So will your game run in Vista.
 

Do you test in it?
Know anyone that could test it?
Maker of your engine says it will!
You don't care?

Did you want this to be a poll?

:confused:

No I could do that was just kind of asking .
I know what I'm using has some problems with Vista and some of the scripts that work with sound.

I think it does, and as far as I know it should run fine, but I'm not aware of anyone that's tried it. (Personally, I've never even seen a Vista box.)

I did try vista on a vmware but ran real slow on my machine.

I shall see what happens with a whole load of stuff once I upgrade to Vista in what should be about a fortnight's time.

I've only tried one AGS game in Vista so far, and it kinda worked. 320x resolution didn't work; I had to force it to 640x. Everything else worked fine though. This was just one game, but it was a recent one, so the same stuff should apply to most newer AGS games, unless they use some wacky incompatible plugins.

Thats good AGA, the game I'm working on now is in AGS .
Using one plugin so hope that works ok. ( flashlight)

Any game will run nicelly if some free virtual machine is installed
(Microsoft VirtualPC, QEmu, DOSBox, etc).

1) Install a virtual machine
2) Install an old OS in it (MS-DOS6, Windows95, WindowsXP)
3) Install the old game
4) Have fun! :)

VirtualPC: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...ily/virtualpc/
QEmu: http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/
DOSBox: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/

But do will expect the user to do all of this so he /she can play the game we make?

That's really the question isn't it. Will underground developers start having to put caveats of a game not being tested on Vista if they don't have access to a machine.

Virtual machines are always a possibility for the dedicated gamer but, as a developer, do you really want people to struggle to run your game? There are a lot of games out there so most people will just get something else rather than bother.

I know some of the early AGS stuff struggles under XP. Lunchtime of the Damned skipped straight to the closing scene (with dialogue but minus characters) when I played it on XP. Worked fine on my old 98 machine.

Those game makers have an easy solution available: Update the version of AGS used by the game, and then it'll run fine. That's the beauty of using a pre-made engine. All that technical stuff is taken care of for you. I don't understand why so many old games get problems. I certainly plan to do what I can to keep my old games running in the future.

It takes no more than 20 min to do it all. DOS/Win95/98 installs really fast on mondern machines running VirtualPC.

If the user has the original disks. Most have either mislaid them, have a "rescue disk" from the manufacturer, not the original OS, or (shock) have pirated setups made by a local one man OEM. The last time I offered to help someone with their computer they didn't even know what OS they had!

It probably depends on what kind of game you run. Hardcore gamers can be expected to know more than casual gamers, and if (like me) you target people who don't normally play more than Solitaire, then Vista compatibility is a real concern!

Vista seems to require separate paths for game and ini files really grates with me, since I like things to be neat and tidy. My game only has five files including saved games (and one of the five files is the game icon!) so spreading these across two or three folders and virtual folders just seems like madness. Right now, Linux is looking more and more attractive. But I'm using the Inno installer and won't release until December so I'm crossing my fingers that by then everything will be idiot proof and I won't have to even think about it.

I'm not sure how AGS runs on Vista as I have no way to test it so have to go by what others say about how the games run.
I know right now Adventure Maker games run on Vista but have no sound and have some errors .
Shadow from the Am forums was trying to code his plugin to help with AM but didn't have much luck.
And AM has an installer that you can't change where the files are installed ( users can pick the folder ).
I have a feeling that BestBuy etc will see a lot of people bring in their computers and asking to have windows XP put on them and Vista removed. lol

That's already recommended in XP, as Windows' idea of neat and tidy. A limited account isn't allowed to write to Program Files. Each type of file in its own place.

Except indie games, Games can't go in the Vista games folder unless you pay several thousand dollars for certification. So indie games are left out in the wilderness, trying to find shelter in the cold, while the OS tries to break them into parts and scatter them to the four corners of the earth.

Sorry, I'm in a nostalgic mood today. I miss my old DOS computer. It started faster, programs ran faster (because they were leaner), installing meant just copying the files to anywhere I wanted them, and cleaning up meant just deleting said folder. Those were the days!

Yeah, anyway, I will not run Vista because I think it's a bad OS.

I will probably move to new AmigaOS4.

I like the .app bundles of OSX. It works sort of like that, but easier.

Take my word for it, you do NOT want to upgrade to Vista.

And if you won't take my word for it, take it from Microsoft's. The O.S. is crippled from the get-go and only gets worse from there. It also takes a really big performance hit over XP, requires double the ram, and the OEM versions only allow for a single activation (means you can't upgrade without having to buy a new copy).

Vista is really bad news.

Oh, it's also dropped open GL support completely so XP runs OpenGL apps 80-90% faster.

And yeah, I dual booted it for about a month to check it out ($120.00 mistake on my part), stick with XP, yer better off. It "seems" like it runs faster, but the truth is it only "loads" faster because it caches your most used programs in Memory if you have a 2 gigabyte system. But once the applications load, they carry out their tasks slower. Anything from ripping cd's to transcoding your music to compiling data. When you install Vista on your computer you give control of it over to Microsoft and any and all "premium content" providers. It's 100 times worse than Sony's Rootkit software.

Windows Vista As CrippleWare and DRM Bloat, Written by David Marsh (Microsoft).... More Vista Goodness
Digital 'Fair Use' Bill Introduced In Congress 02/17

the worst part about it is that besides the performance hit which will affect everyone who uses vista. All the DRM crap is only going to hamper people who actually buy their music/movies/games/etc. The software/music pirates won't have to deal with any of it.

Go one step further and Vista 64 (microsoft plans to dump Vista 32 midway through vista's life cycle) requires signed drivers. You can't install ANY unsigned driver at all. The amount of control you lose when running vista is a huge step backward for consumers. Vista only helps the RIAA, MPAA and any other companies who choose to employ Vista's DRM policies.

Heh, you are brave. :) I used to love my Miggy, still have it actually... but as time went on, it was more of a hobby than anything else, and I might find myself getting AmigaOS4 for the same reason, just to mess around with. Users bitched way back when they announced they were going to recreate the OS as a runtime environment that would run on top of other operating systems, but I am actually seeing the logic of that now and wish they actually did that.

As for Vista. My advice to anyone would be to wait till the second service pack is released... right now there's too much wrong with it, including hundreds of users complaining that the simple task of moving and copying files was very slow for them. On the Microsoft support forum, a MS tech wrote to say it's slow because the operating system is actually very busy doing other stuff... blegh, sounds like bloat to me. A hotfix has been released for this problem, but no major patches.

Sadly that isn't an option to those of us developing games. Users have Vista now, and they want the game to run now. Otherwise they simply won't get past the demo, and players/sales are lost.

That's not the least of your worries. It sucks being in indie developer in the world of Vista. If you have lots of money though, you're fine.

http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=14952

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/01/30/vi...s-wildtangent/

http://www.informationweek.com/showA...SSfeed_TechWeb

PLEASE DONT HURT ME!!

:\

Thanks for the links!

I bet Microsoft love joystiq! Whose idea was it to choose an alleged spyware promoter as a sympathy figure? That article missed the bigger story IMO, which is that Vista undermines its own security by banning simplicity.

Warning: rant ahead!

I havea simple game, I just want to place three files into one folder, and I don't want to spend thousands of dollars feeding a game registration monopoly. But Vista creates headaches with permissions, it demands that I split the game up into little bits (engine here, data there, saved files somewhere else), and simplicity and transparency become impossible. I spent ths morning removing a copy of Norton antivirus from a machine (and putting AVG on instead). I have serious issues with software that tries to take control away from the user, tries to scare people into paying too much money, and embeds itself deeply into every corner of a machine. Yet that seems to be the only kind of software that Vista will allow.

The linked article implies that the answer to spyware and other threats is ever greater levels of complexity. No, complexity is the problem, not the solution. Encourage programs that stay in one folder and keep their tentacles out of other programs' business. Allow people to write simple code that is easily quarantined, and then security will become far easier and lss intrusive.

As I said in another thread, this is rapidly turning me into a Linux fan, but sadly most of my potential customers use Windows.

We have a company that makes the OS and then we have the same company that makes and sales software that will let you make/program software for said OS from the same company.
So how do you stop others from competing with you. you make the OS so hard to program for and charge them for the signature so their software will install on the OS.
It all boils down to controlling the Computer with OS.
Hope I didn't make to many typos. lol

It does, but the requirement can be turned off very easily.

I've been using Vista for a couple of weeks now, and don't have any real complaints (issues with Norton Antivirus aside). And it's okay, I didn't lose any money on it, because I won a copy from Microsoft.

From where I'm sitting the problems with Vista are overstated. That said, I'd agree that most people probably shouldn't upgrade this early.

Kind of defeats the purpose of vista. may as well stay with XP.

Mandatory signed drivers (which aren't necessary in 32-bit Vista) is the only reason to upgrade?

There are plenty of nice - if unnecessary - things about Windows Vista. I swear, some people (I don't mean anyone here particularly) are just looking to slate it.

I'm curious to know of your experiences with "underground" games. Sludge games in particular, if you've tried any. That includes Out of Order, Cubert Badbone, The Game That Takes Place On A Cruise Ship, Nathan's Second Chance and my game. (If any game on that list is a game you haven't played, I recommend that you do so. They are all games I recommend without hesitation.)

I'm curious about that as well.

(Oh, and thanks, Trum.)

I guess you will be happy to know that your game "The Game That Takes Place On A Cruise Ship" works in Vista.
I install Microsoft Virtual PC then install Vista and got it running.
I don't know if the sound works as I couldn't get my sound card to work under Vista .
But the game plays fine so would think the others Sludge games will too.

Egads!

Peeps suing microsoft
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/200...ing_deception/


By the way... both TGTTPOACS and Frasse work in Linux under Wine... so :P

What about saved games? I don't have Vista, but everyone tells me you can only save games (or update ini fles) if the privileges and folders are set just right. I'm not the world's greatest rogrammer, so that rings scary alarm bells for me.

Never again.

Well, in Vista, applications are supposed not to store any private data in "Program Files". So if you want to be safe and play nice, you should store saved games in the user's Documents or AppData directories, not directly in the game directory. As far as I know AGS and WME support this directly, don't know about Sludge.
But, not to break compatibility with existing applications, Vista "virtualizes" any writes to Program Files and automatically redirects them to user's private directory, so I believe it should work.
That said, I tested TGTTPOACS in Vista and saving/loading seemed to work ok with my administrator account and UAC enabled.

Woohoo! That's great news. Thanks.

Regarding where to save stuff, I guess I'm too muhc of a newbie, but I never know what to type. Sludge has a line for where to save games, but I don't know what magic formula should be typed there to make every possible configuration and flavor of Windows work perfectly every time.

My current method is to leave that field blank and cross my fingers. And if there's a chance that Vista might be involved I cross my toes too and hang a lucky rabbit's foot over the monitor while the game compiles. I think that's what they recommend on the Microsoft Knowledgebase.

That path is relative to the game data. Using something like "saves" is a good idea, but you can't get more fancy than that. Because of that, my installer puts the game data in the appdata folder (that Program Files deal was true already in XP, except not enforced when the user runs as admin, which most XP home users do). That usually works, but I know of a few instances where people had that on a different partition than where they installed the game so they ran out of disk space and got problems. For those rare cases, and Linux users playing though WinE, a zip file download is a good complement.

If you look at Vista just like aesthetic OS, you can download Vista transformation pack to your computer and that will do. :P (30 mb)

Thanks for the info. I'm still a little confused (though no more than normal).
Are you suggesting two downloads of the complete game, differing only in save paths? Or something else?