2010-06-19, 11:51 AM
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)
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)