MM7 Day is fine but the night looks like the day with brightness turned down

[incubi]

First I have to say that I am very happy to see CelestialHeavens still around and active! This is my new account because my old account as dark_pegasi is not worth the resurrection. Anyhoo

I have searched the internet for a solution to a new problem with MM7 and am having absolutely no luck. The problem is what appears to be a lack of contrast between light and dark. Daytime is fine but nighttime looks likes someone just turned the brightness down on daytime. I used to love how dark the game was, now I don't even need the torch spell anymore. Unfortunately because of the nature of this turning brightness down does not solve the situation. The in game gamma no longer works.

I am using a gigabyte AERO laptop with Intel Core i7-11800H (11th Gen) and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 with 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM
Intel UHD Graphics 630
MM7 is the latest latest gog version
Grayface mm7 2.5.7

I can take a screenshot later if that helps.
Thanks in advance

[Pol]

And can you check what graphic is in use, when you are playing MM7?

It seems to me like some (graphic) driver function to interfere.

[incubi]

Yeah, no matter what I do, it refuses to use the Nvidia card. I have the Nvidia control panel set to always use the high performance Nvidia card, and I have windows advanced video set to specifically use the Nvidia card with this game. But according to task manager it is still using the Intel graphics.

The contrasting has improved even though it doesn't seem that anything that I did changed anything. Still not perfect but definitely more playable. The things that I did other than what I mentioned was change a registry setting for d3d device in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\New World Computing\Might and Magic VII\1.0, but it auto changed back to what it was after launching the game. I set ViewDistanceD3D=0, not sure if it helped. While things are not perfect, they are more playable, and I am now just seeing if it is stable, and it seems to be for now. The darks are still a little bright but no longer look washed out. I still don't need the torch spell, which is annoying.

[Pol]

And prior to that, was there any recent GPU driver update? It may come with different settings/color profile. Or gaming color profile.
As well, this can be caused by update of lcd driver - can do exactly the same.

[Eksekk]

Yeah, no matter what I do, it refuses to use the Nvidia card. I have the Nvidia control panel set to always use the high performance Nvidia card, and I have windows advanced video set to specifically use the Nvidia card with this game. But according to task manager it is still using the Intel graphics.

Have you launched the game through MM7Setup.exe, choosing hardware acceleration? Did you change MM7.exe compat to Windows XP? Have you toyed with PaletteSMul and PaletteeVMul options in MM7.ini (from Grayface's patch)?

[incubi]

I did mess with PaletteSMul and PaletteeVMul. I increased the saturation to .85 and brightness down to 1.00 I had to be careful with the brightness because the problem was more with the difference between the light and darks, the light was fine so lowering the brightness for the darks doesn't actually solve the problem. Compatibility mode has no effect, probably because I am running GOG version.

There were no driver changes recently, but the thing that made things mostly better was messing with the registry even though I think restarting the game reset that registry value somehow. So not sure how that helped. I'll know for sure when I enter the haunted mansion. I do wish I could force the game to use Nvidia card but nothing I do fixes that, as I stated earlier. For now, it does seem better, so I need to get into the pitch-black areas to know for sure. The colors seem right now, at least no more washed out look.

[incubi]

update. I entered the Haunted Mansion and in the past, I used to have to cast a spell to even see what was in there. (Very fond memories of the first time I did that!) Now I can still see the monsters directly in front of me, but it is in fact pitch black behind them. Whatever I did, did fix it. Somethings just are different now (probably the grayface patch 2.5.7) I wish I could be more specific so this could help anyone else. But I think this problem is solved. Thank You.

[Edwardmatthew]

update. I entered the Haunted Mansion and in the past, I used to have to cast a spell to even see what was in there. (Very fond memories of the first time I did that!) Now I can still see the monsters directly in front of me, but it is in fact pitch black behind them. Whatever I did, did fix it. Somethings just are different now (probably the grayface patch 2.5.7) I wish I could be more specific so this could help anyone else. But I think this problem is solved. Thank You.

Glad to hear that your issue with the Haunted Mansion ride has been resolved! It's always frustrating when something doesn't work properly, so it's great that you were able to find a solution. If you ever encounter similar issues in the future, don't hesitate to reach out for help.