Widescreen hack and some other fixes aka AiO Patch

[Diablonar]

Could you update main post with both the latest AiO and latest Gold Pack at same patch level?

[Morell]

test the pack on viruses. My antiviruses claims it to be okay, but when unpacking, they beep for active virus infected file.

[Arokhs Twin]

It's clean with malware bytes and Bullguard (scanned on my PC) plus Symantec (on the server) I've updated the latest version.

[UCyborg]

Diablonar has brought an interesting issue to my attention (thank you!). And searching the forums, there was another person experiencing this back in 2010:



This happens only when system locale is set to Japanese here:



The game calls API function GetSystemDefaultLCID and if it returns Japanese, displays said message and quit. Needless to say, I removed the restriction.

Could you update main post with both the latest AiO and latest Gold Pack at same patch level?

Will do.

test the pack on viruses. My antiviruses claims it to be okay, but when unpacking, they beep for active virus infected file.

It's clean with malware bytes and Bullguard (scanned on my PC) plus Symantec (on the server)

Some anti-virus software flag some files as infected, it's false positive. I heard some files are even flagged as suspicious when they haven't been downloaded enough times, which happens every time I upload a new version. Nothing can be done about it except complain to anti-virus software makers. Every single bit of code was written for the sole purpose of fixing deficiencies in game executables or adding some bits of new functionality. I have no interest in infecting other people's computers with viruses/malware etc. Part of the patch is available in source code form on Github. The rest are modifications to excutable files. I don't have documentation files because at some point they were invalidated, modifying compiled executables is not the most intuitive task. You could compare .text section with the originals to construct what was changed code-wise. If you ran the game with certain monitoring software, you'd see that the it doesn't make any harmful changes to the system or send any of your data over the internet.

Personally, I haven't used an anti-virus product since 2011. They seem to just get in the way. If I get something new that might be shady, it's tested in an isolated environment before I let it run on host machine.

Some guy over at MSFN forums used to have a problem with Aero Glass utility, particularly the functionality for allowing usage of unsigned themes for Windows. Suspected everything from permission issues to his Windows being in Russian. Turned out his anti-virus was blocking it (ESET Smart Security).

Also check out this blog post from Nir Sofer, the guy behind many utility programs.

I've updated the latest version.

Hate to bug you, but now you can update it again!

[Morell]

It's clean with malware bytes and Bullguard (scanned on my PC) plus Symantec (on the server) I've updated the latest version.

Good. I was afraid and earsed my whole virtual PC. (and restored it again from backup, I do it often as I test software on it... or when I get angry.) Drakan wasn't working anyway on virtual... what's funny is that the version without any patches worked the best for me. AiO patch made game totaly out, didn't even oppened window with menu...

Hey, if you can make Drakan run on virtual graphic cards, you might make it acessible for sure, as virtual computers are getting quite usable for using old software and games. (you cannot play 16-bit games on 64-bit system, not to mention my favourite 3D ripper DX, which simply needs 32 bit system)
And drakan is crazy about graphic cards...

[UCyborg]

Hm, never heard of an issue where the game just wouldn't open. Did you install 445 Patch before applying AiO Patch? You can also try the link with my copy of the game on the first page. There is however a problem with DIrectDraw implementation on Windows 8/8.1 where the game just bugs out if you have desktop extended through multiple monitors (screens blink, almost everything is black).

Virtual machines never had a decent 3D support for gaming. VirtualBox doesn't support anything that uses ddraw.dll, so everything from DirectDraw 1 to Direct3D 7 is a no go. It runs slowly in VMware and some textures don't render. Anyway, virtual machine is an overkill for this. Virtualization software vendors simply don't have gaming anywhere in their priority list, and Drakan is a pretty serious 3D game. If you could make it better compatible with virtual machines, you could make it work better on real one as well. The only feasible way of improving compatibility without game's source code is replacing the DirectDraw/DIrect3D implementation game uses for rendering.

If graphics cards supports Direct3D 11, one can simply use dgVoodoo 2 wrapper, it will convert old rendering calls to Direct3D 11. It's a really good stuff for old games, particularly for problematic ones. Drakan fared pretty well, but I bet you can't get past difficulty selection screen with the un-patched versions of the game without crashing. Even just dgVoodoo can help with that. There's also WineD3D, but it's on the slower side.

[Morell]

Of course I did. I'll try it again, because one of files was pointed as virus in Drakan folder so I tried it with the same file from demo drakan folder.
I have quite new graphic card as well as the rest of PC, it handles virtualisation quite well, I run World of Warcraft on virtual (laggy rotating of camera, but that doesn't matter), as well as other 3D games, like Heroes5, or old StarTron. Even problematic SpaceHawk works perfect, while on my brothers NB win 7 32-bit it doesn't.
You hit the point with VMware not rendering textures correct and not getting over difficoulty selection, but saves didn't worked either. Turning Drakan into openGL is no solution for me, although it would be playable, I need DirectX as I'm extracting models from it with 3D Ripper DX and that works with DX aplications only.
That is why I need it only to work on virtual, No need for the game to run on my Win 10. Ripper won't do its job on 64bit system. (Gah, i wish that developer released the source for 3D ruipper to the public so someone could continue developing this great piece of software...)

[UCyborg]

Drakan Demo folder has patched files for the demo version. It's not finished, and even if you slapped everything in from full AiO Patch, you'd still have bugs that were fixed with patches. Demo version used the earliest publicly available iteration of the engine. Maybe with few tricks you could run the demo level as intended with fully patched engine from the full version.

What's the issue with Ripper? Does it produce unusable files?

[Morell]

No, 3D ripper is well written... only not developed anymore. under 64 bit it actualy run, but cannot rip, it creates no files at all. it doesn't rip.
Actualy, having 3D Ripper DX working on 64-bit system ripping is wild dream for me... although nt sure how much games it can rip as it rips some dx 9 games and few on older DX versions. Surely not ultimate tool, but the best that was made.

[UCyborg]

Weird, it must be something else about your PC that's bothering it, both my systems are 64-bit and it seems to work. F12 definitely puts some files in the specified folder. AFAIK, only 32-bit programs that rely on 32-bit kernel drivers don't work on 64-bit systems. I agree it would be useful if it was updated to work with newer Direct3D versions and OpenGL.

[Morell]

It works? Wait, a small idea.... yeah, it just cannot save on my system drive without admin rights. but my other drive it saves. Thanks, That should have hit me long ago.
(I still have thinking from using windows XP)
Reall pitty is that there is no sourcecode of this ripper aviable, that program might have a future...

[UCyborg]

Glad you sorted out, I was going to suggest to make sure security software isn't interfering. Ripper uses DLL injection. I just tested with everything set to default.

It seems VMware's graphics driver for newer Windows versions above XP is a bit better for Drakan, but things are still missing. At least menus work better and bump mapping works properly (it crashes on XP if enabled).

The issue with crashing on difficulty screen and black menu background is related to the fact that the game originally specifies it wants DirectDraw surface where the background is copied that is also a mipmap, which has to be power-of-two in dimensions, maybe square as well. The actual dimensions are the current screen resolution. Old graphics drivers must have allowed that. It crashes because game tries to access the non-existent surface, 445++ patch skipped over the code that accessed it, AiO Patch prevents creation of the surface from failing in the first place by removing mipmap flag in such scenario. The rest of the issues specific to virtual hardware, who knows.

[Morell]

As you said, gaming is not priority for vmvare.... neither mine. Almost everything I wanted from the game is already extracted. only three models (and their textures) remain.

I know how Drakan is tricky, from my four computers it worked on one 100% on one with saves for skipping choosing difficouilty (crash) and on the rest it didn't work at all.

[UCyborg]

From my experience, Drakan is actually on the less tricky side, some old games have weirder problems. I ran it on 8 different computers, the one major issue I remember, on the first computer all those years back, when I didn't know I could turn off lens flare effects to prevent crashes when a lot them are on the screen. Later, patch 445++ was already a thing. And a random crash there and there. Managed to fix the one with the Giant grabbing you and game crashing. But I still suspect at least one possible cause for remaining crashes might be the game corrupting the save data. I still don't understand why the crash occuring when leaving Alwarren existed, the current fix is actually just a workaround.

And then you have crashes when running the game server, although at least one possible cause are errors in custom player created levels. Would have to run the server for some time with only stock levels, then mix in custom ones. It's tricky, because last time I tried it, running the same level when it crashed last time didn't trigger, must have been something from previous levels. If it would be possible to fix them with the game in only binary form, it would take a lot of effort and time. And I don't see anyone ever implementing whole Drakan engine from scratch.

[UCyborg]

AFAIK, only 32-bit programs that rely on 32-bit kernel drivers don't work on 64-bit systems.

3D Ripper DX does have 32-bit kernel driver in its folder, must be for global system monitoring feature. I tried the trick with preventing the editor from starting 3D view and starting it via Ripper with correct parameters, Ripper just crashes it. Launching it with cmd with the correct parameters works or launching via Ripper without parameters...so Ripper can't normally hook editor's 3D engine.