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Garbage displayed when EXE loads

by baylor wetzel · in Torque Game Builder · 08/08/2009 (4:56 pm) · 6 replies

Game looks fine when run from the level builder but if i do a build and run the resulting EXE, the screen displays garbage for a few seconds until the game kicks in. i had this problem (and i think asked about it) two years ago but to this day, i still don't know why that is. And now that i'm submitting to a contest, i'd love to get that problem fixed. Anyone know what the issue here is?
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Torque 3D Owner Marc Dreamora Schaerer
Gayasoft
#1
08/09/2009 (12:05 pm)
sounds like you don't show a gui right at start in the first level.

As result it will show what the backbuffer contains which is defined as "undefined". that can be anything from black to funny color garbage

Torque 3D Owner baylor wetzel
#2
08/09/2009 (5:40 pm)
The game loads the main menu, which is a GUI (in previous versions, we started with splash screens, which are standard TGB splash GUIs). It's loaded in startGame. i tried moving it elsewhere (initializeProject i think) but that apparently wasn't early enough. Is there a better place to do this?

Torque 3D Owner baylor wetzel
#3
08/26/2009 (4:13 pm)
i'm gonna bump this because it's driving me crazy :)

When the game starts, there's 4-5 seconds of graphical corruption on the screen. Has been on every TGB game i can remember making. Only happens when i run from the EXE - when i'm developing the game and running from the level editor, everything looks fine. Uninitialized buffer makes sense to me but i don't see a solution (it also seems like a bug; i would think the engine would initialize it to all black)

First line (give or take) from game.cs::startGame(%level): showMainMenu();

First line from main.cs::initializeProject():
exec("~/gui/splashscreens/GarageGamesSplashScreen.gui");
Canvas.setContent(GarageGamesSplashScreen);
error("GG splash screen should be showing"); //but it never does

So i show *something* as soon as possible but the game still shows junk for an uncomfortably long time (i'm surprised at how long it sits there on my dual-core laptop before doing anything)

So either i'm doing it wrong (and have been for years) or there's a bug in the engine. i could modify the engine to clear the buffers but i'm OpenGL illiterate and don't understand the scary TGB rendering code at all

Torque 3D Owner Ronny Bangsund
Torque Cheerleaders
#4
08/27/2009 (1:38 am)
I've had the garbled screens myself. After unpacking a pristine copy of (i)TGB and recompiling, things worked fine again.

Torque Owner Patrick W
Dream. Build. Repeat.
#5
08/27/2009 (10:32 am)
I get the same symptoms on my lpatop with an ATI card but my desktop with and Nvidia card, all seems well.

Torque 3D Owner baylor wetzel
#6
08/28/2009 (2:45 am)
So not everyone gets this problem? And it's happening to people with laptops? i had a similar problem with an OGRE game i made - the advanced compositors didn't work properly on my laptop but the desktop was fine. Turned out that my card didn't support some OpenGL extension it was using. Maybe something similar is happening here. A shame since the laptop is only a year old and the ad brags about the fabulous graphics chip (Renderer: Intel 965/963 Graphics Media Accelerator, Version: 2.0.0 - Build 7.15.10.4990; silly laptop)

Not sure what to do about it though - maybe i'll look for a bug submission form and see what happens