Vista Modifications

AF · Post by AF » 03 Feb 2007, 02:56

Firstly, you cant uninstall spring correctly in vista, the start menu entries are in a different place now:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Spring

I also found it was best to set folder permissions of the spring folder to allow full access for every single user.

AF · Post by AF » 03 Feb 2007, 03:46

Steps to get mingw32 working under Vista

Downlaod this:
http://sourceforge.net/project/download ... irror=kent

Then follow this:

http://aarongiles.com/?p=199

AF · Post by AF » 03 Feb 2007, 04:01

hmm That mingw installer dosnt install everything it should so the following steps dont work as a result pfft

KDR_11k · Post by **KDR_11k** » 03 Feb 2007, 08:24

In Program Files? How doews Vista handle different user accounts?

el_matarife · Post by **el_matarife** » 03 Feb 2007, 19:10

I found some MSDN documentation about how to create the XML file that makes games show up in the Games Explorer on Vista. It's not too hard it seems, and this may or may not let us launch Spring from Media Center. There is a tool to create these XMLs w/ documentation here http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb173435.aspx I have no clue if you need Vista to test this or not, but AF & Kujeger & I could all act as guinea pigs since we're running Vista already.

AF · Post by AF » 04 Feb 2007, 15:57

To Add Spring to the game explorer, take a tasclient shortcut and drag and drop it into game explorer. Hey Presto

ZellSF · Post by **ZellSF** » 04 Feb 2007, 18:49

That doesn't give it a proper thumbnail, name, age rating, genre, publisher, developer and so on.

I think you're not able to add them yourself either, you couldn't in RC2 and I don't think I saw that option in the RTM release either.

AF · Post by AF » 04 Feb 2007, 20:17

You can if you use an API to do it.

el_matarife · Post by **el_matarife** » 04 Feb 2007, 21:37

Which is why I posted the tool to generate the XML file for all that stuff.

Anyway, one more Vista bug/issue. Dual Screen mode only works if you set it to windowed mode. Tested on 2x 1680x1050 DVI monitors, after setting the width Spring refused start with some video mode error about it not being able to set or start that video mode. Oddly enough, windowed mode works at that same resolution, it just sticks a little off screen in places. This is on a 7600GT and the latest NVidia drivers. No clue if this is an NVidia bug, Vista bug, or they changed the way Spring needs to handle this stuff. Is Spring using the latest version of SDL? I think the last few versions of that have fixed at least one Vista bug and some of the window placement issues Sping has been having too.

AF · Post by AF » 05 Feb 2007, 10:35

Nobodies updated SDL recently from what i can tell. At least not in the last 3 months.

Tobi · Post by **Tobi** » 05 Feb 2007, 13:05

I think we ship SDL 1.2.10, I just saw 1.2.11 is already released so I guess we can update it for the next release.

AF · Post by AF » 05 Feb 2007, 14:52

SDL 1.2.9 is used in the VCLib packages IIRC.

Tobi · Post by **Tobi** » 05 Feb 2007, 16:01

Assuming SDL devs didn't break ABI compatibility between 1.2.9/10 and 1.2.11 you can probably just replace SDL.dll with one from the SDL site if you are experiencing problems that you want to (try to) solve immediately rather then waiting for the next spring release.

el_matarife · Post by **el_matarife** » 07 Feb 2007, 07:33

Spring just plain doesn't work on an ATI X800XL and Catalyst 7.1 in Vista. I get display corruption, then my videocard crashes most of the time or Spring crashes. It said it was going to generate an infolog I could upload once, but it didn't. Anyone else have an ATI card and Vista to test this with?

AF · Post by AF » 07 Feb 2007, 13:04

go into program files and right click on the spring directory, and change the permissions to allow everybody full access to the folder. This solved a lot of issues I had with dissapearing files and folders when i was copying maps there. This action also seems to correct compatability issues in other programs, such as winamp, which had its media library wiped everytime it closed untill I did this as vista would mark files as 'compatability files' then erase them when the program was finished executing.

QMan · Post by **QMan** » 07 Feb 2007, 19:57

Found this last night and got MinGW/Code::Blocks working in Vista using it.

BTW, Spring works fine with my NVidia GeForce 6800.

el_matarife · Post by **el_matarife** » 07 Feb 2007, 20:22

AF wrote:go into program files and right click on the spring directory, and change the permissions to allow everybody full access to the folder. This solved a lot of issues I had with dissapearing files and folders when i was copying maps there. This action also seems to correct compatability issues in other programs, such as winamp, which had its media library wiped everytime it closed untill I did this as vista would mark files as 'compatability files' then erase them when the program was finished executing.

Hmm I figured it might be a limited permissions issue for the Infolog writing out. Guess I'll go turn my NTFS permissions on Spring to "everyone -> Full Control" and see if I can get us some crash logs.

el_matarife · Post by **el_matarife** » 08 Feb 2007, 03:57

No luck, even with Full Control permissions granted to everyone, TASClient & Spring running as administrators, and Spring running in XP SP2 Compatibility mode. Considering it keeps crashing my GPU and giving me insane display corruption, I'm going to say ATI's OpenGL driver isn't quite ready for Prime Time!

el_matarife · Post by **el_matarife** » 14 Feb 2007, 23:38

Driver Roadmaps for ATI & Nvidia:

ATI/AMD
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=367
Of note: Catalyst 7.2s next week will have a lot of OpenGL improvements, the same with the 7.3s next month. Also, they note that 25% of their downloads are for Windows Vista drivers now. I'd suggest that this means we need some extra work done to make Spring better on Vista, but our userbase tends to lag behind a bit.
Nvidia
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=357
Of note: March is when they are probably going to have OpenGL SLI support working. They didn't specifically discuss any OpenGL improvements, but I am sure they'll be working on it. They're targeting the release of a WHQL certified driver this month as well.

el_matarife · Post by **el_matarife** » 21 Feb 2007, 02:52

Time for an update:

NVidia users, there's new WHQL certified drivers out for you with better performance, give them a try.

ATI Users: Let's submit Spring's failure to the Catalyst feedback site. Include your system specifications so we don't just flood the thing for no reason. http://support.ati.com/ics/survey/surve ... 6&type=web All of us probably have different ATI cards, processors, etc. I suggest you include a URL to the game, what the crash is like, etc. They won't respond to a those tickets, but I think they'll maybe take a look into why it crashes. Do any of the devs have an ATI card and/or Vista yet?

Spring RTS Engine

Vista Modifications

Vista Modifications