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Any way to have HQ graphics on a 64-bit system?

Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2021 1:40 am
by bliznik
I am currently running Windows 10 Home 64-bit.

I wanted to run this game using the HQ2x or HQ3x settings, but it seems like those settings only work on 32-bit systems. Is there any way to get HQ3x on a 64-bit system?

Re: Any way to have HQ graphics on a 64-bit system?

Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2021 12:29 pm
by adeyke
The "32-bit" there refers to the color depth of the game, not the type of processor you have. It just means that some AGS run with 16 bit colors and the filters won't work for those games. It should work fine with the QfG2 remake regardless of system you have.

It just might not be what you actually want. The game is made at 320x200 resolution, and those filters don't change that. If you use "nearest neighbor" filters, it'll just give you big pixels. If you use the "HQ" filters, it'll try to algorithmically smooth the edges of those pixels. There are times when this works (e.g. it changes the octagon in the character selection screen to have smooth lines instead of jagged ones), but for the majority of the time, it just distorts things and calls even more attention to those parts it isn't able to smooth out.

The pixelly "nearest neighbor" filter is what the game was designed for and how it's intended to look.

Re: Any way to have HQ graphics on a 64-bit system?

Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2021 5:23 pm
by bliznik
The "32-bit" there refers to the color depth of the game, not the type of processor you have. It just means that some AGS run with 16 bit colors and the filters won't work for those games. It should work fine with the QfG2 remake regardless of system you have.
Oh, after some experimentation I figured it out. I have two graphics cards in my computer, one on my motherboard (Intel HD Graphics 530), and another in a PCI slot (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745). If I boot my computer with my HDMI cable plugged into the motherboard graphics' card, both the Intel and the NVIDIA drivers will load, but if I boot my computer with my HDMI cable plugged into the NVIDIA graphics' card, only the NVIDIA drivers will load.

For some reason, the executable wants to use some of the drivers on my motherboard in order to apply the hq2x filter. (I get an error message when I try to apply the hq3x filter though).

Strangely, if I try to play the game using the Intel graphics' card (my HDMI cable plugged into the Intel slot), I won't get any sound. I can only get sound in the game when I play the game using my NVIDIA graphics card. Sound works fine using both graphics cards in other applications (e.g. youtube, Final Fantasy VII), but in QFG2, I can only get sound if I plug my HDMI cable into the NVIDIA graphics card.

So, if I want both sound and an hq2x filter applied, I'll need to plug my HDMI cable into my Intel motherboard, start up the computer, then unplug the HDMI cable, plug it into the NVIDIA card, and then play the game.

Whew! That took a while to figure out...

Re: Any way to have HQ graphics on a 64-bit system?

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2021 6:20 pm
by bugmenot
You might want to try running the game via the external engine's latest acwin.exe (see this). Who knows, maybe it'll help you...

Re: Any way to have HQ graphics on a 64-bit system?

Posted: Sat May 08, 2021 8:19 am
by bugmenot
Alternatively, this game is now runnable right from ScummVM, you might want to go that way. See here.