War2Combat 4.5 released (upd 4.5.1)! GoG+Classic, holpunch, plugins, w7 fix, etc

[WillTheRealKoorbStandUp]

Nice job but adding the chop hack i donno what ur thinking there IL

Half dont want it Half want it, Well it should be 90% who want it for something like this to be added.

Please update the combat with it removed, dont kill the core of wc2..

Starcraft 2, u just have 16 workers or wateva and dont need anymore on those mineral patches. Everyone has the same income.

Wc2, there is little things that arent automatic so a pro player can excell by having better wood/gold mangement and excelling past the other player, this dumbs it down alittle bit.. sorry but its true

[jordan4385]

"Lance is right" -me, right now

I know right, cant believe id ever say that..

[tk[as]]

I'm not seeing the 1/2 that want it. I've seen like 3-4?

[{Lance}]

A problem I noticed with the "GDI" lib is that I am unable to tab in/out of the game reliably.  Once its tabbed out,  you are unable to go back unless you click around blindly and hope you hit a menu item which will then bring the window to the foreground.  If you miss,  the window re-minimizes itself.  This is all in Win7 btw.  I had to switch it to DirectDraw 3D to get it to function properly.  But when I do that, it annoyingly places war2 in a window unless you are in a game.  I also noticed that it crashed when using DD3D (probably because I was using the timer thing which had a note NOT to use anything other than GDI).  OpenGL seemed to work better than either of the directdraw options as it didnt crash but it still annoyingly windowed the game lobby and the chat channel lobby.  On my size monitor,  the chat is so small its nearly unreadable.

Is there a way to stop it from windowing the thing when it goes to any of the chat areas.  Seems fine in game.

[{Lance}]

I was able to fix my own problem by using the OLD ddraw.dll from the 4.3 combat version attached here.  I dont know what the difference between the two is but it certainly ran a lot better.  Everything worked, including alt/tab and returning,  no windowed chats,  etc.  The ddraw that comes in the 4.5 version seems to be severely flawed.  All I did was replaced the DLL,  nothing else.

[Lambchops]

 Hehe can't wait to try the Warcfart II campaigns, they sound awesome

[fois]

A problem I noticed with the "GDI" lib is that I am unable to tab in/out of the game reliably.  Once its tabbed out,  you are unable to go back unless you click around blindly and hope you hit a menu item which will then bring the window to the foreground.  If you miss,  the window re-minimizes itself.  This is all in Win7 btw.  I had to switch it to DirectDraw 3D to get it to function properly.  But when I do that, it annoyingly places war2 in a window unless you are in a game.  I also noticed that it crashed when using DD3D (probably because I was using the timer thing which had a note NOT to use anything other than GDI).  OpenGL seemed to work better than either of the directdraw options as it didnt crash but it still annoyingly windowed the game lobby and the chat channel lobby.  On my size monitor,  the chat is so small its nearly unreadable.

Is there a way to stop it from windowing the thing when it goes to any of the chat areas.  Seems fine in game.

I was able to fix my own problem by using the OLD ddraw.dll from the 4.3 combat version attached here.  I dont know what the difference between the two is but it certainly ran a lot better.  Everything worked, including alt/tab and returning,  no windowed chats,  etc.  The ddraw that comes in the 4.5 version seems to be severely flawed.  All I did was replaced the DLL,  nothing else.

This seems to be a Windows 7 exclusive bug (It doesn't happen on winXP nor win10), I could reproduce it on a virtual machine with both combat 4.3 (Original 0.2 ddraw) and latest combat 4.5 (updated 0.2 ddraw). It's apparently a bug that been around for ages, but somehow no one ever reported it.

I tried the version you linked, but it didn't work for me though. It just showed a "Display Failure!" and the game didn't start. It's the 0.4 version according to its file version info.


About Direct3D 9 and OpenGL, both are using Fullscreen Exclusive Mode + No Vsync. Those two are optimized for low input lag, professional gamers in other games are using the same settings so I tried to make something similar available for warcraft 2 players too. Problem is that the battle.net interface doesn't support Fullscreen Exclusive Mode (It would become invisible) so the only way to get these low latency settings working were by running the battle.net interface in a window.


Anyways, I got a Win7 test setup now so I'm going to have a look into the bug you reported.

[Available]

A problem I noticed with the "GDI"

I just tested that on win7 (different comps 1920x1080, 1680x1050, 1366,768 displays)
none of them had problems with GDI + Fullscreen mode.

"war2_ddraw.ini" file:
[ddraw]
Windowed=No
MaintainAspectRatio=Yes
AlwaysOnTop=No
ShowWindowFrame=Yes
Width=640
Height=480
PosX=0
PosY=0


Are you tried Alt+Enter to switch modes to fullscreen and back?

When you press Alt+Enter then exit war2 'war2_ddraw.ini' settings rewrites to last mode that you used,
so parameter "Windowed=" must switch "No" and "Yes" corresponding when you exiting from fullscreen or windowed mode.

Maybe you are using some strange hardware/software combo, that *king up fullscreen, stealing window focus or so on,
then let we know please, to try same type hardware at least.


ps: I hope that hardware/software combo not a imac+win7 :]

[fois]

@Available


The bug seems to happen when you use Alt+Tab to minimize the game and then press Alt+Tab to return to the game.


If you click on the taskbar icon to return to the game rather than using Alt+Tab it works fine.

If you hold the Alt key down until the game is showing up then Alt+Tab to return to the game works fine too, it only happens if you press Alt+Tab quickly.



Anyways, I might have fixed the bug. Source is here: https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/Aqrit-DDraw-Hack
I attached a test build below

[Available]

Hmm... strange.

Tried again, looks like win7 just  set war2 to "last position" in Alt_Tab order... damned win7 "don't like" war2 window 


But in that case only thing i need to restore war2, is press Tab so many times how much apps opened for return to fullscreen war2


but nothing like this:
"...you are unable to go back unless you click around blindly..."



UPD:

tried new version

Ha-ha, now i'm stuck @ war2,
alt-tab effect: just blackscreen then returning to war2

when switches finally (by 'windows' key) war2 same last in tab order


up2:
sometimes switching is ok...

new problem:
that maybe switchnig too fast

and web browser set his size to 640 - not so funny.

[fois]

I made it working the same way as cnc-ddraw and the 0.4 version lance is using. I guess you would have the same issues with these two as well

I just tested a bit more on win 7 and it actually doesn't do anything on Alt+Tab if there are no other windows open, pretty strange... Win 10 is a lot better than win 7!

Did you test the 0.4 version that lance is using? What happens if you only got the game open and nothing else, will it minimize or will it do nothing like the new test version i made?

[{Lance}]

I couldnt DL the test dll you put up,  it said "You are not allowed to access this section".  Secretive bastid

[Available]

you would have the same issues with these two

Yes, almost same issues here.
Also another issue:
when finally switches to desktop (by "windows" key or some another hotkey)
and clicked on another program icon in taskbar, somehow was switched back to war2,
but i'm clearly NOT clicked on "war2 button" in taskbar.


Idk, maybe allowing Alt+BackSpace feature in fullscreen can be better for some "switching"?


Anyway Switching by Alt+Enter works fine for all versions.

As for me, nothing to do with Alt+Tab:
I start war2 in windowed mode,
make some preparations with replays, if necessary,
join the game, then press Alt+Enter and just play without switchings.


-------
For those who hates windowed mode,
probably better solution is pure "test2" version:
ftp://ftp.war2.ru/war2/ddraw4/ddraw.dll

There no window mode at all, but have one good thing:
it is "transparent" for system text antialiasing - as a result text can be smooth in BNE chat.

I asked iL for more options, but he against older, but still useful versions of ddraw for some reason.

[{Lance}]

Hmm,  I had tried alt-enter to get it to work but it didnt work, so I assumed it wasnt ever going to work.  However what I didnt realize is that I'd used alt-tab to get out and then was never able to go back because it was unable to refocus the window for some reason.  I would click it in the task bar (as well as tried alt-tab list) and it simply wouldnt work.  While the black window was up I tried alt-enter.... nothing.  I then discovered that if I had a menu in war2 up BEFORE I alt-tab,  then I would be able to blindly click on the menu and it would magically focus the war2 again.  But then after you mentioned alt-enter working,  I tried using alt-enter FIRST instead of alt-tab, and that took a while to render but it does work.  It's just slow as dog shit.  It's going to take some getting use-to to not use alt-tab.  I do it instinctively a LOT lol.  It would be cool if alt-tab would work with the newer DLL.  But until then,  I'm sticking to the older version that I know works.  I didnt find any problems with that old version and I dont even know why a new version was added.  I dont see any functionality changes to it listed anywhere.  I think it might even be the same ddraw.dll that I had put out for war2custom like,  years and years ago back when we first started toying with it to fix screen issues related to icons in the channel chat.  Things have certainly advanced since then thats for sure

So if you have a different dll I can try,  put it up where I can actually DL it,  the one up there isnt downloadable

EDIT: Nevermind,  now its downloadable   something changed lol.  I'll see how this one works.

[{Lance}]

I dont know what you did to the new ddraw,  but it seems to have fixed the problem I was having with alt-tab and using tab is much faster than using alt-enter.  Besides,  I instinctively use alt-tab anyway,  I dont think I could retrain myself to use alt-enter haha.