Heroes of Might and Magic V

[archcorenth]

Heroes of Might and Magic V has the potential to be one of the most impressive games in 3D. However, it takes quite a bit of fiddling to make this happen. As such, I've created a my own instructions for getting it there. If you set up your system like me you should be able to have incredible depth when playing the game zoomed out and an amazing pop out effect in battles. I've done this by maximizing the separation for the depth and decreasing the convergence until, when the game is completely zoomed in, your units are standing right on your computer screen. Also I've moved back the frontplane so that the HUD is now at screendepth -- something that was incredible difficult to make happen.

Instructions:
1.) Do not have a graphics driver higher 162.50 (the current is 162.75), on the later drivers it seems stereo will not work at all. Even at 162.50 it seems that this is touchy and you have to hit ctrl-T a couple of times before it registers.

2.) Have the stereo beta driver 94.24 or later installed.

3.) Turn on the Classic Nvidia control panel by opening regedit, then pointing to this directory: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/NVIDIA Corporation/Global/NvCplApi/Policies/
Then creating a new DWORD named "SedonaDisable" and modifying its value to "2"

4.) Open your classic Nvidia control panel. Enable your stereo and increase separation to 100% in your "Stereo Properties" Tab. Then in "Stereo Compatibility Settings", check "Force HW TnL off (DirectX only). If you don't do this you cannot reset the position of the HUD and you won't be able to see it. (Incidentally, it's annoying to have to turn this on and off based on what game you are playing. Does anyone know how to have each individual game turn this on and off?)

5.) Go back to your registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/NVIDIA Corporation/Global/Stereo3D/GameConfigs/
Create a new key "H5_Game"
Create the following DWORDS and give them the following values:
RHWGreaterAtScreen 1064339462
StereoConvergence 1088346587
StereoTextureEnable 1

And there you go. I'm still trying to get the stereo pointer to work also you can make the separation game specific too, but I feel it's best to always have the separation at 100% and change the other values to make it fit your screen appropriately. Also people with smaller monitors may want to change my Convergence slightly with hotkeys as the image pops way out of your screen and you want to sit back. The only other thing I'm working at is to fool with the Heroes V game itself to decrease the size of the HUD as it's distractingly huge for 2D let alone 3D where you're always trying to look behind it.

Well let me know what you think and if you have anyproblems. If you do, you may want to roll back your video card drivers. As 162.50 is a bit touchy. However, it's such a boost on performance I think it's worth the incompatibility.

One last problem. The Elves castle doesn't have any textures it's all just grey objects inside. None of the other castles have this problem. If you can help, I'd appreciate it.

Paul

[archcorenth]

I have lots of awesome preview shots but apparently you can't upload them here. So, if you'd like them E-mail me at archcorenth@yahoo.com

[archcorenth]

I uploaded a bunch of images from the game to the gallery here. Hope you enjoy.

[Neil]

Excellent! We also have a special game database in the gallery. There is a section to enter special game settings so other users can duplicate your results!

Regards,
Neil