High Heat 2004 PC GPU issue

[tinpanalley]

Does anyone have an issue where the menu, yes just the menu, of High Heat causes their GPU fan to go nuts? Any clue what that could possibly be due to?

[akilgour13]

is any other program affected like that? And are you running any thing like gedosato or enb/reshade/sweetfx? how old is your gpu? that is kind of a crazy thing for sure... can you get past the menu and into the game?

[tinpanalley]

1 hour ago, akilgour13 said:

is any other program affected like that? And are you running any thing like gedosato or enb/reshade/sweetfx? how old is your gpu? that is kind of a crazy thing for sure... can you get past the menu and into the game?

Only happens in HH2004, no problems in any other game, and not running anything special. As soon as the game starts, the card calms down. Same card I use to play other games in my Win10 boot without any issues. Obviously running something like Assassin's Creed Syndicate it gets noisy but that's understandable. HH2004 is, well, 14 years old.

[Kccitystar]

It was like this with older cards too. Something about the rendering method with RenderWare.

[tinpanalley]

4 hours ago, Kccitystar said:

It was like this with older cards too. Something about the rendering method with RenderWare.

Oh ok, cool!! Thanks! Saved me from spending more hours searching online. Actually I went in again to play with it and it's actually more of a strange fan squeak than a full blown fan noise thing. But it really sincerely is only in certain menus.

[tinpanalley]

Well other than the minor menu issue, the game is fine. I was reading somewhere about how the game didn't scale up well beyond a certain res and text boxes and artwork like headshots didn't scale properly. At 1920 X 1080 it feels despite the resolution that it's stretched. Is there an ideal resolution?

[akilgour13]

i use 1680x1050,it seems ok to me there,i really haven't experimented with it myself so idk for sure.Possibly due to it's age it looks best on a crt @4:3 screen ratio- i have an old 19" crt i can try it out and see.1680x1050 is a 16:10 screen ratio and 1920x1080 is 16:9.It natively scales to those resolutions when installed which just means the option is there to choose them i guess.Some old games obviously don't do it like Rallisport Challenge from 2002 for instance.Highest rez that has is 1280x800.I will give hh a try on the old pc and save some screens to post if it looks really different.

[Kccitystar]

13 hours ago, tinpanalley said:

Well other than the minor menu issue, the game is fine. I was reading somewhere about how the game didn't scale up well beyond a certain res and text boxes and artwork like headshots didn't scale properly. At 1920 X 1080 it feels despite the resolution that it's stretched. Is there an ideal resolution?

 

The game's engine can RENDER at 1920x1080 but the presentations only scale to 4:3 displays so everything will stretch rather than fill or scale accordingly to 16:9.

[tinpanalley]

46 minutes ago, Kccitystar said:

 

The game's engine can RENDER at 1920x1080 but the presentations only scale to 4:3 displays so everything will stretch rather than fill or scale accordingly to 16:9.

Ok. Like several games from that era. So better to just play 4:3. I wish I could find this old review, maybe from IGN, that talked about how player headshots and other text boxes got blown up too big and lost definition obviously when you went beyond a certain resolution.

[Kccitystar]

1 hour ago, tinpanalley said:

Ok. Like several games from that era. So better to just play 4:3. I wish I could find this old review, maybe from IGN, that talked about how player headshots and other text boxes got blown up too big and lost definition obviously when you went beyond a certain resolution.

 

Using the DangerZ editor I'm trying to see if I could blow up the text so it's rendered at 4x resolution. No success so far. Then again I haven't modded HH2004 as much.

[tinpanalley]

1 hour ago, Kccitystar said:

 

Using the DangerZ editor I'm trying to see if I could blow up the text so it's rendered at 4x resolution. No success so far. Then again I haven't modded HH2004 as much.

Thanks for looking into it. Honestly, it's not the end of the world, it hardly affects the gameplay. The stretched graphics are worse and I can fix that by simply picking the highest 4:3 the game offers. I play MVP in 4:3 so it really doesn't bother me.

[akilgour13]

The game's engine can RENDER at 1920x1080 but the presentations only scale to 4:3 displays so everything will stretch rather than fill or scale accordingly to 16:9.

That is what i was missing,and obviously why it looks weird in the higher res.
320x240-----4:3
640x480-----4:3
800x600-----4:3
1024x768-----4:3
1152x864-----4:3
1280x960-----4:3
1400x1050-----4:3
1600x1200-----4:3
2048x1536-----4:3
3200x2400-----4:3
4000x3000-----4:3
6400x4800-----4:3

here is a list of 4:3 resolutions and this is where gedosato can help if your gpu has the power.But it's essentially fancy antialiasing unless you use the shader settings(like with enb or reshade) and you can force your video card to do a lot of the same things in the nvidia control panel(i haven't used an amd vid card in a long time so idk what to do with those).

[tinpanalley]

1 hour ago, akilgour13 said:

here is a list of 4:3 resolutions and this is where gedosato can help if your gpu has the power.

Ok, but surely the game doesn't have anything as high as 6400X4800. And what exactly is gedosato?

[akilgour13]

So GeDoSaTo (each pair of initials stands for the program name) is a downsampling(think that is the proper term) program which makes a program display in a much higher resolution then downsamples it to fit your chosen display resolution on your crt or lcd/led monitor-so i use a 3840x2400 setting in gedosato and have it set to downsample to 1680x1050.It may need a more powerful gpu than you describe as having in the pc you use  for hh.Essentially it makes the images sharper like anti-aliasing settings.But it also has a shader function built in,if you know what enb does or is(if not just use your fav search engine)it adds to older games the more modern effects(kind of like when the gaming consoles jump to their next generation).ReShade and Sweet FX are also programs that add shaders.This is a very crude explanation of what these programs can do,a lot of pc modders use these to make/take pretty screenshots and videos that are all over the net. I've got a 1st gen GeForce Titan in my pc which is insane overkill for 15 yr old high heat lol.But a modern low to mid level gpu is more than enough to run all the programs i mentioned with hh and mvp 05.And nvidia and amd have software that will force some effects through the gpu and you can tell it what settings to use with specific programs or all of them. All very useful stuff to make old games look better. Tomorrow or saturday i will post some screens and show the in game resolution  setting screen set to 7680x4800 ! (it then gets downsampled to 1680x1050). 

[tinpanalley]

24 minutes ago, akilgour13 said:

So GeDoSaTo ...

Wow. Very interesting. Had no idea. Well first of all I'm using a GPU that lets me play any game from today on highest settings with minimal quality or framerate loss. So I think I'll be able to handle this program fine.
I know SweetFX from playing Pro Evolution Soccer although I have to admit, I sort of hate the way it looks. It's extremely unrealistically lit and sacrifices vidual fidelity for shiny surfaces and unnatural smoothness to characters. But perhaps it works better with games that look a bit older. I just want the game to look as it did at its best resolution and if a few tweaks can smooth things a little then fine, but I'd rather not end up with a game that no longer looks like the original game or taxes my system for purely aesthetic reasons. One of the reasons I run a dual boot is so that I can play older games with no problems. I don't need them to look perfect. But I do like this scaling idea. No problem with playing it at 4:3 at the best resolution possible.

[akilgour13]

i'm scouring online garage sales and craigslist in my area to try and find a large crt monitor,not an easy thing to find these days so i can play old games on it,i like the look,i don't really miss tube tv's but i have an old 3d setup that needs a crt monitor,i'd like to get it working again. 

[Yankee4Life]

3 minutes ago, akilgour13 said:

i'm scouring online garage sales and craigslist in my area to try and find a large crt monitor,not an easy thing to find these days so i can play old games on it,i like the look,i don't really miss tube tv's but i have an old 3d setup that needs a crt monitor,i'd like to get it working again. 

 

Son of a gun! That's a hell of an idea. Remember how heavy those things were? It was like a hernia waiting to happen.

[tinpanalley]

50 minutes ago, akilgour13 said:

i'm scouring online garage sales and craigslist in my area to try and find a large crt monitor,not an easy thing to find these days so i can play old games on it,i like the look,i don't really miss tube tv's but i have an old 3d setup that needs a crt monitor,i'd like to get it working again. 

Get yourself a Sony CPD if you can. They were the best and lasted longest. It's not just a visual preference you have, there are several older games that actually took advantage of scanlines to produce their images. It's why Super Mario Bros. never looks quite right on a progressive scan LED screen.

Not to dissuade you, but any monitor you find these days is unlikely to be in good shape or last you a long time. CRT monitors almost needed more care than TVs because the static images on computers caused people to burn them in a lot. Go ask around on avsforum.com. You'll find the best guidance there.

[akilgour13]

Yes lol,i lugged my oldest daughters crt back and forth to college a few semesters until we caved and got her a flat screen. The 36 inch tube tv was worse though,so awkward,glad she only had a 2nd floor room!

 

[akilgour13]

Thanks for the advice tpa,good things to keep in mind. I do know about scan lines from messing with pcsx 2 to play the show ps2 games,which does allow higher resolutions and shader effects,unfortunately those break the game display for the show series games so there are artifacts all over the screen. Pain in the rear to get the bios from my ps2 to legally use it though.Pcsx2 is very cpu intense and my Alienware is the only pc i own that can run it.Works super nice with nfl 2k5 though! All in all much easier to plug the ps2 into my tv...

[tinpanalley]

15 hours ago, akilgour13 said:

Thanks for the advice tpa,good things to keep in mind. I do know about scan lines from messing with pcsx 2 to play the show ps2 games,which does allow higher resolutions and shader effects,unfortunately those break the game display for the show series games so there are artifacts all over the screen. Pain in the rear to get the bios from my ps2 to legally use it though.Pcsx2 is very cpu intense and my Alienware is the only pc i own that can run it.Works super nice with nfl 2k5 though! All in all much easier to plug the ps2 into my tv...

I love that PCSX2 exists but honestly, without fail, every game I try to play has framerate issues. Not a single sports game I've tried on it works without slowdowns, choppy audio, framerate issues, etc. NCAA 07, NFL 2K5, NHL 2K-anything, all of them play with problems. It takes so long playing with settings that I just end up putting the game on my PS2. Always works like a charm.
 

Anyway, thanks for the info @Kccitystar about Renderware, etc. That's explained the issue I was having. I've just chosen to play at the highest 4:3 at 32bit and leave it at that. Looks fine, plays smoothly.