COGBox 0.2.1

COGBox 0.2.1

Extract over your current COGBox folder (close COGBox first), or use the launcher's updater.

Fixed

• Gears of War 2 mouse look (Title Update 6) now uses the game's own mouse aiming, like Gears 3 and Judgment. It no longer falls back to the right stick.
• Camera shake Off now works in Gears 2 with Title Update 6. The update carried its own camera setting that put the roadie run shake back on.
• In-game menu (Back + Start) no longer pauses the game or controls the game's menu behind it.
• FPS counters (NVIDIA overlay, RTSS) now match the game's real frame rate. Before, the fps bar and the shader note made them read your monitor's refresh rate instead (#18, #23).
• Audio crash (#19): if your audio device won't open, the game falls back to DirectSound, then runs silent, instead of crashing.
• Steam Deck / Proton (#15): the launcher uses Vulkan under Proton, where DirectX 12 doesn't start yet.
• Steam Deck problem reports are saved in COGBox's reports folder, which opens for you. Proton hid the old desktop location.

Changed

• WASD and the arrow keys both move you. The mouse turns the camera.
• Render resolution lists 1080p in size order.
• The PLAY button in settings says why it's greyed out when you hover it.
• FSR, DLSS and XeSS are marked highly experimental. SMAA is the tested option.
• The frame-rate tooltip explains the V-Sync cap.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who sent logs and reports, and to Flippage (gow3-recomp) and Santiago Quiroz Upegui (gears-of-war-2-pc-port) for the mouse input research.

As always: you need your own copy of the games. No game files are included.

COGBox 0.2.0

COGBox 0.2.0

Fixes

• Black screen on Windows 10 with DirectX 12 (#9) - the ports now bring their own DirectX 12 runtime
• If the graphics can't start, a message says why instead of a black screen
• Gears 3 crash with AMD FSR (#6) - fixed, and if FSR ever fails again that game switches to SMAA and tells you
• Judgment start-up crash (#1) - Title Update 4 is required for now, and COGBox tells you so
• Steam Deck / Linux: games greyed out after unzipping (#3, #7) - COGBox detects a flattened unzip and says how to fix it
• Steam Deck / Linux: "Error initializing network layer" (#11) - should be fixed, please report if you still see it
• Mouse look (#2) - real mouse look: the mouse now turns the camera through the games' own PC mouse controls, with no stick dead zone, speed cap or drift, in all three games. Mouse sensitivity goes from 0.05 to 2 (0.5 to start; lower for a high-DPI mouse)
• Camera shake (roadie run) Less / Off now work (#12)

New

• COGBox in 11 languages, with a language prompt on first start (Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Polish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Korean)
• Game language setting for each game - every language the US and European releases have (#4)
• DLC support - add DLC packages from your console on a game's About tab, or drag a package (or its folder) onto the window
• Mod loader - add a mod's .zip on a game's About tab, turn mods on and off, set their order
• 21:9 ultrawide for Judgment (all three games now have it)
• "1080p" render resolution - 720p upscaled and sharpened, for weaker graphics cards
• Keyboard keys can be changed on the Controls tab
• Button hints follow what you used last (controller or keyboard and mouse)
• In-game menu in the Gears style; the game ignores your input while it's open
• COGBox comes back to the front when a game closes
• Desktop shortcuts for COGBox and each game
• Popups recommending each game's title update (with "Don't show this again")

Thanks

• The native mouse look method comes from the open-source gow3-recomp (Flippage) and gow2-recomp (Santiago Quiroz Upegui) projects

Updating

• Use the UPDATE TO 0.2.0 button in COGBox, or unzip over your old folder (keep the folders). Your games, saves and settings are kept.

COGBox 0.1.0

COGBox 0.1.0 - first public release

Native PC ports of Gears of War 2, Gears of War 3 and Gears of War: Judgment, with the COGBox launcher.
Unofficial fan project - no game files are included; you need your own copy of each game.

Download

COGBox-0.1.0.zip below. Unzip the whole folder somewhere you can write to (e.g. C:\Games\COGBox), start
CogBox.exe, add your copy of a game, press Play. Full instructions are on the
project page.

Windows may say "Windows protected your PC" the first time (the programs aren't code-signed): More info → Run anyway.

What's in the zip

Folder	What
CogBox.exe, SDL3.dll	The launcher
Gears2\port-tu6\	Gears of War 2, Title Update 6 build - profile-guided optimised (the default, fastest)
Gears2\port-disc\	Gears of War 2, disc version build
Gears3\port-tu6\	Gears of War 3, Title Update 6 build - profile-guided optimised (the default)
Gears3\port-disc\	Gears of War 3, disc version build - profile-guided optimised
Judgment\port\	Gears of War: Judgment (Title Update 4 applied when added) - profile-guided optimised
shared\	The AMD / Intel upscaler libraries and the shader compiler, used by all three games
README.txt, LICENSE.txt, licenses\	How to play, and every licence
SHA256SUMS.txt	Checksums of every program and library

Each port folder holds the game program, its runtime and the NVIDIA DLSS library; the parts every game uses are kept
once in shared\. Nothing of the games themselves.

The ports

• Our own renderer on Direct3D 12 - every frame drawn natively, no GPU emulation.
• Vulkan (experimental) - a choice on each game's Graphics tab, for testing. FSR / DLSS / XeSS and frame
  generation are Direct3D 12 only; on Vulkan, Gears 3 can look darker in places with some black patches.
• Resolution 1x-4x (up to 5K) or matched to your monitor; SMAA, FSR, DLSS and XeSS, with upscaling modes.
• Frame rate unlocked, vsync with a cap matched to your monitor, AMD FSR frame generation (off by default; highly
  experimental for now).
• Fast shaders: the games' shaders are translated straight to Direct3D 12 shader code in under a millisecond each
  (as Xenia Canary does) and kept on your PC; pipelines are made in the background - brief pop-in instead of stalls.
• Lower input lag: one frame in flight, NVIDIA Reflex / AMD Anti-Lag 2.
• HDR10, ultrawide 21:9, 16x anisotropic filtering, field of view, the games' own motion blur / depth of field / lens
  flares as switches.
• Title updates, chapter select, split-screen (Gears 2), keyboard and mouse, Xbox and PlayStation controllers.
• In-game menu: Back + Start (Share + Options on PlayStation, or F1) during play - change settings, restart to
  apply them, or quit.
• Profile-guided optimisation: Gears 2 +5.6%, Gears 3 +4%, Judgment +9.7% faster than the same code without it
  (measured on the test PC).

COGBox

• Carousel of the three games; Get box art downloads box art and backgrounds from the x360db archive on request.
• Add your copy by button or drag and drop: disc image, Games on Demand copy, title update package or extracted
  folder - recognised, unpacked and checked automatically.
• Settings per game in five tabs, with a description for every option; works fully with a controller - Xbox or
  PlayStation (button names switch to Cross / Circle / Square / Triangle).
• Grows with its window; borderless option with its own minimise / maximise / close.
• Linux / Steam Deck through Proton (experimental): detected automatically - no exclusive fullscreen, Reflex or
  Anti-Lag there; a Deck-size screen starts maximised and borderless. Steps in README.txt.
• Game version choice (title update or disc), play time, plain-English crash messages, problem-report zip, save
  backup, clear shaders, self-update from this page (an UPDATE TO ... button shows when a new version is out).

Known limits in 0.1.0

• Tested on one PC (RTX 3080 Ti). AMD and Intel graphics, older CPUs and laptops are untested - reports welcome.
• A CPU with AVX2 is required.
• Games on Demand copies are supported in the code but haven't been tried with a real copy yet.
• Vsync has been checked by its measurements, not yet by eye; Gears 3's frame rates above 62 fps haven't been checked.
• The first visit to an area can still hitch briefly while the graphics driver builds its pipelines; later visits
  are smooth.
• Vulkan, Linux / Steam Deck and PlayStation controllers in-game are new - Linux and the Deck are untested on real
  hardware.
• AMD FSR frame generation is rough; a better frame generation is planned.

What's coming

Plans, not promises:

• Gamer Tag Login
• Mod and Texture Pack Loader
• Mac, Linux, Steamdeck - Linux and Steam Deck through Proton are in as experimental now; tested support next.
• Online Co-Op - Hopefully.
• Vulkan as the default - it's already a choice (experimental); next: matching Direct3D 12 everywhere, then default.
• Better frame generation - an OptiScaler-style frame generation to replace today's experimental AMD FSR one.
• Background art read from your own copy of each game inside COGBox.
• Multi-core rendering (the next step of the speed work) and shaders built at the main menu, for no first-visit hitches.
• DLSS Frame Generation and DLSS 4/5 features through NVIDIA Streamline on the cards that support them.
• More controllers (Switch and others), button remapping and an accessibility section in COGBox.
• Achievements, kept locally.
• More of the Gears series.

Reporting a problem

In COGBox, a game's About tab → Make a problem report, then open an issue here and attach the zip. Please don't
attach game files.

SHA-256 of COGBox-0.1.0.zip: see COGBox-0.1.0.zip.sha256 below.