Display Drivers Causing Black Screen

[Ghostlady]

I started making a game a few months ago.  I recently updated my display adapter drivers.  When I went to run the game, I got a black screen for the display.  I could hear the music and sound effects, but no video.  This was true for the editor and the .exe.  It will play in window mode with no problem.   I rolled my drivers back to the original ones and now everything works fine. 

So what does this mean, if anything?  Does this mean because I started creating the game with the older drivers I now must finish it with them?  Does this mean someone who will play the game that has updated video drivers will get the black screen also?  Or, does this mean I will need to redo the game with the updated drivers?

[Gilbert]

What resolution was the game in?
Also, what display are you using?
Sometimes, the system may change the mode to use a resolution-refresh rate combination that the display can't handle (normally windows and display drivers would auto-detect these settings but that's not always reliable, especially when you're using a CRT), it can be the updated driver attempted to use a higher refresh rate for that particular resolution which the display can't handle (it may be some other reasons, of course).

[Ghostlady]

The game resolution is set at 640 x 480 and my display is set at 1280 x 1024, on a laptop.

[GarageGothic]

The drivers you use doesn't change the game engine, so it should run the same on any computer (with the same setup as yours) using the new drivers, no matter which drivers it was developed with. The problem is with the drivers, not your game,  which you should be able to see by running any other AGS game using the same resolution/color depth as yours. Possibly the new drivers just don't support the resolution and color depth you're using.

Have you tried running the game with the 2x filters (selectable from the winsetup.exe menu)? It should allow the game to run in 1280x960 resolution which might be supported.

[Ghostlady]

I didn't try using any of the filters.  I was having a near heart attack when the black screen happened so I went with the roll back and that worked.

The drivers update went forward, not backwards, and the version number was upp'ed pretty good so that told me the original drivers were a couple years old.  You would think by going forward it would support that resolution.

My concern was other people's pc's and if there would be a problem.  It sounds like there won't.

[Pumaman]

You could try updating your DirectX as well. Sometimes newer display drivers don't work well if you have an old version of DX installed.

Failing that, it's quite worrying that newer drivers don't work whereas the older ones do. You could try fiddling with some settings in Setup, like the Letterbox resolution and filters, but I would expect the drivers to return an error if they didn't work, rather than give a black screen.

If you put the newer drivers back on, can you see if any non-AGS DirectX games still work?