Hard Light Productions Forums

General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: z1x on January 08, 2007, 02:27:54 am

Title: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: z1x on January 08, 2007, 02:27:54 am
Well i just found out about this, so i posted it, so anyone wanting to play FS1 in hires like i did,
can get a crack at it too. The solution was quite simple!

Yups, that's right, i just found a way to run FS1 in 1600x1200 without using a port of any kind.
I was really anoyed that i could not play this great game in hires straight from the box,
but then trying to play another game (battle isle Incubation) in hires, i found the solution!
There is an emulator out there called dgVoodoo by DEGE.

"dgVoodoo is a Glide Wrapper that implements Glide 2.11 and Glide 2.43 using
DirectDraw7 and Direct3D7.
dgVoodoo provides support to run Windows-based and DOS-based applications using
Glide, and it can also emulate VESA 2.0 for DOS applications."

Now running FS1 in Glide and setting the dgvoodoo to any resolution your system is able to use,
you can enjoy Freespace 1 streight from the box with hires graphics ingame, and no fuzz. OH JOY!

-z1x

here is a screenshot:
http://troldmosehus.dk/z1x/FS1.JPG (http://troldmosehus.dk/z1x/FS1.JPG)
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: karajorma on January 08, 2007, 03:01:22 am
Very cool :)
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: Huggybaby on January 08, 2007, 03:05:09 am
Indeed, that's a great tip! (And a big screen shot too, it shows me how small my 1024x768 monitor is :eek2:.)

Here's the same image, but in a thumbnail using a link conveniently generated by the fantastic xs.to:

(http://xs511.xs.to/xs511/07021/Big1.jpg.xs.jpg) (http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs511&d=07021&f=Big1.jpg)
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: Harbinger of DOOM on January 08, 2007, 03:12:30 am
OMG, I want that HUD.
lol

Thats a huge screenie, if I wasn't hooked up to my hard-line it'd take forever to load that monster.
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: z1x on January 08, 2007, 03:28:57 am
Sorry about the large screenshot, I made it into a link, speeding things up.
And yeah, that HUD is huge.. lol
I haven't had time to try this trick out on FS2 yet, but i bet it'll work the same way but the HUD might be smaller if i set the resolution in the FS2 setup to 1024x768, and then boost the res in dgVoodoo.
Oh yeah, dgVoodoo also boost the graphics to 32bit. ;) 
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: Mefustae on January 08, 2007, 03:31:25 am
Sorry about the large screenshot, I made it into a link, speeding things up.
Don't apologise, it's a sign of weakness.

Back ot: That's just plain ****ing awesome. :yes:
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: Pnakotus on January 08, 2007, 04:07:34 am
So this makes it possible to play old crappy ugly FS ... in really high res?  Who cares?  It still looks awful.
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: Turey on January 08, 2007, 04:42:32 am
So this makes it possible to play old crappy ugly FS ... in really high res?  Who cares?  It still looks awful.

My thoughts exactly.
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: z1x on January 08, 2007, 04:48:41 am
It may look awful to some, but hey.. playing the game in high res is not a question of it looking great for me, but a question of making the game more playable. Being able to see the ship you are shooting at, is not just a single pixel flickering on the screen, does help me play the game, thus making the gameplay worth even more. But perhaps you have to enjoy Freespace in the first place to see this.
Or it's just a retro-gamer-thing!  ;7
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: Huggybaby on January 08, 2007, 06:20:15 am
Rock on z1x. You can always upgrade to the SCP version later.  ;)
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: Taristin on January 08, 2007, 12:09:18 pm
Well, it does nothing for the low res interface, but the models themselves should look better, assuming you use the reg values to use the large textures...
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: maxxus on February 05, 2007, 05:10:43 am
So awesome...been looking for a way to run original FS in high-res since like 1999 :P

Question though:  The opening cutscene and in-level parts of the game seem to work flawlessly.  However, any interaction with the interface (choosing a pilot, the home screen, mission briefings) all run at about -10x speed. veeerrrry sloooowly.  Did you have this problem and were you able to fix it?  If not, does anybody here have an idea?
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: maxxus on February 05, 2007, 10:10:12 pm
Found the solution..on the Global tab of dgVoodoo, full screen only bit depth can only be set to 16 bit or the 2D interface lags like hell :(  Unsure if there is a workaround
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: IceFire on February 05, 2007, 10:25:41 pm
It doesn't look like its in high res to me.  Its just been taken from 640x480 and blown up...thats what it looks like.  The interface is fixed width pixels...so the HUD should be pretty different (and probably out of position) if it was somehow running at a higher resolution.

FreeSpace 1 never had a high-resolution option.  It was 640x480 regardless of Software, Direct3D, or Glide.  The big advantage of Glide was that the textures were sharper and the graphics were just sharper overall.  Probably better filtering than D3D at the time.  When FreeSpace 2 was in development they spent a lot of time making the engine run properly in Direct3D instead of Glide.  If you hacked the registry you could run FS1 in D3D mode with top level textures...they just never programmed it by default to use them as most D3D cards at the time were crap.
Title: Re: Running FS1 in hires, without a port!
Post by: CP5670 on February 05, 2007, 11:08:46 pm
Quote
If you hacked the registry you could run FS1 in D3D mode with top level textures...they just never programmed it by default to use them as most D3D cards at the time were crap.

This doesn't actually seem to work in D3D, despite the name of the registry flag. The flag does affect software mode, however, and maybe Glide as well.