Compatability Issues.

[Battleline]

I've been developing a game called Epoch Star (http://www.epochstar.com) and from time to time I hear reports of Graphics not displaying correctly. A few people have told me that when they attempt to actually play the game, no 3d objects actually appear. Also I've had a few people tell me that there are "Black Boxes" around some of the sprites in my game. Everyone so far who's had these complaints has had an NVidia card. I have 2 Nvidia cards that I've popped into various machines, and it never has a problem. I've also gone so far as to purchase the exact same graphics card as one of the people who have had this complaint, but still the game runs fine.

I have 4 computers at home and the game runs great on all of them. I even have about 12 different video cards that I have swapped in and out, and the game runs fine with all but the older ones. I know there are people out there who can not play my game that have hardware that should be capable. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to track a problem like this down?

Thanks

[princec]

There were some nvidia cards shipped with a broken BIOS.
There are also nvidia cards running old and broken drivers.

Cas :)

[Battleline]

There were some nvidia cards shipped with a broken BIOS.
There are also nvidia cards running old and broken drivers.

Cas :)

Thanks!

Is there a list somewere of the cards that may have shipped with a bad BIOS?

The few people who have responded to my inqueries have said that other games play fine. Is it possible that if the BIOS were the problem there is some work around that I need to code to? Also, at least one of the individuals who said the game did not play on his computer claimed to have downloaded the most recent driver.

Thanks again for your help... I'm really stuck on this one.

[Robert Cummings]

it's nearly always an older driver. You told them to update their drivers, right?

[Battleline]

Only one person responded to my questions concerning drivers. According to him, he updated to the most recent driver, and it still didn't work.

I do agree, it sounds like a driver issue to me, but I want to cover all the bases, especially since this person told me he had the most recent version.

Thanks :)

[stan]

For the "black boxes around sprites", it might be due to some border color or clamping problem... Are you offsetting texture coords by half a texel when you draw the sprite? i.e. using (0.5,0.5)-(255.5,255.5) instead of (0,0)-(256,256).

Also for some reason I'm using this, too:

if( g_DoClampToEdge ) // TRUE if OpenGL version >= 1.2
{
glTexParameteri( GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE );
glTexParameteri( GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE );
}
else
{
// This might have the same behaviour with some drivers (nVidia)
glTexParameteri( GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP );
glTexParameteri( GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP );
}


I hope this helps.

PS: For the "no 3D objects" problem, I'd have a look at z-buffer and backface culling, see if they are initialised properly... And Fog, maybe...? Sorry, no other idea at the moment.

(You might want to use a more descriptive thread subject next time, such as "nVidia display problems" for example)