Game freezing in fullscreen/DirectDraw mode using Win7 - SOLVED!

[Dave Gilbert]

Hi all!  I recently got a new computer which uses Windows 7.  Today I tested my current game in fullscreen mode and my mouse cursor would not move.  The mouse cursor would work fine in windowed mode.  After trying various options, I found that the cursor would magically work perfectly in Direct3D mode.  I am trying to avoid using Direct3D mode, as I've discovered that a lot of older computers are incompatible with it and I've lost a lot of sales that way.  Is there to get a DirectDraw game to work under Win7 in fullscreen mode?

EDIT:  I've tested this with other AGS games and the same thing seems to happen.  Switching to windowed mode works fine.

EDIT 2: Actually, it seems the whole GAME freezes up, not just the mouse.

EDIT 3:  I've looked up this old thread which said the game needs to be in 32 bit color to run in DirectDraw mode under Win7.  My game *is* a 32 bit color game, and it still doesn't work.

[Calin Leafshade]

I have noticed this but it seems like alt-tabbing out and back again fixed it for me.

[Dave Gilbert]

No joy, alas.  That wouldn't really be a viable solution for me anyway, since this is a problem that customers would face and not myself.  Downloading demo + game not work = no sale.  They don't bother fiddling with settings in order to get it to work, they'll just move on. 

[Wyz]

I've searched for similar problems and I get the impression that DirectDraw is not working very well on windows 7 systems. My guesses are that Microsoft is slowly breaking support for DirectDraw and the is not much you can do about that. 

Maybe you could make a distinction between win98/xp/vista and win 7 downloads? You'd only need to supply a other config files, but that's way too fiddly. Separate uploads might be a solution?

[Gilbert]

BTW, have you tried updating DirectX9 first?

One problem is that DX10(or 11) is actually not compatible with older DirectX versions, so instead Vista and 7 are shipped with both DX10/11 and DX9 at the same time, so that programmes not supporting 10/11 would use 9 instead. But for some reasons, it seems that under default setting DX9 wouldn't be updated automatically under Vista/7 and so you should try manually updating DX9 first.

[Dave Gilbert]

Updating DirectX9 isn't a very intuitive solution for the average customer.  A customer faced with a directX issue would typically go: "What gives? I've already got the latest version of DirectX!  Guess I won't buy this game."  

Wyz's solution is probably the best one, although it would be problematic for the distribution networks.  Hm.  I'll have to think about this.  Odd that this problem has never come up before on the distribution networks, since I only give them DirectDraw builds.  You'd think that at least one customer would have been using Win7.  Or maybe I just got lucky?

[AGD2]

Doesn't sound like it's a Win7 issue exclusively, but perhaps it could be a quirk with your particular laptop's video hardware or something similar?

I also have a laptop with Windows 7 and I was testing a full-screen AGS game today (320x200 resolution, no graphics filter), which was compiled with AGS 3.2, and the mouse worked fine in DirectDraw mode.

--EDIT--
This thread could be helpful, but I don't know because I didn't read much further than the first few posts:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistagaming/thread/4e83dac8-8d4d-4dad-9f1d-e08fa2fe1e48

Seems like it could also be related to sound. Maybe you could also try changing the sound driver in winsetup.

[Baron]

I've just tested my current DirectDraw project built on Windows XP machine on my wife's Windows 7 laptop in full screen mode and experienced no problems.  As you say, it is rather unlikely that no one downloading your games has been using Windows 7.  I suspect the single machine -have you tested on many Windows 7 systems?  Or are you using something external to AGS in this current game that you haven't in your previous games (some weird .dll or something?) that might not jive with Windows 7?

[Dave Gilbert]

No .dlls in this game, although I just tested a different game that uses the snowRain plugin DLL.  That game wouldn't run at all in Direct3D mode/Fullscreen.  I had to switch to DirectDraw, but since it wouldn't run in fullscreen I had to play it in a window.  Yeesh!  And I've been liking Win7 so far.

-Dave

[Calin Leafshade]

yea, the snowrain plugin is DD only.

But you could use the AGSBlend plugin to code a similar effect which would work in either mode.

[/sorry not really relevant]

[Dualnames]

No .dlls in this game, although I just tested a different game that uses the snowRain plugin DLL.  That game wouldn't run at all in Direct3D mode/Fullscreen.  I had to switch to DirectDraw, but since it wouldn't run in fullscreen I had to play it in a window.  Yeesh!  And I've been liking Win7 so far.

-Dave

Dave, I'm using Win7 for the span of over a year now, and I've played lots of ags games in fullscreen, windowed ecc, without any trouble. Even games with and without dlls. So I have to say that this isn't AGS related here. At least not entirely.

[Dave Gilbert]

Hm.  So this is definitely to do with my computer.  That's good to know!  At least this won't effect anybody else.  So, I should just try updating DirectX9?  I'll give that a whirl. Thanks!

EDIT: aaand no joy.  

[cat]

Do the graphics filter change anything?

[Dave Gilbert]

The game refuses to run at all in fullscreen when I change the graphics filter above 2x.  Probably because my laptop monitor only goes up to 1366 x 768.

[Dualnames]

The game refuses to run at all in fullscreen when I change the graphics filter above 2x.  Probably because my laptop monitor only goes up to 1366 x 768.

Dave, I usually never adjust that at least for fullscreen I play the games without a filter just fine, and I use up to 4x for windowed. When the game is 16bit and played on fullscreen it just blinks on and off for a while then properly plays. My screen resolution is 1920x1088 though. Want me to test some games on a lower resolution? See if we can narrow it down?

[Dave Gilbert]

Oh, and here's another bit of info.  I checked dxdiag and it says that DirectDraw acceleration is enabled in both 32 and 64 bit mode, so it appears DIrectDraw *should* work, even though it doesn't.

Dualnames, if you could try that and you run into the same problems as me - that would help narrow down the problem!  (Even though I still don't know what the solution would be)

[cat]

Another test: Do you have a WinXP virtual machine at hand? You could try to run the game in it on your laptop.

[subspark]

Dave, your problem isn't exclusive to your machine. I also have very recently been affected by this odd behavior.

I suspect that it may have something to do with a recent windows update for Win7 based machines. To help CJ issue
a fix, we'll need to narrow down the source of the problem. Can you give me your system specs including:

(Model of PC or Mac, OS, CPU, RAM, Monitor, GPU, Native/Current Resolution, anything else that might be relevant or helpful).

My specs are:

• Intel Mac Pro - Jan 08 Model
  
• Win7 x64 Ultimate (Bootcamp) & Snow Leopard
  
• Intel Xeon X5472 - 3.00 GHz x2
  
• 8GB DDR3
  
• 30" Apple Cinema Display
  
• Nvidia GeForce GTX285
  
• 2560x1600
  
• Logitech MX518 USB Mouse
  
• Standard Apple USB Keyboard
  
  Hope that helps narrow this sucker down. It's a business breaking issue I recognize that.
  
  Cheers,
  Sparky.

[Dave Gilbert]

Glad to know I"m not the only one!  Here are my specs:

ASUSTek Notebook K52F/K62F series
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU  M 460 @ 2.53GHz
RAM: 4GB
64 bit Operating system
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Display driver: Intel(R) HD Graphics

[Pumaman]

If you set the game to run in XP Compatibility Mode does that make any difference? Not sure what it might do, but it might have some affect on the DirectDraw behaviour.