Three AGS games lock up in my new XP system. All three begin with video sequences (The Breakdown, Stargate Adventure, and Project Xenophobe). When I play the clips independently on Windows Media they seem to work fine (although I haven't played them all). What is wrong? Does anyone know?
Do you get any error messages or does the game just hang?
Just a black screen.
Did you try playing the games in windowed mode (if you hadn't already) and see if the problem still exists?
Just tried that but it still doesn't work. May I ask how the game plays the in game movies? Should it work the same as double clicking the movie? If so, should I not get an error message? The games work on my laptop, but not on my desktop although they are both XP.
If you press ESC on the black screen, does it skip the movie and continue playing, or does it seem to have hung?
AGS uses DirectShow to play the movies, which is the same APIs that Media Player uses, so in theory if Media Player can play them then AGS should be able to as well.
Update your codec's .
It hangs. ESC does not help. It is a new XP with all Windows updates and the latest Windows Media, so I assume it has the latest codecs. How can I confirm this?
Try gspot
http://www.headbands.com/gspot/
I get a similar problem with Stargate Adventure - in windowed mode, the AGS window loses focus, and the screen is black. When I click on the window, the movie starts displaying - maybe you can try that. The sound plays no matter what.
In fullscreen, I always am forced to exit fullscreen for some reason. It's really annoying. The movies play fine in WMP.
Edit: After some more investigation, I find that the little superfluous programs installed with the Divx program were causing the black screen and leaving fullscreen bug. Now those are fixed, the new problem is that videos in AGS play upside-down. Weird!
Mine look green . lol so the problems are mix.
XviD seems to be a better codec anyway :P
I think I managed to fix everything by installing the latest DivX codec (but none of the other players/converters/etc. that come in the package), and then removing a file called divxsm.exe from \windows\system32\ .
Well, I downloaded the latest DivX and now two of the four games in question work, but with the strange side effect that the game minimizes after the movie begins. I have to maximize it to watch! Why does it minimize?
The two games still not working (they crash rather than lock up) are The Breakdown and Ozzie's Playwrite.
It minimizes because a little program (in the taskbar) is loaded. Just delete divxsm.exe from \windows\system32\ and that will fix it.
I presume the 2 other games don't use the DivX codec. Try gSpot to find out what it is.
There are some rather dodgy DivX codec distributions that do things like play the video upside down and then apply a filter to flip it back round. Additionally, some DivX distributions come with unnecessary background apps like the one you described.
Basically, AGS plays the movie as WMP, but it doesn't apply any filters. Thus, if your codec relies on one to display properly it may not work. XviD is certainly a better choice.
Quote from: Sotaria on Tue 07/11/2006 16:35:04
On the previous thread ... I got all the AGS games working after updating Windows Media Player and the Divx.
I hope it's okay to bump this, because I'm having the same problem.
I d/led Stargate Adventure a few weeks back, but couldn't get it to work.
I just d/led the Futurama Fryscape demo, and that don't work neither.
Both have a brief splash screen, which displays fine, before jumping into an intro vid, which doesn't.
As before, the vids play fine in MPC, but within the games they just play the audio over a black screen
The game doesn't pick up when their finished, either, it just hangs on the void.
According to AVIcodec, the Stargate vids are XviD Mpeg4 and the Fryscape ones are MS Mpeg4 v2.
The Fryscape readme recommends 3ivX. to play 'em.
I already had both XviD and 3ivX installed.
I've tried reinstalling both, but nothing doing.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
J.
Also, Stargate doesn't work in windowed mode, either, and Fryscape is missing its winsetup.exe, so I can't open it in anything other than fullscreen.
You can always setup the game using this method (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/kbview.php?id=60).
Quote from: Gilbot V7000a on Wed 07/05/2008 02:18:36
You can always setup the game using this method (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/kbview.php?id=60).
Ah, cool. Thanks for that. :)
I figured there'd be a way around it.
Quote from: Ultra Magnus on Wed 07/05/2008 02:15:35
Any suggestions?
Anybody?
No?
Any at all?
And I mean suggestions about how to make it work, rather than those about where to shove certain things...
I can only repeat my previous post and assume that there's some sort of dodgy codec going on.
If you're playing a game made with AGS 3, you could try the Direct3D driver and see if you have more luck with the video playback in that.
Well, Stargate was done with 2.7 and Fryscape with 2.6.
Maybe it's ffdshow, as I'm still using a version from '05, but last time I tried to update that it screwed with everything else so I had to revert.
I'll get around to trying that again at some point when I can be bothered with the hassle.
If anyone has any alternate ideas in the meantime, please let me know. 8)
It's fddshow.
When I was making Unbound, I found that a conflict arose between the AGS runtime trying to use WMP to playback my MPEG files, when fddshow was setup to decode them.
I uninstalled fddshow and the problem went away.
I'm sure there's a less drastic solution to the problem, though.
most easie way is to ren the avi file and than play the game, the game will not find the avi file and skip that part...
Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 11/05/2008 19:25:08
It's fddshow.
When I was making Unbound, I found that a conflict arose between the AGS runtime trying to use WMP to playback my MPEG files, when fddshow was setup to decode them.
I uninstalled fddshow and the problem went away.
I'm sure there's a less drastic solution to the problem, though.
OK maybe a little late, but I ran into the same problem: ffdshow.
However, in the config of ffdshow there is a possiblity on de 'DirectShow Control' page to add StarGA.exe to the list 'Don't use ffshow in'.
This solves the problem, while you can keep ffdshow for other uses.
Maybe someone running into this problem may find this helpful