Forum :: Lounge 2.0 :: Optimizing Endless Online to Work with Windows 10

Is there any reason that  msimg32.dll shows up as a virus? I have no way of getting it through my security software, it wouldn't let me download it at first, after i assured my computer that it was fine, and tried to start up endless, it auto deleted the file....

Would love to get endless working smooth again, because i crash randomly every 5-40 mins on Windows 10 :/

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Everything is the same thing, except for the differences.

Sordie posted: (8th Jul 2016, 08:15 pm)

I'm working on getting fullscreen working. I'll update you as soon as I have something working. Shouldn't take me too long.

That's a really awesome breakthrough, Sordie.

As someone who hex-edits hacks and addons directly into the game client for ease of use for players, I don't suppose you'd be willing to share the types of edits you made to achieve that result? I imagine this may be a bit more complex of a fix than a few simple hex edits, but I'm still very curious about whether it's a fix that could be rolled directly into the client.

If not, that's A-OK. It's nice to see a fix like this coming out for Win10 users.

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Cirras posted: (10th Jul 2016, 06:04 am)

Sordie posted: (8th Jul 2016, 08:15 pm)

I'm working on getting fullscreen working. I'll update you as soon as I have something working. Shouldn't take me too long.

That's a really awesome breakthrough, Sordie.

As someone who hex-edits hacks and addons directly into the game client for ease of use for players, I don't suppose you'd be willing to share the types of edits you made to achieve that result? I imagine this may be a bit more complex of a fix than a few simple hex edits, but I'm still very curious about whether it's a fix that could be rolled directly into the client.

If not, that's A-OK. It's nice to see a fix like this coming out for Win10 users.

Agreed. I have a hard time playing anything EO since the update to Windows 10 over a year ago now. It works great with all the other games I play, but Endless online has just about become unplayable. Opening the map causes tremendous lag, and walking in any direction causes buggy tiles and sprites as well as black bars across the map. I still like playing EO none the less, but win10 has definitely added that un-needed level of difficulty to game-play cause of the lack of support for such games.

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Cirras posted: (10th Jul 2016, 06:04 am)

Sordie posted: (8th Jul 2016, 08:15 pm)

I'm working on getting fullscreen working. I'll update you as soon as I have something working. Shouldn't take me too long.

That's a really awesome breakthrough, Sordie.

As someone who hex-edits hacks and addons directly into the game client for ease of use for players, I don't suppose you'd be willing to share the types of edits you made to achieve that result? I imagine this may be a bit more complex of a fix than a few simple hex edits, but I'm still very curious about whether it's a fix that could be rolled directly into the client.

If not, that's A-OK. It's nice to see a fix like this coming out for Win10 users.

It can't be done with a simple hex edit. It involves injecting code to hook the API that create DirextX interfaces and creating proxy "man in the middle" interfaces that wrap the real ones, alowing me to adjust parameters when various methods are invoked.

EDIT: The msimg32.dll and a few addons may be mistaken for viruses due to the nature of how they work. Addons forceload into the clients process allowing them to edit data and run code in much the same way a virus may try to hijack other software. They are, at the end of the day, nothing more than funny little hacks.

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http://sordie.co.uk
http://twitter.com/@SordieEO

Sordie posted: (8th Jul 2016, 08:15 pm)

I'm working on getting fullscreen working. I'll update you as soon as I have something working. Shouldn't take me too long.

Sounds great! Thanks so much, Sordie. :)

EDIT: Would you be able to bundle everything into a downloadable zip file? :)

Sordie posted: (10th Jul 2016, 05:35 pm)

Cirras posted: (10th Jul 2016, 06:04 am)

Sordie posted: (8th Jul 2016, 08:15 pm)

I'm working on getting fullscreen working. I'll update you as soon as I have something working. Shouldn't take me too long.

That's a really awesome breakthrough, Sordie.

As someone who hex-edits hacks and addons directly into the game client for ease of use for players, I don't suppose you'd be willing to share the types of edits you made to achieve that result? I imagine this may be a bit more complex of a fix than a few simple hex edits, but I'm still very curious about whether it's a fix that could be rolled directly into the client.

If not, that's A-OK. It's nice to see a fix like this coming out for Win10 users.

It can't be done with a simple hex edit. It involves injecting code to hook the API that create DirextX interfaces and creating proxy "man in the middle" interfaces that wrap the real ones, alowing me to adjust parameters when various methods are invoked.

EDIT: The msimg32.dll and a few addons may be mistaken for viruses due to the nature of how they work. Addons forceload into the clients process allowing them to edit data and run code in much the same way a virus may try to hijack other software. They are, at the end of the day, nothing more than funny little hacks.

what if you expand the size of the eo client, overwrite the load msiimg.dll instructions to jump to new code that you added at the end of the client?

and that's right you're not forcing anything at all. poor eo drinks its poison without question

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I not hacker

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its
whole life believing that it is stupid.” - Albert Einstein : Really Great Quote Ramy!

I don't know if it will help with Windows 10, but I have found that setting compatibility to windows 98 etc and disabling visual themes on windows 7 / 8 helps with graphics disconnections / freezes etc.

They made the way you have to disable them a little more complicated than it used to be for 7 / 8 (could just right click a program etc).

- http://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-visual-effects-windows

Maybe worth a try, also for the client setup, I found these settings seemed to help -

# disable pageflipping could increase your framerate (fps).

# running without pageflipping might be unstable. 

# only enable blocktranfer if you see weird graphics.

Pageflipping=off

BlockTransfer=on

# the next settings are advanced, it are instructions for behaviour

# of the various graphic loaders. Making a loader static will require

# more memory but will increase the overal game performance because 

# the harddisk activity will be less. If you have little system memory 

# (32mb or less) you can turn these values to 'off' to reduce memory.

StaticSprites=on

StaticObjects=on

StaticTiles=on

Aeeria posted: (11th Jul 2016, 03:37 am)

I don't know if it will help with Windows 10, but I have found that setting compatibility to windows 98 etc and disabling visual themes on windows 7 / 8 helps with graphics disconnections / freezes etc.

They made the way you have to disable them a little more complicated than it used to be for 7 / 8 (could just right click a program etc).

- http://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-visual-effects-windows

Maybe worth a try, also for the client setup, I found these settings seemed to help -

# disable pageflipping could increase your framerate (fps).

# running without pageflipping might be unstable. 

# only enable blocktranfer if you see weird graphics.

Pageflipping=off

BlockTransfer=on

# the next settings are advanced, it are instructions for behaviour

# of the various graphic loaders. Making a loader static will require

# more memory but will increase the overal game performance because 

# the harddisk activity will be less. If you have little system memory 

# (32mb or less) you can turn these values to 'off' to reduce memory.

StaticSprites=on

StaticObjects=on

StaticTiles=on

It's not really a problem with themes. It's how Win10 graphic drivers work with legacy DirectX. Although on slower machines you may notice a slight improvement due to less work the OS has to do.

Something to note about this configuration, you have "BlockTransfer" turned on. This can help speed up in some cases, however, if you try this with the EOSoftwareRender addon installed then your client will probably crash the first time it tries to draw a player character. You wouldn't gain any performance with BlockTransfer+EOSoftwareRender anyway even if it did work due to all rendering being done by the CPU so it's always a memory blt.

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http://sordie.co.uk
http://twitter.com/@SordieEO

Sordie posted: (11th Jul 2016, 05:30 pm)

Aeeria posted: (11th Jul 2016, 03:37 am)

I don't know if it will help with Windows 10, but I have found that setting compatibility to windows 98 etc and disabling visual themes on windows 7 / 8 helps with graphics disconnections / freezes etc.

They made the way you have to disable them a little more complicated than it used to be for 7 / 8 (could just right click a program etc).

- http://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-visual-effects-windows

Maybe worth a try, also for the client setup, I found these settings seemed to help -

# disable pageflipping could increase your framerate (fps).

# running without pageflipping might be unstable. 

# only enable blocktranfer if you see weird graphics.

Pageflipping=off

BlockTransfer=on

# the next settings are advanced, it are instructions for behaviour

# of the various graphic loaders. Making a loader static will require

# more memory but will increase the overal game performance because 

# the harddisk activity will be less. If you have little system memory 

# (32mb or less) you can turn these values to 'off' to reduce memory.

StaticSprites=on

StaticObjects=on

StaticTiles=on

It's not really a problem with themes. It's how Win10 graphic drivers work with legacy DirectX. Although on slower machines you may notice a slight improvement due to less work the OS has to do.

Something to note about this configuration, you have "BlockTransfer" turned on. This can help speed up in some cases, however, if you try this with the EOSoftwareRender addon installed then your client will probably crash the first time it tries to draw a player character. You wouldn't gain any performance with BlockTransfer+EOSoftwareRender anyway even if it did work due to all rendering being done by the CPU so it's always a memory blt.

I'm not so sure it is Win10 drivers, unless you meant drivers for hardware used on Win10. I have had zero issues with Win10 and EO since it rolled out last year. Some manufacturers send out there hardware graphic cards with little concern for the few people still running Win98 software. Windows 10 has a bigger problem than any previous OS due to the way it wants to manage device drivers. I have seen a USB port become non-functional (this is fun stuff when there are no PS2 keyboard/mouse ports to attempt fixing it) on Windows 10 because it is pathetic excuse for an OS. Windows 7 would attempt to make every piece of hardware on the machine work with generic drivers when possible in catastrophic cases like this one. This machine was repaired with a new hard drive, a reinstall of the OS, and transferring old files from the old drive proving the USB ports were fine.

We probably need some sort of compiled list of problematic Win10 display adapters posted somewhere due to the fact people still buy computers just to run the EO client.

Intel HD graphic chipsets seem to work fine (preinstalled on the motherboard).

All that's nice and all.. so... can someone give me those exact words.. but dumb'd down 1000%?

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Apollo posted: (12th Jul 2016, 12:51 am)

Sordie posted: (11th Jul 2016, 05:30 pm)

Aeeria posted: (11th Jul 2016, 03:37 am)

I don't know if it will help with Windows 10, but I have found that setting compatibility to windows 98 etc and disabling visual themes on windows 7 / 8 helps with graphics disconnections / freezes etc.

They made the way you have to disable them a little more complicated than it used to be for 7 / 8 (could just right click a program etc).

- http://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-visual-effects-windows

Maybe worth a try, also for the client setup, I found these settings seemed to help -

# disable pageflipping could increase your framerate (fps).

# running without pageflipping might be unstable. 

# only enable blocktranfer if you see weird graphics.

Pageflipping=off

BlockTransfer=on

# the next settings are advanced, it are instructions for behaviour

# of the various graphic loaders. Making a loader static will require

# more memory but will increase the overal game performance because 

# the harddisk activity will be less. If you have little system memory 

# (32mb or less) you can turn these values to 'off' to reduce memory.

StaticSprites=on

StaticObjects=on

StaticTiles=on

It's not really a problem with themes. It's how Win10 graphic drivers work with legacy DirectX. Although on slower machines you may notice a slight improvement due to less work the OS has to do.

Something to note about this configuration, you have "BlockTransfer" turned on. This can help speed up in some cases, however, if you try this with the EOSoftwareRender addon installed then your client will probably crash the first time it tries to draw a player character. You wouldn't gain any performance with BlockTransfer+EOSoftwareRender anyway even if it did work due to all rendering being done by the CPU so it's always a memory blt.

I'm not so sure it is Win10 drivers, unless you meant drivers for hardware used on Win10. I have had zero issues with Win10 and EO since it rolled out last year. Some manufacturers send out there hardware graphic cards with little concern for the few people still running Win98 software. Windows 10 has a bigger problem than any previous OS due to the way it wants to manage device drivers. I have seen a USB port become non-functional (this is fun stuff when there are no PS2 keyboard/mouse ports to attempt fixing it) on Windows 10 because it is pathetic excuse for an OS. Windows 7 would attempt to make every piece of hardware on the machine work with generic drivers when possible in catastrophic cases like this one. This machine was repaired with a new hard drive, a reinstall of the OS, and transferring old files from the old drive proving the USB ports were fine.

We probably need some sort of compiled list of problematic Win10 display adapters posted somewhere due to the fact people still buy computers just to run the EO client.

Intel HD graphic chipsets seem to work fine (preinstalled on the motherboard).

I don't think IGP's are an issue, only GPU's. It's easily solved by turning off automatic updates from the Microsoft driver repo (this can be done just for graphics, so other drivers get updates), Uninstalling the driver and installing the latest from your graphic cards OEM. This solves the most problems, including the "Black lines" bug that makes EO almost unplayable. 

Even with this solved things are still slower than they should be; walking with the map overlay on is crippling. This seems to be caused by a combo of both sloppy coding and bad legacy DirectX7 support. Graphics pipelines work a lot different to how they did back in DX7's days so I assume modern DX just badly emulates the old process.  I've been writing a few test DX7 programs to try and pinpoint exactly what is different between Win10 and previous versions and it seems to be locking/unlocking of surface buffers that use dedicated graphics RAM. The EO client does this way more times than it should need to if written correctly but we can't blame all that on "The developer" as a 3rd party graphics library is used.

The solution for now is to either use EOSoftwareRender to make the client use the CPU and main RAM or, if you have one, set some kind of option in your driver package to do this. I know the old nVidia control panel had this but it seems to not be there any more. =[

I'm still working to find a good way of doing this without EO.Addons. Not everyone that plays EO on Win10 wants to install them so we need a better solution. I'll keep you updated.

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http://sordie.co.uk
http://twitter.com/@SordieEO

I think Age of Empires had some sort of fix associated with distorted graphics. The fix wrapped the exe into a nifty batch file that disabled at run/ enabled at close whatever the compatibility issues was. This might be a simpler method for fixing full screen issues. If you are still working on a full screen add on, you might consider an enforced aspect ratio to prevent poor hardware stretching as well. 

Apollo posted: (12th Jul 2016, 06:15 pm)

I think Age of Empires had some sort of fix associated with distorted graphics. The fix wrapped the exe into a nifty batch file that disabled at run/ enabled at close whatever the compatibility issues was. This might be a simpler method for fixing full screen issues. If you are still working on a full screen add on, you might consider an enforced aspect ratio to prevent poor hardware stretching as well. 

You play age of empires 3?

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Siggy