do. And on 10, everything goes black if you try. But it's a workaround, not a fix, so...

[Arokhs Twin]

Ill update it on the site as it's not the latest one.

[UCyborg]

I've hacked together another update, there was a funny glitch with multiplayer if the player had game minimized when the level transition happened. Again, only in fullscreen mode.

There is also a new dedicated server launcher in the ZIP, it just keeps the server running if it crashes and suppresses Windows' crash dialog without the need to globally disable crash dialog with editing registry settings. Can be used exactly like Drakan.exe, except there's no need to pass -dedicated parameter as it does by itself.

[Arokhs Twin]

Ill update the main page

[UCyborg]

Made another tweak for that pesky fullscreen disconnect issue, the very first variant worked without issues because certain code was executed every time around the game loop, then I changed that to skip the section with a lot of rendering calls when the game is minimized, the only problem is there must be some code in between that affects other things as well.

Those strange ties between different tasks the engine does to make everything go must be the reason why there were issues in the first place with disconnects when it's minimized. The funny problem I thought I completely fixed the last time shows itself with the player who happened to have the game minimized when the level transition happens would just sort of slide around their spawn area. The fix works with simple "execute everything the first couple of times after the map loads" method, the only difference from the last update is how many times it does it.

So we got the best from both the first fix I came up with and the second that doesn't make as much redundant calls when they aren't needed.