Tiberian Sun, Windows 8

[MajorK]

I'm fairly certain this is an issue related to W8's Metro. As where Windows 7 had the same issues with Aero, windows 8 also has them (other games such as Warcraft 3 present the same issues as they would when using Aero ie; washed out videos, or the videos not playing at all.) Of course, windows 8 does not have an ability to disable metro. Hopefully with 8.1 we might get this resolved.

[pichorra]

The problem is that Windows 8 can't display less-than-32bits colors at all. Microsoft did some kind of wrapper that display those colors at 32-bits, and such wrapper do not work very well. A friend of mine had a issue with Counter-Strike 1.6 because he was running it at 16-bits colors mode, and because this, the game was just running pretty odd. After changing to 32-bits everything started to work fine. This wrapper is probably how Microsoft tried to not solve, but bypass this problem.

 

I don't think Microsoft is going to fix this issue, even in next version of Windows, or the next of the next. Maintaining legacy technologies are somehow expansive, and that money could be invested in something else. What is necessary with Tiberian Sun is some kind of a good wrapper, reimplementing the legacy ddraw technologies into a newer one (OpenGL, as example).

[richard.malone]

How to get Tiberium Sun working on Windows 8/8.1 (at least for me)

 

Go to http://bitpatch.com/ddwrapper.html and download DDwrapper, extract into the TS directory with Game.exe in it. Open aqrit.cfg in wordpad, set NoVideoMemory = 1. Then create a shortcut to game.exe and set launch options to "game.exe -ui". Next go to the compatibility tab and select reduce color mode 16-bit and "Disable high dpi".

 

Next go to sun.ini and change ScreenHeight to be 80 pixels less than your screen height. For example, I have a 1080px high screen so I set ScreenHeight=1000. Now run the game. It should be in pseudo fullscreen, you should see the menus and there shouldn't be any lag in game. There will be some small artifacts when you scroll around, but nothing major. Also the taskbar flashes when you scroll down, but again I can live with that.

 

Twisted Insurrection: The launcher doesn't like ddraw.dll so just rename Game.dat to game.exe and follow the above instruction.

 

Hope this works,

Richard

[Tekathurrai]

Well, I've read through this whole thread and still having the lag problem. I was able to fix the menu problem using the TS_Win8fix. However, if I edit the resolution past the 800x600 or whatever default, I lag when I move my mouse at all. I've tried using the ddwrapper fix, but then my menu problem is back, and the lag is still there.

 

I've played with the compatibility, administrator options, 16-bits, everything. I'm running Windows 8.1, i5-3570k, GTX 770, 8GB RAM. Has there been any progress on the lag fix since? Also, I've tried using the CnCGraphicsPatcher, and it does not seem to make any difference.

 

Thanks.

[Shaggy Alonso]

How to get Tiberian Sun working on Windows 8/8.1 (at least for me)

 

Go to http://bitpatch.com/ddwrapper.html and download DDwrapper, extract into the TS directory with Game.exe in it. Open aqrit.cfg in wordpad, set NoVideoMemory = 1. Then create a shortcut to game.exe and set launch options to "game.exe -ui". Next go to the compatibility tab and select reduce color mode 16-bit and "Disable high dpi".

 

Next go to sun.ini and change ScreenHeight to be 80 pixels less than your screen height. For example, I have a 1080px high screen so I set ScreenHeight=1000. Now run the game. It should be in pseudo fullscreen, you should see the menus and there shouldn't be any lag in game. There will be some small artifacts when you scroll around, but nothing major. Also the taskbar flashes when you scroll down, but again I can live with that.

 

Twisted Insurrection: The launcher doesn't like ddraw.dll so just rename Game.dat to game.exe and follow the above instruction.

 

Hope this works,

Richard

 

I think you fixed it! Thanks so much for figuring this out, was dying to play this classic, the above explanation is the only one that sorts the screen lagging for me. Thanks again!

[avantgreen]

Wow thanks that solves the mouse problem too! Is there a way to run it in windowed mode? "-win" just forces it to run in a corner in full screen.

[Nyerguds]

Sadly, Tiberian Sun's "-win" only works in 16-bit colour mode, which Win8 doesn't have. Two notably missing features in ddwrapper are windowed mode and frame rate limiting, though windowed mode is excusable since most old fullscreen games never bothered correcting the 0,0 offset for their mouse position, making them unplayable in windowed mode since the mouse position would be wrong unless it's put in that upper left corner. Cnc-DDraw does some extra hacks to correct that.

[Shaggy Alonso]

Does anyone know if the actual game resolution can be changed for TS? Any alterations I make to it, either in the sun.ini file or the game itself, seem only to change the dimensions of the screen. The native resolution of my laptop is 1366 x 768, so at this resolution the game units are tiny. Any ideas?

[Iran]

Win8 not only has 16-bit color mode but it sets the color mode on only that program, not the whole desktop.

[Tore]

Does anyone know if the actual game resolution can be changed for TS? Any alterations I make to it, either in the sun.ini file or the game itself, seem only to change the dimensions of the screen. The native resolution of my laptop is 1366 x 768, so at this resolution the game units are tiny. Any ideas?

 

That's pretty much what changing the resolution does for 2D and "2.5D" games. You can only see more of the screen as the content in the game can't adapt.

[Shaggy Alonso]

Does anyone know if the actual game resolution can be changed for TS? Any alterations I make to it, either in the sun.ini file or the game itself, seem only to change the dimensions of the screen. The native resolution of my laptop is 1366 x 768, so at this resolution the game units are tiny. Any ideas?

 

That's pretty much what changing the resolution does for 2D and "2.5D" games. You can only see more of the screen as the content in the game can't adapt.

 

I can happily change the resolution for all the other old C&C games, including Red Alert 2, which I believe was made with the same engine as TS wasn't it?

[avantgreen]

How to get Tiberian Sun working on Windows 8/8.1 (at least for me)

 

Go to http://bitpatch.com/ddwrapper.html and download DDwrapper, extract into the TS directory with Game.exe in it. Open aqrit.cfg in wordpad, set NoVideoMemory = 1. Then create a shortcut to game.exe and set launch options to "game.exe -ui". Next go to the compatibility tab and select reduce color mode 16-bit and "Disable high dpi".

 

Next go to sun.ini and change ScreenHeight to be 80 pixels less than your screen height. For example, I have a 1080px high screen so I set ScreenHeight=1000. Now run the game. It should be in pseudo fullscreen, you should see the menus and there shouldn't be any lag in game. There will be some small artifacts when you scroll around, but nothing major. Also the taskbar flashes when you scroll down, but again I can live with that.

 

Twisted Insurrection: The launcher doesn't like ddraw.dll so just rename Game.dat to game.exe and follow the above instruction.

 

Hope this works,

Richard

 

Main Execution for Tiberian Sun has stopped working. Everytime I launch it.

However with the -win also after -ui it loads just fine, but, in a corner lol *edit nvm, it crashes on mission start same message.

[Tore]

I can happily change the resolution for all the other old C&C games, including Red Alert 2, which I believe was made with the same engine as TS wasn't it?

 

Changing the resolution in all of those games does exactly the same, In C&C1 and RA1 you can stretch the screen if you use cnc-ddraw, but that's about it. The games contains only graphics in one size.

 

As illustrated here:

http://tore.cnc-comm.com/stuff/datsidebar4.png C&C1 in 1920 x 1200

http://tore.cnc-comm.com/stuff/rasidebar1920x1080.png RA1 in 1920 x 1080

http://cnc-comm.com/community/index.php?action=media;sa=media;in=735 TS in 1680 × 1050

 

If you want the game to fill your screen properly, but not make your view large and units tiny choose a lower resolution that matches your aspect ratio.

 

 

[avantgreen]

So is 64-bit Windows8 possible to run this 16-bit game?

[FunkyFr3sh]

there are many people playing this game online with win8

[richard.malone]

I had to reinstall windows 8.1 and forgot how to setup this, so referred to my above message which I have noticed is slightly incorrect. But I have improved it anyway so here goes (not for the feint of heart).

 

Go to http://bitpatch.com/ddwrapper.html and download DDwrapper, extract into the TS directory with Game.exe in it. Open aqrit.cfg in wordpad, set NoVideoMemory = 1 only. Then right click on game.exe and set the compatibility tab to "reduce color mode 16-bit" and "Disable high dpi"

 

Now I have a largish monitor (1920x1080) and was sick of squinting so I wanted to run it at a lower res, say 1280x720, but I wanted to do it from a batch file. I found out about a program to do this while try to get Z to run. This is QRes, get it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/qres/ and extract to the same directory.

 

(The next few programs are optional, but will enhance the experience.) Next I was annoyed by the flickering caused by the taskbar, so I downloaded TaskBarHider from http://www.itsamples.com/taskbar-hider.html and again extracted it to the same directory. And I wanted to minimise all running programs so I used NirCmd from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.zip and extract in the same place. These last two will need to be run once just to get rid of the message (you can close them immediately).

 

Ok, so you now have all the required programs. Create a batch file called game.bat in the same directory as all the other program .exes and type the following:

 

#Set the gaming resolution
qres /x:1280 /y:720

#The next four commands minimise all the open programs
nircmd sendkey lwin down #The next four commands minimise all the open programs
nircmd sendkey d down
nircmd sendkey lwin up
nircmd sendkey d up

#hide the taskbar
start TaskBarHider.exe
#Stops things going too quickly
choice /t 1 /d y    
start TaskBarHider.exe --hide  

#run the game
Game.exe -win   

#Now clean up and return to desktop resolution
TaskBarHider.exe --show --exit  
nircmd closeprocess TaskBarHider.exe
qres /x:1920 /y:1080   

 

The desktop resolution can be changed to whatever you run. Finally, I have noticed people struggling to get custom resolutions out of TS. If that includes you, now edit SUN.ini and replace the [Video] section with this:

 

[Video]
AllowHiResModes=yes
VideoBackBuffer=No
ScreenWidth=1272
ScreenHeight=680
StretchMovies=no 

 

That's it. When you double click the .bat file, TS should load at a suitable resolution and without glitches. Long process, but worth it for such a great game. Best of luck.

Richard

[Blackbird]

The ddwrapper with the wine stuff works for me, but I have different problem.

Every time I enter the menu and save game/close it, it freezes the game. I thought it's something to do with write permissions, but no dice.

Tried running the game as admin and unchecking read-only on the folder, but nothing.

And the bitpatch ddwapper crashes on startup no matter what I do.

 

So I just reliazed what's wrong. For some reason the in-game menu randomly disaapers so the game was paused with invisible menu. So all I had to to was Resume Mission.

It's funny because everything else is fine so far. No flickering or any other graphical glitches.

[Paran01ac]

Sorry for reviving old thread, just wanted to say that I fixed NO MENUS / INVISIBLE MENUS / FREEZE issues with installing my favorite 337.88 geforce driver, Tib Sun now runs perfect as before. Game is licensed First Decade + community patch 103 rev4.