Best posts made by M123

Well this is amazing :D

Did some quick testing.

Some specific improvements I noticed, for those who haven't had a look yet:

• Working, separate volume sliders
• Music proceeds through tracks correctly
• 32-bit colour
• Texture4 (high resolution) used by default
• Improved LOD distance and reduced shadow clipping (original || Machines 1.5)
• Improved texture filtering (works better than forcing bilinear via dgVoodoo - smooths transparent texture edges and reduces distant terrain shimmering)
• First person without letterboxing / black bars
• Menu animations play at a sane speed on high refresh rates
• Loads 512x512 textures without crashing (hey @antrad !)
• High-resolution support (beyond old Direct3D limit of 2048x2048)
• Configurable refresh rate
• Day/Night cycle performance issues (stuttering) seem to be fixed

Found only one in-game issue - transparent textures like gun barrels and trees draw out of order: original || Machines 1.5

I seem to have too many available resolutions / refresh rates, so the list runs off the bottom of the screen. My native resolution and refresh rate were selected by default, and setting other resolutions via config.xml works fine.

My specs:

Windows 7 64-bit
Intel Core i7 4770
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti (driver 431.36)
1920x1080 @ 120 Hz

Note: my original Machines screenshots are with dgVoodoo 2 installed - without it the game crashes on the loading screen.

@Pisarz

I think on most current PCs the game will only use the textures in the texture2 folder - I'm guessing this is due to either:
a. the game not detecting the amount of available graphics memory properly and automatically applying the "low" quality textures; or
b. the option to select texture quality being unfinished / missing in the released version of the game (with texture4 being a leftover).

To get the texture4 ones to show in-game they can be copied into the texture2 directory - replacing the original files (as they have the same filenames). Not all of the textures have a high-resolution version, which is why it's necessary to copy the texture4 files into the texture2 directory instead of just changing the folder names.

Here's a before / after comparison:
Default (texture2): https://i.imgur.com/gcP9pD2.png
After texture4 tweak: https://i.imgur.com/8jMZhsN.png

Editing the textures works the same either way - to make a higher resolution version of an existing texture you'll have to resize it to the desired resolution and work from there (use image filters and/or manually improve details), or create a new one from scratch (use the original as a reference).

I don't have Photoshop available to test this, but you should be able to save your edited textures as 24-bit BMPs as long as you have the image mode set to RGB Color before saving. If textures saved this way cause the game to crash, it might be due to Photoshop applying some type of compression or additional image properties that the game doesn't like - to work around this you could try copying the image out of Photoshop into another image editor like Paint.NET, and then save the file using that.

For the screenshots, I think the lighting might just be due to the map and time of day (Oasis with day/night cycle enabled - was late afternoon judging by the position of the sun in-game). My gamma slider in the options menu is set to about 25%.
Image quality-wise I'm running Machines at 1920x1080* with 32xS antialiasing forced through Nvidia Inspector and 16x anisotropic filtering forced through Nvidia Control Panel.

*The first time I ran Machines with my current setup I had it set to run in Windows 98 compatibility mode, and the game would only allow resolutions up to 1280x960. I tried running it without any compatibility mode enabled and the list of available resolutions in the options menu expanded significantly - allowing up to 1920x1080 to be selected.

EDIT: that turned out to be a much larger wall of text than I expected :p

I've been playing around a bit with the textures in Machines recently - the game supports 24-bit BMPs at up to 256x256 resolution. Even some of the textures that were originally 16x16 pixels can potentially be replaced with 256x256 versions.

e.g. here's my 256x256 interpretation of misshole.bmp: http://wiredforwar.org/uploads/files/upload-a86399f0-4ca4-45fb-afb3-85610cd5acae.bmp (saved using Paint.NET 4.0.4)

In-game comparison:
Original: https://i.imgur.com/Lts5RGJ.png
256x256: https://i.imgur.com/6lp9Rqw.png

If you want to improve or customise existing textures, I'd suggest using the higher resolution versions from the texture4 directory as the base.
If the texture4 textures aren't being loaded by the game you can copy the contents of the texture4 directory into the texture2 directory (overwriting the lower-res files) - make a backup first if needed.

Tried Machines on a PC running Windows 10 (haven't updated mine from 7 yet), and wow, that is bad - messed up menu and textures, and very poor performance even on an i5 4690k and GTX970 (running at 640x480 D: ).

Tried a few different things... and found something that seems to work - dgVoodoo 2.

EDIT: Note - dgVoodoo 2 requires DirectX 11 and a GPU supporting at least DirectX feature level 10.1:

• Nvidia GeForce 400-series and newer (some GeForce 200-series might work - G210, GT220, GT240)
• ATi (AMD) Radeon HD 3000-series (except Radeon HD 3410) and newer
• Intel HD Graphics 2000 and newer

Here's what I did:

1. Download dgVoodoo 2.55.4 from here.

2. Extract it somewhere (e.g. C:\Games\dgVoodoo\).

3. Copy the "D3DImm.dll" and "DDraw.dll" located in the "MS" folder under the folder you extracted the dgVoodoo 2 archive to (e.g. C:\Games\dgVoodoo\MS\).

4. Paste the two .dll files in your Machines install directory - must be the same folder as "machines.exe" (e.g. C:\Games\Machines\).

5. Run Machines.

6. (a). If the image is too bright, washed out, etc. or you want to try forcing some extra graphical settings (e.g. MSAA, Vsync), run "dgVoodooSetup.exe" located in the folder you extracted the dgVoodoo 2 archive to (eg. C:\Games\dgVoodoo\) and try out the various settings.

   (b). If Machines crashes or runs even worse than before, delete the "D3DImm.dll" and "DDraw.dll" files from your Machines install directory to restore it to the original state.

With dgVoodoo 2 installed I could run Machines fairly smoothly (some rough patches, but I get those on Windows 7 as well) at 1920x1080 without graphical issues (at least none I noticed in the time I could test it). :-)

Seemed to work fine without Windows 95 / 98 / XP compatibility mode.
The game crashes on exit on that PC (with or without dgVoodoo 2).

EDIT: some things to try if Machines doesn't run properly with dgVoodoo 2 installed:

• Install the DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010)
• Make sure Machines is installed in a folder other than "C:\Program Files" or "C:\Program Files (x86)".
• Run Machines as administrator
• Run without any compatibility modes applied (aside from run as administrator)
• If you use MSAA through dgVoodooSetup.exe and get weird graphical issues ('smearing", blurring, flickering), make sure you don't have any transparency multi-/super-sampling forced on Machines through your graphics drivers

@asdama @bilal

I posted a possible solution here: http://wiredforwar.org/topic/77/machines-and-windows-10/14
(just edited in some extra info and possible fixes in case it doesn't work initially)

@bilal I think the problems are DirectDraw related - DirectDraw emulation apparently performs poorly on Windows 8 and up. Using dgVoodoo (see above link) seems to bypass these issues by wrapping the game's rendering to DirectX 11.
DirectPlay was used for networking.

Unfortunately the CD music playback method used by Machines (and many other games from the 90s) is partially broken on Windows Vista and later, causing both of the issues you mentioned.

With some effort, it's possible to work around the problem using an audio wrapper called _inmm.dll.

I haven't tested this very thoroughly yet - there may be better options, this is just what has worked for me so far (hopefully it will work on Windows 10):

Preparation

1. In your Machines install folder, create a new folder "Music".
2. Rip the music files from the CD into that folder, or download the Machines OST and extract it to that folder.
   (If you use the .flac soundtrack files, you may need to install the OpenCodecs pack from here (opencodecs_0.85.17777.exe) for playback to work correctly)
3. Make a backup of Machines.exe.

Install/config

1. Download _inmm238-installer.zip from here ("Download this file").
2. Extract it somewhere, then run _inmm238.exe to install the wrapper config / patcher program (to, for example C:\_inmm\).
3. Navigate to the install folder and run _inmmcnf.exe.
4. Edit the file types and players on the "Method" tab to match this image.
5. Click on the "Patch" tab.
6. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to your Machines install folder, then drag-and-drop Machines.exe onto the _inmm.dll setup window. ! This doesn't seem to work on Windows 10 - instead, try these instructions.
7. When prompted "Patch these files?", click OK.
8. Click on the "_inmm.ini" tab.
9. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the Music folder in your Machines install folder, select all the music tracks, then drag-and-drop them onto the text box in the _inmm.dll setup window. ! This doesn't seem to work on Windows 10 - instead, click the "Add" button, navigate to the Music folder in your Machines install folder, select a track and click "Open" (if using .flac format, you may need to change the file filter from "Sound files" to "All files"). Repeat until all (10) tracks are added.
10. Click "Save" and save the _inmm.ini in the root of the Machines install folder.

Run Machines.
Tracks should now cycle correctly, and you can adjust music volume by using the Windows Volume Mixer to adjust the volume of _inmmserv separately from Machines. A bit awkward, but functional.
Unfortunately the in-game volume sliders remain broken.

Note: music may stutter when loading a level - may be affected by HDD read / access speed.

@lew Nice, thanks lew (and Moritz!).

If the demo installers behave similarly to the one for the released game, they might only work reliably on Windows XP / earlier.

@antrad The tiles are created with a configurable amount of overlap to help prevent artifacts around the edges. The overlapping areas are smoothly blended together - the differences between a single-piece and tiled upscale are unlikely to be noticed during gameplay.

I upscaled sand_b.bmp using the "Misc" model - once as a single piece, and once using 128x128 tiles, 32px overlap:

https://i.imgur.com/e9dYYU9.png

https://i.imgur.com/MRjyFfd.png

Another upscaling model or texture might produce a more visible difference in one-to-one comparisons, but hard seams don't appear to be an issue.

@antrad said:

I do run out of memory if I try to upscale anything larger, I am limited to upscaling just 256x256 textures and smaller.

You might want to have a look at Image Enhancing Utility (formerly "crop-unscale-merge").
It can split images into tiles, upscale them with ESRGAN, then merge them together into a single image.
With an appropriate tile size, it should be possible to upscale large images without running out of memory.

Nice. I think @X-Lord did something similar with the unit textures a while ago.

Since waifu2x algorithm smoothens everything and makes things look like a painting for the moon textures I also applied a HSV filter using Gimp to add some noise, so it has a more "sandy" look. I think it turned out quite well. Since ice is supposed to look smooth, for ice textures I applied some noise only to the parts where there are rocks visible, but it didn't make much of a difference.

Good attention to detail :)

Recently I've been checking out ESRGAN (install + usage guide) with the Manga109 model from here - it takes a bit of work to set up and may have increased processing time compared to waifu2x, but the results can appear more natural:

seekndes bsnd1_b upscaled

It's also surprisingly good at handling dithering and banding (adding some noise after upscaling can help to mask new artifacts).

seekndes sky_b 2x nearest
seekndes sky_b upscaled

Finally found the (or at least, a) reason why the texture4 textures weren't being used on some systems:

The Voodoo 3 fix (vidcard.cap file) intended to allow owners of 16MB Voodoo 3 video cards to play the game at resolutions higher than 640x480 seems to allocate 16MB of video memory to Machines, divided into 12MB for display and 4MB for textures:

MEMORY_AVAILABLE_FOR_TEXTURES        4194304
MEMORY_AVAILABLE_FOR_DISPLAY        12582912

If you edit vidcard.cap (using Notepad) and increase both values (double the originals seems to be enough) the game will load textures from the texture4 folder without needing to move any files around.
You can also simply delete or rename the vidcard.cap file.

EDIT: apparently the vidcard.cap file being present also fixes the options menu freezing on some systems

I'm not sure if vidcard.cap is included in a fresh (and patched) install of Machines from CD, but it is included in the zipped install directory from WiredForWar.org.

EDIT2: vidcard.cap is also added by the XP patch - which explains why many players have it.

Note: this part is not necessary for Machines 1.5 - it uses Texture4 folders correctly

Machines includes some high(er) quality textures in the install folder, but for some reason they aren't displayed in-game (at least on some computers).

You can get high-quality textures for most units, effects and buildings to work properly without much effort - just copy the contents of the Machines\models\texture4\ directory into Machines\models\texture2\.
To see an example of one of the biggest improvements in resolution, compare these two images:

(This texture is used on the Red team Civilian Research Academy)

Recently I had a look through the Machines\models\planet\ folder and found that certain maps have higher-quality terrain textures, as well as some copies of unit and building textures which are higher resolution than those in the general texture4 folder.

I went through the various folders, found the best available version of each texture¹ and copied them into the appropriate folders (for individual maps and for units/effects/buildings) so they would be displayed correctly in-game.
I then removed the duplicate, unused texture4 folders.

I have uploaded the resulting models folder here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/mi5n3jnmv503pw4/models_texture4.zip (17MB download, 32.7MB once extracted)
(if this is useful enough maybe it could be re-hosted on wiredforwar.org ?)

¹ I left most moon and sun textures alone for now - there are some differences in naming, positioning, etc. which could lead to issues if they are swapped around.

To use this pack:

1. Re-name your existing models folder (e.g. C:\Games\Machines\models) to models_bak

2. Download the above linked models_texture4.zip and extract its contents into your Machines install directory (e.g. C:\Games\Machines\).
   Make sure the new models folder is located directly in the Machines folder instead of a sub-folder like Machines\models_texture4\ .

3. Play Machines :-)

   ?!. If something goes wrong (crashes, graphics glitches, poor performance, etc.), delete the new models folder and re-name the models_bak folder back to models.

Some in-game comparisons:
(I am using dgVoodoo for 32-bit display colour and forced bilinear texture filtering)

Red Dozer Constructor default
Red Dozer Constructor texture4
(the texture for the constructor upper arms and track sides is used on many units and had a very nice 256x256 version hiding away in a map texture folder, mixed with segments of a different texture. I merged the matching parts into the regular unit texture. This is the only "modified" texture in the pack.)

Blue Pod default
Blue Pod texture4
(64x64 → 128x128)

Tutorial floor default
Tutorial floor texture4
(the texture2 version of this terrain texture was already at the maximum 256x256 resolution, but was only in 8-bit colour - containing only 231 unique colors. The texture4 version is in 24-bit colour and contains 36449 unique colors.)

This pack might be useful as a base for modders to make custom skins or further enhance Machines' existing textures.

Something like this?

Light Infantry Factory

Front + Enforcer | Front (closer)
Left
Right
Rear
Above + Enforcer
[Interior] (none)

@Pisarz
Good luck, hope you can get it working.

I noticed a few extra benefits of dgVoodoo that make it worth using on earlier versions of Windows as well - with it installed Machines is displayed in 32-bit colour mode instead of 16-bit, and you can force bilinear/trilinear texture filtering for all textures (through the dgVoodooSetup utility).

Comparison images (ignore FRAPS counter):
Native DirectX
dgVoodoo

32-bit colour massively improves the appearance of terrain and sky textures (especially darker colours / at night) by reducing banding.
Forced texture filtering reduces the jagged appearance of distant / angled textures and smooths over certain textures which Machines usually renders with nearest-neighbour sampling. This causes slight distortion of some transparent textures (e.g. autocannon turret barrels) and parts of the interface. I think the trade-off is worth it - especially if someone makes higher-resolution versions of the affected transparent textures (which would reduce the visible distortion).

NOTE: If you use dgVoodoo 2 2.55 or later with forced texture filtering, set the "Videocard" under the DirectX tab to one of the GeForce cards to avoid pink outlines on some transparent textures (gun barrels, etc.)

@nainnad said:

wow m123, I wasn't able to play the game since the screen would constantly flicker but that really fixed the problem!

Glad it helped :-)

@Flopshel said:

Edit: I got it working, just have that options issue thing now and some performance issue, particularly in fps. WIll now try dgVoodoo and see how it fares.

Any idea what fixed the stuck on loading / crash on start issue? Might help some of the other users with similar issues.

dgVoodoo 2 should help with FPS issues related to Windows 8 - 10.
In some situations the game may still stutter a bit - day/night transitions in particular are a bit rough for me.

You could try using Machines Loader to play the game without a CD in the drive - the game won't be able to play music if it can't find any...
You may need to copy the flics folder from each disc into the Machines install folder if you want the campaign videos to play.

If Machines Loader doesn't work for you, you could try making an ISO image of your CD and mounting that in a virtual drive instead of using your physical CD. (game will detect the CD as being in the drive, but ISO files don't store CD audio tracks)

(I think the slider issue is due to a change in how CD audio works in Windows Vista (maybe XP?) onwards - seems like CD audio volume can't be adjusted separately from overall volume anymore, so both sliders in-game do the same thing.)

@Vasja1st the original Machines files (patched or otherwise) should not be used with Machines 1.5.

Make a new folder, e.g. C:\Games\Machines 1.5\, and extract the Machines 1.5 game assets and windows native executable 64-bit .7z archives into that.

DrFirebug made an installation tutorial video which might be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROpWUIz22qY

@Hepativore Where do you have the game installed?
Windows might prevent the game from writing files if it is installed under C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86) - I would suggest moving it to C:\Games or similar, if that is the case.

@lowowlow

That's a strange one... Hmm...

What version of the nVidia GeForce drivers are you using?
I remember some older versions had a memory leak in certain situations which could cause issues similar to what you describe.

Maybe try running the game at a different resolution, see if there's any change in behaviour (try highest and lowest available resolutions).