Hello (Creatura)

[Creatura]

I placed an enemy on the map and now I can't Test Map. what the hell should I do? I don't think reinstalling SOM will help.

[Holy_Diver]

If you know what caused the map to stop working, then take it out then try again. And if you can repeat it, provide us with more info about the situation. Starting with which version of Som you are using.

People will help you, but this stuff takes time, and you need to also be able to help yourself. Making a game does not happen over night, so we all assume you have the patience to stick with things. Making your game play in Georgian for example will not be as simple as snapping your fingers. You will have to understand a lot of stuff, and do a lot of stuff to make it work. It will take some time (and it will also save you a lot of time in the long run)

[Creatura]

I was ready for all this since the day one of starting this project so I am going to be as patient as man can be.
The version is 1.02 and taking the enemy out didn't solve my problem.
I even started a new project and that didn't work either.
Seems like my SOM is F***ed up.
I'll reinstall it and tell you more.

[Creatura]

Reinstalling solved my problem but I don't see any texture on objects when I press Piece setup. I can only see white silhouettes.

[dmpdesign]

Sounds likely that you may have objects that didnt get the texture copied completely. ‎  Are you installing off an original disk or the download installer located on this site's main page?

If you have white textures then the texture files are just missing. ‎  I would recommend downloading the installer from the main page here and using it, it will come with about 30% extra objects/map pieces/items than the standard install and will automatically be updated to the newest patch release that From had. ‎  There are alot more bugs on the older versions that were on From's original disk.

[Creatura]

I did everything like you told me to and now my SOM works fine (I have even changed the compatibility to Win98). but now it doesn't generate any preview at all. and also when testing a map, everything seems to be glowing (turning darker and lighter).

[dmpdesign]

Im no expert in windows 7, but there must be a way to lower the hardware acceleration for your 3d graphics. ‎  I found in vista at least, that lowering it no acceleration at all or nearly none allowed me to use the map editor perfectly, and then id bump it back up to test the game.

I honestly did a relatively equivalent thing on my xp laptop by disabling direct3d via dxdiag but I dont know any way to do that in 7, and im pretty sure each computer will have a different UI based on the graphics driver youre using.

[Holy_Diver]

If you have a better version of Windows 7, for working with the editors you can download "XP Mode" from Microsoft's website. If you can't afford to setup an XP machine just for working with Som you should be using Virtual PC (same as XP Mode for 7) or VMWare so everything will work correctly. In theory using an older DirectX redistributable runtime like the ones that come with Som would help. But I'm not sure these days how much of DirectX is implemented by the runtimes versus the display drivers. The runtime component of DirectX11 is implemented natively by Windows 7.

I'm guessing the reason disabling hardware acceleration helps is because the runtimes probably implement everything then defer to the display drivers for the accelerated stuff. In which case props to MS because the runtimes seem to do a much better job than the display drivers, but really it's just a quirks thing.


Yesterday I downloaded the last Direct X SDK that supports MSVC2005 and intend to play around with the idea of remapping Som's DirectX7 calls to DirectX9 (and maybe eventually 10/11 if successful) here shortly. I know at the least that should make it play better with Aero mode, and hopefully make windowed play easier to implement. I'm hoping it will also magically solve all the crappiness the nVidia drivers I have access to are exhibiting. In general drivers of all kind are less likely to fully support older versions of DirectX.


EDITED: If you do decide to try XP Mode, keep in mind you still probably want to have an XP disc handy because you need it to enable components like East Asian Language Support. Microsoft does not provide a download for that. In fact I learned when I was researching my last PC purchase Microsoft has in fact revived XP and is continuing to support it (even though after Vista it declared it would not) because it had no OS to offer Netbook computers when they became popular (because they were not powerful enough for Vista and were too good for CE)

[Creatura]

how did yoy do it on Vista?

[Verdite]

If you want to use Ex you should download the Dark Destiny Ex patch and modify it to suit your game. There is a thread in the Dark Destiny forum that should have the last download location for the patch assuming it's still there. Todd has never actually finished DD and it was never released with Ex. If you use Ex you can easily use any Unicode font that includes Georgian script, and your game can be translated into different languages, and it will automatically detect if a user is using a Georgian PC etc.

You should follow Divers advice. He knows about these things. Me? I am more of a designer.

I can help you with design templates for meta if you need them.