Puzzleword - Vista
Puzzleword - Vista
Has anyone managed to get Bigfish/Bigfizz Puzzleword running in Vista?
Do you get an error box up? If so, what does it say?
Vista no longer includes large chunks of Direct X, the graphical system used by a lot of windows games (they cut out a lot of older stuff basically). And there is currently a lack of drivers for versions of OpenGL greater than 1.1. Either one could be the root cause. Or it could be something else.
Vista no longer includes large chunks of Direct X, the graphical system used by a lot of windows games (they cut out a lot of older stuff basically). And there is currently a lack of drivers for versions of OpenGL greater than 1.1. Either one could be the root cause. Or it could be something else.
Puzzleword just sits there on one of the opening credit screens - no error diaglogue etc. so nothing for me to have a go at. I've tried every permutation of compatibilty modes and graphx/sound options in PU to no avail 
Will look in to the DirectX/OpenGL thing but I'm seriously thinking about setting up dual boot to XP - my Vista experience hasn't been too great in the 3 months I've had it and a lot of my fave software won't run.
Will look in to the DirectX/OpenGL thing but I'm seriously thinking about setting up dual boot to XP - my Vista experience hasn't been too great in the 3 months I've had it and a lot of my fave software won't run.
In windowed or fullscreen? It might also be worth seeing if there's a "Compatability" tab in the properties of the EXE you can play about with. If there is, then try enabling the XP option.
I had a quick look at the demo, and from looking at the EXE in a hex editor, it doesn't use either (there's no indication it loads in the relevant DLLs). Just GDI32, which is meant to be fine in Vista AFAIK.
I plan on leaving Vista for a while - I intend replacing my PC sometime next year, hopefully Vista will be worth using by then.
Incidentally, we can't actually blame MS for most of the problems. As members of the MSDN, we've had pre-release versions of Vista for something like eighteen months now. So it's not like all the companies that should be writing compatable drivers haven't had a good long time to make all their stuff compatable!
I had a quick look at the demo, and from looking at the EXE in a hex editor, it doesn't use either (there's no indication it loads in the relevant DLLs). Just GDI32, which is meant to be fine in Vista AFAIK.
I plan on leaving Vista for a while - I intend replacing my PC sometime next year, hopefully Vista will be worth using by then.
Incidentally, we can't actually blame MS for most of the problems. As members of the MSDN, we've had pre-release versions of Vista for something like eighteen months now. So it's not like all the companies that should be writing compatable drivers haven't had a good long time to make all their stuff compatable!
The biggest thing is Vista removes Direct3D Retained Mode, an old "easy" way to use the 3D part of DirectX. Now, while this hasn't actually been part of DirectX for a number of years, it was still actually there so older games would still run.
When Vista was released, they took the decision to remove RM entirely. Which meant a lot of (lazily coded ) games don't work any more.
IF that's the problem, a solution to try is to find D3DRM.DLL from an old install of DirectX on XP (or below) and copy it into the games directory on Vista. It's in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directory on XP.
Developers themselves are not allowed to do this, as DirectX's distribution license forbid them to install the DLLs themselves - they have to use the DirectX install facility provided by MS (with good reason, DirectX is a very complicated system of drivers, and extremely easy to fuck up if you don't know how it works).
When Vista was released, they took the decision to remove RM entirely. Which meant a lot of (lazily coded
) games don't work any more.IF that's the problem, a solution to try is to find D3DRM.DLL from an old install of DirectX on XP (or below) and copy it into the games directory on Vista. It's in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directory on XP.
Developers themselves are not allowed to do this, as DirectX's distribution license forbid them to install the DLLs themselves - they have to use the DirectX install facility provided by MS (with good reason, DirectX is a very complicated system of drivers, and extremely easy to fuck up if you don't know how it works).
