Open source modding toolkit

Hi there,

I have began putting together all publicly available information into a .NET 5 modding toolkit.

if anyone is interested in building open source Arcanum related tools feel free to join ArcNET

The project just began its a bit messy but once things get working proper rewrite is in place.

See ya, and thank you for all the work.

 

Hi and kongratz for doing this, i wish the unofficial patch was on github too, perhaps it would make the fixing/restorations/improvements easier.

 

You should contact the authors of OpenArcanum and Arcanum Factory, maybe you can join forces

 

Yes, I do plan to continue on UAP and High-Res patch as both are still unfinished projects, and the development will be open.

Well I am kind of very dogmatic person. Here are my beliefs:

• I don't think that Arcanum related development needs high performance/low level languages like c or c++, I use these languages only where no other means suffice like device drivers, high perf routines, embeded software.
• I don't use Javascript or Typescript for anything else then just client side app for web projects in .NET 5, quite frankly I don't understand these languages well neither do I see anything superior in them to .NET 5
• My experiences have led me believe that most closed source development exist to mainly hide incompetence of developers in for profit regimes, this completely apparent when reverse engineering products from Microsoft, Apple and Samsung.
• I have no need to hide my incompetence its completely obvious and apparent, I also believe that more people collectively working on set of problems leads in most cases to superior solutions rather then if one works on it in secrecy.

Simply put I believe that .NET 5 is sufficient in both abilities and performance to do all what is needed to be done.

 

So I have been experimenting a bit and actually found out that somehow the ddraw.dll is not rly compatible with my system 64bit win10, I was experiencing render freezer, problems on alt tab, insane fps oscillations 12-5000, as I was not able to find out from where this .dll comes from as there are multiple projects on GitHub.
I have decided to use the most supported one and that seems to be DxWrapper and its related stub ddraw.dll, as such I have added option to deploy this rather then the included one. And indeed this greatly improved my stability of game, no more render freeze, stable fps and mainly I can now launch on 4k while previously it wasn't possible.

So if anyone is interested in trying this out..

1. Install Arcanum from GOG
2. Install UAP without HighRes Patch
3. Download 1.5.1 from Github as .zip
4. Extract the HighRes folder content into empty HighRes folder inside Arcanum folder
5. Launch _install.bat which is inside the HighRes folder

Notes:

• this uses my 4k preset and that uses DxWrapper by default, so change config.ini as you need.
• some shit may go wrong on reinstall, although I have changed settings, tried and things went as intended.

What's different from 1.5 and 1.5.1?

• Fixed the inconsistency between 1.5 from Drogs site and 1.5 included in UAP
• Add DxWrapper as main lib to handle ddraw.dll wrapper, which fixed my issues.

Generally this issue will need much more data to be properly addressed, well at least the game is playable for me in 4k now and much smoother :]

 

Guess the only person that has info on the draw.dll would be Drog. Maybe you can reach him via Discord.

 

Quite frankly I don't think there's need to. The DxWrapper is far superior solution. I have tested on other win environment (win 8.1) which had problems running with HighResPatch 1.5 and works well on 1.5.1

I strongly suggest people who experience problems with 1.5 to try out 1.5.1 also the debug information collected is more helpful.

I am not saying there wont be some problems with related to DxWrapper but at least they can be properly raised and addressed as DxWrapper is still maintained.

 

Can't say I had any issues running into those problems tbh. still nice someone is giving arcanum some love again

 

Just updated ArcNET. Its now handles installation of HighResPatch from GitHub automatically, just install UAP without HighResPatch and give it path to Arcanum folder.



Edit:
If I am not lazy, ill make ArcNET autoconfigure the config.ini based on environment tonight.
Or add option to change them.