HellenicNoob
commented
10 months ago Funny enough I was looking for older hardware to play the Splinter Cell games (lolz). And I've actually been quite lucky to find unused parts. I suppose that's the only solution at the moment until the above bugs are figured out. Any idea what the last year would have been for hardware that can run/render these games without issue? When was the ability to render these shadows removed from graphics processors?
Also would these parts be compatible?
EVGA Nvidia GeForce 9800GT (or possibly a Radeon 9800 Pro IceQ Excalibur W 128 MB DDR...)
ASUS P5N-D (or possibly a ASUS P7P55D-E LX Deluxe)
Intel Pentium 4 3.40GHZ (no model number is discernible on the one i found only FCPGA2-1M-800 | PO Number: V-794419)
Joshhhuaaa
NV-LL
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (SCPT) runs on Unreal Engine 2 with a DirectX8 renderer. D3D8to9 will need to be used in order to have it hook into RTX Remix.
Bug 1: Full-screen mode does not work correctly.
Much like the first game in the series, SCPT fails to handle full-screen mode correctly. The game changes the desktop resolution to match the in-game settings and opens in a borderless window even when full-screen is enabled in the configuration file. To avoid this issue, it is recommended to run the game with ThirteenAG's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow Widescreen Fix.
Unlike the first game, however, SCPT does not appear to encounter any problems with displaying resolutions beyond 640x480.
The following are the logs generated when attempting to run the game in full-screen mode, which is not handled correctly. d3d9.log NvRemixBridge.log SplinterCell2_d3d9.log
Bug 2: Numerous graphical issues arise when the skybox is visible and being rendered on the screen during gameplay.
If the player adjusts their camera away from the skybox, the game renders correctly, as shown below.
As of Remix 0.2, the skybox issue still occurs, but now the entire screen seems to be affected.
The issue appears to be a recurring problem in various titles using Unreal Engine 2, indicating it might be a broader issue related to how the engine handles the skybox.
To verify this issue, I loaded a developer map that has no skybox present, and I see no graphical problems, regardless of the camera angle.
Bug 3: Night vision and thermal vision are not path traced, and the original image remains unchanged.
SCPT's vision modes appear to be causing confusion for RTX Remix. The game features goggles that can switch between night vision and thermal vision, but neither vision mode utilizes path tracing and simply displays the original image without any modifications. Although thermal vision does not utilize path tracing, it is not surprising since it does not rely on conventional lighting anyways.
No vision modes on, path tracing present.
Night vision.
Thermal vision.
In thermal vision mode, the character meshes and BSP surfaces are not rendered correctly. Only StaticMeshes appear to render correctly in this mode. Thermal vision does not encounter this issue in the first Splinter Cell game.
These are the logs that are generated when loading into a level and encountering Bug 2 and Bug 3. d3d9.log NvRemixBridge.log SplinterCell2_d3d9.log
Bug 4: "Bloom" Effects stay on the screen and never update past the first frame.
The effect of the lights stays stuck on the screen and never updates.
The green light in the center is from the player's green light on their back, but is frozen. Additional lights remain on screen as well permanently.
Additional information about Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
As it was built on the same engine with only a few modifications, SCPT shares numerous common issues with the original game.
SCPT provides only one choice for rendering shadows in the game, which involves using Shadow Buffers. This game does not feature the "Shadow Projector" mode from the original Splinter Cell.
Shadow buffers was a technology from NVIDIA's GeForce 3/4 era which is now obsolete. Today's graphics cards cannot accurately render this mode without the assistance of a wrapper, such as dgVoodoo 2, which emulates a GeForce 4 Ti 4800.
SCPT was likely never released digitally on storefronts like Steam or Ubisoft Connect because the rendering of Shadow Buffers was a problem on modern hardware until the wrapper of dgVoodoo 2.