SMAC and ReShade?

[totheleadensky]

This is my first time posting here, so first off: hello, and happy to see such a dedicated community for this game!

SMAC has been on my must-play list for many years now. But, for various reasons, such as not owning a PC for a long time, as of today, I have actually barely played it!

Anyway, another important reason for not playing it is that I don't like how it looks on modern-day HD displays. Ideally I'd like play older games on a CRT monitor, but since I don't really want to clutter my apartment with too much gear, I usually rely on various shaders that mimic scanlines, screen curvature and so on. My go-to solution for Windows PC games has usually been a software called ReShade: https://reshade.me/

For some reason though, ReShade won't work with SMAC. This is perhaps a long-shot, but I was hoping someone here might be able to make an educated guess regarding why? Or if anything could be done to remedy whatever the problem is?

Thanks in advance!

[bvanevery]

Well their homepage says:

ReShade supports all of Direct3D 9, Direct3D 10, Direct3D 11, Direct3D 12, OpenGL and Vulkan.
A computer with Windows 7 SP1, 8.1 or 10 and .NET Framework 4.6.2 or higher installed is required.

SMAC is very much a pre-D3D9 game.  Heck I don't think it uses D3D anything.  It has a proprietary software voxel rendering technology to do the unit artwork.  It does make use of DirectDraw, which is an obsolete API, that I doubt ReShade is even thinking about interfacing with.  The way many of us get higher resolution on modern displays, is to put "DirectDraw=0" in our Alpha Centuari.ini.  So many of us aren't even using DirectDraw when playing the game.  I'm supposing we're just using straight old fashioned GDI?

Doesn't sound like your chosen software is applicable to a pre DirectD3 game.

They do have a FAQ menu entry on their homepage, which actually leads to a section on troubleshooting.

  - How to install Reshade on even older games?   (Not confirmed yet)
There are some APIs used by older games that need to be converted into ones that Reshade can read, since there is no way to install Reshade directly in those games.
The API we're talking about are:  DirectX (1 to 7), DirectDraw and Glide.
The most common wrapper used to make Reshade compatible with these libraries are DXGL and dgVoodoo2 .
They both should do the job. While DXGL seems to be more efficient, dgVoodoo2 is the only one compatible with Glide APIs.

The installation procedure is the same: You need to install DXGL / dgVoodoo2 before installing Reshade.
Remember that DXGL converts older APIs into OpenGL, while dgVoodoo2 converts them into DirectX 11. So:
DXGL = Choose OpenGL during Reshade installation
dgVoodoo2 = Choose Direct3D 10+ during Reshade installation
(Based on acknowledge's suggestion)

Be aware!
Using this method to apply Reshade into older games might lead to visual / techincal issues, which can affect the integrity of your games.
More about it:

In other words, if it works at all, you're going to have to exert a considerable amount of effort to get there.  You'll have to be pretty hardy with reading FAQs, troubleshooting sections, getting gnarly with whatever, and probably posting questions in ReShade's forum itself.  One thing you should be looking for, is whether anyone got this thing working with any game that is similarly old, and similarly isometric 2D.  Some late 90s / early 2000s game.  Whatever they did, maybe you can do as well.  Or, maybe there's no way, and the stuff's too old.

This obviously ain't plug 'n' play.

[totheleadensky]

Thank you for taking the time to reply, and even doing a bit of research! My understanding of the technical aspects of all of this is extremely hazy, so I'm glad you could clarify the problem for me.

I've actually managed to run a few late-90's/early 00 games by using dgVoodoo2 mentioned in the above quote (Rollercoaster Tycoon, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, and a few others, if I remember correctly). Sometimes I had to tamper a bit with the settings (trial and error, I really have know idea what I'm doing here), can't say I really understand what makes this solution work sometimes and sometimes not. I tried using dgVoodoo2 with SMAC but I haven't gotten it to to work.

I'll keep trying, and perhaps consult the people at ReShade as well. I'll post here again if I make any progress. Thanks again for your help!