Closed Bill-Boquet closed 3 years ago
narzoul
commented
4 years ago Since I don't have access to the game, it is very unlikely that I can help with this. You can try to use the ReleaseWithDebugLogs build from ddraw-debug.zip of the experimental release, which has a lot of additional logs. Reproduce the issue with that one and I'll take a look at it if you upload the logs, but there's a good chance that it won't be helpful either.
Bill-Boquet
commented
4 years ago Thanks @narzoul, I understand. I propose that I take the time to reproduce the issue on a VM with the minimum number of steps. I will come back in a few days with a google drive link to have access to all data + clear instructions. Thank you in advance for your kind support and see you in a few days, Bill.
narzoul
commented
3 years ago Closing due to inactivity. Feel free to reopen if you have more info available.
First many thanks to you @narzoul for this great project and your continuous support to oldies lovers ;-). I use your latest stable release DDrawCompat v0.2.1 with a very old game since 2 years. It solves a weird problem ... but let me start from the beginning.
I bought PC Scrabble 99 (in French) in 1999 : it was my first game on my first PC (was on Mac before). PC Scrabble 99 was released end 1998, was compatible Windows 95/98 and used DirectX 6.1. In the early 2000, Azursoft (developer of the game) issued a patch for Windows XP SP2 compatibility. The company was thereafter acquired by EA and no further update to this program was ever made. Later versions of Scrabble on PC were sold in the 2000's, but none came on par to PC Scrabble 99. Since then, the only versions I found were not Scrabble® compatible, probably for copyright reasons. A 2' advertising trailer of Scrabble 99 can be found at around 2/3 of this URL.
As can be seen, it is a simple game, with no video effects, and it plays in full screen. The only singularity is the mouse pointer : a picture of a pointing finger instead of the classical arrow. The game uses internal pop-up windows and the menu allows to open external pop-up windows (browser or help menus).
Over the years, I succeeded to install the program on XP, Vista and Windows 7 and it continued to work with a few tweaks :
Starting from Windows 8, 8.1 and now 10, the game started to become unstable. Randomly after 10-30 minutes, the game just stops working and quit. Another weird and very annoying problem is that when opening (by choice or by accident) an external pop-up window (browser or help menu), the main window lose the pointer. This means that the main window pointer image (pointing finger) becomes frozen and disconnected from the mouse pointer (arrow). It is possible to close the pop-up window, but impossible to get back the control of the main window pointer image. The only solution is to stop the process (Ctrl-Hlt-Del). The only workaround I found since 5 years was to play PC Scrabble 99 on a Windows 7 Virtual Machine : not very user friendly, but it works.
On Windows 10, after enabling DirectPlay and an additional tweak to install Winhlp32.exe update, the game works fine except for the 2 abovementioned issues : game unstabilitity after 10-30 minutes and program freeze after calling an external pop-up window. Browsing internet, I found and tested half a dozen of DirectX wrappers ... and DDrawCompat v0.2.1 miraculously solved my 5 years old problem ;-). It works different than without DirectX wrapper. When opening an external pop-up window, the main window quits the full screen mode and is parked on the task bar, similar to what happens when pressing the Windows key on the keyboard. The popup window opens in the the top-left part of the monitor, where the main window is minimized (but invisible). Afterwards, it is possible to reopen the main/game window again in full screen ... and get back the control of the main window pointer image ;-). After 2 years of use, it still works flawlessly, with sometimes a small instability : when the game remains open too long (several hours), it sometimes blocks the PC (black screen) that then needs to be restarted.
I recently tried the experimental/test release and unfortunately, the weird problem came back ! This time, the behaviour is similar to behaviour without wrapper : the popup window opens above the (full screen) main window (that becomes black). It is possible to close the pop-up window, but the mouse pointer does no longer get back in control of the main window. Comparing the log files of v0.2.1 and the test release, there is an addition : 0ca8 12:54:47.704 Hooking user mode display driver: C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\igdlh64.inf_amd64_bdd37d808cfdf045\igdumdim32.dll Could this be the reason of the issue I am facing with the DDrawCompat test release ?
In order to investigate, I also tried another DirectX wrapper tested in the past (dgVoodoo2). It works also fine but with a stretched image instead of 4/3 ratio :
I don't know if this weird problem is very specific or can ring a bell to a specialist. Anyhow, I can live with the latest stable release DDrawCompat v0.2.1 that works fine for me. I would of course welcome a new release compatible with my oldie ;-).
Thanks for all, cheers, Bill.