Vista compatability?

[jjsonick]

Has anyone had a chance to try out AGS games and the editor in Windows Vista?  Any issues?

[Akatosh]

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...

[inmortal]

Anyway, why do you want windows vista? To make Bill Gates earn more money making slower your computer?

[jjsonick]

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.

[inmortal]

Oh right! Sorry then 

[dasjoe]

CJ just said it's running ok on vista, but he only booted it up.

seemed to work fine

[Joseph DiPerla]

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.

[pcj]

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.

[jjsonick]

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.

[strazer]

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?

[pcj]

Nice idea, strazer.  However I get the error:

---------------------------
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.

[strazer]

Try the acwin.exe from AGS v2.4b (and maybe v2.5 as well), available here.

[RowdyAdventurer]

Or use Dosbox.

[pcj]

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:

---------------------------
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.

[jjsonick]

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.

[HeirOfNorton]

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

[lemmy101]

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.

[pcj]

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.

[jjsonick]

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)

[pcj]

Please see the 2.72 ags-help.chm:

You 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.