The Dink Network

Hello again!

Just wondering if anyone else experiences compatibility issues of some sort when playing dink on a windows 7 computer. I've tried to play it a bit in recent years and every so often I would get a glitch which would make everything go a reddish sort of color. I'd have to close the game down and start it up again if I wanted to get rid of it, but it could and would return at random points.

Info about my computer

Windows 7 Home Premium
2.40 GHz processor
8GB of RAM
I don't know what sort of graphics card it has but it plays other more recently made games fine so I feel like it could be something to do with the age of the game.

Any information would be great!
~LadyCarrot

Yes, absolutely! I'm not sure if I've had that particular problem (I've had the game's palette get garbled up, which makes everything resemble bright puke), but v1.08 generally runs poorly on Windows 7/8.

I've moved over to using FreeDink, which runs much better on newer operating systems.

Awesome!

Thank you Scratcher I'll try it out after work tonight and see how it goes.

~LC

I know a lot of folk here aren't fond of Dink HD, but I quite like it. Far more compatible with newer Operating Systems, too.

But less compatible with mods.

on another subject, how about making an account and joining our lil family?

http://www.dinknetwork.com/user/LadyCarrot Unless this is an imposter.

I can confirm that I'm not an imposter. Although that I know there's no way I can actually do that because there's nothing I can recall that is of any importance that isn't public knowledge already. I mean I could probably do an account recovery and I may do that at some point when I actually feel up to it, but for now you'll just have to trust that I am she

Besides who would honestly take up this name knowing it's reputation?

Anyway back on subject, I notice two people above mention that DinkHD is less compatible with mods, haven't gotten around to trying out FreeDink yet, but does that have a similar issue of being not quite compatible with mods?

Danke
~LC

I'm wondering if HD is doing a proper job on housekeeping, on a Win7 box at least.

I find that the longer it has been running, the more frequently I need to reload a DMod as walls and monsters are present but not being displayed...maybe they are being drawn to a different canvas in the windows system, though the engine still recognizes they should be there?

Closing HD and restarting seems to solve the issue for awhile, depending on which module I am playing, but it seems eventually that Lag creeps back in as does missing visuals. I will mention that playing the original game does not seem to contribute to the issue though it will suffer from the same issues, once it has gotten out of sorts.

Just my observations so far.

Do you ever tab out of game Millimeter? Dink HD has that issue where if its on the background or tabbed it can make top sprites dissapear. I had this bug pop in a few time in the base game (where the game was only running a minute or 2 yet) so free dink might be better if it fixed that. never had lag issues myself tho would be horrible in the middle of a run ahaha.

hope that helps at least on that issue if no one noticed it.

q13¬

Yes, I notice that sometimes entire houses will vanish visually except for maybe the door. Reloading the mod doesn't solve it, but quitting and restarting does, so it's not saved in the save files as messed up.

This isn't always a result of tabbing out though. Sometimes tabbing out will impact the "true color" mode and make it look grainy and washed out, but this is more like Windows drawing some things to different layers and "interpreting" what the engine wants it to display, rather than simply placing it on the layers the engine is dealing with, if that makes sense? I wonder if this has anything to do with Windows themes, and opacity? Perhaps Windows is overwriting the Pallette it translates too, and not so much the one the engine is using?

I also notice flickering on occasion, like you would expect when something is being updated...

mhh have myself not noticed it just happening out of nowhere you said only or tabbing or deselecting the window.
win 7 box? so its a emulated copy? might be causing more issues I am on windows 7 ultimate and never had those other things happen (yet) on dinkHD.

Yeah magic definitely works out fine. had a perfect goblin king fight in the run I just finished 1 bomb 1 fireball. and beat the hour in save file team for the first time

Seth indeed has more hits resisted you with magic only. so it IS indeed the better option thanks guys.

q~

woops posted that last message in the wrong topic :[

you said only or tabbing or deselecting the window.
No, I said Tabbing will mess up the true color display, likely because Dink likes to run in 640x480, where my Windows is using 1360x768, with 32bit True color. The disappearing sprites seem to relate more to how long the engine has been running. I notice that it only happens in a select few DMods, so I am confident it is not a Win7 issue.

Also, I am MCP and licensed to resell Microsoft product, Windows does not cost me enough to consider using an unauthentic installation.

I haven't tried it on my Win8 box yet, but I don't remember the periodic flicker when I was using Win95. For clarity, the flicker is considerably slower than the monitor refresh rate, it visually resembles the same delay you might experience if turning a group of sprites on and off. This flickering doesn't necessarily coincide with events of missing sprites.

The flickering happens with both v1.08 and v1.09. though I haven't had missing houses in 1.08 yet.

does [FreeDink] have a similar issue of being not quite compatible with mods?
No. On the contrary, it fixes many bugs that could crash 1.08, and is compatible with all the bugs that don't. There may occasionally be an incompatibility, but Beuc is very quick in fixing those when they are reported.