Widescreen Gaming Forum

This is my first post, and almost certainly the wrong place to put it (as it's not a widescreen issue), but I figure that there's a lot of competant hacker types in here that might be able to have a look into it...

Ford Racing 2 (by Razorworks/Empire) won't work on Vista/Win7 as it tries to use an old WMA method of playing audio that's been removed from Vista/Win7, even if you disable the audio in the game's setup program. When you start the game and put in your name it exits with an error "WMA:347 Failed to create the Wma_source_filter"

If you Google "ford racing 2 wma" you'll find many other people talking about it.

Here's a bit about the removed WMA filter: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsdirectshowdevelopment/thread/4420bf19-71ce-4a00-9b3b-f441f8d61c63/

And a bit more here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsdirectshowdevelopment/thread/b79027a9-7ef4-4d97-8e0a-d4937693691e

It seems that the wma filter used DirectShow, which is not supported in Vista/Win7.

Ford Racing 3 works fine, as it's a bit newer and plays a different music format.

Is there anyone out there who could hack the game so it doesn't call to the WMA filter, or do something even more clever?

I even tracked down the lead programmer but he said he couldn't help and "Unfortunately no one will be able to help with Fr2... sorry!"

There is a WSGF page for Ford Racing 2, but it's a bit of a moot point as you can't get past the name entry screen in the game on Vista/Win7!

If you don't have a copy of the game then the same happens with the demo version, which you can find here: http://www.gamefront.com/files/1169445/Ford_Racing_2_Playable_Demo

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My PC spec: Win8.1, i7-4970K (not overclocked) MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 980, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Fix for Ford Racing 2 v.1.0 - FR2.7z (mirror link)

- Game now works on Windows Vista / Seven (at least works for me on Windows 7 x64 SP1)
- FOV is increased, now the game is Hor +

Hor + :
                   
             
          

Vert - :
         

Wow that's cool. I'll try it out tomo on Win7 with the original game CD and let you know what happens. What did you do exactly?

Please could you make a straight 4:3 version too, i.e. without FOV modification?

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My PC spec: Win8.1, i7-4970K (not overclocked) MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 980, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Now that's impressive customer service right there!

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i5-2500K @ 4Ghz ° Asus P8Z68 ° GTX670 Windforce OC ° 8GB DDR3 RipjawsX ° 4x Viewsonic VA2703 ° Logitech G15 / G5 / G27 ° Razer Vespula ° TrackIR 5 ° Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS

It works! Okay there's no music but that's to be expected given it's in an outdated format using an unsupported driver... perhaps the next step would be to convert the music to MP3s then play them in a music player, I'll look into that perhaps!

But yes, thank you jackfuste. Please can I have a 4:3 unchanged FOV version too, to complete the "set"?

Cheers!

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My PC spec: Win8.1, i7-4970K (not overclocked) MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 980, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

I added a 4:3 version, redownload - FR2.7z (mirror link)

Thank you!

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My PC spec: Win8.1, i7-4970K (not overclocked) MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 980, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor

Thanks a lot for this fix! However, I found out that it works out-of-box only for Russian version of the game. If launched with English one (bought form GamersGate), it throws out this error after profile selection:


Having access to the Russian version as well, I tried copying the SOUNDS folder from it to the English version. This time it worked. Files were checked with hash checker and it turns out they are rather different in Russian version. All files "SOUNDS*.spc" and "SOUNDSMUSIC*.wma" are different. Furthermore, for every "SOUNDS*.spc" file there is "SOUNDS*.sxb" file in Russian version. Without them (*.sxb files) the game still launches. As music doesn't work anyway, original MUSIC folder from English version is enough as well. So, only "SOUNDS*.spc" needed to be copied. Now let's hex-check them. It turns out that they all are different in 3 bytes only. All of them have a values of (89, 44, B2) instead of (71, F6, 40) in 13th, 14th and 15th byte. But reading the actually useful error message tells us that it's a timestamp, so it should be in .exe as well. And it is - in block CF219-CF21B. So, basically, when I changed the values in this block from (71, F6, 40) to (89, 44, 82) - it worked. As there might be even more versions - here is the general fix for the error message:

If the game does throw out an error like this, after applying fix from jackfuste, all you need to do is change block CF219-CF21B in "fr2.exe" to block C-E in any file "SOUNDS*.spc".

Hope it helps!

The string for the German version I own (distributed by Kelloggs) is also 89 44 B2.

Game works fine. Running the music with a media player in background makes it almost perfect. Thank you for the fix!

Please!

Make that the music is working again.