PlayNice

Piezo · Post by **Piezo** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 8:46 pm

Is there a way to make EQPlayNice to work with other programs or games? If not, is there a possibility that there will be a version or separate program that will? Thanks.

Post by **Lax** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 9:48 pm

EQPlayNice is and will always be tied directly to EverQuest 1. Inner Space provides the same CPU/FPS limiting functionality for a wide range of Direct3D games

Piezo · Post by **Piezo** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 10:22 pm

Is it limited to D3D or can it work with other video modes like software rendering, Glide or OpenGL?

Post by **Lax** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 1:41 am

Glide will never be supported, but OpenGL is a possibility. OpenGL was supported in the past, and there is SOME level of support for OpenGL in Inner Space right now, but there is no GUI support presently (Inner Space has an overlayed GUI on top of the game). Also, only Direct3D8 and Direct3D9 are supported, so it doesnt exactly work with every Direct3D game, and there's some D3D8/9 games that dont work properly.

Did you have specific games in mind, or are we just talking about random old games? If theyre old enough to have glide support, it's probably not supported by IS

Piezo · Post by **Piezo** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 12:14 pm

To tell you the truth, there's a couple of games that have been around for ages, Interstate '76 and Interstate '76 Nitro Pack that have needed this type of function ever since the Pentium II. The game doesn't work right on fast CPUs though it isn't really a big problem until you've got like a Pentium 4.
Software mode is something that I've always used while playing it, but ever since the glide wrapper "discovery" It's the only mode I've used since it makes the game look more beautiful than it ever has before, and it forces a resolution of 1280x960, which was never possible since the game only allows a maximum resolution of 1024x768 and you can't read the chat text that high so before you were forced to use a maximum of 800x600 if you want to play online.
Now I'm not even sure if a glide wrapper is actually running in glide mode since this particular one mentions OpenGL in the configuration menu. What's funny is that I was actually expecting OpenGL support in IS more than I would D3D since I've read that D3D is a little more difficult to code.

Post by **Lax** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 3:08 pm

Piezo wrote: What's funny is that I was actually expecting OpenGL support in IS more than I would D3D since I've read that D3D is a little more difficult to code.

I find D3D far easier to work with, actually. I imagine other developers feel the same way, since nearly all new commercial PC games use Direct3D.

Anyway, Inner Space isn't particularly suited to really old games, and I have little interest in working with old games

There's plenty of utilities around that are designed to slow down old games, which were generally not coded to take real time into account -- an old pinball game would move a ball x amount per frame, instead of x amount per second. Newer games generally do this right

Piezo · Post by **Piezo** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 4:08 pm

Lax wrote:There's plenty of utilities around that are designed to slow down old games, which were generally not coded to take real time into account . . .

I know there's ones for DOS but so far the only ones for Windows that I've found is . . . well, Fraps, EQPlayNice and Inner Space though Fraps only slows down the frame rate and it has to be recording in order to do it. Could you link me to the utilities you're talking about?

Piezo · Post by **Piezo** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 4:34 pm

Well I found a few, most of these are for MS-DOS, but I'll sort through them and see what works. I'd rather use a program that limits the CPU usage of the game instead of bog the CPU down if I can find one.
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.p ... de55715a5e

Post by **Lax** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 4:34 pm

I cant, because it's been years since I worried about it at all. I dont play old games, sorry heh

Piezo · Post by **Piezo** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:11 pm

Well I tried CPU killer and apparently slowing down the processor doesn't work nearly as well as Fraps's frame rate cap. Fudge.

Piezo · Post by **Piezo** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 4:05 pm

Lax wrote:Anyway, Inner Space isn't particularly suited to really old games, and I have little interest in working with old games

I think I'm misunderstanding what it takes to make a program that will cap a frame rate in a game. Fraps doesn't seem to care what game it is as long as it's OpenGL or D3D. Is it something that is difficult to code?

Post by **Lax** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 4:15 pm

I'm not in the business of creating a free tool that caps the framerate in any given game...

Piezo · Post by **Piezo** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 8:11 pm

Lax wrote:I'm not in the business of creating a free tool that caps the framerate in any given game...

Not even a pay-for tool? I was under the impression this was one of the goals of Inner Space.

Post by **Lax** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 8:47 pm

Not even a pay-for tool? I was under the impression this was one of the goals of Inner Space.

Inner Space does provide that functionality for the supported range of games. Direct3D8 and Direct3D9 are supported, but OpenGL is not presently fully supported, and Glide will never be. The cost for me to implement support for Direct3D7 or earlier, or Glide, is more than whatever might be earned by supporting them. There's just not enough demand for games from years past to be supported by my work.

There's a good chance that OpenGL games can be framerate limited by Inner Space presently, but most of the features of Inner Space would be unavailable.

Piezo · Post by **Piezo** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 6:40 pm

Sounds cool man, like I said I think a Glide wrapper simply tricks the game into thinking you've got a Voodoo card and uses OpenGL for the rendering. D3D and OpenGL have prevailed over all the rest of the APIs so I think you're right: supporting anything else would be kind of silly.