color problem on Vista

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-> 4 out of 5 times i start quadra, the graphics are extrem low quality,
looks like 8 colors ega ;). Can't really reproduce the case, when it was
fine. Quadra always starts in fullscreen, no window-mode with
"-nofullscreen" possible or switching with alt-enter.

-> At the moment i start a game (single player, clicking start when joining
a internet-server from nx or replay a game from the highscore list)
quadra.exe crashes.

Windows Vista Business German, SP-1 here.

I'll try to make enough space on my hd to install the directx-sdk for
debugging purposes, perhaps then i can help more than "it doesn't work" ;)

Original issue reported on code.google.com by tino.mie...@gmail.com on 16 May 2008 at 8:53

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I have seen the issue with the wrong colors a few times here as well (though 
nowhere 
near 4/5 of the time) on Vista Home Premium. Note that this version doesn't 
have a 
windowed mode; that will only be available in the SDL version.

Does the crash only occur when the colors are wrong or is it all the time?

Another note: the correct Direct X SDK version is the one from August 2007. 
Later 
versions have removed some stuff that we use. Maybe that only applies at build 
time 
(i.e. it's possible that the latest version could help debugging anyway) but if 
you're installing it just for Quadra, it might be worth your while to dig a 
little 
for that specific version.

Original comment by slaj...@gmail.com on 16 May 2008 at 1:51

• Changed state: Accepted

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[deleted comment]

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Original comment by slaj...@gmail.com on 16 May 2008 at 1:52

• Added labels: OpSys-Windows

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Assigning to our resident Windows expert. ;-)

Original comment by pphaneuf on 16 May 2008 at 2:22

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Ok, when i switch my to 16bit color depth, quadra looks fine. Even if i change 
back
to 32 bit the next time i start quadra it seems to be able to switch for 
itself...

The problem with the crash on game start remains. Neither "Run as admin" nor 
WinXP
compatibility mode changes seems to help.

I've download the DirectX-SDK, but March 08. You are right, quadra doesn't
compile/link with this newer version. Have to find the older version, but it 
seems
every page redirects to the actual version...

Original comment by tino.mie...@gmail.com on 21 May 2008 at 9:22

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That's really annoying, is there anything we can do? Stéphane, have you got
reproduction on this?

Original comment by pphaneuf on 6 Jun 2008 at 11:24

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Tino, if you've got a development environment set up (minus the problematic 
DirectX SDK version), maybe 
you could try the SDL branch?

I'm not sure if this would be a conclusive way of resolving that bug ("oh, if 
you have Vista, wait for 1.4, in a 
few years"), but I'm curious to know if the SDL version has the same problem. 
Since it seems to be heavily 
buggy on your system, you'd be the best test case. :-)

Also, have you tried Quadra 1.1.8 (the last released version)? Does it have the 
same problems? This could help 
us isolate the problem better...

Thanks!

Original comment by pphaneuf on 17 Jun 2008 at 4:50

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I think that if we don't get this right, we might just end up getting pushed 
soon for
"why doesn't it work in Vista"... Since I'd like this one to be the last 1.2, if
possible, if we could bury this, that'd be awesome.

Tino: If you manage to build trunk on your machine (resolving your DirectX SDK
problems), something that would be EXTREMELY helpful was if you could help 
pinpoint
the revision that introduced the problem. Basically, you look at
http://code.google.com/p/quadra/source/list?path=/trunk/quadra/ and go update 
to one
of those older revision, test if it's working okay or not, then go forward or
backward, try again, etc...

Either you'll hit a point so far in the past that it won't compile anymore 
(knowing
the oldest one that you could build would still be helpful) but you'll still 
have the
issue, or (preferably!) you'll find a revision which is okay, and where the one 
right
after isn't (introducing the bug). That latter case would probably make it 
super-easy
to fix. :-)

Thanks!

Original comment by pphaneuf on 20 Jun 2008 at 7:52

• Added labels: Priority-Critical
• Removed labels: Priority-Medium

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Oh, Tino, just so you know, 1.1.8 (which you said was okay, I think?) seems to 
be
r175, so you shouldn't need to go further back than that.

Original comment by pphaneuf on 20 Jun 2008 at 7:53

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I separated out the second point in the description to its own issue #80.

Original comment by pphaneuf on 23 Jun 2008 at 12:10

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Rémi and I did some research on the subject, and discussed it a little with 
Stéphane...

What we found is that it seems to be a common problem with DirectDraw games on 
Vista,
and it seems to be related with other programs trying to display something, and 
while
they fail (since the DirectDraw program is fullscreen), their attempt seems to
disrupts the palette. Descriptions of the problem seemed to associate it with
programs such as anti-virus software, Google Desktop, things of that nature.

While Stéphane did experience the problem, he did so only *twice*, having 
started the
program untold number of times. So we basically don't have reproduction.

Since we don't have reproduction (although I suggested to Stéphane he could try
installing Google Desktop and seeing if it does anything to Quadra), and this 
seems
to be a well-known problem of DirectDraw games on Vista, we agreed that we would
probably ship with this problem, unfortunately.

Since the SDL version does not (normally) use DirectDraw (it uses the GDI 
instead,
which is now faster than DirectDraw on DirectX 9 and newer when on 2D hardware, 
and
is in any case "sufficiently fast" for a game like Quadra), it should not have 
the
same problem, so that might be a way out for you?

Any new information is welcome, and could change our decision in this matter. 
If we
could do something about it, we would, sorry!

Original comment by pphaneuf on 23 Jun 2008 at 12:28

• Changed title: color problem on Vista
• Changed state: WontFix
• Added labels: Priority-High
• Removed labels: Priority-Critical