New graphics card bundled with 320x200 woes... Any help out there?

[Snake]

Is there anything in the internet world that I can download or something that will allow me to play games, particularly AGS games of course, in 320x200?

You guys that have high-end cards or whatever, how do you play AGS games? I hate having to switch to 640x480 and watch the text shrink down to nothing.

There's also, not too sure on how to explain it, but these lines that garble up the screen when playing certain games. All AGS games do this. The splash screen for AGS even does it.

Is there anything out there that can solve these problems?

What I've done already is tried looking for drivers and such on the NVIDIA site but can't find anything.

I'm at a total loss and would be mucho appreciated for any help that comes my way. I can't fucking stand not being able to play or create AGS games anymore (let alone see them without zipping lines all over the screen), especially in 320x200. My whole computer world has come crashing down around me


Thanks in advance.

EDIT:
My graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS btw. Sorry...

[Babar]

Heh....I never thought to ask for any solution, because I didn't think there was any....I've been playing 320x200 AGS games in 640x400 for a while now. Recently there was an improvement (that fixed the text problem) by playing the game with selecting a 2x graphics filter from the setup.

[Snake]

That's funny, Babar I was hoping to hear from somebody out there that had the same problem.

I can play in 320x200 using DirectDraw 5. The drawback with this, is that the screen gets filled with "zipping" lines (shooting across the screen) all over the screen, garbling the graphics. Over time it gets worse.
I can select the filters, but there really isn't any point when there are lines all through the screen anyway.

I cannot play in 320x200 with Direct3D 9. The filters panel is also greyed out.
What's funny with Direct3D 9, is that when played in 640x480, there's no "zipping" lines and the text is sized normally.

So is there any way to fix the "zipping" lines and make it possible to play in 320x200 mode using Direct3D 9?

EDIT
And this is only if I have the option of how I want the graphics to be drawn in the setup file.

Some games don't have this option and so the default graphics are garbled by the lines and I must play in 640x480.

EDIT2:
And some setup files only have 320x200(or 240) as an option (The Vaccum for example). So I must play it with lines in it.

[InCreator]

I switch to 640x480 (enable letterbox if game's 320x200) with 2x filter.

So, basically, don't switch to 640x480, FILTER to this size. And make sure letterbox is on, incase you have blur.

On my 1280x1024 desktop resolution & 17" Samsung Syncmaster,
that's only way to not have blurry picture or small text..

If you didn't discover filters yet, there's your answer. I can play anything if it's either 640x480 or double, 1280x1024
anything in-between is ALWAYS blurry.



If you're having weirder troubles, try following things:
* Getting latest video driver (stupid advice usually, yet popular)
* Rolling back to older one (Much better. Works wonders on older cards! First place to start when some games get messy for no reason whatsoever)
* Using one that came with card (On my old GF7400LE, most foolproof way to have no trouble, that card didn't digest any updates from nVidia)

[Snake]

The example I'm going to be using is from Ben Jordan 1:

The older setups don't give me the option of choosing between DirectDraw 5 and Direct3D;


And here's an example of the "zippy" lines and garbled graphics I've been yapping about:

Once again, I hate how you can't load a game that was saved in a different resolution :
Ben Jordan is a wierd case though. I'm assuming it is using my computer's default graphics which should be Direct3D. Now, with Direct3D I can't play in 320x240 but there's no lines.
With DirectDraw 5 I can play in 320x240, but WITH lines.
Ben Jordan tells me that it can't set the video mode (320x240) but yet has the lines in 640x480 (illustrated above).

I don't know why, but I keep thinking that there is a TXT file somewhere with resolutions in it and you can type in a custom one... or maybe I'm just remembering from an emulator or something.

InCreator:
I've previously updated the monitor and video card drivers already.
If I roll back the video driver, what happens to the video card? I mean, can I just switch in between the two if it works? Or will everything work correctly, like say, when I try to run Portal or F.E.A.R? I don't want to mess things up where I have to reinstall the video card.

[Eggie]

I'd totally forgotten the title screen of Ben Jordan 1 was just a photo of Grundy with a dollop of pasta-sauce slapped on his head...

[Galen]

Have you tried messing around with the hardware acceleration setting on your display settings?

[InCreator]

About drivers:
With nVidia drivers, you can quite safely simply download them from nvidia.com, and install. If it doesn't work, install other ones ontop of old ones. Setup is quite smart and warns you if you're about to replace new driver with old or something. I've seen "nvidia driver cleaners" and long talk about removing trace of old drivers, but in reality, I never had to. Installing any driver always replaces old one and makes card use installed one. You never have to reinstall the CARD. It's all matter of replacing the driver.

What you SHOULD try is original driver. The one that came with card. And - things should run with with those drivers. Steam warning about drivers being old isn't really something to pay attention to. You know, if you buy a car, you should expect the engine it has to be compatible with rest of the car, right?
And if it doesn't help, it's simple to download & put back newest driver.

Same for monitor driver.

Also...

I'd try those things if I had your problem... the logical solutions first, desperate last-straw ones last:

* Try running in window mode. Do you have lines then too?
* Try starting fullscreen game, then alt-tabbing to windows, and back. Move mouse cursor over lines. Does mouse "erase" them, cleaning up the line-mess? (more common anomaly than it sounds, seen in hundreds of games in my life. Points directly at drivers and directx - or more exactly - mess in video buffer)

Start -> Run -> dxdiag
Display tab
* Check that all acceleration is turned on, especially directdraw. Do the test, if you have patience.
* Check files tab and make sure there's no problems
* Try reinstalling (re-downloading!) DirectX, maybe that would help. It's small download anyway, and might do good even if it doesn't help with that particular problem!
Some games install some custom(ized?) DirectX drivers and they might not be that good, or even broken
* Run Nvidia Control Panel (you should have taskbar icon near clock). Go to "Change flat panel scaling", Try different options.
* Go to windows display properties (via control panel or right click>properties on desktop), Settings > Advanced > Monitor > play with refresh rates. If you have only 60Hz selectable, uncheck "hide modes this monitor cannot display" and you can try 75Hz. Do this at your own risk. If something blows up, run.

Maybe something here would help?
Those lines... I could swear I've seen those before. But I don't remember what card did I have back then. And I think I got rid of the problem in some really easy way, maybe one of those I listed?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

You might try the x-treme g drivers from tweakforce, Snake.  I use them and have no problems with any games (and get a nice performance boost over the regular nvidia drivers).  I've never seen a glitch pattern like that before, though.  It's almost like your video card isn't properly resizing the image.

[Khris]

You can try to run the game with a newer version of the engine.

(If you're using the Explorer, make sure to uncheck "Hide known file extensions" in its folder settings first.)

-Rename the game exe to "ac2game.dat".
-Copy AGS 2.72's acwin.exe to the game dir.
-Right-click acwin.exe and select "Create shortcut".
-Right-click the newly created shortcut (acwin.lnk) and select "Properties"
-In the text field the cursor is in, add " --setup" (Space, 2x dash, setup)
-Click "OK"
-Double-click acwin.lnk, make sure the resolution at the top is selected, check "Run in a window ..." and select the "3x nearest-neighbour filter"
-Click "Save and Run".

[Snake]

Thank you guys for the info. I'll try them out tomorrow and get back to you.

[Snake]

Hm, I'd really like to try the Tweakforce drivers, especially if they will help with speed of non AGS games. But I don't know what to do, or even which ones - I checked them out and there's a million of them.

So how do I go about this, Proggy?

EDIT
InCreator, I tried all that you suggested and nothing seemed to make a difference.
The lines are still there in windowed mode aswell.

[BOYD1981]

using older video drivers shouldn't really do anything to the graphics card, especially in the case of FEAR which i believe was out before GeForce 8 technology was around, but if there were any incompatibility issues with older drivers that have since been fixed with newer ones then you might run into problems.
personally i am using older nVidia drivers with 7600GS (AGP) because upgrading doesn't offer me any advantage, and in fact stops me from using the tv-out on the card the way it's intended (i forget the acronym associated with it, but it basically stops anything from playing fullscreen on a secondary display due to some bullshit thing to comply with vista, which stupidly they've also put into their XP drivers).
i have had problems in the past with running AGS games at 320x200/240 but that was with ATi cards and only if the game was running in 16bit colour mode, it didn't produce any graphical glitches though; the game just wouldn't run.

what kind of monitor do you have and what refresh rate are you using (if CRT) ?
if your monitor supports it, try forcing 85Hz or try forcing different rates that it supports via dxdiag (i think it's some advanced option).
that probably isn't a refresh rate problem, they tend to manifest themselves as a squished horizontal image or giving the appearance of an interlaced image, or atleast they do on my 19" CRT.
i only came across one reference to the 8400GS causing problems at 320x200 but that was from january last year and concerning a NES emulator.

[Snake]

Thanks, Boyd. I've got the Dell monitor that came with the computer refreshing at 75Hz - changed it yesterday to see if that would solve the line problem, but it didn't.

ProgZ:
I've installed the drivers through the program I downloaded, but is there anything else I have to do? I don't think the computer is utilizing them. How do I do this?

I downloaded: XTreme-G_181.22_XP_32bit.exe