Alight, as you all may know/care, i've released Until I Have You, that uses AGS 3.3.5
The ever ending bane of my existence is this OS. Windows 7.
Basically, what happens is this, most users cannot start the game, and they immediately crash. That forces them to run both the game and the winsetup (yep can't even run winsetup) as administrator and set the Driver from Direct3D to Draw.
I've tested this with a person, and they had the same problem with all AGS games.
So, they set the mode to DirectDraw, but if they have an antivirus (usually Avast), hell brakes loose. They have to disable it, otherwise the crash still happens. And as far as i can tell, nobody is willing to do that. Any thoughts?
Uhhh, come on, some details maybe?
First, you are saying that your game uses AGS 3.3.5. I downloaded it and in the game it sais "3.3.4.2". ???
The looks of winsetup is definitely from 3.3.4 -- it does not have mouse lock & mouse speed settings.
Now, let's separate the issues. First issue is the crash. What is it exactly? Is there error message? Was the crash dump written?
Where do they install the game?
Oh, the game is a Steam game. Would they have this crash if they run it separately from steam?
Where do they keep steam games? Is it "C:/Program Files" for instance? That could explain why they need admin rights to run setup.
Note: I am using Windows 7 since 2010, and was running AGS games under it all this time.
Alright, yeah, forgot i am on 3.3.4, but none of the issues that AGS 3.3.5 brings as features are the problem. Anyhow, they run steam games from program files. The crash is irrelevant to steam and related to AGS. Perhaps the Steam plugin causes this? I remember Gemini Rue had similar issues reported with their rain and snow plugin.
There has been no error window on the crash, everyone says it just crashes on them. I didn't ask for a crash dump, i presumed none was written.
Quote from: Dualnames on Wed 06/04/2016 17:08:26
Alright, yeah, forgot i am on 3.3.4, but none of the issues that AGS 3.3.5 brings as features are the problem.
Well, for instance, 3.3.5 does not write config file in game's folder anymore, so you do not need admin rights if you installed game to C:/Program Files.
Quote from: Dualnames on Wed 06/04/2016 17:08:26The crash is irrelevant to steam and related to AGS. Perhaps the Steam plugin causes this?
I do not mean that the crash could occur in Steam app itself, I mean that presence of it could cause AGS behave differently. For example, there were reports about glitches caused by Steam overlay before. Well, and there's steam plugin too.
Since there is little data on error, it could be worth try running the game outside of Steam enviroment.
This is nearly impossible to help if there are no details on "crash". Also, it is hard to believe there was no report on problem whatsoever (no message, no dump).
What about system events? http://www.cyberlink.com/support/faq-content.do?id=10449
If crash dump really was not written, you could try using log. If you put this in acsetup.cfg:
[misc]
log=1
then the log should be written to C:/Users/<Username>/Saved Games/.ags/
(Unless the game crashes before the log could be instantiated, ofcourse).
Just to add my two cents: having Avast installed is worse than having an actual virus.
And I never had any problems with AGS under Win7, Win8.x and 10 before I installed Avast and it all continued to be fine after I got rid of it.
Avast simply blocks the AGS executable and even remembers that. So once you run winsetup, you're screwed because afterwards the game is blocked forever.
Quote from: abstauber on Wed 06/04/2016 17:52:49
Just to add my two cents: having Avast installed is worse than having an actual virus.
True, but Norton is even worse.
"If you don't pay me, I'm gonna block you and accuse you of being a virus!!!" 8-0
I have been running Win 7 and Avast for years and never have had any problems with AGS games whatsoever.
Luckily I know exactly what the issue is: you have to turn off Avast's Deep Screen feature. It's right there in General Settings.
AGS Steam games also run perfectly fine for me, but I install all of my games on D:\
So, the admin thing seems solvable by porting the game to 3.3.5, that's at least one good thing out of this. What seems to be the reason why people on Win 7 can't run on anything else but DirectDraw? in all these cases DirectX was installed, so I'm wondering what else can stop them.
Quote from: Dualnames on Thu 07/04/2016 22:44:59
What seems to be the reason why people on Win 7 can't run on anything else but DirectDraw? in all these cases DirectX was installed, so I'm wondering what else can stop them.
What exactly happens when they run Direct3D?
Is DirectX9 updated in these computers?
DirectX10 onwards do not backward support applications using DirectX9. Instead starting from Windows Vista, both DX9 and whatever the newer version of DX coexist, but for whatever evil stupid reasons M$ decided to ship these O/Ses with a very old version of DX9 and by default DX9 will not auto-update.
I think this (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx%3Fid%3D35) is the most recent version of DX9.
Perhaps that is the issue
It would still be very useful to know if the program tells something to user or not, because it should not just crash even if it cannot initialize Direct3D.
Also, I noticed a lot of people use word "crash" when program stops working, but "crash" is when operating system shuts program down because it tried to do something very bad. If the program reported an error, like "cannot initialize graphics", then quit, - it is not a "crash".
Lack of clear information prevents developers from fixing the problem. If we won't be able to find out what happens exactly in this case, then sooner or later it will happen again and someone else will open similar thread.
Well, it's not up to me to give out such information, I am clearly sharing all I know, and I've asked for dmps, or crash messages, and nothing yet so far.
These are the dmps i was just sent, and these seem to be Steam ones...wtf
http://duals.agser.me/Files/assert_steamwebhelper.exe_20160406011034_1.dmp
http://duals.agser.me/Files/assert_steam.exe_20160406104136_1.dmp