Has anyone had a chance to try out AGS games and the editor in Windows Vista? Any issues?
Hm... I don't know, but I guess there *will* be issues. Wait, does it still count as a guess if I'm 99.99% sure? Vista's backwards compability isn't one of it's few strenghts...
Anyway, why do you want windows vista? To make Bill Gates earn more money making slower your computer?
Quote from: inmortal on Mon 01/01/2007 18:03:01
Anyway, why do you want windows vista? To make Bill Gates earn more money making slower your computer?
Oh, believe me, I will avoid getting vista for as long as possible. My main concern is people with vista being able to play my game. I'd hate to work for a long time on something only to have anyone with vista not be able to play it.
Oh right! Sorry then :)
CJ just said it's running ok on vista, but he only booted it up.
Quoteseemed to work fine
Vista runs the editor fine. Maybe some games too.
I booted up the PC with Vista and ran Dr. Who demo. It crashed my CPU. Something went wrong with the graphics I think. Maybe it wasn't a capatible Graphics card as Windows Vista does have a problem with GC capatability.
I'm having problems with Rob Blanc on Windows Vista.
AGS 2.7 and all the games I've played around on that engine work fine though. I don't think Vista supports 320x200 display mode, it had problems switching to that. 320x240 "letterboxed" mode works fine, though. The display switches to Vista Basic, apparently there's a conflict with Aero.
My machine is Windows Vista Premium Ready, so it shouldn't be the graphics card or anything.
Rob Blanc is closed down by Windows, Data Execution Prevention kicks in, and lots of cool stuff.
Trilby's Notes wouldn't work until I used 640x400.
If there's any other games people want me to test on Vista, let me know.
Thanks for investigating, Joseph and pcj.
pcj, for the games that do run, can you check if Save Game/Load Game is working normally? I'm concerned that Save Game might be impaired, since Vista wants all programs to only write to the user's Documents and Settings folder.
Isn't Rob Blanc a DOS game? DOS support isn't a priority in Vista so I imagine those games are more likely to cause problems. Have you tried running it with a Windows version of the AGS engine (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/kbview.php?id=22)?
Nice idea, strazer. However I get the error:
Quote---------------------------
Adventure Game Studio
---------------------------
Invalid file format. The file may be corrupt, or from a different
version of AGS.
This engine can only run games made with AGS v2.5 or later.
I'll check that out, jjsonick; however, it seems to me that if you just put the game in your Documents folder it should be able to save. And you can always run the game as an administrator to avoid UAC.
Edit:
rb.exe has file version 2.40.325.0.
I'm not familiar enough with AGS versions to tell if that could be a DOS version but it seems my ACWIN.exe won't be compatible with it.
Try the acwin.exe from AGS v2.4b (and maybe v2.5 as well), available here (http://americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/AGS_Version_history).
Or use Dosbox.
Running rb.exe in DOSBox says "This is the Windows 95 version of the AGS Interpreter. An MS-DOS version is available on the website: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk"
So it is the Windows version.
Edit:
And of course, that means using a different ACWIN.exe doesn't work.
Also, jjsonick, saving/loading works when the program is in a standard user-writable directory. However, outside those instances (such as when the game is in Program Files), the program will not start, and closes with error:
Quote---------------------------
Adventure Game Studio
---------------------------
Unable to write to the current directory. Do not run this game off a
network or CD-ROM drive. Also check drive free space (you need 1 Mb free).
Unless you run it as an administrator.
Aha, thanks pcj. So it looks like all should be well for high-resolution games if I tell Vista users to install the game in My Documents, or better yet, if I make a custom installer for the game that will put it in that location.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=26273.0
Does the game itself have to be in My Documents, or will it work as long as it only WRITES to My Documents? If the latter, you could still allow users to put the game wherever you want, and just Game.SetSaveGameDirectory to My Documents.
HoN
Gamewise :- Id assume, since AGS uses allegro, which uses DirectDraw on windows, which uses COM and *should* be perfectly backward compatible, that it'll probably be fine.
I say probably...
EDIT: Ahh apparently we have a Vista guy on the thread. ;) Ignore me.
Quote from: HeirOfNorton on Fri 05/01/2007 03:02:24
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=26273.0
Does the game itself have to be in My Documents, or will it work as long as it only WRITES to My Documents? If the latter, you could still allow users to put the game wherever you want, and just Game.SetSaveGameDirectory to My Documents.
HoN
That works fine in Vista, but I'd suggest it defaults to the new Saved Games folder under the profile for Vista if possible.
pcj, is there a way to that that would pick up the user's home drive in case it's not C: ? (which I assume Game.SetSaveGameDirectory's $MYDOCS$ does)
Please see the 2.72 ags-help.chm:
QuoteYou cannot use fully qualified directories with this command (eg. C:\Games\Cool\Saves), because the player might have installed your game to any folder, and they might not be running Windows.
Right, I guess I was wondering what syntax with Game.SetSaveGameDirectory would guarantee the save file would end up in Vista's Save Games directory -- normal relative paths (or $MYDOCS$ on a non-Windows system) would put the save file inside the game's folder (wherever it happens to be installed), right?
Right.
As I understand it at present, Vista's Saved Games folder is only usable by games that support the Game Explorer. Unfortunately, to support this your game needs to have a digital signature, which is something that's difficult to implement with AGS because the EXE is rebuilt every time you save the game. It's something I'm looking into.
I think all Game Explorer requires is a GDF (Game Definition File, an XML document), as described here (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms687240.aspx).Ã, And the structure of the GDF (as defined here (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms687239.aspx)) doesn't seem require a signature and looks rather straightforward to programmatically generate.
Edit:
Information on using "Rich Save Games" with Game Explorer can be found here (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms687244.aspx).
Ok, maybe that would work -- I was trying to integrate the Vista Parental Controls with AGS and found that it wouldn't work because of digital signatures. Perhaps the save game thing doesn't have that requirement.
I'll investigate it at some point.
Quote from: jjsonick on Fri 05/01/2007 02:38:19
Aha, thanks pcj. So it looks like all should be well for high-resolution games if I tell Vista users to install the game in My Documents, or better yet, if I make a custom installer for the game that will put it in that location.
Eek.. installers actually make it harder for Linux and MacOS users to play your game. Please think twice before locking us out. Thanks.
Quote from: blashyrkh on Sat 13/01/2007 15:06:03
Eek.. installers actually make it harder for Linux and MacOS users to play your game. Please think twice before locking us out. Thanks.
Don't worry, if I went that route, the installer would only be for Vista users, and everyone else could use the regular exe.
BUT, from the information given in this thread, it looks like that complication is unnecessary, since SetSaveGameDirectory allows the tag $MYDOCS$, which will save to the user's documents folder in Windows and simply uses the game directory in non-Windows systems. Using that, the regular exe should be Vista-compatible AND cross-platform compatible -- and that's my plan.
I'm working my way through the tutorial, using a release candidate version of Vista; I've got one room and the default sprite, in 32-bit mode at 640x480. Trying to test the game in fullscreen mode resultes in a black window and I have to kill it from the Task Manager. Running in a window works fine though.
You guys are already working on the Vista!?Ã, Whoa!
I'm not touching that os until it works.Ã, It doesn't work!
It took me a year to get the xp prefessional version to work with everything I had running.Ã, Sound card most important!!!
I run a theater.Ã, I write music.Ã, Sound had to be the number one priority... Since I built all the sound files from scratch... violins, flutes, sax, trombones etc.
SSH... Cudos!Ã, I passed my game to my son (on a mac) with your docking and it worked perfectly between Windows and Mac.Ã, Thanks.
I have to say that you guys are doing wonderful work making this engine viable and workable and usable by us 'joes' out here in the netherworlds.
Hugs and rubs
Steve
Vista works fine, and better than XP in most cases.
Quote from: theatrx on Fri 09/02/2007 06:41:51
It took me a year to get the xp prefessional version to work with everything I had running.Ã, Sound card most important!!!
I run a theater.Ã, I write music.Ã, Sound had to be the number one priority... Since I built all the sound files from scratch... violins, flutes, sax, trombones etc.
You definately will want to wait a while before considering whether to upgrade then. Vista rewrote most of the sound architecture and the software and hardware manufactuers haven't caught up yet. A lot of old software might not work either.
I've been using the pre-release versions without a lot of problems though, and I will probably buy it when I build a new computer later this year.
Now back to your regularly scheduled topic.
Quote from: pcj on Fri 09/02/2007 13:34:47
Vista works fine, and better than XP in most cases.
I agree with pcj. Vista has worked cleanly for me. In fact, I was able to install Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 on my comp cleanly on Vista, whereas on XP the installer would always freeze up (important b/c I need that software for my C++ programming classes).
However, big however, AGS has been giving me turds and gravy ever since I upgraded to Vista. For some reason, I can't run an AGS game in Vista, which seems to be attributed to the lack of 320 x 200 support, I guess, because that's the kind of error I get when I try to run Casserole Caper (a 320 x 200) game in Vista. I tried updating my graphics card, but that didn't help much. Not sure what to do. Need help. Send biscuits.
!
EDIT: Sorry, I just realized this particular thread was a little outdated! Blame Gilbot! :P
Don't blame me :P, especially when it's the right place to post if you really have new info for it.
It's just digging up old threads without constructive content that's prohibited.
There actually probably are new drivers, but ATI is being a bit of a bitch. See, they don't allow updated driver downloads for labtops (Mobile Radeon is their chip brand), and that forces me to go back to my original manufacturer (HP) for updated drivers. However, HP isn't very good at delivering drivers made by other companies to the consumer. In fact, I can't even find a new driver for my graphics card online, so I'm stuck with a driver install that was updated way back in early August of 2006. I don't even think Vista was commercially available then, although I haven't really been keeping tabs. Therefore, put 1-and-1 together, and you get 'my drivers aren't even meant to be used in Vista!
I can still use AGSEdit, but the lack of a test ability and executable running means 1) Debugging is nigh on ipossible and 2) I can't draw inspiration from fellow AGS projects if I can't play them.
But did you follow my advice in the other thread to try test it windowerd or at 640x400? That'll probably work.
Quote from: Gilbot V7000a on Thu 09/08/2007 07:30:10
But did you follow my advice in the other thread to try test it windowerd or at 640x400? That'll probably work.
Yes! It works perfectly. I'll try running it outside of windowed mode (just 640x400) to see if that works, but it seems to be running smoothly. Thanks a lot, robot-based chum!