dxwrapper Missing environment cube map when playing Freelancer (2003) on modern OS/DirectX 8 version

In the game Freelancer (2003) the space ships are supposed to have a somewhat-shiny front window. This shininess is achieved in the game by applying an environment cube map on top of all ship windows. This is what the cube map looks like:

Unfortunately after some DirectX 8 update this particular cube map stopped working completely which caused all front ship windows to lose their shininess. The exact update where this started to occur is unknown. Though it's certain that it happened a very long time ago since this issue is present on Windows 7 and even on the latest Windows XP service pack.

The only known way of getting the cube map to work on modern operating systems is to launch the game using dgVoodoo. It would be nice if this could also be fixed in DxWrapper, or possibly d3d8to9.

Windows 10:

dgVoodoo:

Sep 25 '21 15:09 BC46

I've updated the content of this issue because one major part of the mentioned problem has already been fixed during this discussion: https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper/issues/134.

Mar 23 '23 22:03 BC46

Do you have an older system setup where this works? If so can you send me a d3d9 Microsoft PIX output file of that frame working correctly?

Mar 23 '23 22:03 elishacloud

I happen to have an ancient Windows XP laptop lying around. Might be a while before I can get that thing running again...

Mar 23 '23 22:03 BC46

Managed to get the game running on the laptop. There's two problems though. First of all, for some reason even on this system the cube map does not work. I tried installing the DirectX version that was shipped with the game, but to no avail.

The second problem is that I can't get d3d8to9 to work on the laptop. It says a file named "MSVCP140.dll" is missing. Installing the VC++ 12.0 redistributable package did not do the trick unfortunately.

Mar 25 '23 18:03 BC46

140 is visual studio 2015 (hoping that crosire used the XP version of the toolchain)

Mar 25 '23 19:03 mirh

Here is a version complied for Windows XP with the runtimes built-in: d3d8.zip

Mar 26 '23 02:03 elishacloud

140 is visual studio 2015

Ah, I didn't know the number at the end represents the VC++ version.

Here is a version complied for Windows XP with the runtimes built-in: d3d8.zip

Thank you for this build! Running the game with it no longer showed the error message, but it did crash right after launch. ModName: d3d8.dll Offset: 00013809

I tried installing a VC++ 14 Redistributable package that was still supported on XP. After that the official d3d8to9 release dll did load, but got the same crash as above, this time with a different crash offset: 00013f53.

Mar 28 '23 11:03 BC46

This issue might be related to issue #75

Apr 12 '23 03:04 elishacloud

Ok, here is a quick test build to see if this will fix the missing items: dxwrapper.zip

Apr 12 '23 20:04 elishacloud

It seems that didn't do the trick unfortunately:

Apr 12 '23 21:04 BC46

I see. It was worth a try. Thanks for checking.

Apr 12 '23 21:04 elishacloud