Progress Report (July+August+September 2021)
Added 2021-10-04 12:13:21 +0000 UTCAlthough there haven't been many code contributions to Cxbx-R in recent weeks, we have been very busy with testing. We are proud to announce that every single Xbox game in our database has now been tested.
This brings our playable games total to 162 (15.7% of the entire library), with only 89 games still doing nothing. Over the next few weeks, we plan to iterate through the games in the “Nothing” category, to attempt to get them at least booting, 100% of games reaching intros/menus or better would be an amazing milestone and we are aiming to achieve that as soon as possible.
This also means that the total amount of games reaching in-game or better is now 673, a whopping 65.22% of the entire game library. It is possible many of these could make 'playable' with only minor fixes needed.
Notable Game Improvements
As usual, these are all the games recently verified as playable. Also, as usual, this doesn’t cover all the games due to the number of games that are potentially playable that I didn’t have the time to finish for now.
Darkwatch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFXcAlGJSO0
Fully playable with great performance even on potato tier hardware. The only known issues are some minor geometry flickering while starting to play (goes away after some minutes) and missing some of the audio effects/music.
G.T.A. III
The last known game-breaking issue fixed (solid fog covering most of the geometry at a very specific time of day), now fully playable.
G.T.A. Vice City
This game shared the same issue we had with G.T.A. III, so the fog issue was fixed here as well, making the game playable till the very end with no major issues.
Spider-Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfxdati8bhk
Probably been playable for some time now, but only finished some weeks ago. The game-breaking issue here was very weird: you could run the game properly for the first time… but would need to restart your computer to make it run a second time due to some file access weirdness that prevented the game from loading a second time at all. Now you can run it properly and stop how many times you want or need to without the need to power your entire computer for the sake of a second run.
Ty The Tasmanian Tiger 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPJsXOsiB8s
The latest visual game-breaking issues are now fixed, nothing else blocks your visibility at any point of the game. Known issues, for now, are only some minor problems with some sound effects and the game, in general, being darker than it should be.
Ty The Tasmanian Tiger 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEfVnmCxkaU
The same visual issues that were blocking Ty The Tasmanian Tiger 2 from being playable also affected this game, so now the entire trilogy is playable with CxBx-Reloaded. Note: the issue with the game being darker and some missing sound effects also apply to this game.
The Cat in the Hat
A recent regression in this title was fixed, so I’ve decided to put some hours into it as well. Result: fully playable with a minor visual issue (transparency with smoke and some similar effects aren’t actually transparent, but this effect isn’t part of most of the levels and even when it’s present it’s mostly part of the scenario without blocking your view).
Final Words
As mentioned previously, a ton of work was put into updating as much as possible on the compatibility list side of things (most missing icons were added, lots of games that were previously listed as “Boots” were promoted to “In-Game”, some playable, no games left untested). From now, the war against the “Nothing” status begins, till the last broken game gives us at least some signs of life!
As always, don’t forget to check the updated compatibility information on our site: https://cxbx-reloaded.co.uk/compatibility
