Colin McRae Rally 2.0 - Patching the game for modern standards

[CookiePLMonster 12]

Hey there! Not exactly a topic about DiRT games, but I guess it fits here best, seeing how DiRT is a spiritual successor of loved CMR series.

Having messed around with numerous games by now (mostly through SilentPatch series for Grand Theft Auto games), I decided to go back to one of the first games I ever played and attempt to adapt it to modern standards more. That resulted in SPCMR2 surfacing.

What's changed?

• The game now handles ALL aspect ratios properly. That means the game will not be horribly stretched when playing in widescreen anymore.
• The game now defaults to borderless windowed mode. This change gets rid of a DirectDraw bug on Windows 8 and newer, which would make the game run in a window even if fullscreen is requested, also affecting performance negatively. Fullscreen borderless windowed mode does not have any of these issues, and looks identical to real fullscreen. Both windowed and borderless can be toggled via SPCMR2.ini file.
• When playing in windowed mode (borderless or not), the game can handle Alt+Tab properly now.
• All dependencies on registry keys have been removed. This makes the game fully portable and also fixes an occasional issue, where the game would not launch without Administrator privileges (due to an incorrect way the game was reading registry keys).
• Logging has been removed for good (since it would never log anything anyway). The game used to create a log file in C:\ which would often make the game require Administrator privileges to run.
• Regions can now be switched via the INI file. Depending on the game version, it has different region directories included in CountrySpecific directory. Now, if you have more than one region installed, you can easily switch between them.
• Field of View can now be adjusted via the INI file. You can select any value in 30.0 - 150.0 range.
• Support for non-Full installation methods has been removed. On the plus side, the game will never ask for a CD now.

Screenshots

A short gameplay video showing the game in proper 16:9:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0HMeN27Rcw

Download

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lh9pccm5jvz6xbl/silentpatch_cmr2.zip

Cheers!
Silent

[JackKey 23]

This is so awesome man, thank you, it even fixed all my visual glitches I got with my new PC. This is great!
Will you work on a patch for the first game, too?

[CookiePLMonster 12]

Maybe at some point, but currently no ETA. Luckily, I own the game too so if I ever want to do it, I can ;)

[JackKey 23]

That would be really cool. I am happy that I can play CMR1 already, but it would be really cool to play it in Full HD Widescreen ans smooth 60fps. But no pressure, take your time.

I am really thankful to you. That is one thing about PC-Gaming I love. Fans take care of the games they love and create patches. Thanks to you I can still play one more of my favourite games, and now even better.

[Porkhammer 78]

Mr Cookie poland monster... I appreciate your work. :) Dziekuje I believe is the correct term.

Perhaps you know how to get the game running smooth on W7 Ultimate 64 bit as well?

[CookiePLMonster 12]

From what I know, Win7 doesn't have issues with ddraw, so in the best case it should work just fine even without my patch. You also could try grabbing it and setting Window to 0, since fullscreen is broken since Win8.

[Porkhammer 78]

Yeah I did set Windowed to 0, and it mostly runs at 60 fps... but sometimes it drops down to 20. No idea why.

[CookiePLMonster 12]

Indeed, can confirm there ARE some odd framerate drops. Perhaps try messing aroung with dgVoodoo? I never used it with CMR2 but one person told me it does solve some stability issues.

[JackKey 23]

I tested out some stuff, too and there seem to be a few issues, so here is what I got so far:
I have win7, gtx770, intel i5
- Fullscreen works very good so far
- there seem to be framedrops in the special stages (not sure if it was like that before the patch)
- Windowed mode seem to cause stuttering even with constant 60fps - it just feel less smooth, a little stuttery
- a FOV of 65 seems to be better than 70, renderplane seems to stay small, so in a higher FOV, polygons disappear earlier on the sides of the screen
- resolutions higher than 1920x1200 crashed on my PC the Game.
rather unimportant:
- there are a few stages where everything is untextured before or after crossing start and finish-line. here I am not sure if its my gpu or the patch, if I remember correctly this happened before. but this is very minor, as soon as you are driving this bug disappears
- (low details made visual glitches return) not that this is important, but maybe good to know

I hope this helps, and thanks again.

[JackKey 23]

I tried out dgVoodoo on Windows 7 with CMR2 (and CMR1)
It seems to decrease the performance even more on CMR2. For CMR1 I think it improves stability, as well adds more feature like antialising. To sad I couldn't improve resolution or FPS. It looked like it was an 800x600 resolution inside of an 1600x1200 resolution, so CMR1 maybe always any kind of resolution.

As of for CMR2, I tried the Arcade mode,too. There were FPS-drops, too. It looks like there are always FPS-drops, when there are other cars on the screen.

I think thats it for all the stuff I can try out on my PC. I hope there was some stuff that helpes clrearing up some issues or something like that.

[DiogoSoares 0]

Hi, i love this game but i cant make it work on windows 10 even using the silent patch.
Do you have any sugestions?

[lutherdelorme 0]

CookiePLMonster said:

Hey there! Not exactly a topic about DiRT games, but I guess it fits here best, seeing how DiRT is a spiritual successor of loved CMR series.

Having messed around with numerous games by now (mostly through SilentPatch series for Grand Theft Auto games), I decided to go back to one of the first games I ever played and attempt to adapt it to modern standards more. That resulted in SPCMR2 surfacing.

...........

Download

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46581994/SilentPatch/silentpatch_cmr2.zip

Cheers!
Silent

Great patch Cookie !! Thanks a lot man!. My CMR2 wouldnt even start after installing it. But now I can play it again, thanks to your patch! :smiley:

[StigAdamsson 0]

CMR2 runs very well on my Win10 with wonderful graphic, BUT every time I start the program is "Setting configuration to defaults". How to tell the program to save my options?

[DCeric 0]

I know this is an old thread but considering that people want to play this game I decided to leave a comment.  I don't know what problem the person above is having cause I am not having an issue with that on Windows 10.  Okay so I have the latest version of Windows 10 installed that would be the Fall Creators Update of 2017.  As we know some of you probably are having issues with playing the game in fullscreen.  So in the SPCMR2.ini I have the following changes:

; NOTE: It's recommended to stick to windowed mode, since it solves Win8+ framerate issues

; and allows for Alt + Tabbing the game - borderless window set to desktop resolution looks identical to fullscreen

Window=0

; Sets window border on/off. Requires Window=1

Borderless=1

Now a lot of us i'm sure are having framerate problems so there is a fix for that as well.  If you use Windows Compatibility Manager toolkit x32 (https://goo.gl/zxGNqA) and change only the following settings the game will run at full 60fps.

-ForceDisplayMode
-ForceSimpleWindow

If you done this correctly you'll be able to play this game with no hiccups.

[Pootegao 0]

Hey,so.
I've recently downloaded the patch,and it works great,except,every time I try to save,I am unable to.
I know this article is old,but if there's that can help,I would very much appreciate it.

[LauraRowlan 0]

On 8/13/2015 at 6:37 PM, CookiePLMonster said:

Maybe at some point, but currently no ETA. Luckily, I own the game too so if I ever want to do it, I can 😉 the essay service

The hardcore game that everyone praises here is not at all in the complexity of physics, but in bots on steroids, which are like crazy. and it forces to run along narrow tracks to the limit. it's great, but it has nothing to do with the actual behavior of the machine.