Cinematics vertical line display bug

[Sat42]

Hi all,

New here, longtime RTS fan who is finally slowly getting ready to plunge into Age of Empires III (complete collection bought via Steam)

Just for reference:-
My PC: Windows 7 64-bit, AMD Ryzen 3 1300X Quad-core processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050, 8 GB RAM

Everything works great with game's native max settings! Playing on 5:4 monitor (as I do for old games to respect original aspect ratio) at 1810x1448 resolution (can't really see difference with 1280x1024 which is native resolution of my monitor, but NVIDIA card still seems to apply DSR) - no problems in-game.

The sole (admittedly small) issue is with pre-rendered cutscenes such as the intro cinematic (including logos etc.): I have an unsightly vertical line cutting the cinematics (always in the same place), see screenshot:


Has anyone experienced this before, and can someone guide me to fixing this?
Thanks for any help!

cheers

[Riotcoke]

I believe that's actually just a bug with the game generally that you can't actually fix, i've had it on all the 10 pcs i've played the campaigns on with each having different specs etc. Thankfully it's only a little visual bug that only affects parts of the game that you're not actively playing.

[Sat42]

Thanks for the quick reply Riotcoke!

Sounds like an unfortunate oversight then - nothing terrible but (and that might be just me nitpicking!) not the kind of thing that goes unnoticed. All cinematics in the previous "Age of..." games work flawlessly for me so this is a bit of a bummer - I thought it might be a codec issue.

oh well, thank you for the info anyway! :)

[Sat42]

Sorry for double-posting but I found the avi folder in my Age of Empires III installation - and I can play the .BIK video files flawlessly with VLC Media Player. So this must be a codec issue - if the codec used by the game could be updated, the pre-rendered cinematics' vertical line display bug would go away.

If anyone knows how to do that, please tell!

[Riotcoke]

@EAGLEMUT @musketeer925 Might be able to help you out?

[Sat42]

Thanks for the suggestions :) I'll wait a bit to see if there's a reply here, otherwise I may contact them by PM.

Cheers

[harcha]

updating the engine that plays the video LOL
please fix microsoft software @EAGLEMUT

[Sat42]

I honestly have no idea how complicated that would be! :p

But fixes of this kind are not unheard of and have been done for other games by modders and/or GOG staff (sometimes just using modders work :p)

[musketeer925]

Sounds weird. As far as I'm aware, no one has looked into this bug, and I doubt anyone will in the two weeks before the Definitive Edition comes out.

[Sat42]

Sounds weird. As far as I'm aware, no one has looked into this bug, and I doubt anyone will in the two weeks before the Definitive Edition comes out.

You are probably correct, my timing for bringing this up is unfortunate. I would imagine the Definitive Edition will have clean FMVs without any visual artefacts (it would be hilarious if that weren't the case).

Still, if no one here has experience dealing with this sort of issue, I might start digging into it (I don't intend to buy the Definitive Edition any time soon).

Bear in mind that what follows is still speculative...

It seems one needs to update the binkw32.dll file within the game's installation folder. That requires Visual Studio.
FYI, you can find a bink file named exactly like that (binkw32.dll) in the Age of Mythology installation folder: it's not the exact same content of course (the bink files have different sizes), but since the AoM intro cinematic works flawlessly for me (and I imagine everyone else) despite being from an older game than AoEIII, I might use the AoM bink file as a point of comparison with the AoEIII bink file. Naturally, simply replacing the AoEIII bink file with the AoM bink file doesn't work :)

I will try to look more into this during the weekend.

Cheers

[musketeer925]

Please do report back if you learn anything

[Sat42]

Hey all,

So I haven't spent too much time on this yet but here is what I learned so far:

- not forcing the antialiasing mode on the game with NVIDIA card helps a bit - now I set the antialiasing mode to application-controlled for AoEIII, and the "vertical line display bug" in FMVs (pre-rendered cutscenes) is barely visible as a result (see screenshot below)

- setting the antialiasing mode to application-controlled for AoEIII also got me rid of some flickering on some rooftops on the Spanish home city screen, so the graphics in-game are now absolutely perfect.

Beyond that, I remembered that on modern systems Tomb Raider III displayed a vertical line bug across its menus and loading screens and that was fixed by a modder who applied a "half pixel offset". I suspect the vertical line in the AoEIII FMVs could also be fixed by that half pixel offset method.
I contacted the modder who suggested I create a new entry for the game then try different combinations of the settings: forced resolution, SSAA and half pixel offset.

I haven't had time to get back to this person however, and I would need to as unfortunately I have no idea how you apply a half pixel offset (certainly I didn't find the option in my NVIDIA Control Panel, and btw I didn't see SSAA as an option either in my case, only FXAA and MFAA - I didn't play with the latter yet).

That's all for now! Cheers and for all you lucky bastards who have the hardware - enjoy the Definitive Edition in the coming days!

[Sat42]

RESOLVED!

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but I'm the author and I can bring closure now: using the same OS and the same hardware as detailed in the OP (I use the setup for preservation purposes), I can now play the original Age of Empires III and its expansions in perfect conditions!

Due to lots of stuff happening IRL, it took until this semester for me to really get going with playing AoEIII (and I have yet to get to the expansions), and I fixed the unsightly vertical line cutting the FMV cinematics!

Solution: simple (no complicated codec workaround or half pixel offset technique required), I just set the game's resolution to 1280x1024! remember I use a 5:4 monitor with exactly that native resolution, but since the game can push to 1810x1448 and my NVIDIA card can apply DSR, I figured I could squeeze ever so slightly more sharpness out of the image. I was wrong: not only did a careful comparison of screenshots of the same Home City taken at 1280x1024 and 1810x1448 reveal only the slightest of differences which if anything showed slightly more sharpness with the lower resolution (!), the use of a higher resolution than that of the max native resolution of my monitor led to the vertical line artifact in the CGI cutscenes (just generating an image with a higher resolution internally and then downscaling it to 1280x1024; the problem comes from however the interpolation is done). That said - at least if you use DSR like me, you still need to set the antialiasing mode to application-controlled for the AoEIII games, or the line bug will remain.

So for those of you who thought this was just a bug with the game generally that cannot be fixed: no, it would have been extremely unprofessional to release a game with bugged out pre-rendered cinematics and it would have been noted by reviewers; the thing is, AoEIII came out not long before 16:10 and then 16:9 became the norm, and most people have been playing with widescreen monitors thereafter. If you want the original experience, a 5:4 monitor is a must for old-school gaming.

Hope this can help the odd one out there who still cares about having their old games play under perfect original conditions!

[harcha]

So for those of you who thought this was just a bug with the game generally that cannot be fixed: no, it would have been extremely unprofessional to release a game with bugged out pre-rendered cinematics and it would have been noted by reviewers; the thing is, AoEIII came out not long before 16:10 and then 16:9 became the norm, and most people have been playing with widescreen monitors thereafter. If you want the original experience, a 5:4 monitor is a must for old-school gaming.

Congrats!

I just wanted to point out that 16:9 is preferable for game-play as in this game You gain line of sight on the sides when compared to the standard 4:3 aspect ratio.

[Sat42]

So for those of you who thought this was just a bug with the game generally that cannot be fixed: no, it would have been extremely unprofessional to release a game with bugged out pre-rendered cinematics and it would have been noted by reviewers; the thing is, AoEIII came out not long before 16:10 and then 16:9 became the norm, and most people have been playing with widescreen monitors thereafter. If you want the original experience, a 5:4 monitor is a must for old-school gaming.

Congrats!

I just wanted to point out that 16:9 is preferable for game-play as in this game You gain line of sight on the sides when compared to the standard 4:3 aspect ratio.

Oh certainly, I understand that! If I join the multiplayer scene at some point in the future, then for sure I'll go with a widescreen aspect ratio (but then I might also just get the Definitive Edition for multiplayer)
In single player, I always prefer to play under original conditions to avoid potentially immersion breaking stuff. E.g., I also own the Warcraft III games, which gave me access to the Reforged (aka "Ref***ed") edition, and while I'm sticking to the originals, out of curiosity I did install the latter on my Macbook Pro which of course comes with a widescreen aspect ratio, and a quick test of the story mode revealed how the game was not built with 16:9 in mind: during in-game cutscenes, suddenly you'd see all kinds of things you couldn't see originally, like characters "pop" into existence on the side of a scene before moving to the centre of the stage, or the abrupt edges of the map (for example over a lake)... someone experiencing the campaign for the first time under such conditions would think there was a lack of polish when it's just that the game wasn't designed around widescreen resolutions! (and of course Reforged was done on the cheap, so they made no adjustments to the maps and cutscenes)
But yeah, there's no downside to 16:9 in skirmish, and especially with the majority of players in multiplayer using widescreen aspect ratios, it's better to not be disadvantaged