Our ReVolt Pub

<edit>
A little edit, now that the patch is done, for those who don't read the entire topic.

jigebren @ Apr 16 2010, 10:09 PM wrote:Ok, it's done.
You can download the patch on my website.

Original post is following...
</edit>


It seems that more and more people are using non 4:3 screen nowadays (so called wide screens). I personally don't see the aim of such screens apart from creating a lot of empty space on each sides on a lot of webpages and other documents, (ok, they are good for looking movies), but anyhow, here is not the point...

For now, AFAIK, if you run revolt with a non 4:3 resolution, the image is just streched to fit the screen.
So, as I'm a good guy, I was thinking about you poor rich people with your brand new wide screen, and I was trying to see if there is something to do about it (in my patching way). But it seems to be really harder that I could have believe, and after spending 3 days on it, I did find a lot of interesting things, but unfortunately I didn't achieve to anything great.

I will post soon some screenshots (those I currently have don't show what's wrong, and I have to re-check and re-apply the patching values before). I tried with a resolution of 700x480 (not an usual value, but I choose it so I can compare with 640x480).

great jiggie,
thanks for your efforts.

awesome i was just complaining about this on revolt live about a week ago lol.
i got a widescreen monitor for christmas. all that is different is most of your games are stretched out so everything looks fat (lol) and you have a little more desktop space because of the extra size.

For now, AFAIK, if you run revolt with a non 4:3 resolution, the image is just streched to fit the screen.

you are indeed correct.

So, as I'm a good guy, I was thinking about you poor rich people with your brand new wide screen

lol you are a good guy but im not rich

anyway as soon as you have something let me know, i definitely want to try it out. thanks.

What the ?
Forgive my excitation, but here is the cause: I re-checked my values and write quickly a dirty little tool to patch the exe. In the test before, I did the patch by hand, so I may have done oversight error. And I added a few missing values.

So it seems to work really better now. Take a look at what I think is the first image of revolt in widescreen... I used 640x900 resolution!



I'm quite excited because it's the accomplishment of these hard working days, when I was really fearing I would never achieve this patch.

One of the toughest issue I had was to identify the exe part that determine if an object is seen/drawn on the screen (an optimization which is managed by the exe himself, not by directX as I could have believe).

Here you can see what I got before I was able to figure out this issue:



The issue was not the rocket but look at the extrem upper left and right. You can clearly see missing parts: that's simple, those parts would not have been drawn in a standard 640x480 resolution, but as we enlarge the visible screen, there is more objects/faces to draw.

For the moment, the HUD is at a wrong place. It has to be corrected, but I'm a bit less excited about tweaking this part (as this will probably take a lot more of my time again).

@human & @zipperrulez
Thanks for your support, guys. It was quite desert plains here below...

That's pretty nifty! Wish I had a wide-screen...

wow its looking amazing. i use old crt monitors, but im sure i need to have a widescreen when the crt species becomes extinct. and thats not far away i think.
great job.

I agree. Even though I only own 5:4 monitors, I will probably be able to see a difference when I use my laptop (1280x800) with no monitor connected.

I got mine froo a 42 inch LCD so I would love love love it......

I have an off-aspect monitor the other way. 1280x1024 is 5:4 rather than 4:3.
I get vertical stretch. It's hardly noticeable. You need to figure out how to get the HUD items to clip to the edges like in the 4:3 ones, though. Otherwise, good work.

I'm using a crt too. But in a close future, it's like we won't have the choice

For fun, have you ever seen the frontend like that (you can click on the image):



Looks nice. I'm trying extreme ratio like this to see if there is issues.

For 5:4 and other more vertical ratio, it gives:



It's apparently working, but the font and the HUD (and perhaps the all image itself) seems to be badly resized, and for now I don't have a clue why.

I think you will have to be patient before I can release something. I'm questioning myself about the better way to implement all of my patchs, perhaps regrouping all my stuffs in one, and I don't know if I'm remaining in a patching way or if I will try a loader way...

That's very cool!

I also have laptops with 16:10 and 16:9 widescreens, but you can adjust the video card drivers to keep the right aspect ratio if you choose for 4:3 resolutions, so it won't stretch a 1024x768 res to native (widescreen) resolution.

but this.. is SO much better. Please continue with that add-in, it'll make Revolt last longer!

I have worked again on this issue.

Here is a screenshot after my last modification:
Now the HUD right items are properly aligned to the right (you can compare with first screenshots in this topic). The reverse, etc. signals are well centered. But the menu are a bit to much to the left, and it will stay like that, even in future version, I think.
Keep in mind that I had to modify each value by hand, and it's quite boring. For example, for the speedometer, I had to move each used sprite (red/green little spherical light) one by one to the right position.



I was thinking about integrating it into WolfR4, and I yesterday I wrote all the code for it. But some value refused to let themselves patched (the pest). After trying to understand why, I have learned that value in the .rdata section of the exe file are usualy read-only... but, well, who feel concerned...? To conclude: I can't add it to WolfR4 and will made a little other patch to modify directly the exe file (like the 512 patch).

But it wil be very simple (let's say minimalist: no interface, etc.). Interface and settings saving/restore will wait.

So only one new ratio will be supported (in a first time?), and I'd like to know which is the more usual value today.
So can you tell me here your screen resolution (not the one you use, the real screen's one, which of course is likely to be the same for LCD), or just your screen ratio is enough (ratio = width / height).

jigebren @ Apr 15 2010, 03:48 PM wrote: So only one new ratio will be supported (in a first time?), and I'd like to know which is the more usual value today.
So can you tell me here your screen resolution (not the one you use, the real screen's one, which of course is likely to be the same for LCD), or just your screen ratio is enough (ratio = width / height).

My native LCD resolution is 1680 x 1050.

It's nice to hear that you tried to implement it, but it's such a shame that the patch currently won't be able to support more than one screen ratio. I hope it's possible to use both the 512patch and the screen ratio fix at the same time, though.

The most used resolution for me is 1280x1024, but since 5:4 is pretty close to 4:3, I would suggest that you use for the screen ratio 8:5, since it's the most commonly used for wide screen computer monitors that I know of (for example 1280x800 for most laptop screens & 1680x1050 for most widescreen PC monitors). I don't have any screens using 16:9 ratio, but it could be an alternative as well since High Definition is in that ratio.

my screens are 1366x768 or 1280x720, which i belive are both 16:9

jigebren @ Jan 8 2010, 11:37 PM wrote:

great, this allows to look better at your sides when a car wants to overtake you or to look better at the walls/fences

I have been running re-volt on a 1440 x 900 (8:5) screen for more than 2 years. I think re-volt look better in the 8:5 stretched version.. It was my old 5:4 monitor that made the cars look squeezed.
For instance Here is a video of re-volt at 8:5

I've 16:10 I guess (1680x1050), sounds like a nice project

Ok, it's done.
Thanks for your answers. I have made 2 patch versions. One for 16:9 and one for 5:4.
I chose these 2 values instead of 8:5 because they are more 'extreme', and thus will allow more easily to detect issues.

As I said in my last post, the HUD should be properly aligned.
But I know that (so please don't report it to me as a bug):
- menus are not centered (and will probably never be).
- the image during loading level is not centered (and will probably never be).
- for screen ratio < 4:3 (eg. 5:4, a screen less wide than usual), the HUD is not well bottom aligned, but a bit too high.

EDIT: By HUD, I mean all supplementary informations (speed, time, position, turn and wrong way signal, FPS, etc.).

As I can't have tested all possibilities, some texts or sprites could still be at a wrong places, or simply may have disappeared. If you notice oddities like that, please report them.

You can download the Screen aspect ratio patch on my website.


@KDL
16:10 = 8:5

That's great news, Jig

I wonder if a 16:9 display ratio, would look much different if being used on a screen using 16:10 (8:5)? Perhaps using 16:9 was a good idea, maybe I just need to buy a new VGA Cable supporting 1920x1080 then.

The 5:4 Patch works very well, and it's nice to see Re-Volt displaying normally, even though I actually never really saw Re-Volt being that (I never owned a 4:3 Screen in my life). I can say it looks great, tho, even though the Speedometer and the radar isn't placed at the bottom, which I understood was a part of the HUD. I will run a bit with the patch for a while, to see if I notice any weird bugs, so I'll follow up on this topic if I find anything.

I've tested the 16:9 patch as well, and it works just as nice - and with a more fixed HUD. I can't even believe that my VGA Cable that only should support 1680x1050 as the max resolution, currently is running Windows Vista & Re-Volt in 1920x1080. And thanks to the patch, it looks great!

Ok, thanks for the feedback.
A little after I made this patch available, I had started to work more on this patch, adding a GUI to allow all possible screen ratios, but due to the lack of interest here, I have stopped...

Now, I'm thinking about adding a new tab in WolfR4 dedicated to exe file patch, that is to say the 512 patch, and the screen ration patch.
I'm not sure yet, I still have to think about it.

It's a good idea and will help people who don't feel like downloading three programs " to play a R4&#124;512 -track properly.

If the HUD positions can be edited through notepad by code, I would'nt mind using a few hours on positioning things right - are these defined by pixels?

I'm still not sure I'll merge them all, because the 512 patch, the screen ration patch, and all WolfR4 patches are all done in quite a different way, so I think I can't easily share any code between them.
But it could be nice to have them all in one, that's true...


@urnemanden
Unless it is able to detect that the file is in binary mode (not text), I would highly recommend against edit any binary file with notepad. Use a real hexadecimal editor, even a simple one.
But you can't edit the HUD position without a disassembler, because all used values are scattered in the binary file, and to identify them, you have to identify that they are used by some specific functions, so you have first to identify the function, etc.
It's not the most easy thing to do if you have no knowledge at all about 'reverse engineering'.

Wow this is super thanks Jig! I've always wanted more in view instead of stretched; you've made my dream come true!

I was very interested in that GUI you mentioned that could include other aspect ratios because I use three 22" monitors at 10:16. I know ya'll might think me quite mad, but would you consider my request for aspect ratio of 24:5? I could stretch it across all three monitors in windowed mode, or hopefully get it working with softTH (my MB has two PCI-E x16 slots), or I might consider actually getting a TH2G. Triple-head Re-Volt would be AWESOME!!!

nuclearhythmics @ Jun 17 2010, 10:38 PM wrote:I was very interested in that GUI you mentioned that could include other aspect ratios because I use three 22" monitors at 10:16.&nbsp; [...]&nbsp; Triple-head Re-Volt would be AWESOME!!!

I want to see that... If it works, please take a picture of it.

As I PMed you, I think WolfR4 is now able to manage all screen ratios (as this patch is now integrated in WolfR4).
But one thing to notice: I haven't adjusted the menus position (too much work...). So menus won't be centered on the screen anymore, but will be shifted to the left (as the left margin will be the same than without patch).
So if multi-head works, the menus (and also loading screens) will be on the left screen.

Also, it seems that modifying the screen ratio can entail a strange pixelating of the menu font, etc. Sometime it can be very noticeable. After several tries, I still have not found why, so unless someone can explain me why (after reading re-volt source code), we'll have to live with that.

jigebren @ Jun 18 2010, 01:39 PM wrote:Also, it seems that modifying the screen ratio can entail a strange pixelating of the menu font, etc. Sometime it can be very noticeable. After several tries, I still have not found why, so unless someone can explain me why (after reading re-volt source code), we'll have to live with that.

Do you mean like this?


It occurs only when using an unsupported resolution in windowed mode.

Huki @ Jun 18 2010, 11:06 PM wrote:Do you mean like this?

Well, it could be. Not easy to say, my memory is not accurate enough . But sometime it can be even more noticeable. And I think it's not only the font, but the whole rendered image that is affected, but it's most noticeable on the font.
Also, you can notice the little glitches on the top left corner. Don't know why this also happens sometime too...

It occurs only when using an unsupported resolution in windowed mode.

Yes, but with the screen ratio patch, we're always using unsupported resolution, even in fullscreen (that's precisely the goal). So this issue is probably always here, more or less noticeable...
But it's not easy for me to test the rendering it in fullscreen, because my screen ratio is precisely 4:3.

Thanks jig, the aspect ratio patch in WolfR4 works well. I don't mind the main menu being off center, or the missing pixels in the menu outlines; that's just cosmetic issue.

The standalone screen ratio patch from this thread worked great at first and I was able to select an appropriate resolution from the list of resolutions in Re-Volt's video options with my monitor set to use scaling with a fixed aspect ratio. I chose 1600x1000 and saw a black strip above and below on my 16:10 monitor (which I didn't mind since I had more view!).

The next day however after I re-booted I no longer saw wide-screen resolutions listed in the Re-Volt video settings; so although the patch was still applied I could not select an appropriate resolution anymore since only 4:3 resolutions were displayed. Luckily however, I got WolfR4 which can force the resolution; so that solved the problem by bypassing the video settings resolution selection of Re-Volt.

For full-screen forced wide-screen resolutions using WolfR4 I did have to change my monitor settings to use scaling WITHOUT a fixed aspect ratio so the aspect ratio wouldn't be squashed to a 4:3.

I'm wondering how wide-screen resolutions can be included in the list of resolutions of Re-volt's video setup because I've seen them before for my middle monitor (KDS) and they are included if I use one of my side monitors (HP) as the primary monitor to run Re-Volt (their largest resolution is 1150x720, or 1280x720), however those 16:10 HP monitors zoom in cutting the sides when I choose a 16:9 aspect ratio and I'd like to have the black stripes and uncut wider view that I had before on my KDS 16:10 monitor when I initially used the patch and chose 1600x1000 resolution (which is no longer in the list of resolutions in Re-Volt). Where does Re-Volt get those resolutions for the user to choose from?

I did finally get 1280x800 into the Re-Volt video settings list for my KDS monitor by creating a "custom resolution" in the NVIDIA control panel that Re-Volt saw but I can not get 1280x720 nor my custom resolution of 1600x1000 (which I'd seen there before after using the standalone patch) into that list.

I tried using windowed mode for triple monitor re-volt, but whenever I specified a resolution greater than than my middle monitor's native resolution Re-Volt would run but would not be seen, however in windowed mode with a width smaller than my middle monitor's resolution Re-Volt works fine and I can even move the Re-Volt window to a side monitor and play so I think triple monitor Re-Volt will work with Matrox Triplehead2go hardware. Unfortunately I don't think I can get it to work on 3 monitors with softTH because softTH uses d3d8.dll or d3d9.dll to work and Re-Volt is a DX7 game I think.

Today I ordered an open box TH2Go digital edition with a 30 day return and next week when I receive it hopefully Re-Volt and WolfR4 will display a 24:5 aspect ratio of 5040x1050 resolution over my three 22" 16:10 monitors.

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/

oh yeah! I almost forgot to mention that I did have success with 24:5 aspect ratio in windowed mode on only my primary monitor using a resolution of 1680x350. I was a little worried that the FOV might look slightly conical.

okay after searching the pub for "resolution" I found an answer my question about the disappearing 1600x900 (not 1600x1000 as I mistakenly stated earlier) in the discussion "Textures 512x512, project of patch"

jigebren wrote:I don't think that revolt has any limit for the resolution value (but it has for the number of modes available). I thought that, but after trying to change it, I discovered it was due to the XP compatibility mode (I'm not sure it is already known).
So if you set the windows 98 compatibility mode for revolt, the max resolution available will be 1280x1024 (at least on my system). Without this comp. mode, you can set the resolution higher.

Without Windows 98 compatibility mode I once again have the 1600x900 resolution I had when I first used the patched revolt.exe. I did finally get 1280x720 in the video settings list but for some reason my monitor, or Nvidia stretches 1280x720 in Re-Volt to fit my monitor's native 16:10 space, however with 1600x900 Re-Volt maintains proper aspect ratio and uses the black bands above and below. The reason I'm interested in full screen mode instead of just using windowed is that fraps won't record windowed mode. I was going to try to record the 24:5 at 1680x350 but the Nvidia control panel won't let me enter that as a custom resolution after my monitor fails a compatibility test for it.

Yes, about the limited list of available resolutions, it's actually an outcome of the Windows compatibility mode, or more precisely, it's a feature, because it's done on purpose.
Quite recently, I found out that we can create in windows a special compatibility mode for re-volt to avoid this drawback, but I have not delved more into the subject.

I was not much aware of the kind of devices like the TH2Go. It seems cool, but I'm disappointed by the maximum resolution available in 4:3. 1280 x 1024 is not that much!
I tend to imagine that it would be possible to run an application in fullscreen in triple-head as if is was one single bigger screen. But, well, sometime things don't work like we expected them to do. And it could depend on the drivers availlable settings.
Keep us informed...

...well the triplehead2go was able to work with WolfR4 despite the Matrox PowerDesk crashing my system every time I tried to start it to enable widescreen modes and the bezel management.

I tried different versions of Powerdesk with different nvidia drivers but to no avail so I had only 3x(1280x1024) resolution but with the flexibility of WolfR4 I was able to get 24:5 aspect ratio on my 16:10 monitors using their spanning to stretch so I just used the patch for 24:5 aspect and used the Matrox TH2Go native 3840x1024 resolution and since it was stretched it looked okay (amazingly enough) but I had to use it in windowed mode because for some reason in full screen it went full only on the left monitor, and as fore-mentioned there was no bezel compensation.

Here's a headcam video of my setup working:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbppl2zxLpI

Pretty cool but I'm angry about the Powerdesk freezing my system and frustrated at restarting over and over to test different drivers and software versions I'd read about on forums. So I think I'm gonna have to send it back since I want bezel management and screen splitting/window maximizing support.

I've recently found out that with SLI I could use Nvidia's new native surround gaming on 3 monitors if i just buy another GTX 280 because it requires SLI and I have an SLI MB, but It requires windows7 and doesn't work on XP (darnit!); expensive. Maybe Nvidia is the problem; purposefully not supporting this th2go thing since they have plans for their own surround gaming.

Despite your trouble with Powerdesk and full screen resolution, I think you got some pretty cool results. It must be awesome to race that way online! How is the FPS mainly?

Hey hey, excellent!
Thanks for the video. I think I have recognized the background music...
Too bad your camera is not enough wide-angle to see the big whole 3 screens at the same time.
I have not much experience in multi-screen, so I would have hope it could be easier to set up, but it rather seems quite harsh. Mostly for fulscreen.
Well, I wish I had 3 screens too...

Dual monitor Re-Volt with just 1 8600GTS card's two outputs in Horizontal Span display mode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX_nWDP6gKE

WolfR4 patched the aspect ratio to 16:5 and forced the resolution in windowed mode, but I found that the actual resolution was poorer than specified and best if 768 was specified for vertical in either WolfR4 or Re-Volt afterward; then alt/tab out to stretch the window to the monitors' borders

No external dualhead hardware required.

No external triplehead hardware required for 3 monitors if you have Windows 7 and the latest Nvidia drivers and 2 pci-e graphics cards that probably have to be the same model in SLI (I don't know since I use XP).

Another solution for extra wide is the ATI Eyefinity which can do 2 or 3 monitors with 1 card, but for 3 with 1 card you need an active display port adapter or a monitor with display port input since you can't use HDMI for the 3 monitor combo. Saphire makes a working active adapter I've seen for &#036;33: http://www.techpowerup.com/110927/SAPPH ... apter.html

I did finally get full screen in dual span; not only working with re-volt, but also for Rollcage 2 and Airfix Dogfighter, so it works with all games, but revolt required the aspect ratio fix wheras Rollcage and Airfix did not.

With full screen I have Fraps so here is a fraps video in dual wide-screen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc1_QKT1Ijw
(The background music is a piece I did with Fruityloops called Circuitous Sojourn)

For some reason horizontal span display mode only works with my 8600gtx card(s) but not my GTX 280 which doesn't show horizontal span as an option for some reason; weird, I guess the different chipset doesn't include that option.

I sent the th2go back today; B&H Photo accepted my rma. I couldn't get full screen to work with it, and windowed looked poor, but playable. My plan is to take the refund and spend it on another GTX 280 on ebay; then upgrade to Windows7 so I can use the new Nvidia surround technology which works with 200, or 400 series cards in SLI with the latest drivers.

i dont know if this has already been said, or is fixed in Wolf but when you go into makeitgood, the cursor cant reach the widescreen part of the screen, eg on 1366x768 it can only reach 1024pixels along. its very frustrating when making tracks

I can tell that it isn't fixed in the WolfR4 as far as I know. I haven't been using MAKEITGOOD lately tho, so it didn't bother me that much.

MOH @ Jul 14 2010, 07:48 PM wrote:i dont know if this has already been said, or is fixed in Wolf but when you go into makeitgood, the cursor cant reach the widescreen part of the screen, eg on 1366x768 it can only reach 1024pixels along. its very frustrating when making tracks

That was not reported yet, thanks. I think I have fixed it. It should be available in next WolfR4 version.

Nvidia Surround works with Re-Volt and the WolfR4 aspect ratio patch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruAkAVeh4lE

It requires and SLI configuration and Windows 7. Re-Volt spreads out to the outer monitors with the beta driver (258.69) after selecting a triple wide resolution, but only at the lowest vertical resolution (2015x480); if higher triple wide resolutions are selected Re-Volt just gets squashed into the middle monitor or freezes the screens to black.

The latest WHQL version (258.96) doesn't allow Re-Volt to spread out to surround at any triple resolution; instead it freezes at black screens of no return requiring me to reboot.

Other games as old as Re-Volt exhibited the same results when tested (Rollcage 2, Airfix Dogfighter).

Later games work fine at any triple-wide resolution chosen; even in 3D (I'm just using the red/blue glasses).