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Forum » driftmoon isn't working!

driftmoon isn't working!

Kario 14 years ago
Turns out i downloaded driftmoon but as soon as i started it shut down does anybody know why? I don't know what's wrong and i really want to play.
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Venom31 14 years ago
Does it display any error messages? How did its shutdown look like?
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Amarth 14 years ago
Some general remarks: try updating your graphics drivers and DirectX. Almost never hurts.

More advanced... Let's try to get a log file... It is named log.txt and should be in your Driftmoon install directory. HOWEVER if you don't have write permission there (90% chance you don't), then there won't be a log file generated and the log file that is in there is an old file from a playthrough from Ville (yeah, confusing - Ville, please don't package this in your next release?). So find your Driftmoon install location and see if the log file there is recent or old (old = from 2009, recent = from the moment you tried to play Driftmoon). If it's recent, then it here. If old, then you want to get your Driftmoon to a writable location. Copy the Driftmoon directory to your Documents folder or your Desktop or something. Then run it again from that location and check if the log is created properly now. If so, please post.

Also post your Windows version and if you have it, information about CPU, memory and graphics card.
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Kario 14 years ago
driftmoon.exe has encounterd a problem and needs to close. That's what it says.
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ville 14 years ago
That's a straight crash, hard to tell what's crashing it, but it could be a missing DirectX, bad drivers or anything. The next version might very well work for you, since I've changed the graphics engine.
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Kario 14 years ago
So ville what you're saying is that i should download and try again?
or should i wait till the next version comes out?
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ville 14 years ago
I guess you'll have to wait for me to release the next demo version.
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Luminon 14 years ago
All right, so I downloaded the new version of Driftmoon and surprisingly this isn't working. When the game starts, there is an island on sea, music is playing, some guy and crab ocassionally move. But that's all, there's just some empty grey rectangle appearing from time to time and by something I managed to show some kind of typing line that only displayed spaces instead of keys being typed in there. Went away by Esc.
Similarly, the game shuts down by Esc.

Nothing else is happening there. There is no log.txt either. I can only move mouse, but clicking doesn't do anything.

My graphic card is crappy, it's built-in Intel Graphic Media Accelerator 950, but graphics seems to be working, so where's the problem? My DirectX is just updated.
I've got Widows XP with Service Pack 2. But recently I tried to update it and got installed a lot of stuff like Microsoft Visual Runtime Basic/C++/Whatever, in order to try if Paint.NET will work then. It didn't.
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Pete 14 years ago
Thats the menu you got right there. Sounds like something somewhere cant quite meet the necessary specifications, be it your card, your DirectX, or your drivers. A <knowledgeable person that made the game> will probably know more.
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Anonymous1157 14 years ago
Notwithstanding anything Ville can do about it, there is a 90% chance that it's your Intel graphics card's fault. If this computer you tried the game on is a desktop, and you play video games with it often enough, you should consider upgrading to a real graphics card immediately.
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E_net4 14 years ago
"Anonymous1157" said:
Notwithstanding anything Ville can do about it, there is a 90% chance that it's your Intel graphics card's fault. If this computer you tried the game on is a desktop, and you play video games with it often enough, you should consider upgrading to a real graphics card immediately.
Pretty much this. Under those circumstances, you wouldn't want to keep that graphics card.
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Luminon 14 years ago
"Anonymous1157" said:
Notwithstanding anything Ville can do about it, there is a 90% chance that it's your Intel graphics card's fault. If this computer you tried the game on is a desktop, and you play video games with it often enough, you should consider upgrading to a real graphics card immediately.
Well, I'd upgrade it long ago, if possible. But nope, I have it hard-wired in laptop. Only if some genius would invent a graphic card to a free RAM slot or externally through USB.
Once I get to another computer, I'll try Driftmoon there. I hope it will not work too, in which case it will be a problem not on my side.

But in the worst case scenario, I hope Ville will refund me money. Alternatively, Ville might consider using some compatible graphic functions, OpenGL or something. If more people have this problem, then it's money slipping away. I am still under the pledge of NOT pirating at least ONE independent developer's game per year And it is a disappointment, I was already ready to buy another RPG, Battles of Norghan, which also didn't work. (t'was the fault of engine, they say)
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Pete 14 years ago
Just how old is this laptop, anyway? Also, can you possibly imagine the amount of work thatd have to go into porting the entire game into OpenGL?
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Luminon 14 years ago
"Pete" said:
Just how old is this laptop, anyway? Also, can you possibly imagine the amount of work thatd have to go into porting the entire game into OpenGL?
It will be 3 years old - Acer Aspire 5310.
No, I have no idea what OpenGL would take, I just know that some games offer the option to run in software mode, if hardware is lacking.
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Amarth 14 years ago
Have you tried upgrading your graphics drivers?
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Anonymous1157 14 years ago
"Amarth" said:
Have you tried upgrading your graphics drivers?
If my brother's laptop is any indication, Intel doesn't really update their older drivers anymore.

"Luminon" said:
Only if some genius would invent a graphic card to a free RAM slot or externally through USB.
Actually, yes, these do exist. Many modern laptops have user-replaceable (Or at least removable with some effort) graphics cards.
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Vacuus 14 years ago
'3 years' isn't all that old; the card should be sufficient to atleast attempt running Driftmoon. As Amarth said, check your drivers - you may have to visit the intel site for the latest version. It could also be that some of your hardware isn't XP compatible, hence you may need to upgrade to vista and/or seven for it to work.

All intel cards are integrated as far as I'm aware and yes some motherboards use a common interface like MXM or MXM-II, but there is still usually only one or two cards that fit because of the differences in mounting points and size etc. External USB-powered cards are avaliable, but for the price they're often underpowered and require an external monitor to hook up to.

Could try tweaking the various compatibility mode settings, though I doubt it'll get you anywhere. You're not using something like Windows Blinds are you?
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Anonymous1157 14 years ago
"Vacuus" said:
'3 years' isn't all that old; the card should be sufficient to atleast attempt running Driftmoon.
Indeed, it does start on his computer. A graphical glitch prevents the menu from being visible.

Ville will probably need to change how menus are rendered so that people with Intel cards can play the game. Somebody poke Ville and tell him about this.
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ville 14 years ago
Luminon, I will of course give you a refund if it's not working, but I'd much rather fix the problem - I want it to work on as many computers as possible. Can you post a screenshot of the menu? If it's just the texts that are not showing, it could be a relatively simple problem.
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Luminon 14 years ago
"ville" said:
Luminon, I will of course give you a refund if it's not working, but I'd much rather fix the problem - I want it to work on as many computers as possible. Can you post a screenshot of the menu? If it's just the texts that are not showing, it could be a relatively simple problem.
All right, I updated the graphic driver and tried new exe file, but it didn't help. I have sent you the screenshots and newly found log.txt. It is obvious from them, that the main problem are not displaying texts. Looking forward to further news!

However, the game worked fine on my brother's computer with (as I see now) graphic card ATI Radeon X600 and Windows 7. It might really be incompatibility with Intel graphic cards, at least the built-in ones.
Hell, just a moment ago, after more blind clicking and remembering where the buttons are on my bro's computer, I managed to start the game itself! The cave of Eldar, the terrain, torches and so on. Everything works fine, except there is not a single letter or word anywhere on the screen.
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E_net4 14 years ago
Only text, you say? I wonder if you need some font files that are not in the game files. Either that or the installation application missed something... have you tried reinstalling?
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Luminon 14 years ago
"E_net4" said:
Only text, you say? I wonder if you need some font files that are not in the game files. Either that or the installation application missed something... have you tried reinstalling?
Yes, I tried and according to log.txt fonts are loaded:
Graphics: loading fonts
Graphics: load cursors
Graphics: Started successfully

However, some files weren't loaded, look:
Error: Could not find sound file D:\hry\Driftmoon\mainmod/sound/monsters/wolf_grunt0.ogg in sound yelp_wolf : No such file or directory
Error: Could not find sound file D:\hry\Driftmoon\mainmod/sound/monsters/wolf_grunt1.ogg in sound yelp_wolf : No such file or directory
Error: Could not find sound file D:\hry\Driftmoon\mainmod/sound/monsters/wolf_grunt2.ogg in sound yelp_wolf : No such file or directory
Error: Could not find sound file D:\hry\Driftmoon\mainmod/sound/music/Underground Cue 1 (Faded).ogg in sound music_test : No such file or directory
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Vacuus 14 years ago
Ville, are you using something like freetype for fonts or a simpler glyph system? Maybe there's an incompatibility there somewhere.

I can't see it being a purely intel problem (unless it's a simple fix); they have standard API's and bug patches for a reason y'know.
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ville 14 years ago
I've actually rolled my own version of D3DXFont using basic GDI calls. I think the problem lies in the code where I copy the GDI bitmap to a DirectX surface, or the problem may also lie in GDI not drawing the text at all. I'm testing a different approach with Luminon, but I think it's something pretty basic that should be easy to fix once I spot it.
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MageKing17 14 years ago
In one of my coding projects, I made my own pixel-based font library. It was horribly inefficient, but it absolutely guaranteed that the text displayed.
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E_net4 14 years ago
"MageKing17" said:
In one of my coding projects, I made my own pixel-based font library. It was horribly inefficient, but it absolutely guaranteed that the text displayed.
I must mention how poor pixelated text would look in Driftmoon.
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Luminon 14 years ago
I announce that Ville sent me the exe file that finally works and displays all texts properly. I am very grateful. I'm curious how it was done and I hope it is only a minor change that will not upset the game on other computers.

As I understand it, the executable file of the final version will be already updated with this change. Saves will be hopefully compatible. Currently, there is nothing more available than demo, ending in the area with four gems. Is that so?
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ville 14 years ago
In the end it was that on some computers the GDI text drawing works differently. You have to remember to GDIFlush at the end if you expect to get the results visible. I will add the updates to the next preview version. Thanks for helping!

You're right, saves will be compatible for the next version. The only problem with saves is that if you get to an area which I will change later, the changes won't be visible for you. That's why I'm holding off the next area until later, so that it's complete enough for you to continue to another area after that.
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