Tehulotl
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2022
- Messages
- 45
THE INTRODUCTION OF A WORKING BEAUTIFUL COLWIN
Intro1:
If Colonization for Windows would have two things: good looking units and resource icons, AND an easy working stage to get it to run - it would be a great alternative for ColDos, cause it is .MP and .SAV compatible, you just can copy and paste your save games right into it - and play, on WIDE SCREEN, in my case, I can see whole North America on my 55inch4K, upscaled terrain, really lovely, and now, upscaled good looking units and resource icons, and I can play via simple double clic a smooth running, good looking game. An easy working, beautiful game. Reasonable. Makes sense!
Intro2:
The BLOODY BONKERS decision to ruin the resource icons within City Pool and Europe Pool was utter bonkers by these 1995 programmers. They did nice efforts to write a nice Colonize.exe for Win, with nice new pop ups, all stored nicely within newly attached .DLL files to support these gfx - all nice! Yeah, then they did huge ugly resource icons, too huge for the pool, and their decision to make ugly resources fit into this pool was - to program a downsize to 80 or 90 percent! Yeah, this makes ANY ugly gfx better. So, they had ugly resource icons, and pervert ugly units, cause the most important thing is to draw nice backgrounds for the pop ups, AND THEN they let downsize this crap to fit into the pools, cause the pools are irrelevant. Idiots. This was the perfect pervert blue print on "how to ruin a beloved ColDos game for Win in two seconds". Idiots. I can rescue the gfx, but NOT find the downsize pool icons line within the .EXE. *sobbidi sobsob*.
Main Article:
Hello. This were two lovely weeks now. 30Sep I started to play ColDos again, after probably a decade, DosBox, 55inch4K, two metres distance, really enjoyable and fun. I played four games "small landmass/archipelago" til 5Oct, while I watched a little @Blake00 video about ColWin, and downloaded, and, didnt run. 6-8Oct I modded ColDos to fit my needs, 8Oct @pavelbel told me in PM that VM Wine would be a solution to run ColWin, WITHOUT an installed whole XP Emulator.
You know, ColWin didnt fail caused by the lack of Emulator or WinXP. ColWin was released, it seems, 1995, and I personally think, some boss said: "Make ColDos for Win, you have five minutes, and then FK IT." and this is what they did. They shovelled ColDos into Win, and then, FK IT. Once you extract the 201.tga from the COLDATA1.DLL, you SEE, that they tried to upscale all of it, once you play ColWin via VM Wine, you SEE, that the terrain was upscaled to better look and resolution. ColWin had PLENTY OF YEARS with XP machines, and, it had PLENTY OF YEARS with these ugly, unbearable fishhead faces they call "units". Once you see the 201.tga right in front of you, you see, that they tried to upscale all of it, the terrain was a very nice job indeed, then some ships they managed to upscale and smoothen - the units were a quickie, and not one of the good ones - you CANNOT play ColWin with these fishhead SHT units, imo.
Well, 8Oct @Lord_Hill told me in PM how to crack it, but I said: Unpack the 201.tga for me, and send it, I will re-draw it and send it back, and you implement it back. 9Oct in the morning, I could not wait til Friday, and unpacked it by myself. The whole 9Oct units drawing. The whole 10Oct terrain and tweaks. 11Oct in the morning, I could not wait any longer, and tried to implement it back myself - HexEditor, manually replacing gibberish within a .DLL, never done this before.
BUT. You NEED to SEE it in-game, to re-draw, re-implement, re-draw, re-implement, and so on, 11Oct til 12Oct, today, I hopefully kicked out all pixel errors, smoothened all I could, to finalize a 201.tga and my COLDATA1.DLL with FAR BETTER units, with FAR BETTER everything, so that it would fit my personal taste and needs.
To see how ColDos units could look like, upscaled to 32x32 and well-drawn, ColDos itself is not fit, cause first, I found software to unpack, but no software to pack - and these units could never be better within these 16 pixel heights anyway! But ColWin gave me the opportunity. After final tweaks for my ColWinMod I will upload the whole pack in here. This is how ColWin should have looked like, right from the start, and it cost me FOUR DAYS, from absolute ZERO, to getting ColWin to run via VM Wine, to unpacking, to re-drawing, to implementing. A fifth day to finalize the COLTEXT0.DLL. Oh, and a sixth day to hopefully have finalized the COLDATA1.DLL as good as possible, so, 9-14Oct COLWIN MOD.
ColWin IS PLAYABLE. You download
> ColWin (I downloaded the small pack)
> VM Wine (I downloaded the stable version)
github.com
> whpxvm.dll
Wine uses vm86.dll to run most stable, and most CPU and power hungry with for me 25 % of my CPU with high power usage and I want to use another dll for a better performance cause that old small games use up 25 % and make noises is super annoying, unnatural, and inacceptable, old games no eat my CPU. But the haxmvm.dll seems to be not continued and would need further stuff to download, fishy, no. The whpxvm.dll, what @pavelbel said, lets run VM Wine FAR SMOOTHER, I want. Once I know how to use it, I write in here. EDIT: I failed. I tried to implement other .dlls into the .ini, but I just got the same error message like many other guys I read in forums.
pavelbel told, you need to download THIS (what I already did, but with an error message, game didnt open):
to place it into the Wine dll subfolder, to change the otvdm.ini vm=xxx.dll entry to THIS:
vm=whpxvm.dll
Possible, that many guys out there will be lucky and it will run, and more smoothly, I wasnt. pavelbel told THIS:
PeekMessageSleep=5
and this worked for me the way, that just with vm86.dll, my system runs CONSTANTLY on 25 %, this is a big NO NO. With this PeekMessageSleep=5 otvdm.ini entry my system runs on these 25 % when actually processing, for example loadings, AI movements, but while pop ups and my own movements, while nothing happens, it can go down to near zero, CPU calms down finally, and this is far better for CPU and power usage!
> @pavelbel
Had a problem with 27inch high res, his solution was a 200 % resolution Windows
> BatchFile
I LOOOVE BatchFiles! To use VM Wine I had to open both folders and to take the Colonize.exe to the Wine.exe, drag and drop, to run it. This annoys MUCH. After some testing - to put a Colonize.exe shortcut into the Wine folder, to drag and drop, but Wine didnt get shortcuts - to put a Wine.exe shortcut into the ColWin folder, to drag and drop actually worked, but the save game folder was WINE then, annoying.
So, I wrote a BatchFile to run Colonize.exe with Wine.exe, done. The BatchFile itself should be in the ColWin folder to get instant access to the save games, I called it 1PLAY.bat to stand in front - but you can put the shortcut of the BatchFile to wherever you like.
The inside of my 1PLAY.bat looks like this:
@Echo off
cls
"D:\Ascend\Colonize\Wine\otvdmw.exe" D:\Ascend\Colonize\ColWin\Colonize.exe
I use BatchFiles to execute simple redundant commands via double clics - I use a simple DOUBLE CLIC and can play a far better resolution ColWin VM Wine easy and smooth! Cause ColWin could be a great alternative - it is MP and SAV compatible with ColDos, so, you can paste your old savegames right into the ColWin folder and load and play, with a WideScreen resolution I can see all of America on ONE screen, and ColWin VM Wine executes easy via double clic, terrain looks good, WideScreen looks good, and if the units would look good - GREAT!
Outro:
As I said. The downfall of ColWin WAS NOT the complicated Emulator XP stuff. This game had TWO DECADES with plenty of XP machines, but it just SUCKED - cause if the units look like dead fish, nobody likes it, nobody would do efforts for it, and yes, nobody wants to install Emulator XP stuff for a mediocre fishy weird game.
Well, these two things are done. @pavelbel told good infos and feedback. @Lord_Hill told how to unpack and implement. VM Wine CAN RUN ColWin easily. And my new COLDATA1.DLL should be awesome. REALLY AWESOME. Now the ColDos units look like a person invested LOVE and CARE and FOCUS and PASSION to upscale and smoothen the old beloved units into bigger and better. And yes. This is what I did.
Teaser. But I dont want to spoil the full experience. Caravel. Ore Miner. Common Soldier. Prices in Europe.
YEEEHAW.
Intro1:
If Colonization for Windows would have two things: good looking units and resource icons, AND an easy working stage to get it to run - it would be a great alternative for ColDos, cause it is .MP and .SAV compatible, you just can copy and paste your save games right into it - and play, on WIDE SCREEN, in my case, I can see whole North America on my 55inch4K, upscaled terrain, really lovely, and now, upscaled good looking units and resource icons, and I can play via simple double clic a smooth running, good looking game. An easy working, beautiful game. Reasonable. Makes sense!
Intro2:
The BLOODY BONKERS decision to ruin the resource icons within City Pool and Europe Pool was utter bonkers by these 1995 programmers. They did nice efforts to write a nice Colonize.exe for Win, with nice new pop ups, all stored nicely within newly attached .DLL files to support these gfx - all nice! Yeah, then they did huge ugly resource icons, too huge for the pool, and their decision to make ugly resources fit into this pool was - to program a downsize to 80 or 90 percent! Yeah, this makes ANY ugly gfx better. So, they had ugly resource icons, and pervert ugly units, cause the most important thing is to draw nice backgrounds for the pop ups, AND THEN they let downsize this crap to fit into the pools, cause the pools are irrelevant. Idiots. This was the perfect pervert blue print on "how to ruin a beloved ColDos game for Win in two seconds". Idiots. I can rescue the gfx, but NOT find the downsize pool icons line within the .EXE. *sobbidi sobsob*.
Main Article:
Hello. This were two lovely weeks now. 30Sep I started to play ColDos again, after probably a decade, DosBox, 55inch4K, two metres distance, really enjoyable and fun. I played four games "small landmass/archipelago" til 5Oct, while I watched a little @Blake00 video about ColWin, and downloaded, and, didnt run. 6-8Oct I modded ColDos to fit my needs, 8Oct @pavelbel told me in PM that VM Wine would be a solution to run ColWin, WITHOUT an installed whole XP Emulator.
You know, ColWin didnt fail caused by the lack of Emulator or WinXP. ColWin was released, it seems, 1995, and I personally think, some boss said: "Make ColDos for Win, you have five minutes, and then FK IT." and this is what they did. They shovelled ColDos into Win, and then, FK IT. Once you extract the 201.tga from the COLDATA1.DLL, you SEE, that they tried to upscale all of it, once you play ColWin via VM Wine, you SEE, that the terrain was upscaled to better look and resolution. ColWin had PLENTY OF YEARS with XP machines, and, it had PLENTY OF YEARS with these ugly, unbearable fishhead faces they call "units". Once you see the 201.tga right in front of you, you see, that they tried to upscale all of it, the terrain was a very nice job indeed, then some ships they managed to upscale and smoothen - the units were a quickie, and not one of the good ones - you CANNOT play ColWin with these fishhead SHT units, imo.
Well, 8Oct @Lord_Hill told me in PM how to crack it, but I said: Unpack the 201.tga for me, and send it, I will re-draw it and send it back, and you implement it back. 9Oct in the morning, I could not wait til Friday, and unpacked it by myself. The whole 9Oct units drawing. The whole 10Oct terrain and tweaks. 11Oct in the morning, I could not wait any longer, and tried to implement it back myself - HexEditor, manually replacing gibberish within a .DLL, never done this before.
BUT. You NEED to SEE it in-game, to re-draw, re-implement, re-draw, re-implement, and so on, 11Oct til 12Oct, today, I hopefully kicked out all pixel errors, smoothened all I could, to finalize a 201.tga and my COLDATA1.DLL with FAR BETTER units, with FAR BETTER everything, so that it would fit my personal taste and needs.
To see how ColDos units could look like, upscaled to 32x32 and well-drawn, ColDos itself is not fit, cause first, I found software to unpack, but no software to pack - and these units could never be better within these 16 pixel heights anyway! But ColWin gave me the opportunity. After final tweaks for my ColWinMod I will upload the whole pack in here. This is how ColWin should have looked like, right from the start, and it cost me FOUR DAYS, from absolute ZERO, to getting ColWin to run via VM Wine, to unpacking, to re-drawing, to implementing. A fifth day to finalize the COLTEXT0.DLL. Oh, and a sixth day to hopefully have finalized the COLDATA1.DLL as good as possible, so, 9-14Oct COLWIN MOD.
ColWin IS PLAYABLE. You download
> ColWin (I downloaded the small pack)
> VM Wine (I downloaded the stable version)
GitHub - otya128/winevdm: 16-bit Windows (Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1, etc.) on 64-bit Windows
16-bit Windows (Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1, etc.) on 64-bit Windows - otya128/winevdm
github.com
> whpxvm.dll
Wine uses vm86.dll to run most stable, and most CPU and power hungry with for me 25 % of my CPU with high power usage and I want to use another dll for a better performance cause that old small games use up 25 % and make noises is super annoying, unnatural, and inacceptable, old games no eat my CPU. But the haxmvm.dll seems to be not continued and would need further stuff to download, fishy, no. The whpxvm.dll, what @pavelbel said, lets run VM Wine FAR SMOOTHER, I want. Once I know how to use it, I write in here. EDIT: I failed. I tried to implement other .dlls into the .ini, but I just got the same error message like many other guys I read in forums.
pavelbel told, you need to download THIS (what I already did, but with an error message, game didnt open):
to place it into the Wine dll subfolder, to change the otvdm.ini vm=xxx.dll entry to THIS:
vm=whpxvm.dll
Possible, that many guys out there will be lucky and it will run, and more smoothly, I wasnt. pavelbel told THIS:
PeekMessageSleep=5
and this worked for me the way, that just with vm86.dll, my system runs CONSTANTLY on 25 %, this is a big NO NO. With this PeekMessageSleep=5 otvdm.ini entry my system runs on these 25 % when actually processing, for example loadings, AI movements, but while pop ups and my own movements, while nothing happens, it can go down to near zero, CPU calms down finally, and this is far better for CPU and power usage!
> @pavelbel
Had a problem with 27inch high res, his solution was a 200 % resolution Windows
> BatchFile
I LOOOVE BatchFiles! To use VM Wine I had to open both folders and to take the Colonize.exe to the Wine.exe, drag and drop, to run it. This annoys MUCH. After some testing - to put a Colonize.exe shortcut into the Wine folder, to drag and drop, but Wine didnt get shortcuts - to put a Wine.exe shortcut into the ColWin folder, to drag and drop actually worked, but the save game folder was WINE then, annoying.
So, I wrote a BatchFile to run Colonize.exe with Wine.exe, done. The BatchFile itself should be in the ColWin folder to get instant access to the save games, I called it 1PLAY.bat to stand in front - but you can put the shortcut of the BatchFile to wherever you like.
The inside of my 1PLAY.bat looks like this:@Echo off
cls
"D:\Ascend\Colonize\Wine\otvdmw.exe" D:\Ascend\Colonize\ColWin\Colonize.exe
I use BatchFiles to execute simple redundant commands via double clics - I use a simple DOUBLE CLIC and can play a far better resolution ColWin VM Wine easy and smooth! Cause ColWin could be a great alternative - it is MP and SAV compatible with ColDos, so, you can paste your old savegames right into the ColWin folder and load and play, with a WideScreen resolution I can see all of America on ONE screen, and ColWin VM Wine executes easy via double clic, terrain looks good, WideScreen looks good, and if the units would look good - GREAT!
Outro:
As I said. The downfall of ColWin WAS NOT the complicated Emulator XP stuff. This game had TWO DECADES with plenty of XP machines, but it just SUCKED - cause if the units look like dead fish, nobody likes it, nobody would do efforts for it, and yes, nobody wants to install Emulator XP stuff for a mediocre fishy weird game.
Well, these two things are done. @pavelbel told good infos and feedback. @Lord_Hill told how to unpack and implement. VM Wine CAN RUN ColWin easily. And my new COLDATA1.DLL should be awesome. REALLY AWESOME. Now the ColDos units look like a person invested LOVE and CARE and FOCUS and PASSION to upscale and smoothen the old beloved units into bigger and better. And yes. This is what I did.
Teaser. But I dont want to spoil the full experience. Caravel. Ore Miner. Common Soldier. Prices in Europe.
YEEEHAW.
Last edited:
