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#3165416 - 12/25/10 03:07 PM Comanche Gold - Tribute *****  
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ufolev Offline
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Hello Friends,
TODAY you can run 1998 NovaLogic Comanche Gold helicopter sim on Windows10 with 1280x1024 resolution.
this is a brief description of all TESTED and READY FOR USE
MODS , INNOVATIONS and NEW MISSIONS for Comanche Gold, made from the game fans .


Many Thanks for : moderasura, FatCatProject, revious83, Bugswatter, SpeedySPCFan, William Feely, Death_Wish_Decker, Flyboy, DavidC99, Reticuli, Kevin Bax, ADHS, Dolores, flogger83, "Command Group 07", Theron Jackson, Deon van der Westhuysen, S3ti and all other enthusiasts and helpers involved cheers .


The Last News are on the Top!

- Comanche Gold On Modern Computers from FLYBOY
https://SimHQ.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4488974/comanche-gold-on-modern-computers#Post4488974

- a Mission Editor MODERATOR from moderasura - it is an application for easy exchange of the maps in the Comanche Gold Mission Editor- it allows to overcome the "10 maps" limitation of the original Mission Editor

- 1 custom mission from FatCatProject with action gameplay.

- Comanche Gold Anti Aliasing and Enhanced Colors from revious83 - YouTube video "Comanche Gold - Graphic Enhancements with Reshade" and a short tutorial How to use Reshade and Dgvoodoo on Comanche Gold instead of DXGL.
With Dgvoodoo2 you can even run it at 1280x1024, that is the highest possible resolution in the game.

- Comanche Gold on Windows10 from Bugswatter - a description how to run CG on Win10 in the page4 of the SimHQ topic:
"Comanche Gold on Windows Vista/7 - fixed!" and a YouTube video - "Comanche Gold on Windows 10 Full Tutorial".

- 10 custom missions from Flyboy - standard Mission Editor.

- Comanche Gold on Windows8 from SpeedySPCFan - YouTube video lesson : "Tutorial - How to Play Comanche Gold on Windows 8".

- Comanche Gold Universal Trainer from Death_Wish_Decker - The Universal Solution / ALL IN ONE / for Comanche Gold !

- Fourth CG MOD from Flyboy and Kevin Bax - allows the game to run on Windows7 and Windows Vista directly!

- Third CG MOD from Flyboy - changes the original Comanche Gold sounds with the sounds of Comanche4.

- Second CG MOD from DavidC99 and Reticuli - unlocks hidden "in game" menu that gives the possibility to save your game,
the options to watch, takeover and continue your saved game, also dives "freeze universe" and "no damage" player options.

- First CG MOD from Flyboy and Reticuli: unlocks hidden "in game" menu that allows 1024x768 resolution gameplay and doubles the terrain, foreground and object details.

- 6 custom missions from "Command Group 07" and Theron Jackson - standard Mission Editor.

- 2 custom missions from DavidC99 with many innovations.

- 1 custom mission from Dolores with many innovations.

- 16 custom missions from ufolev - with innovations and 8 of them are connected in the First New Custom made Comanche Gold Campaign - " Diamond River " .

- CGoldIP from DavidC99 - Windows7 direct multiplayer connection tool .

- Online Multiplayer Manual via KALI from ADHS.

- Map exchange and triggers usage methods from DavidC99 - gives how to change maps subsequently and add event triggers in fan made missions.

- Map exchange method from flogger83 - allows to overcome the "10 maps" limitation of the Mission Editor
and the idea for map import from "Armored Fist2" and "Delta Force1"!
Added 14 maps from "Armored Fist2" and 35 maps from "Delta Force1" for custom mission building. Now we have all together 142 maps!

- Changing the player or wingman aircraft from flogger83

- CG Resource Pack1 from Dolores Contains a lot of models, converted mostly from Armored Fist 3 and a new music track, converted from F-22 Lightning II

- Virtual Computers - VirtualPC, VirtualBox, Parallels Workstation and VMware Workstation allow the Game to overcome all hardware and OS limitations.

- DXGL from William Feely - An implementation of legacy DirectX (DirectDraw/Direct3D 7 and below) in OpenGL, for modern video cards.

- PPJoystick from Deon van der Westhuysen for real or virtual Windows98,XP,Vista,7,8,10 OSes allows to use in the Game your PC mouse instead of a joystick.

- Comanche Gold Antialiasing Solution from S3ti - Workaround to get Comanche hardware rendered and antialiased /for Nvidia video cards/.

- Comanche Gold FreeLook Mode - allows to fly and observe simultaneously which is very close up to a TrackIR option .


NovaLogic Comanche Gold original DEMO MOVIES


All listed improvements can be examined or downloaded from the dedicated for them topics in SimHQ helicopters forum :-)

Attached Files Comanche Gold CD.jpg71KEPQFKXGL.gif517PDDY7KAL.jpg
Last edited by ufolev; 01/28/24 12:08 PM.
Inline advert (2nd and 3rd post)

#3165757 - 12/26/10 11:20 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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DavidC99 Offline
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Add the following features:

  • TCP/IP support.
  • Manual IP selection to join.
  • Automatic IP selection via Novaworld.
  • Windows 7 multiplayer support by way of TCP/IP.
Forgive the poor quality as I was in a hurry, but here's a sample of the game running in Windows 7 in multiplayer via TCP/IP:



I tested this myself, and have cracked the IP encoding scheme that was used by the game. Now we can join by IP and use TCP/IP. This means, if we choose, we can effectively ditch Kali.

Now granted, I had a whole list of connection issues and troubles, but I did manage to get it to connect by placing both machines on the same subnet, disabling all firewalls between them, etc. etc.. It may not be perfect, and it may take more testing, but I did manage a connection, and that is the important part.

What is the point of having TCP over IPX? Well, for one, Windows 7 doesn't support IPX, so that means Windows 7 users can't play over Kali unless they do this hackish IPX installation which has only been reported, to my knowledge, to work for the 32-bit version of Windows 7. Windows 7 users can, however, play over TCP. By figuring out how the game allows for TCP/IP, we can now include Windows 7 users in the game for online sessions.

The next steps:

  • Make the game run on Windows 7 with the CD.
  • Figure out if we want to switch to TCP/IP to accommodate some Windows 7 users.
    • Bad side:Hosting will be a major issue for some, as the host has to make sure all of his settings are perfect.
    • Good side:People joining won't have to worry about most connection settings. Just set it and go. Practically all issues are placed upon the host.
I say we give it a try at least!


DavidC99
#3165788 - 12/26/10 01:10 PM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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Flyboy Offline
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You got it to connect! Congratulations! By the way, DavidC99 and myself spent over 5 hours last night on Kali discussing and testing all this. When it got to 4.00am my time, I decided to bug out. I'm pleased David stayed on and got some success.

#3167994 - 12/29/10 11:06 PM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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DavidC99 Offline
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I think I'm almost there with the connection issues.

Ports needed by hosts and clients:
  • Inbound and outbound 2300-2400 TCP
Port needed by hosts only:
  • Inbound 47624 TCP
Port needed by client only:
  • Outbound 47624 TCP
There may be more ports to open. I believe that users with simple network environments will be able to work this out just fine in general. For those who care, this is what the game actually appears to do:
  1. Host begins waiting for connections.
  2. Client attempts to join.
  3. Connection is made, or else the entire attempt dies.
  4. Host attempts to start a new connection to client.
  5. Connection is made, or else the entire attempt dies.
  6. Client attempts to start a new connection to host.
  7. Connection is made, or else the entire attempt dies.
  8. The client has now joined the session.
This is a very stupid method in my opinion. The host should be receive a connection, accept it, and that's that. There's no reason for multiple connections like this -- and certainly no reason whatsoever to have the client and host each initiate their own connections, as that requires clients explicitly to open ports for incoming connections -- and it sounds like it'll make it difficult for people on the same LAN to get in on gaming sessions.

Nevertheless, this appears to be what we've got. If all goes well, we'll be able to use either NovaWorld's system -- which still appears to work to some degree, by the way -- or else I can provide a program later that will enable a player either to host a game or join by IP, or even both.

I got this up and running on my end despite all of my own security issues. I'll need someone with a fair bit of knowledge of being able to open ports on his own system to test this with me, preferably on TS3 so we don't have to worry about seeing a chat window while the game is running and we're messing with settings. Once we have this set up, we'll be good to go live.

Good news is that Windows 7 users will be able to play Comanche Gold multiplayer natively without all of this virtualization and go-between software, as long as someone else with a CD is playing on the session.


DavidC99
#3168062 - 12/30/10 01:15 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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Flyboy Offline
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So it would appear you're not thinking of using Hamachi then? I thought with that it would basically be objective complete.

#3168115 - 12/30/10 03:03 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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DavidC99 Offline
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Hamachi is more geared toward private groups, being a program essentially to create a VPN. I was under the impression that we want a more public atmosphere, allowing anyone to get in on our sessions. If we use Hamachi then anyone who wants to game with us will have to be allowed to join our virtual network -- and that's not the ideal solution.

If we can get this to work with just opening a few ports, it's probably a safer and more advisable option.


DavidC99
#3192673 - 01/29/11 10:14 PM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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I got Comanche Gold to Load and Play / Fly in Windows Vista. It needs some modding and work, taking time, but doable and should be repacked in a week to play with all terrains / missions unlocked.

First install the Comanche Gold Demo and then open it's root folder to do the modding / have your Comanche Gold Disk in the Disk Drive....




You have to mod the Setup.cd file to where your Comanche Gold Disk is at: Default was C: for the Demo. D: or consecutive for your CDROM or another one pertaining to where your game runs from. This plays the intro videos and unlocks the folders to play the missions.

It involves modding the Demo folder, using Ravens PFF Utility and finding the file in the Cgold.PFF called IDEMO.MNU and placing Fly Boy's WC3.MNU in the demo root folder ( as it over rides the packed one when loading) and renaming it to IDEMO to over write the IDEMO.MNU and then some editing by notepad in the top of the file headers of Fly Boy's file WC3.MNU file to open all missions / unlock them for play so the default menu will have all missions available to click on.

It loads and runs fine and has the higher resolutions without problems / lag.

The PFF file in the demo called: Cgold.pff needs to be repacked with the files or replaced by your disk's PFF files using the PFF packing / Raven's Pff utility.

Endstate: It loads and runs on Vista. It will require repacking the Cgold.pff from my Comanche Gold's game's cd pff for all of the mission guidelines and to run when comparing the WC3.MNU to IDEMO.MNU and going into the terrains / files of the .PFF.

It is doable and will just take some time to repack the appropriate files to meet the coding parameters.

Thanks DavidC99, FlyBoy and ufolev for the initial ideas and talk throughs.

Additionally, you can use 7Z zip program to look at exe's and unpack accordingly to mod.



Last edited by El_Lobo; 01/29/11 10:21 PM.

Molon Labe
#3192698 - 01/29/11 10:37 PM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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Flyboy Offline
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El_Lobo - you might just be a genius! If you could write up a step-by-step guide on how to do this procedure and provide the modded IDEMO.MNU, I will surely - if it's OK with you - add it to my site where you will get full credit for this particular find.

I had got so far with this idea of using demo files in the full game, but got stuck after I got a revert to main menu after the mission should have loaded.

Does the menu music and in-game music work?

Awesome dude! smile

Oh, and welcome to the forums!

#3192842 - 01/30/11 01:37 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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I tried to run some simple tests with simplifying some of these steps on Windows XP, but I naturally could not get it to load a mission because I didn't repackage nor did I extract everything as required (since this would take a really long time). One problem I was able to identify with this is that the Demo exe doesn't appear to allow for the secondary DirectSound option. No matter what the Wsetup.cfg file says, it appears to grab the primary one. This mainly means comms are dead in the water for this new patched version unless I'm missing something... Since the demo is stripped down, I imagine we might be missing other features as well.

The underlying issue is that the Comanche Gold executable is doing something stupid (ie. probably bug-induced stupidity) soon after it detects that you have the CD loaded in the game. This is causing a crash on Vista and Windows 7, but not on Windows XP. The ideal solution is to identify what causes the crash and then provide a patch for it.

I would be all over this solution provided here today, but for two reasons:
  1. As already stated, the Demo exe lacks.
  2. The amount of work to downgrade CG to be Vista/Windows 7 compatible is a lot. It requires a massive restructuring of the PFF files -- or at least a lot of extracting.


Nevertheless, this might be a sort of simple fix for those interested. Not only that, but we could seriously write an auto-extractor or auto-repacker tool that could apply this fix as needed.


DavidC99
#3192857 - 01/30/11 01:52 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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Won't the extracted/modded files simply work if placed in the CG Demo install folder like for the full game?

#3192860 - 01/30/11 02:08 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: Flyboy]  
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DavidC99 Offline
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Originally Posted By: Flyboy
Won't the extracted/modded files simply work if placed in the CG Demo install folder like for the full game?


I don't believe the demo looks for any PFF file except CGold.pff. You would have to extract everything from Resource.pff and KDV.pff -- not to mention the extra files from Comanche Gold's CGold.pff file. Whether you repack them or not into a new CGold.pff is up to you, of course...


DavidC99
#3192864 - 01/30/11 02:14 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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Ah OK. So what you're saying is I can have several hundred loose files sitting in the demo folder OR I can take several hours to repack them all into the CGOLD.PFF file?

Not much choice then!

#3192867 - 01/30/11 02:20 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: Flyboy]  
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Originally Posted By: Flyboy
Ah OK. So what you're saying is I can have several hundred loose files sitting in the demo folder OR I can take several hours to repack them all into the CGOLD.PFF file?

Not much choice then!


Hence why I suggested either:
  1. We ditch this and patch the real problem; or else
  2. We have a program do the packing and unpacking automatically.
The first option is the ideal one; the second one may be slightly more practical, at least in the short run, for users of Vista or Windows 7. If we could find a way to extract files from PFF files from the commandline (as opposed to using a graphical user interface, like the current PFF utility we're using), I could possibly supply a very simple script to automate the entire process.


DavidC99
#3192898 - 01/30/11 03:25 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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I know why you suggested what you did - I was just explaining the situation in a literal sense - as if to highlight how impractical it would turn out to actually be!

#3193015 - 01/30/11 06:17 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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I understand what you guys are saying.



I extracted and copied all of the PFF files to the demo directory - multi-selecting and dragging to select them all. After unpacking them and trying to run other missions, all I kept getting was error codes on file loading other than the original mission for the demo when trying to load the missions. It is not working.

The missiles and cannon bullets freeze on the screen in mid air and stay stationary. It worked for the one mission and then the others were not loading. It has to be the exe and internal parameters for resources to access.

Oh well it was worth a try to get it working in Vista. It is the Exe that must be modded as said earlier. I used 7-zip to look inside the Demo.exe and it had some interesting text. I did not compare it to the text in CG3.exe yet.

Last edited by El_Lobo; 01/30/11 10:01 AM.

Molon Labe
#3193031 - 01/30/11 07:33 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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DavidC99 Offline
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If you want to extract all files from the PFF utility, then the following might work:
  1. Open all of the PFF files in question in the PFF utility that need to be extracted.
  2. Select the first file in the list.
  3. Move the scrollbar to be positioned at the bottom.
  4. Shift-click the last entry.
  5. Confirm that it appears every file is selected.
  6. Extract. Note: If you want to cleanly pack them, move them to a directory one level inside your Comanche Gold directory. If you're using the Demo, this is a new directory inside the Demo director. For example, if the demo is located in C:\CGDemo then you could extract the files to C:\CGDemo\repack
If you'd like to take all of these extracted files and repack them via script into CGold.pff without doing it manually, then the following might work:
  1. Backup a copy of CGold.pff.
  2. Place the following script inside a .cmd file (as long as it has an extension of .cmd, it can be named almost anything) inside your CG directory (or the Demo directory if you're using that):
    Code:
    for /f %%a IN ('dir /A-D /b') do @call pack.exe CGolf.PFF repack\%%a
  3. Replace "repack" in the script with the name of the directory you made earlier.
  4. Run the script.


Disclaimer: Try this at your own risk. I haven't tested most of everything here.


DavidC99
#3214728 - 02/22/11 01:03 PM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: DavidC99]  
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Originally Posted By: DavidC99
Hamachi is more geared toward private groups, being a program essentially to create a VPN. I was under the impression that we want a more public atmosphere, allowing anyone to get in on our sessions. If we use Hamachi then anyone who wants to game with us will have to be allowed to join our virtual network -- and that's not the ideal solution.

If we can get this to work with just opening a few ports, it's probably a safer and more advisable option.


Hi DavidC99,

Eugene and I tried Hamachi for CG trying to connect via IPX, and it didn't work. No surprise, while Hamachi USED to work for IPX connections in many games, it seems to have stopped. Whether this is a limitation on the Hamachi servers, or Microsoft patches to the IPX/SPX stack, I don't know. BUT your TCP/IP method seems like it should work over Hamachi as it does for Longbow2. In LB2, Hamachi overcomes a serious issue where connections will not work under normal conditions if the Host is behind a router.

Any way you could make your fix available for testing over Hamachi? We are both using Windows XP, so it should eliminate a lot of issues.

Last edited by Recluse; 02/22/11 01:05 PM.

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#3226464 - 03/06/11 09:16 PM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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DavidC99 Offline
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If you're still interested in it, what exactly are you asking me to release? Just the join-by-IP program I've written for Comanche Gold?


DavidC99
#3226778 - 03/07/11 06:12 AM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: ufolev]  
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Yes, that would be a big help.


Eugene
i9-9600K
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32 gig RAM
Cougar
#3228376 - 03/08/11 08:26 PM Re: Comanche Gold - TODAY - possibilities [Re: DavidC99]  
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Mako Offline
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Originally Posted By: DavidC99
If you're still interested in it, what exactly are you asking me to release? Just the join-by-IP program I've written for Comanche Gold?


Kali has been down acouple of dayz now. Jay said he is working on getting it up and running soon. I'm interested in this program DavidC99 also. Would be a great back up plan.

Thx !

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