Solved Widescreen loading screens (previously: Graphic glitches on water when using dgVoodoo)

[SonataFanatica]

When playing in windowed mode, the game works perfectly. But I really want to play it in full screen.
Caribbean Tales won't work for me in full screen if I don't use dgVoodoo.
The game automatically minimizes and as soon as I click the active icon on the task bar, it minimizes again.

The game does run in full screen if I use dgVoodoo though.
However: There are these annoying graphical glitches on the water:

Is there anything I can do about them?

Here are my dgVoodoo settings:

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Well if the problem is only when in full screen, you can run the game on windowed but set the resolution to your native one.
This will look like full screen, but probably you won't have this problem.
Plus you will be able to "alt-tab", something that doesn't work with Storm Engine games on full screen.

 

[SonataFanatica]

That's great, it works! (Without dgVoodoo – just editing the engine.ini to windowed and my desktop resolution.)
However, all the loading screens and all the parts of the interface are now stretched, because I'm using 1920x1080...
Anything I can do about that?

edit: Of course I can set the resolution to 1440x1080 to get a 4:3 resolution, but there's still my Windows desktop around it, which is a bit distracting...

 

[Cerez]

When playing in windowed mode, the game works perfectly. But I really want to play it in full screen.
Caribbean Tales won't work for me in full screen if I don't use dgVoodoo.
The game automatically minimizes and as soon as I click the active icon on the task bar, it minimizes again.

The game does run in full screen if I use dgVoodoo though.
However: There are these annoying graphical glitches on the water

Both of these seem/sound like a DirectX issue. What version of DirectX do you have installed on your computer?

Are you running the game on Windows, or on Linux/Mac through WINE? I'm asking because these kinds of graphical glitches/issues are quite common when your graphics card is not native to the DirectX version/implementation (API) used by the game. For this reason, they're quite common with WINE's versions of DirectX.

Edit:

Another thing worth mentioning is trying to run the game in Windows 7/XP compatibility mode. This may fix the fullscreen minimising issue.

How to Set Compatibility Mode for Apps in Windows 10 | Laptop Mag

 

[Cerez]

That's great, it works! (Without dgVoodoo – just editing the engine.ini to windowed and my desktop resolution.)
However, all the loading screens and all the parts of the interface are now stretched, because I'm using 1920x1080...
Anything I can do about that?

Nope. The HUD will be stretched in widescreen unless you can find a UI overhaul mod.

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales | WSGF

Edit:

There are some related settings in "RESOURCE/INI/interfaces/interfaces.ini", but I don't think editing these will give you the desired result, seeing as the positioning of the UI elements is fixed/hard-coded based on the default/intended 800x600 px layout.

Still, may be worth a try playing around with it to see what you can do. (Just be sure to backup the original file, so you can default back to it if things don't work out.)

 

[SonataFanatica]

Are you running the game on Windows, or on Linux/Mac through WINE? I'm asking because these kinds of graphical glitches/issues are quite common when your graphics card is not native to the DirectX version/implementation (API) used by the game. For this reason, they're quite common with WINE's versions of DirectX.

I'm using Windows 10 Pro (current version, fully updated).

Both of these seem/sound like a DirectX issue. What version of DirectX do you have installed on your computer?

I'm on DirectX 12. Should be the most current version.

Another thing worth mentioning is trying to run the game in Windows 7/XP compatibility mode. This may fix the fullscreen minimising issue.

Nah, sadly neither Win7 nor XP compatibility seem to make any difference.

Nope. The HUD will be stretched in widescreen unless you can find a UI overhaul mod.

I was thinking of maybe just editing the loading screens, so they are displayed correctly when stretched.
That way, the UI is still stretched though.

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Nope. The HUD will be stretched in widescreen unless you can find a UI overhaul mod.

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales | WSGF

Yeah the UI will be stretched, but in my opinion it's worth it anyway.

There are some related settings in "RESOURCE/INI/interfaces/interfaces.ini", but I don't think editing these will give you the desired result, seeing as the positioning of the UI elements is fixed/hard-coded based on the default/intended 800x600 px layout.

Still, may be worth a try playing around with it to see what you can do.

I remember doing something in CoAS to make it so not everything in the UI was stretched.
But it only affected the "in-game" UI.
Those that take the whole screen were still a bit stretched.

TEHO has a clever way around this.
On 16:9 resolutions a background is added to the interfaces/loading screens.
The result is the artwork not being stretched.

I was thinking of maybe just editing the loading screens, so they are displayed correctly when stretched.
That way, the UI is still stretched though.

Yeah, more things are needed to make it so it is nowhere stretched.
But it should be possible.

 

[Cerez]

I was thinking of maybe just editing the loading screens, so they are displayed correctly when stretched.

Some of those are video (the intro sequences), and some are images.

I suppose you could edit the images if you really wanted to. They are in
"RESOURCE/Textures/Loading/".

You'll need the TX Convertor to turn the images into uncompressed TGA:
Index of /Cloud/Tools/Modeling+Texturing

Then you can edit them in Photoshop or another image editor that supports editing TGA images.

TEHO has a clever way around this.
On 16:9 resolutions a background is added to the interfaces/loading screens.
The result is the artwork not being stretched.

This sounds like a clever workaround. I wonder where the 16:9 image was inserted in the code.

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Some of those are video (the intro sequences), and some are images.

I suppose you could edit the images if you really wanted to. They are in:
"RESOURCE/Textures/Loading/"

You'll need the TX Convertor to turn the images into uncompressed TGA:
Index of /Cloud/Tools/Modeling+Texturing

Then you can edit them in Photoshop or another image editor that supports editing TGA images.

Theoretically you could also edit the videos, couldn't you?
Though it is more complex than editing the textures.

This sounds like a clever workaround. I wonder where the 16:9 image was inserted in the code.

I can check it out in the future.
It could prove useful.

Plus I too am curious as to how it was done.

 

[Cerez]

Theoretically you could also edit the videos, couldn't you?
Though it is more complex than editing the textures.

A bit trickier, because they need to stay a particular, old-school Windows media format (WMV) in order to play in-game, but in theory it can be done.

 

[SonataFanatica]

Yeah, but the videos aren't stretched. They are just displayed centered, which is great.

I suppose you could edit the images if you really wanted to. They are in
"RESOURCE/Textures/Loading/".

You'll need the TX Convertor to turn the images into uncompressed TGA:
Index of /Cloud/Tools/Modeling+Texturing

Then you can edit them in Photoshop or another image editor that supports editing TGA images.

Thank you! I'll definitely give it a try!

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Awesome then!

 

[Pieter Boelen]

The game automatically minimizes and as soon as I click the active icon on the task bar, it minimizes again.

As in the other thread, setting the game's executable to "Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)" compatibility mode in the file properties might help with this one too.

 

[SonataFanatica]

As in the other thread, setting the game's executable to "Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)" compatibility mode in the file properties might help with this one too.

Hmm, that didn't help either... but thanks nonetheless!

I suppose you could edit the images if you really wanted to. They are in
"RESOURCE/Textures/Loading/".
You'll need the TX Convertor to turn the images into uncompressed TGA (...)
Then you can edit them in Photoshop or another image editor that supports editing TGA images.

Woohooo!! It works!
Though they look pretty pixellated.
But then again, so do the originals.
I might upscale them to 1080p, even though they'll have a pretty big file size as TGA.TX files then.
Who cares. We all have big enough hard drives, I suppose.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Hmm, that didn't help either... but thanks nonetheless!

Bugger!

For me, when I start PotC (windowed mode) and the game "loses foreground focus" before the video/main menu has opened, then it shifts 3/4 outside my screen to the bottom-right corner.
Compatibility mode has worked very well against that; for me and others too.
Shame it doesn't work here.

I might upscale them to 1080p, even though they'll have a pretty big file size as TGA.TX files then.

Wouldn't that just make them fuzzy?
Depends a bit on the upscaling method, of course...

 

[SonataFanatica]

Wouldn't that just make them fuzzy?
Depends a bit on the upscaling method, of course...

Yeah, that's why I'm using an AI upscaler, fiddling around with the settings a bit.
I've found one style that really appeals to me, I'll try it out and show you the results in a bit.

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Nice, quite impressive what these AI upscalers can do.

By the way which one you use?
It may come in handy in the future.

 

[SonataFanatica]

For small artworks that still look good when roughly denoised, I use this one online.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Yeah, that's why I'm using an AI upscaler

Ha! Clever.

 

[SonataFanatica]

Okay, I've edited all the game's loading screens for widescreen usage.
They look like this now:



Here's the archive: download from MEGA.nz / download from Mediafire.com

Just unzip all of them to RESOURCE\Textures\Loading

Additionally, copy the Start_Loading.tga.tx to RESOURCE\Textures\Loading\English (or \French, \German, \Russian, \Spanish – whichever language you've set the game to).

And don't forget to copy these files:
battle.tga.tx
sea.tga.tx
storm.tga.tx
TWISTER.tga.tx
to:
RESOURCE\Textures\WorldMap\reload
RESOURCE\Textures\WorldMap\reload\English (or \French, \German, \Russian, \Spanish – whichever language you've set the game to)
RESOURCE\Textures\WorldMap\old\reload\English (or \French, \German, \Russian, \Spanish – whichever language you've set the game to)