Sega PC Reloaded

Haha, I didn't know that would happen. But I'm not surprised. Ecco PC is quite a different beast from the other games. It's a mess internally with its multiple graphics modes.
Yes, it doesn't allow you to move the window past a screen border, because the programmers were too lazy to handle clipping, or didn't know that there's an IDirectDrawClipper
that would do the work for them...
The Sonic games should go fullscreen only on the monitor they're currently on, because my code handles the switching there. Not so for Ecco.
I am planning to bring it in line with the Sonic games, as far as the window handling is concerned, but that is going to take some major reworking.

Hmm, that implies SONIC_P5.EXE gets tested, as it should be.
The code makes a list of every .exe in the folder and then weeds out all the entries that don't have the expected name, version info, or other characteristics.
You could try deleting SONIC_P5.EXE (it's useless anyway), and see if the error message changes.
For some reason I can't explain, SONICCD.EXE is apparently not found on your system, although it is there! Are some compatibility or security settings enabled for it?

Sonic's Schoolhouse? Ok, one more for the list.

 

I uploaded a new build that should constrain the game to the primary screen at least.

Ok, now we're getting somewhere. So soniccd.exe is found, but the import check fails. The new build should give details why.
And thanks for your offer, I'll get back to it when it's time. I have Sonic R myself, but not the other games.

 

You and me both. "The parameter is incorrect" is coming straight from Windows (calling FormatMessage API with GetLastError).
Anyway, I hope we have found the cause now. New build online NOW.
Which version of Windows are you running, by the way?

I think I got it, used a function that required Windows 8 or newer.
It should work now on 7 and Vista, too.

 

Thanks for the info. I forgot I disabled the shift and control keys in Sonic 3D, while trying to implement custom controls. They aren't active yet, so you have to play the game with the default keyboard controls, the S/Enter thing is normal.
The joypad issue is not. It works fine with my gamepad.
Anyway, new build online that should fix the Sonic CD issue and the spindash key in S3D (shift, "B" also works).

 

Comix Zone is on my radar. I haven't done anything with it yet, but I know that it uses WinG, a precursor to DirectDraw, so that might or might not make things more difficult for me.

I think I figured out the joystick issue. It's from my code mapping the POV hat / d-pad to the axes. My gamepad returns 0x0000FFFF for a centered POV, I guess yours uses 0xFFFFFFFF, which is actually the correct value (JOY_POVCENTERED). Should be fixed in the new build I just uploaded.
I tried bass_adx.dll from the official website, with some adx files from Sonic Mega Collection Plus, and they worked.
Thanks for all your testing, by the way!

 

I didn't make the sound file for Sonic CD, it came from the original 16 bit release, but wasn't included in the 32 bit one (and even disabled in code there).
But I have been thinking about custom sound effects for SCD and S&KC, I.e. using individual external files like Ecco and S3D already do.
I'd also like to add a volume control for sound effects, because I find it annoying when games are significantly louder than other apps and don't offer that functionality.
You can already control the bass.dll playback volume (Alt+Up/Down hotkeys). That reminds me, could you add volume control to smpsout.dll?
In the form of another exported function like "SetVolume" or similar. No urgency, but it would be nice to have.

Yes, Sonic 3D Blast doesn't play the speed shoes and invincibility tracks, even though they are on CD.
The tracks are just never used by the game code, I checked. The only way that I can think of to enable them, is to understand the game logic,
find the precise location of the piece of code that gets executed whenever those powerups become active, and then hack into it to start
the appropriate tracks.

 

Thanks for your feedback! I had the same problem with Sonic & Knuckles Collection not terminating properly, I mentioned it here before. It happens because when the game shuts down, it calls FreeLibrary to unload the music library MIDIOUT.DLL from memory, but for some reason, that causes an access violation in MIDIOUT.DLL. I found out that by calling the "initialize" function of MIDIOUT before freeing, the error won't happen.
I will try to tackle Sonic R, but I can't say when.
Concerning Sonic & Knuckles Collection and Sound Blaster FM: I don't feel that's my department. The game has outsorced its complete music to the mentioned MIDIOUT.DLL library, whose interface is known. So, anyone could relatively easily create a compatible replacement for it to change everything about the music.

Great! By the way, I found another small issue with SMPSOUT: it expects that there's a MIDIOUTY.DLL. If there isn't, and you have a track configured to use the MIDI version, the game will crash. I think SMPSOUT should check first whether MIDIOUTY.DLL exists, and if it doesn't, use MIDIOUT.DLL instead.
Weird issue with your controller. I hope it'll work better once I have completed the new joystick handling code.


In other news, I got Bug! working, but it's not release-worthy yet (doesn't play its videos and music yet). The game lives up to its name and has a nasty bug in its DirectDraw initialization code, writing to a memory object that is allocated only later. But that's not actually what prevented it from running. As usual, it wants a 256 color video mode and also refuses to run in video modes wider than 1024 pixels. I guess they did this for performance reasons, but it was quite short-sighted, after all processing power is known to increase with each new CPU generation.
The nice thing is that the software 3D engine scales, so instead of playing it like this (internal resolution: 320x240, stretched to 1920x1200) (or with halftone stretching, which is usable here, as the game runs at 30 fps, not 60), you can play it like this (internal resolution: 1920x1200). The textures and sprites are still awfully low-res up close, but they look nicer in the distance and the polygons are sharp.

Bug! also has a hidden cheat code: in the Help / About dialog box, there's an invisible edit field that is supposed to capture key input. If you typed "babyseals", it should activate a cheat menu entry with a few options. However, I don't see any way to give input focus to that edit field so that it would actually receive keypresses. Maybe it worked in older Windows versions. Anyway, I can easily activate that cheat menu by other means.