Bug: strange video behaviour on Win7

[bicilotti]

Hello.
Today I went to an internet café to play OROW games. The PC I was given was running W7 ultimate.
When I tried to run a game (i.e. educating adventures of girl and rabbit) this appeared on the screen



so, "transparent" window (even though I could hear music in the background. When I moved the window the graphics magically appeared, but the mouse was unresponsive.

No amount of fiddling with the setup got that to work.
No amount of admin privileges did it.
Other non AGS game ran just fine (e.g. HERO core by remar).
I randomly tried to find a working game in the OROW bundle: The butler ran without problem, other picks did not.

I am well aware this bug report isn't extremely detailed, but it wasn't my machine and I did not have time to fiddle with it.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Hi, my favorite Italian!

After reading Dave Gilbert's pro-tip in another thread, here is the thing that comes to mind: does that game use a plugin that relies on an obsolete technology, such as 16-bits colors or DirectDraw or something? (regardless of what YOU choose in the setup). Only the developers can answer that, infortunately.

[Crimson Wizard]

I too think that might be DirectDraw5 problem in Win7, although only test may show. What happens if you choose Direct3d9 in the setup?
Also, I think that turning off Aero, or explicitly setting display mode to 16-bit (in Windows screen setup) might help in some cases.

[bicilotti]

does that game use a plugin that relies on an obsolete technology, such as 16-bits colors or DirectDraw or something?

no .dll in the folder, no so plugin!

I too think that might be DirectDraw5 problem in Win7, although only test may show. What happens if you choose Direct3d9 in the setup?
Also, I think that turning off Aero, or explicitly setting display mode to 16-bit (in Windows screen setup) might help in some cases.

I have tried switching between DD5 and D3d, with no luck.
I will try to torun off Aero / fiddle with the display mode, but that does seem a hackish workaround to me.
Given the fact that other games (non AGS) work, the average user would move (insert ags game here) to trashbin after such a failure.

[Monsieur OUXX]

We should ask the developers if they used 16-bit graphics. I suppose very few game-makers do that.