Prisoner of War (2002) seems to run slow, even with dgVoodoo

[tgamesfr 1]

I've just made a "experimental" version to force all animations of the game to bypass the 30 FPS and remains in the sync (for most of them).

This version acts to smooth all animations of the game and to match the internal 60FPS fix.
Side-effect: Game clock will be slighty faster than normal.

Tell me if you notice any additionnal issue @AlphaYellow 😉.

I played during a hour and any "slow motion" effects are gone with that fix.

[AlphaYellow 42]

Hey, I've tried it and the game still runs at 30 FPS, also could you make the fix work with dgVoodoo2 instead? Also, is your game at 60 FPS and the animations too? For me it's not.

[AlphaYellow 42]

47 minutes ago, tgamesfr said:

I've just made a "experimental" version to force all animations of the game to bypass the 30 FPS and remains in the sync (for most of them).

This version acts to smooth all animations of the game and to match the internal 60FPS fix.
Side-effect: Game clock will be slighty faster than normal.

Tell me if you notice any additionnal issue @AlphaYellow 😉.

I played during a hour and any "slow motion" effects are gone with that fix.

Hey, I've tried it and the game still runs at 30 FPS, also could you make the fix work with dgVoodoo2 instead? Also, is your game at 60 FPS and the animations too? For me it's not. Also the camera FOV still is the same as 4:3, so the game is still cropped at 1080p. One thing I noticed is the occasional slowdowns are gone and runs stable, but still at 30 FPS nonetheless, even if the engine says it's 60 (cuz it is), everything still feels like 30.

[tgamesfr 1]

Yes try without dgVoodoo2 for the moment.
On my side the game runs at 60 fps for everything, including animations.
Only cameras have performances issues but i suspect it's because there isn't any vSync so it's not matching internal speed for that.
Also for FOV i won't work on it, my goal was just the 60FPS.

1) Reinstall the game completely without any modification
2) Download and install the lastest experimental version here.
3) In d3d8.ini change the line :

DisplayFPSCounter = 0
to
DisplayFPSCounter = 1

4) Now launch the game with PrisonerLaunchEnglish.exe
5) Check the FPS, if it remains at 64 FPS it's really 64FPS.
If you see counter goes back to 32FPS check your files.
You also gonna notice animations run smooth, if it's not the case same as above check files.

[AlphaYellow 42]

6 hours ago, tgamesfr said:

Yes try without dgVoodoo2 for the moment.
On my side the game runs at 60 fps for everything, including animations.
Only cameras have performances issues but i suspect it's because there isn't any vSync so it's not matching internal speed for that.
Also for FOV i won't work on it, my goal was just the 60FPS.

1) Reinstall the game completely without any modification
2) Download and install the lastest experimental version here.
3) In d3d8.ini change the line :

DisplayFPSCounter = 0
to
DisplayFPSCounter = 1

4) Now launch the game with PrisonerLaunchEnglish.exe
5) Check the FPS, if it remains at 64 FPS it's really 64FPS.
If you see counter goes back to 32FPS check your files.
You also gonna notice animations run smooth, if it's not the case same as above check files.

I did exactly all that, and still the same happens. Here's the proof: 

The framerate says 60 FPS, but everything feels like 30 (and yes I recorded it at 60 FPS too).

Oddly enough, the PS2 version emulated through PCSX2 runs at 60 FPS, so I'm not sure why the PC version runs at 32 only.

 

[tgamesfr 1]

It's the cameras performances issues who give you this impression of still "32 FPS".

In reality if you compare the game with and without the patch you will notice :
- That animations run 2 times smoother and a bit faster than before (thanks to that addtionnal fix i've added)
- That all hitchs caused by engine forcing 32fps are gone because now the engine set all things on 64 FPS (lonely: except animations and cameras)

But indeed moving the camera is not smooth a looks like it's still locked somewhere, i've checked the code there is only 2 settings to set the FPS on the engine :
- That general FPS lock who set at 32 FPS (only one setting is set) i've rewrote it to force at 64 FPS
- The speed factor to read animations (set at 0,001 by default, i've moved it to 0,00135 to match better the new FPS)

I will continue to look if we can somehow make camera runs faster but i guess it gonna cause some problems.
Also the PC port is so badly coded there is performances issues a bit everywhere if you try touch others settings.

Normally when a engine is correctly coded changing general FPS also match others things it's not the case here sadly.

As far i've checked it not exist anything else more than that we can modify to improve things on that game.

[AlphaYellow 42]

8 hours ago, tgamesfr said:

It's the cameras performances issues who give you this impression of still "32 FPS".

In reality if you compare the game with and without the patch you will notice :
- That animations run 2 times smoother and a bit faster than before (thanks to that addtionnal fix i've added)
- That all hitchs caused by engine forcing 32fps are gone because now the engine set all things on 64 FPS (lonely: except animations and cameras)

But indeed moving the camera is not smooth a looks like it's still locked somewhere, i've checked the code there is only 2 settings to set the FPS on the engine :
- That general FPS lock who set at 32 FPS (only one setting is set) i've rewrote it to force at 64 FPS
- The speed factor to read animations (set at 0,001 by default, i've moved it to 0,00135 to match better the new FPS)

I will continue to look if we can somehow make camera runs faster but i guess it gonna cause some problems.
Also the PC port is so badly coded there is performances issues a bit everywhere if you try touch others settings.

Normally when a engine is correctly coded changing general FPS also match others things it's not the case here sadly.

As far i've checked it not exist anything else more than that we can modify to improve things on that game.

I see, your effort is really welcome. Yeah, unfortunately this PC version was very badly coded it seems. I guess to deal with the lower FPS animations and camera movement, a linear interpolation algorithm would have to be added to the engine's code somehow (like a lot of engines did back then to get higher FPS animations).

[tgamesfr 1]

On 1/29/2024 at 5:54 PM, AlphaYellow said:

I see, your effort is really welcome. Yeah, unfortunately this PC version was very badly coded it seems. I guess to deal with the lower FPS animations and camera movement, a linear interpolation algorithm would have to be added to the engine's code somehow (like a lot of engines did back then to get higher FPS animations).

For the third person camera you can try that (it gonna move twice the speed as before)  :

In Coltditz.exe with HxD :

35 FA 8E BE 47 46 69 72
to
35 FA 0E BF 47 46 69 72

I've not edited others cameras as i don't think it gonna change that much.

[scagent 1]

I really want to thank you for your work and effort on this tgamesfr, this fix is much better than playing the game as it was before.

I am playing both the PC version and PCSX2 side by side, if you have a good pc and a controller, and know how to get the emulator running well I'd recommend that version, it plays much better.

[gabbagabbahey 0]

On 1/28/2024 at 3:00 AM, tgamesfr said:

The only problem is i have no way to check if camera are really more smooth as mouse events are badly handled on Windows 10 + DirectX 8.1.

What tool are you using to run this game on Windows 10?

EDIT - using the exe file found on pcgamingwiki makes this game work on Windows 10, otherwise I was stuck

[gabbagabbahey 0]

Do you get random minimize on this game, getting thrown to desktop? Doesn't happen with any other game I play...