How stabilize Bridge Commander

[ash]

Hi all people  , first of all sorry for my english.

I think i found a way for make my BC installation run pretty stable. I don't have an idea if this could work for others or if people have my same problems, but i really could not play for more than 10 min maybe 20 , a QB maybe 2, but not more. I was really plagued by crash to desktop no matter what i do to game, i tried everything,  I just found some improvement with windows95 compatibility and 4gb address patch but still no accetable.

After i did a fresh install to a ramdisk, i can play for hours. I did not change nothing but disable nanofxexplosion for stability and warp effect because i don't like it.
I give you a pratical example:

Before: fresh QB, warp to DS9
        crash
        reload fresh QB
        warp to DS9
        this time ok
        hail ds9 load retake of ds9 historical mission
        5 min crash
        redo all
        crash at second wave


Now:   fresh QB
       warp to ds9
       hail ds9
       PLay retake ds9 like 4 or 5 time in a raw, died , clean map, reload mission, call other ships while battle in progress.
       warp to other sector

In 3 days i can say I quit game by myself almost every time. I still have "istitutional legal crashes" like hit spacebar when advanced engeneering is open or warp to ds9(fx) as 3rd or 4th warp jump in Chart mode.
I had 2 crash related to normal ramdisk usage (it could happend that something loads badly and u'll see huge graphics artefact; from then to a couple to minutes game will crash)

So i can say in almost 8 hours of intensive gameplay 2 crash. (i have no idea how resolve ds9 stuff but you just save and go as first warp in the next session). Now i'm testing the huge planet textures and it seems to go without problems.

Using this method i was also able to change render to game, reshading it with plenty of new effect but i still have to test.

Procedure:

There are many free ramdisk program but i use soft perfect ramdisk.

1) create a new volume in ntfs mode big 2 gb more than your bc install
2) Create a image file with the same options (optional)
3) Do a fresh install 1.1 and KM
4) Don't set compatibility stuff just hit yes when uac ask
5) disable nanofxexplosion ( i still have to test with them enabled), gravityfx, MEMORY CLEAN and PRELOAD MODELS (from ds9fx page, I still have to test Preload MODELS but memory    clean seems to lead to instability)
 
It seems that a fresh volume work far better than an image created. So i just create the volume as above, I copy my KM installation in it and play, after I copy it back to original folder.







-Hooks and Render

Sadly i don't have time now to test a lot but i found 3 ways for change render to game






First DDDRAWCOMPACT, is a stabilizer:

"DDrawCompat is a DirectDraw wrapper aimed at fixing compatibility and performance issues with games based on DirectX 7 and below on newer versions of Windows (Vista/7/8/10)."

link: https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/releases






Second D3DWINEFORWINDOWS, You can change render to OPENGL, it works but is a little tricky and I just test it once:

https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag





Third DGVODOO2, Is the big guy here, you can actually change render to DX11 and it comes with a control panel.

http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2.html

On it install Reshade last version (dxgi version) and you can activate plenty of new effect.

https://reshade.me/

I still have to try all this stuff for one reason: I can't start DS9 missions with them enabled. I guess should be a easy fix somehow but it exceed my competence , i'm not an expert, I just like mods. But everything else i tried works nice, so i would be so happy if someone find a solution to this.

I really hope this can help playing this masterpiece   

EDIT: I forget to post my specs: intel 3960x, Asus Rampage IV, 1080 gtx , 16 gb DDR3 , SSD , Windows 10 64 bit

[Morgan]

Adding more memory no doubt helped; however, I think the real improvements stability-wise came because you disabled NanoFX, which is where a lot of modded BC's instability comes from (NanoFX 2 technically never made it out of beta) in addition to the memory leaks.  It's usually recommended to keep at least SpecialFX turned off.  You can kill explosions too but BC's stock explosions are just awful.  WarpFX is pretty much essential.

The most effective way that I found to keep BC stable for the longest period of time possible is to cut down on texture sizes - BC's engine loves polys but hates textures.  2048x2048 looks awesome but it takes a lot of memory (for BC that is).  If you're just BSing playing a few QB rounds, you don't need that level of detail.  1024x1024 uses 4x less space and still gives an acceptable level of detail.

[ash]

No doubt Nero but it actually crash a lot with normal Hdd. No idea why. Anyway I had to disable nanofx completely not only explosions because of strange damage artfacts, game don't crash but after a while damage textures become really weird.

So  textures in BC does not influences video memory? 

[acidtwin]

Thanks for sharing the above, I'll hopefully have some time this weekend to give it a try

[Morgan]

Textures ALWAYS influence video memory, but most games are coded well enough for this to not be a problem.  BC's engine has never really handled high-res textures well (to Totally Games' credit I'm sure back in 2002 they never expected it to have models with such high-res textures), and since there's a memory leak problem that makes it all the more crash happy.

I have no doubt disabling all of NanoFX helped, since again that's where a lot of modded BC's instabilities come from.  We never got the source code for the game to really fix the inherent engine problems, so all of the mods are kind of a patch bandaid job (no offense to our wonderful scripting people who have made some awesome stuff over the years).  This game was NOT designed to handle about 80% of what has been thrown at it; quite frankly I'm surprised it runs as well as it does with everything installed.

Several years back I started a thread about improving BC's performance.  A lot of the community chimed in with advice so I'd take a look:  http://www.bc-central.net/forums/index.php/topic,7056.0.html

[ash]

Thank you Nero for answer , I'm reading everything around. With a bit of sadness, would been great be part of this community at right time. (but never say never , there's excalibur around isn't it?)

I hope i can again steal some time from you , after your first post i took paint.net and I started to modify/do some test with textures. I noticed that lots of old textures if saved with compression, become extremely light and i don't see any difference visually speaking in game, or at least for the pair i modified. It could be a good thing convert olders textures or a big waste of time? 

[Morgan]

I'm not holding my breath for Excalibur; it's been in development hell for over a decade and a lot of the old team members (namely Mark and LC) seem to have left the project.

With the textures, I know that you probably don't want to compress them.  If they're taking up less space and you're not seeing a difference in quality ingame then I'd call it a win-win, but I'd check with someone more knowledgeable about cutting down texture size than me (I was never in the modding communities art department).

[Defiant]

My 0000-CrashFixer.py can avoid many NanoFX Problems like explosions on dead (already deleted) objects

[eclipse74569]

Topics moved and merged.

[ash]

That's great defiant thanks! I did further test in the last days , now i can finally play this game the way i want. With all the old textures compressed i can start all  missions (ds9 and stock) also in directx 11 with reshade BUT , obviously, there is a big problem: Stock missions are ok but with ds9 things changes a bit. If the virtual video driver is set to 128 mb , game runs stable but with lag, if videodriver is set to 256 mb game runs smooth but it crash a lot , no more than 5 min.  I will try to write in the vodoo forum 

[Morgan]

DS9FX missions, some of them anyways, will cause lag because they use a lot of ships and it's pushing BC to its limits.  This has to do with the archaic game engine more than anything.  Might be something we'll have to look at with this latest update...

[ash]

To be more specific , i had time for test only my favourite mission, retake ds9 , i think is good as stress test, before i went to holiday

Fps runs good until nebula appears on screen so i think is something about big texture (if i'm not wrong nebula has 2048 ) and 128mb . (not hard to believe). This also happend with sovereign that is also 2048. So first thing i'll do when back will be cut these texture that are the only i dnd't touch or compress before: Fed ships.

Guys, with a well done reshade created by someone who knows how do stuff so not me, this game can take ar least 6 or 7 years, at least with graphic


P.s. Cannot check grammar , sorry.

[ash]

Hi people,

A couple of years ago I started this thread with the impossible purpose of improve a bit the stability of my favourite game also considering my little knowledge. Since that date I worked on it for over than a year in the free time with the promise to re-post an update. 


Part one Textures:

I noticed many textures were not optimized , I don't know much about coding but I know one or two things about textures. Said that, I compressed , resized, revamped , replaced, optimized almost every texture that needed. Starting from a fresh KM buid I added every ship and bridge I found (but not from TOS) , giving the engine the less possible memory usage but increasing the overall graphics quality.

You can download the entire package from here*

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1i-dQBzrX3e5VCmTmQrgUzHlAFyHv5KG1

How to install:

You have many ways to do this. The background folder should replace every backgrounds, same for scripts folder (who contains nanofx GFX) but for the models I raccomend to select manually the model texture you want to replace otherwise you will waste lot of HDD space.

DS9fx and latest models has not be changed.


Part Two DX11 stable 4k resolution

The last version of the already famous DGVOOO 2.61 works like a charm with BC. Now you can set-up 4k at 60 fps converting the game to DX11.

Download:
http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2.html

****************WARNING*************************
Some Dgvodoo versions could give a false positive on Microsoft edge or I.E. Nothing from Chrome.
**************************************************

Install:
Extract the content in a temp directory. Copy the dll inside MS folder to BC folder. Copy the control panel and the ini in the same BC directory. Everything should be where exe is. Open control panel and set up like this:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NxzBxx81K-hj-cfklmnt4sW5WJ0HEs0s

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cArsLPmZtsB9PGiWXSoLVr8eDGXM11yF




Part Three Reshade:

You can inject new generation effect to the game after DX11 conversion.

Download:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1g7AzVHE5X3A7EG_8BbvqQ6uM3jjWLe1Z

How to install

Just extract to game directory (where the exe are located). Open reshade.ini and change the written game path with yours.





Part Four Nvidia control panel tweaks. (I have no idea how do on AMD)

Using Nvinspector set up bridge commander profile like this:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-OHP0TwEP5HPWj70E10dyrSvKEnQcySz


This makes crispier textures and better AA.

*this is an adapt from the SWTOR graphics tweak.

download:

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/nvidia-profile-inspector-download.html





Part Five CPU Affinity

In the last years we have tons of new multicore processors. Almost ever, one of this core is faster than others. Check on task manager if game is using this faster core otherwise go to task manager/details/ find the bc.exe right click - set affinity - check only the core you want and the two after. For example i have 20 threads and the faster is the fifth (starting from 0) so I set affinity 4 5 6. This helps a bit with stability and loading

*this is an adapt from STALKER Call of Prypiat

**Bios should tell you which core is faster. It shoud be on cpu/synch core by usage/the cores with a * are faster. Or intel turbo boost in windows should give you the core list by efficenty.





Part Six Avoid Memory increase

This is the dumbest , idiot , simple workaround I think I have ever seen, but if works...

Change video card from T&l to normal and viceversa every 1/2 battles.


Do this test: open the game in windows mode so you can see task manager.

Check how much ram is used at the very beginning. Create a battle and you will see ram usage start to grow. At the end of the battle press esc /option and change the video card from T&L to "normal". As you can see the engine get an hard reset and the ram usage value come back as start.





Part Seven High resolution 4k uncompressed screenshots

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cF-NVufzXezL7G268mVKH2-0rCGP89UN



About Textures: I own only a minor part of all the textures, mostly backgrounds and some bridge floor. I tried to find mail or something for contact autors with no lucky, too much time is passed i think. So credits are all of respective original creators. If you reputate this is going to break some rules i will erase link and send only by PM.

[King Class Scout]

*chuckle* you DO realize you developed these tweaks for people owning multiple thousand credit custom refrigerator cooled hardware PC's?  us Old-Timers are happy to get it running on anything newer than an XP machine!  The core trick, however, some of us might be able to pull off if we have the ability to access the processor recognition at all; not everyone has access to little details like that.

ironically, one of my mods has a Voodoo Card texture set

[JimmyB76]

i will definitely give this a try!   

[ash]

*chuckle* you DO realize you developed these tweaks for people owning multiple thousand credit custom refrigerator cooled hardware PC's?  us Old-Timers are happy to get it running on anything newer than an XP machine!  The core trick, however, some of us might be able to pull off if we have the ability to access the processor recognition at all; not everyone has access to little details like that.

ironically, one of my mods has a Voodoo Card texture set

The only thing you actually REALLY need for playing this "refreshed" version is the color-changing uber led rgb stripes. With remote of course. Which mod? I want it

[ash]

i will definitely give this a try!   

This is great. Let me know!

[King Class Scout]

it's a REALLY old mod called _F_TNG_Eximius...which means it's for the first Voodoo card, and maybe a 256 texture set   i think it's in a KM.

and the core use tweak you mentioned must be exclusive to W8's and 10

[Lurok91]

Do you have any screenshots of changes before AND after using reshade?

[ash]

Do you have any screenshots of changes before AND after using reshade?

I deleted the non-reshade version of the screenshots I uploaded. I make new ones!