Is there a way to get SC:DA Working on Pixel Shading 2.0 cards?

[Xtreme2damax]

I'm posting this here because I don't consider it to be game Discussion, but about a possible program.

Problem is, I just received Splinter Cell: Double Agent for Christmas. I didn't know the system requirements were so friggin high.

It say's it requires a card with Pixel Shading 3.0, of which I don't have. I don't have the money right now for an upgrade and I really want to play this game, even if it's slow on my rig.

Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining, but rather have a question:

My Card has Pixel Shading 2.0, Is there a program out there similar to 3d Analyze, that will allow me to emulate Pixel Shading 3.0 in order to get Splinter Cell: Double Agent running?

Right now 3d Analyze Doesn't have Pixel Shading 3.0 Bypass/Emulation in it's current version, and I was wondering if there is another program similar to 3d Analyzer, that contains options for emulating/bypassing Pixel Shading 3.0

Thank you so very much to anyone that can help, and possibly help me get this working

It would be a waste to not get this game working, and usually stores have a No Return Policy. Besides I really really want to play this game. I hope it's possible to get it working even if very slowly.

[Mr. Killjoy]

>> I hope it's possible to get it working even if very slowly.
IMO you should wait, there's nothing better to ruin a game than running it at 2fps. Play something else until you get the cash for a better card, or borrow money.
Emulating higher PS version than the one supported by the card is a bad idea really... though, dunno for Ati, but IIRC Nvidia's site download section used to have an app for PS emulation. Can't tell you if it works cause I never managed to make my old GF4MX use even PS1.0 and nothing beats hardware acceleration anyways

[Xtreme2damax]

Thanks for the reply. However Upgrading my Video Card is not an option atm, as I only have PCI Slots, So it would require me to buy a new motherboard, CPU, Ram and a Video Card altogether as an upgrade, of which I do not have the money for right now.

If anyone knows the name of a Program that will let me emulate/bypass Pixel Shading 3.0 or the name of the program Mr. Killjoy mentioned, please let me know. I just need it as a temporary fix until I have the money for an upgrade.

Beginning of Rant:

I browsed the Ubisoft Forums for Splinter Cell: Double agent, and it does seem in fact that quite a bunch of people are upset that they didn't include support for Pixel Shading 2.0, even the lowest graphics settings won't work with SC: DA on Pixel Shading 2.0 cards. People have requested and pleaded for them to release a patch that includes support for pixel shading 2.0 .

Ubisoft it seems has alienated a good percentage of the PC and Splinter Cell user/fan base with Double Agent, by having support for very few cards, only ones containing Pixel Shading 3.0, considering not everyone has mega money to upgrade to the latest and greatest hardware. the percentage that own high end gaming PC's supporting these features are in fact very few, as compared to the majority of PC Users who are still on cards with no Pixel Shading or Pixel Shading 2.0, with Pentium 4's, in developing nations and people with low income.

You would of thought they would of made the port a little more flexible compared to the X360, for lower end hardware, like the option to choose Pixel Shading 2.0 as Well as 3.0 depending on your specs.

Some of you like me may receive SC: DA, only to be disappointed, and find out it does not work but only on a select few cards.

/End of rant

[Mr. Killjoy]

"If anyone knows the name of a Program that will let me emulate/bypass Pixel Shading 3.0 or the name of the program Mr. Killjoy mentioned, please let me know. I just need it as a temporary fix until I have the money for an upgrade."

NVemulate (obviously, you have to be using an NVcard, if you have something else, browse official sites/google, cause I don't think generic emulators exist)

Update: Seems like it's only for OpenGL apps :s

And yeah I understand your rant, it happened to me a lot when I had the bad idea to own a GF4MX...

[flowrent]

I believe i heard there's a way to tweak the ini files or something so it will work on PS 2.0 cards ..

[Mad]

Rivatuner?

[Xtreme2damax]

If you know what to do flowrent, please do share I really want to play this game

I would really like to get this game working. I don't really care if its slow. I've been dealing with lag or major lag on games with my crappy system. After playing between 1 - 5 Frames per Second on games, you kind of become used to it after a while

Thanks Mr. Killjoy, I did manage to find that app, but after the loading screen it crashes with an Invalid or Unsupported Vertex Buffer error, And it does only support opengl, not DX9.

Thanks if anyone can help me a bit further, so I may be able to at least temporarily fix it for a while, until I can afford an upgrade

:EDIT:

Originally Posted by flowrent

I believe i heard there's a way to tweak the ini files or something so it will work on PS 2.0 cards ..

I found a website that explained to do this, but it didn't work for me. The option is already enabled by default on a fresh install.

When I start a new game on the loading screen, it freezes, and the error I get is "Trying set non-registered Vertex Shader", with a Runtime error after that.

I hope there is some kind of patch planned that will enable Pixel Shading 2.0, even if the quality has to be sacrificed a bit.

Right as of now, my two Options are: A Really Expensive upgrade for which I do not have money for, or to Emulate or Bypass Pixel Shading 3.0, and start playing the game. I want to go with the cheapest option, which would be the 2nd one until I can afford an upgrade.

Not having Pixel shading 3.0 is the only requirement my system does not meet, as I only have 2.0. I really tees me off that this game won't run even on low quality/resolution because of not having one simple thing

[fivefeet8]

Originally Posted by Xtreme2damax

Ubisoft it seems has alienated a good percentage of the PC and Splinter Cell user/fan base with Double Agent, by having support for very few cards, only ones containing Pixel Shading 3.0, considering not everyone has mega money to upgrade to the latest and greatest hardware. the percentage that own high end gaming PC's supporting these features are in fact very few, as compared to the majority of PC Users who are still on cards with no Pixel Shading or Pixel Shading 2.0, with Pentium 4's, in developing nations and people with low income.

You would of thought they would of made the port a little more flexible compared to the X360, for lower end hardware, like the option to choose Pixel Shading 2.0 as Well as 3.0 depending on your specs.

Some of you like me may receive SC: DA, only to be disappointed, and find out it does not work but only on a select few cards.

/End of rant

It's a similar situation when Splinter Cell 3: CT was released. It had only a SM3 path and a Sm1.1 path. It wasn't until a few months later than ATi programmed their own SM2 path with modified shaders which was then included into the game that SM2 cards were able to enable higher level graphics. Could probably happen with this game as well.

Many people actually have SM3 capable cards these days, but most of them do hot have the high end cards. Most have lower/mid end x1600's and 7600gt/gs which sadly won't be able to play the game at any decent resolution with good FPS with all options enabled. The game looks ok without them, but it looks a lot better with them enabled.

Don't be too pissed, even people with High end SM3 cards like the X1950xtx and 7900gtx are agitated because of poor performance. Any lower end SM3 card would be far worse. UBIsoft got lazy and did a direct port of the Xbox360 version which is a bit moronic since the console's hardware architecture is a bit different than most video cards today. Now they seem to be scrambing to fix all the bugs in the game and it's taking very long.

The game didn't support any FSAA until the fist patch. Even with Nvidia's recently released 8800gts/gtx cards, the game is so bugged it's pretty much unplayable without disabling High Shaders and requires a shortcut tweak to keep it from crashing.

The game is a buggy mess. UBI needs to get their act together and release some patches to address the many issues with the game.

[Player-X]

The graphics of SC: DA is broken on my PC, some parts are not rendered and the shadows for the whole screen are rendered on the upper left quarter on my PC and most of the models are not rendered with the latest patch.

Without the latest patch the graphics work but some of the vital safe cracking parts have broken interfaces.

[Xtreme2damax]

Lol Player-X, don't you just love how smilies kick in on you at the weirdest times

I had to space SC: and DA because that smile kept kicking in on me

Anyways I hope there is at least a solution, and if not at least let it be soon. I just need a temporary fix to fool it to make think my card supports pixel shading 3.0 until I can come up with the cash for an upgrade.

The thing is thats so hard about upgrading, is my current computer only contains PCI Slots, not offering much in the way of upgrading my graphics card. So I need to do at least a full/partial upgrade, New Motherboard, CPU, Graphics Card, PSU, Case and Memory. That's not exactly a cheap upgrade. However if I were to get the money, I can still use my current HDD's and DVD-RW Drive, and save on having to buy those

[Player-X]

Originally Posted by Xtreme2damax

Lol Player-X, don't you just love how smilies kick in on you at the weirdest times

I had to space SC: and DA because that smile kept kicking in on me

It's been so long since there was an intentional smile in my post hasn't it?

There is an example of what I mean by "broken".

[Xtreme2damax]

I see, well at least you can get in game. It crashes for me on the loading screen.

Is your card Pixel Shading 3 enabled? I know obviously it is, I'm just asking to see if there is a possible shred of hope to get this working.

I even heard some people with a Geforce 8800 couldn't get this game running, and that card is practically new

Anyways, I know I'll have to upgrade sooner or later. My current Power Supply is corroding inside because of heat/moisture. I just don't like the Idea of practically feeling forced to upgrade to high end hardware in order to play one game. It at least should of been somewhat scalable for different or lower end hardware. Anything Geforce FX 5200 or equivalent and above would of, should of and could of been sufficient or possible.


You would think with the massive delays Ubisoft Pulls, would be time well spent improving the particular game that got delayed, and sorting out the bugs/problems.

[RF]

Arg, I just ordered Rainbow Six Vegas without even thinking it would have the same problem as SC: DA. Hopefully I can cancel my order before it goes through -_-

Think there will be a patch any time soon for either of these games?

[Xtreme2damax]

Originally Posted by RF

Think there will be a patch any time soon for either of these games?

I heard rumors from browsing the Ubisoft forums, at least for SC: Double Agent, that there *Might* be a patch to support Pixel Shading 2.0 in the near future. Another website thats not associated with ubisoft claimed this was denied.

As for Vegas I dunno, could wait it out like I'm going to do with Double Agent before I decide to get an upgrade. Only time will tell.

My guessing is, if they don't add support for it within the first few patches, it's likely they never will, forcing those us on either low income to do without, or get an upgrade.

I however am happy with my one other game I received F.E.A.R. Man that sh!t is creepy. That game does in fact run on my system with everything on low. I get severe slowdown in some areas, while other areas such as enclosed areas or smaller ones, run at a managable speed.

[industrian]

It's issues like these that have driven me back to console gaming. That and the fact I don't want to be spending £500 each year just to make sure I can play games at their optimal settings.

Originally Posted by Xtreme2damax

I however am happy with my one other game I received F.E.A.R. Man that sh!t is creepy. That game does in fact run on my system with everything on low. I get severe slowdown in some areas, while other areas such as enclosed areas or smaller ones, run at a managable speed.

When I got that game last Christmas (when i had a P4 and 1GB value ram) it was the same with me. But it's a very good game. Nothing has yet to beat the Type-7 Particle Weapon or Nail Gun weapons for sheer awesomeness.

[Player-X]

Originally Posted by RF

Arg, I just ordered Rainbow Six Vegas without even thinking it would have the same problem as SC: DA. Hopefully I can cancel my order before it goes through -_-

Think there will be a patch any time soon for either of these games?

There are patches for both the patch for SC: DA is broken while Rainbow Six ran perfectly on my PC with or without patch.

[Xtreme2damax]

Does anyone have any Ideas or suggestions how to emulate/bypass Pixel Shading 3.0, or am I completely screwed till I fork over mega money for an upgrade?

Thanks to anyone that can help me

[fivefeet8]

Originally Posted by Xtreme2damax

Does anyone have any Ideas or suggestions how to emulate/bypass Pixel Shading 3.0, or am I completely screwed till I fork over mega money for an upgrade?

Thanks to anyone that can help me

I don't think the game will even work without SM3 effects. If you somehow bypassed all SM3 shaders, the game would have practically nothing there except for plain colored polygons or wireframes. You still wouldn't be able to play. Unless someone actually writes some SM2.x shaders for the game and inject them into the game, there isn't much hope for you emulating(super slow) or bypassing them.

Emulating SM3 shaders through the CPU on this type of game would probably run at very low frames. I'm talking about single digit frames here. I ran that OGL Pixel Shader emulation software before and it wasn't very fast even when rendering a simple shaded object. Don't waste too much time trying to get this game to work though. For the moment, it's not worth it, even for SM3 capable card owners.

[RF]

Hrm, that really sucks. I was lucky enough to get the order cancelled after the third click since the website was getting very slow due to boxing day.

Guess I will wait a few months when I upgrade.