Mafia: Definitive Edition ultrawide cutscenes & more on that other subject

Another long read? I get it! Here's a link to the fix.

The premise (more on the subject of copying):

Just days ago in light of another instance of my work copied against my explicitly expressed lack of permission, I wasn't sure whether to continue doing what I do or how to proceed. I know that most of the members of this community are very appreciative, and then there are the gems like you who take the extra step of making my life easier with your support.

However, when it comes to our psychology, negativity tends to be all-consuming and weigh heavily against volumes of positivity. It's like a glass filled with your favorite drink, but just a small piece of something rotten dropped in it can ruin the taste as a whole.

For now the last person to copy and appropriate my work is dealt with - though they may always strike again - and I get to be in a solid state to concentrate on the usual work.

Yesterday I finalized a couple of major improvements coming to WSGF, to the benefit of ultrawide and multi-monitor users in particular.

The solution itself:

Today was a new day and a chance to breathe in again, so I was able to get my hands on Mafia Definitive Edition, thanks to its release on GOG.

In the two years since this major game release, nobody managed to get it right for ultrawide.

susahamat, who used to be active on WSGF, fixed it reportedly by stretching the FMVs and making the rendered cutscenes vert- (demonstrated here) - via the common aspect ratio bytes. My favorite thief L3X4RS was next to also "fix" it just by stretching the cutscenes (no kidding). A difference had to be made.

My first look at the cutscenes led me to the thought that they are just FMVs, as I found the intro videos as 4K .bik files in the game folder - no wonder they're not made hor+ by anyone! Where's that uninstall button?

It's almost what I went for, but watching a YouTube video on the game and comparing it to the videos showed me that something was off. The total length of the videos was way shorter than the 2-something hours shown on YouTube. There had to be something more at play.

That pushed me to progress in the game just to see if I could stumble upon a real-time rendered cutscene, and that didn't take long, because the very first chase scene already had the vehicle action scenes as pillarboxed cutscenes. It wasn't in the "all cutscenes" video YouTube, so now there was something to work with (or should I say against?).

It was definitely not as simple as replacing the bytes or even watching what happens in relation to them in real time. I dug deeper and had to restart the game quite a few times as I investigated its behavior and functions, before I finally reached the bingo.

In my solution, I'm not touching any of the aspect ratio bytes, but the pillarboxing removal works for all wide resolutions and does not cause the FMVs to stretch (at least that's how it was in my testing!). It's also packaged as a small DLL injection to drop into the game folder and forget. Now that's a fix, yes?