If designers are interested...

[NCrawler]

The problem that users have been having when running the game full screen in Windows 7 is related to the exclusive DirectDraw palette and the Windows 7 'feature' of changing it at will. The following discussion may be of use to the developers if they are interested in 'fixing' the game to work correctly in Win 7:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...ally-exclusive



NC

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by NCrawler

The problem that users have been having when running the game full screen in Windows 7 is related to the exclusive DirectDraw palette and the Windows 7 'feature' of changing it at will. The following discussion may be of use to the developers if they are interested in 'fixing' the game to work correctly in Win 7:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...ally-exclusive



NC

And we can develop the third-party graphics library dating from 1995 or so how exactly?. Not our code.

So it looks like full screen 256 colour palletised mode is dead in vista or windows 7. Nice one, Microsoft!

But windowed mode does the trick. So for CD owners especially, simply set your game to use windowed mode and max size and you will run in a window covering the entire screen. "Wobbly 7" will then not nuke your palette without warning when it feels like doing so.

As for wide-screen monitors, I am working on that. I now actually have one that does 10180p or somesuch, 1980 by 1280 or whatever. Expect some support for that in next year's patch.

Cheers
Andy

[NCrawler]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

And we can develop the third-party graphics library dating from 1995 or so how exactly?.

By hooking the DirectDraw/Direct3D screen buffer write calls and modifying the palette as described in the above referenced link. Modification of this code http://www.gamedev.net/community/for...opic_id=359794 would be a good start...



NC

[Mobhack]

The DirectX calls are all in the third-party graphics library, WinVFX, which we cannot recompile. So anything to do with palette trickery etc is not doable.

In any case I have an alpha test EXE that allows any window size to be used, full screen or windowed. It all seems to work fine too and so it should be ready for next year's patch.

Windowed mode:
Works as at present. Since you cannot get into WinFX internal code, you cannot set a 'stay on top' window style that would cover the task bar to give a 'pseudo' full screen effect in windowed mode. Not really a problem provided you don't use 'auto hide' which confuses WinVFX.

Full screen mode:
Works perfectly, even on the full screen mode of my new 22 inch1680x1080 or whatever wide screen monitor. But since Microsoft have that bug with palletised modes in Vista/Windows 7, then you may have to use trickery to get round the problem. Killing off the explorer.exe process and restarting it again after the game is over is not really recommended since explorer.exe is your desktop process and is thus a windows core process! - strange things may therefore happen.
see e.g: http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-...te-issues.html
So if you do want to use full-screen palettised mode in Vista/W7 then you are on your own. Microsoft have decided for you that that mode is obsolete in their new operating systems.

With the new variable-sized windows game EXE coming out (if testing does not show it to crash and burn), then all you'll need do as a CD version owner, is to set the thing to use the full desktop area in windowed mode. No Windows 7/Vista palette mangling issues then.

cheers
Andy

(BTW - if you do have an old machine and get a spanking new wide screen CRT for it, then expect to have to splash out for a new graphics card too. I can force the full sized 1080p mode for this new screen but only in 30hz 'interlaced' mode, which is nasty and flickers like crazy. Otherwise it runs it in 'panning' mode like some laptops do with screen sizes set too high for the LCD, unless I choose 1450x900 or suchlike. Which is yucky. So either I get a new graphics card - or like I have done, the new CRT went into the spare room till I eventually get a Windows 7 box (won't need one with a screen, now .)

[NCrawler]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

The DirectX calls are all in the third-party graphics library, WinVFX, which we cannot recompile. So anything to do with palette trickery etc is not doable.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I was talking about hooking the DirectX .dll's, intercepting certain function calls and replacing with your own code. I know it would be quite a bit of work and you all are probably too busy to worry about it. Was just a suggestion... Just out of curiosity, is that WinVFX library written in Asm or C?

Full screen mode:
Works perfectly, even on the full screen mode of my new 22 inch1680x1080 or whatever wide screen monitor. But since Microsoft have that bug with palletised modes in Vista/Windows 7, then you may have to use trickery to get round the problem. Killing off the explorer.exe process and restarting it again after the game is over is not really recommended since explorer.exe is your desktop process and is thus a windows core process! - strange things may therefore happen.
see e.g: http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-...te-issues.html
So if you do want to use full-screen palettised mode in Vista/W7 then you are on your own. Microsoft have decided for you that that mode is obsolete in their new operating systems.

Naw, explorer.exe isn't a core process, it's a user shell. You can stop and start it as many times as you'd like. Hell, you can replace it with another shell if you want or if you're really hard core, you can get rid of it altogether and manage your computer using nothing more than task manager. I wouldn't recommend that though. I don't think that the mode is obsolete it's just that the new Win7 shell does funny things with the palette when it is running. Probably has something to do with the new Aero theme or the way that the shell handles multiple windows...


NC

Edit: nevermind the question about what WinVFX was written in as it appears that WinVFX is an open source project that SSI used. Here is the authors website: http://www.thegleam.com/ke5fx/ - latest version is 1.19

[DRG]

...... and I have tested it on another machine running 1440 x 900. Under the current EXE it will happily run windowed but full screen gives an out of range error message. With the development EXE it will run both modes perfectly at 1440 x 900. We will continue to test this over the summer
months

Don

[SP4EVER]

Hey this is interesting.

A completely noob thing to do probably but I downloaded the vfx v.1.19 packgage from that site and updated the WINVFX8.DLL to a newer one.

The old one has a time stamp of 1999 while the one available from that site has 2005 and a slightly larger file size.

http://www.thegleam.com/ke5fx/misc/vfx119.zip

The game seems to run just fine with the newer dll too. Maybe it could have some benefits?

[DRG]

Originally Posted by SP4EVER

Hey this is interesting.

A completely noob thing to do probably but I downloaded the vfx v.1.19 packgage from that site and updated the WINVFX8.DLL to a newer one.

The old one has a time stamp of 1999 while the one available from that site has 2005 and a slightly larger file size.

http://www.thegleam.com/ke5fx/misc/vfx119.zip

The game seems to run just fine with the newer dll too. Maybe it could have some benefits?

The only difference is the newer version has a debug flag for serial ports which is of no use whatsoever to the game

Don