Silent Hill 3 Onealex Not Work

[Charles5322]

Hey guys, how are you?

I loved this silent haunter 3 I saw some games and I fell in love with it so I decided to get it with the onealex version

The problem is that when I try to start it, it says Cannot Initialize 3D Engine
I tried all the ways I've found

I changed the resolution of the screen, the HZ of the screen game, the compatibility and nothing has worked. I don't know what problem it will be, I hope that one of you can solve it

Thank you

[ElCid97]

Greetings, Charles!

I was getting the same thing when I installed. I re-read the minimum requirements and there is something in there about the computer having to be a PC and not any type of laptop. My guess is that my gaming laptop -- an Asus G73 (circa 2010 with updated stuff to 2017) -- just won't cut it.

It does have a dedicated video card, but it's rated at 1 GB and it's sharing some 3 GB or so of the 16 GB of regular RAM for the rest of the video memory allotment. Total I'm running almost 4 GB of video memory that way. I'm not sure if that's a reason for the error, but you never know.

I read up on many of the other SH3 super-mods and they are way too high for my gaming computer as well. LSH3-2022, for example, requires a Windows 10 system. I'm still using Windows 7. The last version of LSH3 I can run is 2015, which is fine for me for now since I'm trying to fine tune my SH4 setup. Oddly enough, everything's fine there.

On the bright side, I may be able to run GWX Gold. I won't try anything for now since I'm working on getting SH4 tuned up nicely with FotRSU 1.8 and some smaller tweaks. I may try GWX-Gold sometime next month, but not sure. Since SH4 runs spot-on for me so far, I may try Dark Waters with "Multi-SH4" since it seems to be more of an "all in one" which is fairly stable. We'll see. From the videos I've seen, it seems somewhat more stable than KSD-II: Aces. Then again, I just like the effect of the telegraph orders getting called back in he DW videos, so that may be a factor. Same goes for the map.

OneAlex's mod would have been nice, that's for sure! Maybe GWX-Gold will be fine for you? Just remember OneAlex's is a "stand-alone" install, so you don't need a fresh SH3 like GWX-Gold or LSH3. Just place it on your disk, follow the instructions from the latter part of the OneAlex GWX forum and you should be good.

Sorry I'm not much help, but at least you know you're not the only one out there with this issue.

Happy New Year!

ElCid97

PS: Just FYI. Silent Hill was a Haunting movie. Silent Hunter is a Sub Sim. Sorry, couldn't resist!


PSS: Just checked after posting. My max resolution is 1600 x 900, so I may not be able to run a good portion of the mods here. Oh, well. I'll do what I can with what I can. A fleet boat career is good so far!

[blackswan40]

Hi Charles5322 A warm welcome to Subsim sorry to hear your having trouble with SH3 check this post out sir

I also run SH3 GWX3 Gold Huawei mate book AMD Ryzen 5 8GIG Ram and iris 3000 bult in graphics in full screen

Are you also using the 4Gig patch to double your virtual memory pool in SH3 from 2 to 4 if not download link below

https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/dow...o=file&id=5737

https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...&postcount=484

[Pisces]

Cannot Initialize 3D engine could be due to widescreen resolutions. SH3 needs 4:3 (1024x768) or 5:4 resolution(1280:1024). For that in the compatibility properties of the Sh3.exe executable disable fullscreen optimizations.

Or it could mean it doesn't detect DirectX 9. The already built in DirectX in Windows 10/11 isn't sufficient for such an old game. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down...s.aspx?id=8109

[Charles5322]

Originally Posted by Pisces

Cannot Initialize 3D engine could be due to widescreen resolutions. SH3 needs 4:3 (1024x768) or 5:4 resolution(1280:1024). For that in the compatibility properties of the Sh3.exe executable disable fullscreen optimizations.

the resolution i think it is not becuse my screen has a resolution of 1366 x 768
and i have look like you say to disable but i don,t see the option that you say

[Hooston]

I've had that message when the display cannot handle the expected resolution (or even just the refresh rate!). I hear that Onealex is set up for 1920x1080 by default and does not like 1366x768. However I have also read a post somewhere by the man himself saying that he's included a 1366x768 display somewhere, I suppose you need to hunt through the files in onealex to find out how to select it.
Failing that there are a few 1366x768 GUI's out there if you are technically minded, I use Widescreen MaGui v3.4-SA for example on my ancient Linux laptop (which is definitely NOT fast enough to run Onealex).

[ElCid97]

I don't think this is the issue on our ends, but you never know. I have 1600 x 900 resolution which comes out to the same ratio as 1366 x 768 does (1.77 ...) -- so at least we have that in common.

I find it strange since 1920 x 1080 comes out to the same ratio as 1600 x 900 does (i.e. the resolution ratio shouldn't be the problem).

I'll check out some of the options this weekend if I can. The ratio for 1366 x 768 is the same (1.77), so it shouldn't be the resolution on our ends.

Charles, are you running Win-7 or Win-10? Could the built-in DirectX in Windows 7-64 (my system) also be insufficient? I ask because I can run LSH3-2015 fine, but can't run any of the itterations after that (LSH3-2020 or LSH3-2022). Mainly because of the Win-10 requirement for those.

I can't seem to find whether or not you need to have Win-10 for OneAlex like you do for the LSH3 series.

Any idea of minimum requirements?

Thanks to everyone!

ElCid97

Originally Posted by Pisces

Cannot Initialize 3D engine could be due to widescreen resolutions. SH3 needs 4:3 (1024x768) or 5:4 resolution(1280:1024). For that in the compatibility properties of the Sh3.exe executable disable fullscreen optimizations.

Or it could mean it doesn't detect DirectX 9. The already built in DirectX in Windows 10/11 isn't sufficient for such an old game. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down...s.aspx?id=8109

[Hooston]

It's all a bit complicated in that I run everything using Wine on a Linux box. However i think the following is fairly generic for SH3...

My widescreen 1366x768 GUI uses a hacked d3d9.dll file that sits in the same directory as the main SH3.exe file. This performs some magic to get the widescreen working. Associated with this in the same directory is a d3d9.ini text file which tells the hacked d3d9.dll what resolution to use. Ths key lines in my d3d9.ini file are:

[ENGINE]
DisplayWidth=1366
DisplayHeight=768
Refreshrate=false

The DisplayHeight and DisplayWidth must match whatever the selected SH3 GUI wants. It will probably still run if these are wrong but will look strange. You can set Refreshrate to, say, 60 if you want but it makes it less likely it will match the display capabilities.

There are also display settings in [SH3 directory]\data\Cfg\Main.cfg

[VIDEO]
Resolution=1366 x 768
DynamicShadows=Yes
FullScreen=Yes
Synchronized=No
ParticleDensity=100
TextureResolutionHigh=Yes

I think these have to match as well, but not sure.

directX already has it's own list of available display modes based on the computer hardware (windows probably tells you this somewhere) and one of these has to match the settings in d3d9.ini or it throws the error seen in the original post.

So it all depends on the exact widegui mod, the settings in d3d9.ini (and maybe the settings in Main.cfg) and the list of modes supported by the display as understood by directX. In addition the game can run windowed or in full screen mode using the in-game menu. There's a pretty large list of things to get right there, so it can be an almighty pain.

Now imagine factoring in using wine and linux and you can understand why i don't touch the installation any more!

[Charles5322]

Originally Posted by ElCid97

Charles, are you running Win-7 or Win-10? Could the built-in DirectX in Windows 7-64 (my system) also be insufficient? I ask because I can run LSH3-2015 fine, but can't run any of the itterations after that (LSH3-2020 or LSH3-2022). Mainly because of the Win-10 requirement for those.

i Use the Same As you i use W7 X64 maybe is as you say the compatibily of W10 but who knows

[Submon]

Originally Posted by Hooston

It's all a bit complicated in that I run everything using Wine o a Linux box.

Hey Hooston. I'm also playing on Linux and I have a question for you. Do you have the smoke rendered? Because I don't and researching I found that I am not alone with that. Somebody recommended vulkan, but I think my laptop is too old for this.



Anyway, the game is very playable, although I couldn't get my resolution fixed (also on 1366*768, tried several hours with different mods to no avail), but I'm okay with that as it doen't influence gameplay (or hardly by having a wider view).



However not having smoke rendered (only very slightly white smoke) makes it really difficult to spot ships and it's a little sad to see a burning ship with hardly any smoke.

My sh3 has a own WINEPREFIX with winecfg added d3d9, msvcp71, msvcr71 but that doesn't seem to be necessary even. Still no smoke.

May I ask what d3d9.dll you are referring to? You said you have exchanged that one in the game folder?

[Hooston]

A long post - sorry.



The Wine package for Linux has its own drivers for directX and its own version of d3d9.dll. You can download Microsoft's version using winetricks, which I vaguely remember works OK. You may also use winetricks to generate a version of directX running on top of the Vulkan graphics compatibility layer. In my experience Vulkan just slows things down.


To get higher resolutions for sh3 on all OS a hacked version of d3d9.dll is put in the sh3 directory which fixes the display resolution to the one called up in the accompanying d3d9.ini rather than the one requested by sh3.exe. Unlike real Windows Wine will only use a local dll if you deliberately tell it to do so using winecfg, hence the overrides. The display resolution and refresh rate must be ones supported by your hardware. If you like you can set refresh rate to "false" in this file to help things along.

I've recently inherited a desktop PC even older than my laptop. I thought I could add a graphics card and get decent gaming performance, but it's actually a little bit slower overall!

My laptop uses the default Mesa open source drivers to work its Intel integrated graphics. I get black smoke.

My desktop now has an old Nvidia card. i again use the default Mesa drivers but this time they are sitting on top of an open source Nvidia graphics driver included in Mesa called Nouveau. I get white smoke.

I then run "winetricks dxvk" to make Wine use its Vulkan based directX implementation. Frame rate drops by about half (3fps for me!!!) and I get black smoke.

So the big question is what happens if you use the official Nvidia linux drivers? I've no idea because the desktop AMD processor is too old to run them! Try installing them and post back your result.

[Submon]

Originally Posted by Hooston

A long post - sorry.

Hoosten! Wow! No sorry here, I thank you very much!


Not did you only answered very quickly, you also did so with many useful details and all that on a question that wasn't even related to the thread!

You gave me ideas, I didn't even think about trying the onboad INTEL GPU or different drivers for the NVIDIA.


I used so far only the NVIDIA with the proprietary drivers.



So after reading your post, first I wincfg my SH3 PREFIX to use d3d9 native and windowed mode just in case. Then I tried the open-source nouvella drivers (it's a GeForce 610M). Reboot. White smoke. Then I tried the INTEL (HD 3000) GPU but I didn't find a driver place, so I guess I used the standard drivers that Linux chose for me. Reboot. Also white smoke, unfortunately.

AFAIK my NVIDIA isn't supporting vulkan. It's an old 2012 laptop, the only good about it is the upgraded RAM.


So, it seems for now that I ran out of options. Gotta play with white smoke for a while.
However, since this is only a temporary OS (it's an old Linux Mint 19.3 that I had flying around. I plan to go to the newest Mint as soon as I have some harddrive to backup my data) I'll probably be trying again, soon. I am thinking about trying a virtual XP OS, but I doubt my hardware is stong enough for that, but maybe the 16 GB RAM allow it anyway. If that also doesn't work, I even consider doing a dual boot.


Thanks again. If I manage to solve this, I plan to start a new threat on this forum just to document it for maybe others, it seems that white smoke is a problem for some, and for future me.



Edit: I just realized that there are already threats about the white smoke issue here in this forum. Funnily I have read them several times without realizing that I'm in the same place.

[Subcomfreak]

I had the same problem as you, but I was running and old think-pad 7th gen i7 processor and no graphics card (but, on windows 10). Doesn't meet system requirements, but I said, "screw it, I can deal with a low frame-rate..." Got the exact same error as you.

What fixed my problem was to install intel graphics driver. Game runs choppy, but still worked.

[Aktungbby]

Subcomfreak!