GrayFace MM8 Patch v2.5.7 [Mar 4, 2022]

[GrayFace]

What's your screen resolution? Is width bigger than 2000? If yes, that's due to a bug in DX7.

Yes, I'm running at 3440x1440. And BTW, if you want, I'll gladly test stuff for you, if you wish to properly support 21:9 aspect ratio.

Indeed, it's 1920x1440 for classic mode, while UILayout mode gets rendered at 1720x720 and then drawn with nearest-neighbor stretching.

Feel free to hit me up on Discord - MaxG3D#4323

Ok.

Thank you. I just would love to have better textures filtering and some MSAA, or something to increase the fidelity of the image.

Forgot to tell: Use Nvidia control panel applet/Radeon Software. I'm playing on AMD with all these set.

[Novi]

May not be the right place to ask this and I'm sorry if it's not, but I have 2 questions.

What tool would I have to use to get the party in my save file into the plane between planes?

And is the lloyd's beacon information stored in the single savefile?

I lost access to the place on my post-game save and I'd rather not start a new one, which is why I'm asking how to get there. I also have no idea how I lost the beacon's to the plane in the first place (and saved). I have a feeling it was actually me doing a clean reinstall of the game and GOG not syncing everything, but tell me if I'm wrong.

Btw the reason for me doing a reinstall is actually because for some reason, the new UI and high resolutions wouldn't work anymore (without me changing anything) if I ran the game normally. It would, if I ran the game through the setup utility (no compatibility), or if I ran the game itself with win xp sp3 or older compatibility mode. It didn't used to be like that so I was confused.

[GrayFace]

May not be the right place to ask this and I'm sorry if it's not, but I have 2 questions.

What tool would I have to use to get the party in my save file into the plane between planes?

I guess the easiest is writing eve.MoveToMap{Name='pbp.odm'} in MMExtension console (Ctrl+F1).

And is the lloyd's beacon information stored in the single savefile?

There's a bug with lloyd images. If it's just absense of picture, the beacon should still work. Try recalling the slot where the beacon used to be.

Btw the reason for me doing a reinstall is actually because for some reason, the new UI and high resolutions wouldn't work anymore (without me changing anything) if I ran the game normally. It would, if I ran the game through the setup utility (no compatibility), or if I ran the game itself with win xp sp3 or older compatibility mode. It didn't used to be like that so I was confused.

What happened if you ran it without compatibility?

[Novi]

What happened if you ran it without compatibility?

The game runs in software mode if I simply start mm8.exe. With both setup and mm8.exe being set to no compatibility and running the game through setup, it runs in hw mode (with your UI and other things).

There's a bug with lloyd images. If it's just absense of picture, the beacon should still work. Try recalling the slot where the beacon used to be.

Thank you for the answer, though it is as you said. The Llyod's beacons are still there! Just no picture, no description of place, or days remaining. I click on the empty space and it teleports me. So strange.

Couple things to add: I'm on win 10 edu (should be latest update). Might and Magic 7 runs without compatibility mode in hw mode through mm7.exe.

[GrayFace]

The game runs in software mode if I simply start mm8.exe. With both setup and mm8.exe being set to no compatibility and running the game through setup, it runs in hw mode (with your UI and other things).

Now that's strange. When it's set to HW is has to run in HW and possibly fail to create a device.

[Novi]

The game runs in software mode if I simply start mm8.exe. With both setup and mm8.exe being set to no compatibility and running the game through setup, it runs in hw mode (with your UI and other things).

Now that's strange. When it's set to HW is has to run in HW and possibly fail to create a device.

I may even add more mystery to it now.

I changed borderlessfullscreen to 0 to get the old mode back. Since the introduction of borderless window (fullscreen) option, I couldn't get the old mode to work. It would always crash. Well, I started the game, it switched to fullscreen mode, immediately gave some kind of error (windows sound), but the screen stayed grayish. I had to turn off the program with task manager. Couldn't see the error message. This was with no compatibility if I'm not mistaken.

I then went on to test compatibility modes (to make this shorter, windows 95 up to windows xp sp3 do the same thing and vista to windows 8 + no compatibility also do the same thing, so really there are only 2 modes). On the win95 mode, the game would start, play intro, show copyright screen and when about to transition to the main menu, the game would crash and shut down.

So I went back to the "newer" compatibility modes and no compatibility and it started doing it again. The game would start! In software mode.

I swear, I can leave this game lying on my drive untouched for a year, and it'll always work differently when I try and play it could it be windows updates doing the mess? Is it also possible the game reads from different registry folder in old compatibility modes? I don't think so, it remembers binds and all the other settings, just uses sw mode.

Edit: Oh, I found out how to run it in old exclusive fullscreen mode. You also need to disable 32bit textures with TrueColorTextures=0.

[cthscr]

The game runs in software mode if I simply start mm8.exe. With both setup and mm8.exe being set to no compatibility and running the game through setup, it runs in hw mode (with your UI and other things).

Now that's strange. When it's set to HW is has to run in HW and possibly fail to create a device.

Oh, here's one of my favorites. Intel/Nvidia (and optimus...) here. Newly copied game can start once in HW mode (why? how?) and after that it always fails to find D3D device. Setting WinXP (SP2/SP3) compatibility helps (it happens on Win7 x64 and Win10 x64).

[XAPNTOH]

Hi!
I'm trying to run MM8 on a mac using a wineskin wrapper by PaultheTall.
The original game from GOG runs just fine, but what i was missing there was mouselook.

Unfortunately with GrayFace's patch (2.4.1) the game is running somewhat slow and choppy.
I can only guess that there's some kind of conflict between the improvements within the patch and the wrapper (for instance there's no hardware 3d acceleration emulation)... So the question is: is the any way to get the mouselook tweak only?

Kind regards,

[XAPNTOH]

Okay, after some tinkering with the .ini file I've found out, that the choppy performance was caused by BorderlessFullscreen=1
Being set to 0 it works perfectly fine.

That was... unexpected!

[Novi]

Okay, after some tinkering with the .ini file I've found out, that the choppy performance was caused by BorderlessFullscreen=1
Being set to 0 it works perfectly fine.

That was... unexpected!

It could be a simple case of weak hardware. What borderlessfullscreen does is more than running in a window. It allows the game to be rendered at higher resolutions, and this can make even today's hardware take a hit as the engine doesn't run very well at those settings.

If you want to experiment further, you could try limiting the resolution the game renders at. By default, it will render at your desktop resolution. Control with
RenderMaxWidth=X
RenderMaxHeight=Y
Replace X and Y for a resolution you think your PC can handle (maybe 1280 and 720).

[XAPNTOH]

Nah, it's not a hardware issue. At least not with 2,9Ghz i7, 16Gb ram and radeon pro 560 concerning THIS game.
That's why to me the culprit seems to be the wine wrapper settings.
Once again, it's not a PC, it's a Mac

Anyways, it does the trick for me with the borderless thing turned off.

[GrayFace]

It allows the game to be rendered at higher resolutions, and this can make even today's hardware take a hit as the engine doesn't run very well at those settings.

Rendering to bigger resolution isn't a problem I'm sure. Custom scaling code for UI is a drag, as well as the fact whole UI is redrawn on each frame by locking the back buffer.

Once again, it's not a PC, it's a Mac

..so, a PC made by Apple.

[raekuul]

damn you IBM and your trademarking of "Personal Computer" back before the OS Wars started in earnest.

[ReiVerme]

This patch is absolutely amazing! I still can't believe I can play these classic RPGs in ultrawide!

But there's a problem. The pixel scaling seems off, especially when you look at the text, unlike when I run the game in software mode. Is there a INI option to improve it? Also, is there an option to completely disable texture filtering on 3D elements?

[Novi]

It allows the game to be rendered at higher resolutions, and this can make even today's hardware take a hit as the engine doesn't run very well at those settings.

Rendering to bigger resolution isn't a problem I'm sure. Custom scaling code for UI is a drag, as well as the fact whole UI is redrawn on each frame by locking the back buffer.

Well, it is an issue on my PC. My CPU is 10 years old, GPU is newer, but I can't run MM7 for example at 1080p 60 fps. If I lower the resolution to, say, 720p, it runs fine. CPU usage is same on both resolutions (around 25% of my quad core) and GPU is slightly higher at about 65% on 1080p. But I don't get the same smooth performance. Also, the upscaling in windowed mode is pretty bad if I don't play at native resolution.

This patch is absolutely amazing! I still can't believe I can play these classic RPGs in ultrawide!

But there's a problem. The pixel scaling seems off, especially when you look at the text, unlike when I run the game in software mode. Is there a INI option to improve it? Also, is there an option to completely disable texture filtering on 3D elements?

Yes, there are 2 non-descriptive settings you can use to adjust the scaling.
ScalingParam1=
ScalingParam2=
Add these lines to the .ini and set the values (floating point number, I don't remember the defaults but I have Param1 set to 2 and 2 set to 0.5).

Edit: ok, I found out that using windows xp sp2 compatibility mode actually improves the performance over what I used before (I think windows 8 one) which can run the game at 1080p 60 lol

[tomchen1989]

Hi, in traditional (non mouselook) mode, can the team fly forward and backward at the same altitude if the team is looking down, like in the original unpatched game? Is there any option?

[GrayFace]

But there's a problem. The pixel scaling seems off, especially when you look at the text, unlike when I run the game in software mode. Is there a INI option to improve it? Also, is there an option to completely disable texture filtering on 3D elements?

The problem is old DirectX version used in MM7+ doesn't support resolutions above 2048 on each side, so the game has to render in 1280x540 and then x2 upscale with nearest neighbor. I'm hoping to use Emjayen's DirectX proxy to get rid of old version dependence.
When it comes to filtering I'd recommend forcing better filtering and anti-aliasing for the game through Nvidia or AMD settings. There's probably no option for disabling filtering completely.

Hi, in traditional (non mouselook) mode, can the team fly forward and backward at the same altitude if the team is looking down, like in the original unpatched game? Is there any option?

That's how it always works. And in mouse look mode there's MouseLookFly option controlling this.

[Macros the Black]

Completing the promotion quest for Minotaurs takes the Axe of Balthazar from your inventory. When you then go to the seer and say "I lost it" he gives you back the axe, even after having completed the quest. This is good, because it's almost best-in-slot for minotaurs. But unfortunately, it seems the axe loses the cold damage enchantment it had on it. The text description is still the same, and does mention the cold damage. But it doesn't seem to be on there. There's no "deals x cold damage on hit" line. I'm not sure if just that line is missing, or if it really doesn't deal cold damage. I guess one could test that against "Horrors" in the Plane Between Planes, they're the only physical immune enemies iirc.
It's still weird though. Are there two versions of the axe in the files, and they forgot to update the seer to give the right one? Would be nice if this could get fixed, Minotaurs are bad enough already without that axe.

Another thing that would be nice is if the Merchant Guild in Ravenshore could be made to not respawn. I think it's set to respawn after two years, along with the Ravenshore area itself? That's a long enough time if you have teleportation magic, but on solo playthroughs, you can run into trouble with that. And you really need the extra inventory space. I feel like this place was intended to be for storage, like the Harmondale castle in MM7, but having it respawn along with the area ruins that. But maybe it's hardcoded that way? I know I could use the adventurer's inn character inventory for storage, but that always feels a little unintended/cheaty. Either way, it feels bad when the game tells you to use it for storage and then overwrites your storage.

I don't remember if Goblinwatch in MM6 was set to not respawn at some point? It would obviously be good if it didn't for the same reason. I think people use that place for storage as well.

[cthscr]

Are there two versions of the axe in the files, and they forgot to update the seer to give the right one?

No, seems like enchanted bonus is lost when you got item from the Seer. You'll have the same problem with 'evt.Add("Inventory", ...)' for all Special items (these are done via enchanted special bonus).

[Macros the Black]

Strange, the axe seems to have reset itself at some point. I left it in a dismissed character's inventory, and today I saw that it had regained it's enchantment. I went to the seer afterwards, and the axe he gave me also had the enchantment this time. Confusing, but hey I have my axe back