Topic: AGS 3.4.1 - RC 3 (new release candidate)

[AGD2]

I'm curious if there are any updates on the issue that the DirectX 9 driver doesn't work on certain Windows 10 systems?

I've not tested it out, but apparently installing the full DirectX 9 runtime package can restore compatibility with Windows 10.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

Just thought I should mention that I installed this and it didn't resolve the black screen issue for me with the AGS Direct 3D driver under Windows 10.

[Snarky]

I doubt driver selection will change anything about stutter during room transition, because that stutter is caused by loading next room data rather than displaying anything.

I can't test now, but I did some pretty extensive testing back in the day, and concluded:

it doesn't happen if the graphics driver is set to Direct3D, and it happens far less (not at all in most games, barely at all in Egress) if the game is set to run in a window instead of full-screen.

Others have reported skipping on Direct3D, though, so there may be differences between computers in this respect. In any case, it clearly does matter (I have observed the difference), for whatever reason.

[Crimson Wizard]

I can't test now, but I did some pretty extensive testing back in the day, and concluded:

it doesn't happen if the graphics driver is set to Direct3D, and it happens far less (not at all in most games, barely at all in Egress) if the game is set to run in a window instead of full-screen.

Might be related to fade-in, although I've got and impression that blackout animation works slower with Direct3D.
In any case all this is very strange, because music position is kept updated every tick during fade effect.

Also, if you are running games with extensive animations, rising sprite cache size may help to reduce slowdowns.

[morganw]

I had the stuttering issue on room change when I used Windows 7, but the same games were fine once using Windows 10. I also thought it was a graphics driver issue, as I would get some general performance issues with anything using Direct3D. Using the threaded audio mode would fix it, or using WAV files for audio, so I think the issue was that the buffer for MP3 and OGG decoding wasn't updating before the next engine tick.

[edmundito]

Hello, I had an issue with the OpenGL driver that may be worth investigating. I had some of the unusual conditions.
<...>
If you would like more info, please feel free to DM me here or find me in the AGS discord.

I do not even know what I can do with this information. How am I supposed to investigate that, I am clueless.

Me neither. Would it help to have get a copy of the game to run any graphical performance monitoring?

[Crimson Wizard]

Me neither. Would it help to have get a copy of the game to run any graphical performance monitoring?

I can run it, but I do not know if that will help. Even if I see it overheats GPU or something, I would not even know what to do.

[morganw]

I would imagine the CPU and GPU share a heatsink, it might have just been an issue with Parallels.
http://kb.parallels.com/en/123268

[AGD2]

One of our team members is having an issue with sound and music not playing in games compiled with the latest AGS betas. It used to work in previous builds (3.4.0 and earlier), and still works in older AGS games (he tested it with some titles).

He doesn't have a sound card, just an on-board one. And he's already tried changing all the different sound and music-related settings in winsetup, to no avail. Has anything changed in the latest 3.4.1 that might cause this?

[Crimson Wizard]

He doesn't have a sound card, just an on-board one. And he's already tried changing all the different sound and music-related settings in winsetup, to no avail. Has anything changed in the latest 3.4.1 that might cause this?

I do not recall any significant changes to audio playback itself. There were number of bugs related to engine not being to find particular clips in *.VOX, these errors fixed in 3.4.1.5 or *.6.
Is it the very latest beta game is compiled with? Does it matter if sound is WAV, ogg or mp3?

[AGD2]

I know it happened in the beta version before this current one. But I don't think he tried the game that was compiled in any earlier 3.4.1 builds. He had tried it under the the 3.4.0 compiled version, with no sound/music issues, though.

I don't think it makes a difference what kind of sound file it is (ogg, wav, mp3), because he was getting a pop-up message when running the game from winsetup, regardless of which combination of audios settings he selected. He had to change it to the "no Music" and "no Sound" winsetup options to prevent that message from appearing every time he launches the game.  I know he's running Windows 10 now, but may have previously been running Windows 7 when it last worked. I thought it may have been a windows 10 incompatibility/driver issue with his on-board sound card, but that doesn't explain why old (3.4.0 and earlier) AGS games still work on his system with full sound and music...

[Crimson Wizard]

I don't think it makes a difference what kind of sound file it is (ogg, wav, mp3), because he was getting a pop-up message when running the game from winsetup, regardless of which combination of audios settings he selected. He had to change it to the "no Music" and "no Sound" winsetup options to prevent that message from appearing every time he launches the game.

What "popup message"?

[Monsieur OUXX]

oh nice. Though increasingly irrelevant is not fixed

Welp. Dave Gilbert said to never EVER use Direct Draw (and he said that severeal years ago). Since Dave Gilbert is like AGS-Jesus, you'll never catch me using Direct Draw anymore.

[Snarky]

As a proud DirectDrawer, I had a tiny bit of schadenfreude when Direct3D stopped working on some people's computers (because of Windows 10, I think) and he had to tell them to switch to DirectDraw.

[Dave Gilbert]

As a proud DirectDrawer, I had a tiny bit of schadenfreude when Direct3D stopped working on some people's computers (because of Windows 10, I think) and he had to tell them to switch to DirectDraw.

Yep. Happy to eat my words here. Back in ye olde days of 2011, I would always tell people to ignore DirectDraw completely and focus on Direct3D, since DirectDraw was completely unsupported and didn't work on a large number of computers. The problem was so severe that I advocated removing DirectDraw completely from AGS. I'm happy I was ignored, because now... the opposite is true. Direct3D completely chokes on a number of computers and the only recourse is to switch to DirectDraw, which works completely fine. Why this happened is a mystery, especially when you consider that DirectDraw is STILL not supported and is positively ancient.

That said, now I'm an unrepentant OpenGLer. It works BEAUTIFULLY on everyone's system (so far)! I'm never going back!

[Radiant]

So the previous big release of AGS was in the Windows 8 era, and correspondingly the editor splash page and icon were re-drawn in the style of Windows 8. Since we're currently at Windows 10 instead, for the upcoming release I suggest changing the splash and icon to either something resembling the Windows 10 style. We have plenty of good artists in the community, after all

[Crimson Wizard]

So the previous big release of AGS was in the Windows 8 era, and correspondingly the editor splash page and icon were re-drawn in the style of Windows 8. Since we're currently at Windows 10 instead, for the upcoming release I suggest changing the splash and icon to either something resembling the Windows 10 style. We have plenty of good artists in the community, after all

Too late for this release. Also there are people with opposite opinion:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=54726.msg636560198#msg636560198

[Radiant]

Too late for this release. Also there are people with opposite opinion:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=54726.msg636560198#msg636560198

Interesting. In that thread, Peter and Danvzare suggest a more retro-style icon (and nobody in the thread objects to that). I agree that that's a better choice.

[Monsieur OUXX]

That said, now I'm an unrepentant OpenGLer.

What do you mean by that? It's possible to run AGS engine with OpenGL instead of DirectX ?

[eri0o]

Yes Monsieur OUXX, try this beta!

[Grundislav]

Is it possible to increase the number of objects per room? I've hit the 40 object limit (map screen with several location icons) and could really benefit from bumping the limit up. It would make it a lot easier than using characters for icons, or making a duplicate room!