NeoEE Independant Installer

[Mardleseyth]

NeoEE (EE:AOC) Has to 2 installer options.

Default and Custom.

When you chose the custom option, there appears to a few areas of additional options to chose from.
Whilst some of those are simply additional in game content.

One that is most interesting and the one I am having issues with is the DirectX option.
By default Direct 9 (DX9) Wrapper is installed as the game is a DX9 game.

Yet there are 4 more options:
1 x DX9
2 x DX11 (10 and 11)
2 x DX12 (11 and 12)

I have tried installing with the 2 DX12 options and both times when loading the game, the mouse will simply not move whatsoever.
Both times I reverted back to the default installation (DX9) and the mouse moves in game without an issue.

To save me constantly uninstalling & reinstalling to test DX10 and DX11.
Can someone please advise the following:

What benefit does the various DX versions give?
Does selecting a newer DX version fix or alleviate any in game issues (such as FPS dropping over time in an Online Lobby Game).
Does it provide any additional graphics upgrades etc.?

In respect to the FPS drops in game. It is one of the most frustrating parts about the NeoEE independent installation of the game.
Anywhere from 20mins to 45mins into the game I watch my FPS sitting at an average of 60FPS drop down to 10-14.
Essentially making the game a slideshow as well as commands given to units can sometimes take up to 2 minutes for the units to respond to those commands.

Only way around this I have found is I have to save the game with the people I am playing with.
Completely quit out of EE back to Windows Desktop
Reload the game and the save game etc.

One of my friends is reporting the same issue.
In terms of Graphics Performance, an nVidia GTX1080TI is definitely not an issue to run this.
So would the DX9 be the issue here due the age of that DirectX Version and what the new Gfx cards are more designed for? (EG DX11/12).

[EnergyCube]

Hey,

EnergyCube here, I'm the one behind the Setup, here are some answers to your questions

By default Direct 9 (DX9) Wrapper is installed as the game is a DX9 game.

Yes, because when someone use an NVIDIA card the Setup is configured to use DX9 by default.
You can find that behaviour in the source code: https://github.com/EE-modders/Empire-Ea ... 5C8-L145C8

Yet there are 4 more options

Well 5 technically, because you can also simply don't pick any, that usually work on NVIDIA card.

I have tried installing with the 2 DX12 options and both times when loading the game, the mouse will simply not move whatsoever.

You may try to press ALT+ENTER, this should force the wrapper to put the window windowed and do it again to make it fullscreen again, at that moment it should work again. (this only work for DX11-12 wrappers)

What benefit does the various DX versions give?

Now that's a more complicated question... Because there's no answer.
First of all, let me make one thing clear: Empire Earth is coded to work with DirectX 7, a very old version. DirectX wrappers will try to transform DirectX 7 instructions into DirectX 9/11/12 instructions to take advantage of modern optimizations or to avoid compatibility problems with older versions of DirectX that may not work as well on recent graphics cards.
The performance of these wrappers or the game's native performance (i.e. without wrappers) depends on the GPU.
BUT not only, the CPU is also absurdly used and is often responsible for slowdowns when there are a lot of units in the field. The setup distributes dreXmod with a much higher camera than the original, which makes the game much more greedy - just zoom back in on the map to see if there's a difference.
So there you have it, it's not easy to formulate an answer, for some it's up to a 5x increase in FPS, for others it's slower than without the wrapper etc... So you have to test for each PC.

an nVidia GTX1080TI is definitely not an issue to run this.

If you've been following what I've been saying, you've probably realized that this isn't the case.
The more recent a card is, the more it will suffer from compatibility problems, and the slower the game will be.
That's why wrappers try to correct the situation, but they work very differently from one PC to another.

[Mardleseyth]

Hi EnergyCube,

Thanks for the reply and detail on that.

I completely forgot that EE was a DX7 game, I kept thinking it was DX9 for some reason.

I remember playing this back when I still had an AGP on a Socket 9 system and really didn't have any issues at all, but alas there was also a lot less graphical changes made to the system (Resolution, scaling etc.)

My processor is probably playing a big part in this as well as I am only running an i7-4790k.

I also found the work around to the mouse not moving before you posted by windows-tabbing out of game and back in, it then moves. But Alt-Enter definitely makes it quicker, thanks

On a side note, as I've had to reinstall a few times. I lost my account I had loaded for the online side of things and forgot my password. As the 'forget password' option is not doing anything in with the Multiplayer section.

Would you know if there's a way to search for the password you created via windows registry entries?
I had installed the game via my sons desktop some months back and logged into the account for some testing and I know it's still there.
That would be a god send if I could recover it again as I have a few save games that I'd love to recover.

In terms of the custom installation.
I saw you had the option for Intro Videos and eC Full Civilizations.
Yet, in game I don't see the Intro video and not sure what the Full Civs added, can you elaborate on that?

Thank you and appreciate the work you guys have done to breathe life back into this classic.