I play a lot of "old" games that need some poking to get them to work properly. This is a place to record what's needed.

Most of these are either with my 750M (gaming laptop) or GTX 1070 (gaming desktop).

Deus Ex

GMDX v10, although vanilla is also fine if you manually install Kentie's launcher which otherwise comes bundled. There's also Han's, but I've never tried it.

Also get the D3D10 renderer if you're going to use Kentie's launcher.

To launch directly on Steam and track time played:

  1. In the Deus Ex install folder, open the System directory and rename DeusEx.exe to DeusEx.exe.orig (or whatever)
  2. Copy GMDXv10.exe to DeusEx.exe
  3. Add the following launch options: INI="GMDXv10.ini" USERINI="GMDXv10User.ini"

Splinter Cell

Dynamic lighting method autodetection bug

Splinter Cell autodetects that the 750M supports projected textures for dynamic lighting (e.g. spotlights/flashlights), but this is an old Radeon-only technology, the autodetection is just naive. This results in dynamic shadows/lights not being rendered at all. The fix is to explicitly tell SC to use shadow buffers instead, which is supported on Nvidia cards. Set this in the D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice section in system/SplinterCell.ini:

ForceShadowMode=0

Possible values are:

Bonus levels

Someone kindly provided the bonus levels not in the Steam version here. Be warned: they are unpolished and not very interesting.

FOV changes

I don't recommend doing any changes to DesiredFOV/DefaultFOV (and thus default 4:3 res), as it causes overlaid interactions to become misaligned (e.g. keypads).

Graphics tweaks

High in game settings doesn't set some of these, especially 32-bit textures look a lot better.

In SplinterCell.ini this can be replaced verbatim:

[D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice]
Translucency=True
VolumetricLighting=True
ShinySurfaces=True
HighDetailActors=True
UsePrecaching=True
UseMipmapping=True
UseTrilinear=True
UseMultitexture=True
UsePageFlipping=True
UseFullscreen=False
UseGammaCorrection=True
DetailTextures=True
UseTripleBuffering=False
UsePrecache=True
Use32BitTextures=True
HardwareSkinning=False
AdapterNumber=-1
ReduceMouseLag=False
ForceShadowMode=0
EmulateGF2Mode=0
FullScreenVideo=True
UseVsync=False

In SplinterCellUser.ini, these settings aren't set by "High":

ShadowLevel=2
LightMapsLevel=2
TextureLevel=2
ShadowResolution=2
AntiAliasing=2
EffectsQuality=3

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow

Shadow/reflection fix

This page contains a fix for the vertex shader garbage.

Mouse acceleration

The mouse acceleration in this game verges on making it unusable (why?!). In offline\system\ESetting.ini, change all useAimTuning lines from v=1 to v=0. You need to create a new save to register the change.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Shadow/reflection fix

Software TnL emulation is needed, which can be provided by the ancient 3D-Analyze.

Select "Gun Metal Demo fix". There's also conveniently an option to save a batch file which will launch with these settings.

Mouse acceleration

In System\SplinterCell3Settings.ini, change all biasCut values to v=0.0. Once again, you need to have a fresh load to register the change. Sigh…

Oblivion

  1. Grab the following mods and install with JSGME in order (these are also in the files S3 bucket):
    1. EBF/other dependency: xOBSE
    2. Unofficial Oblivion Patch
    3. Unofficial Oblivion DLC Patch
    4. Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch
    5. EngineBugFixes
    6. Light of Oblivion (use the Bravil mesh)
    7. RTNM (download part 1, 2, and shivering isles "fixed")
    8. Hear No Evil
  2. Make sure all plugins are enabled in "data files".
  3. Download LOOT + JSGME in base folder
  4. "Fix ambiguous load order".
  5. Update master list
  6. Reorder
  7. In nvidia CP, force override, 8x for AA and transparent AA. Also cap at 90fps for physics.

GTA IV

See here. Also, reducing vehicle density/view distance/detail distance reduces stuttering.