Windows Vista Beta 2 and W:A

[Ovrkill]

I'm curious if anyone out there has gotten W:A fully working with Vista. I got the game to load and such, can even play, but the color fluke that most are undoubtedly familiar with plagues the ENTIRE game. I do not know if this is a driver problem, or possibly DirectX 10 not working correctly. What I'm looking for here is maybe a confirmation of this problem or an idea of where to look for the problem. The startup screens, etc... are all affected. The game installs and loads perfectly fine with the latest beta patch in case anyone is curious. With exception of the gameplay being quite hindered by the video that is.

[MadEwokHerd]

Worms games expect the display to be in 256-color mode, and they supply their own palette. If the display doesn't support 256 colors (and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Vista doesn't), that's a slight problem. Iirc, Wine deals with it by lying to the application about the screen mode and drawing things anyway with the palette it requested. I don't know what Windows Vista does.

I'd suggest looking for other games that expect to be in 256-color mode and seeing if you have problems with those. If so, complain to Microsoft.

A Google search (http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awinehq.org%20%22Cannot%20change%20 screen%20BPP%20from%2032%20to%208%22&hs=OW5&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aunofficial) shows that the following demos use 256-color mode:
-Diablo (http://compactiongames.about.com/library/demos/bl_diablo_demo.htm) (Diablo, incidentally, shares another problem with WA that affects Wine, but that is probably not affecting you, since it results in a blank screen at menus)
-NetStorm (http://g1.acid-play.com/download/59816a8b/netstorm.exe)
-Diablo II (http://www.blizzard.com/diablo2/demo.shtml) (if you get a choice, use directdraw; other options may not use 256 colors)

Edit: BTW, a search of this forum turned up nothing, but you probably already thought of that.

[Plutonic]

while I cant answer yet, I am about to install vista on my back-up/testing machine so I will see what happens ;)

[Plutonic]

ok have tried it, right clicking the shortcut -> properties -> compatability and ticking all the boxes fixes the colour inverting on the menus. But I still cant get any game playing, just pblack screen

[AndrewTaylor]

Deadcode has said he's going to get W:A into 24-bit colour mode eventually. If he does that before Vista is on general release then that problem ought to go away.

[Plutonic]

and alot of other problems will go away too, which is always nice :D

first we have to find Deadcode though...

Also, i think its more than a colour depth issue, but I cant put my finger on it.... it just runs... slow.
Might just be all the stuff running in the background.. like the destop and what not, or might just be unoptimised beta code. Will be able to see more clearly when RC1 comes out next year.

[Chip]

Oh Deadcode, where are you?

[bonz]

Oh Deadcode, where are you?
Right behind you with a bottle of whine.
No wait, that's me.

[Ovrkill]

thanks for the input guys, I had more problems than W:A with Vista and as such, uninstalled it. for instance, MP 11 refused to play mp3's for some odd reason it hung up every time. Installed winamp, could play em. Couldn't get CNC Generals to fully load, installed fine and went to load, got through intro movies, black screen. All I can hope is that these are just beta bugs, but to see things like that so late in development is not a good sign. It is quite possible that the compatibility mode would have fixed both of my game problems now that I think about it. I may go back and try again. Anyway, I thought this info might be useful to help people figure out what is a W:A problem and what is an OS problem. W:A went online and played flawlessly with the latest beta patch, the ONLY problem I had was the color distortion. (with W:A anyway) Vista still seems a tad too buggy to even be usable on a daily basis. Personally, I am hoping this is not an early indication that games written before Vista will have problems on a broad scale. Only time will tell.