nvidia problems - any ideas?

BlitzPlus Forums/BlitzPlus Programming/nvidia problems - any ideas?

mulawa1(Posted 2003) [#1]
My recently released 2D game is not working properly in a couple of instances - the common factor seems to be nvidia cards. I've searched the forums here and found quotes like:

"As for 2d issues with the latest nvidia drivers: As I understand it, the latest DX has, in microsoft's infinite wisdom, dropped 2d support altogether." and

"I thought the more recent Nvidia drivers were known to be problematic"

The problem reports seem to be saying that the background and sound are fine but that images that I have overlaid (like navigation arrows for example) are unstable.

Here are the reported specs:

Win98 SE DirectX 8.1 NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS Rev A on one, RIVA TNT on the other.

Guru comment urgently needed.


mulawa1(Posted 2003) [#2]
Sorry - I forgot to say that I'm using version 1.80 of BlitzBasic.


mulawa1(Posted 2003) [#3]
I also failed to mention that my web site is offering two free copies of the game to anyone who can provide a usable solution to this problem.


ashmantle(Posted 2003) [#4]
I think the well known problem with Nvidia cards is their latest driver, which seems to have a bug that causes DirectDraw (in directX7) to slow down to almost a halt.

Nvidia confirmed the bug, and were going to fix it in the next updates of their driver.

People (including me) have solved this by going back to earlier drivers.. I have version 4.1.0.9, and everything works just fine :)


JazzieB(Posted 2003) [#5]
As far as I know, there are issues with the latest Nvidia drivers, but these revolve around the use of the Text (and similar) commands and how they render to the screen. I don't know the details, but the part of DX that these commands use no longer exists in later versions of DirectX, so have to be 'emulated' somehow, hence the slowdown - which is the inherit problem with the new drivers.

The main workaround is to move to bitmap fonts, which has always been the main rule of thumb when writing games where speed is a necessity. The Text command should only be used for play-testing, debugging etc.

However, Mark (and others) has relayed this problem to Nvidia and the problem should be resolved in the next update. Although there are mumblings that the latest beta drivers still have this problem.

Until I know for sure, I'm sticking with my current drivers. Of course, there's still the problem of what to do with any current or potential users of your software that always upgrade to the latest drivers (which I normally do, but caught this thread before I did - just).


mulawa1(Posted 2003) [#6]
I greatly appreciate the rapid responses - I will see if my customers are able or prepared to try earlier driver versions.


Réno(Posted 2003) [#7]
what is the problem on your game ?


mulawa1(Posted 2003) [#8]
"The problem reports seem to be saying that the background and sound are fine but that images that I have overlaid (like navigation arrows for example) are unstable."


mulawa1(Posted 2003) [#9]
In a player's words: "The arrows are hard to see, the cursor disappears in the middle of the screen, and a couple of the games I can't play because I can't see all the pieces."

In all cases she is referring to smaller images that I would use DrawImage to place over the background which would have been drawn with DrawBlock. Some of the posts here referred to DirectDraw being very slow with these nvidia drivers.

Please appreciate that Magnetic is running fine on hundreds of machines the world over. I myself have tested it on about 10 very different machines. And it is only very basic 2D stuff.


Xuul(Posted 2003) [#10]
I can recreate this effect exactly on one of my machines. Using the latest nvidia drivers, I get the exact effect you are talking about (it has nothing to do with the text command - that's not even used). By going back to an earlier version of the drivers the problem dissapears.

Do games made in blitz plus also suffer from this problem?


mulawa1(Posted 2003) [#11]
Excellent work Xuul - thank you - one of the customers wasn't prepared to go back - I haven't tried the other yet. I'll let you know how I go.


mulawa1(Posted 2003) [#12]
I now have three customers who I've asked to try going back - no response yet.