TechnoVenture for SGDK2

[bluemonkmn]

I'm guessing that this is failing on systems that simply don't have the necessary hardware support.  I need to add more checking of hardware to SGDK 2.1 still, but I suspect (hope) that these systems won't be able to run any SGDK2 projects if they can't run this one.  Care to help me verify that by running some older DirectX projects?

[Jam0864]

exactly how much hardware support is required? a super computer? average computer? s***ty computer?
Well I am trying it on my laptop, which has the ATI Radeon Xpress 1150.
It is quite a capable graphics card most of the time. (fails to run bioshock due to not having pixel shader 3.0, but it can run almost any new game thrown at it with medium settings.)
I will do anything if it helps fix the problem.
edit: btw, if by older directx projects, you mean version 2.0 projects, yes I can run them, I have played a few on this computer.

[durnurd]

Perhaps some bad news:  The first version you posted worked fine, or fine as far as I could tell, on my computer, but the new version is buggy as all get out.  Sprites randomly flash and disappear, and the metalman at one point turned into a different graphic, I think.

It may have been doing that on the old version as well, but I just couldn't tell due to the framerate.

[bluemonkmn]

Durnurd (or anybody), I posted the C# Express 2008 project at http://sgdk2.enigmadream.com/support/TVSGDK2Src.zip if you want to help investigate.  I'm at a loss.  Maybe I'm using some feature not supported on your version of OpenGL or maybe some errors occur in your environment that don't occur in mine.  I added a few CheckError calls, so if the project compiles and runs, maybe some errors will be reported that weren't reported before.  I can compile and post a version with some more error checking if anyone else wants to check, but I've been on the computer all day so I want to get off now.

[bluemonkmn]

Does http://sgdk2.enigmadream.com/support/TVSGDK2c.zip give any different results?

[Jam0864]

same error.
I will try to get one of my mates with vista to try it. Then at least we'll know if that's hte problem.

[Jam0864]

ohhno, my friends pc will run it.


He has the same opengl32.dll version as me. (6.0.6000.16386)

any sorta thing i can do to fix this...? D:

EDIT: Googled System.AccessViolationException, found a few things about it...

"An access violation occurs in unmanaged or unsafe code when the code attempts to read or write to memory that has not been allocated, or to which it does not have access. This usually occurs because a pointer has a bad value. Not all reads or writes through bad pointers lead to access violations, so an access violation usually indicates that several reads or writes have occurred through bad pointers, and that memory might be corrupted. Thus, access violations almost always indicate serious programming errors. In the .NET Framework version 2.0, an AccessViolationException clearly identifies these serious errors.

In programs consisting entirely of verifiable managed code, all references are either valid or null, and access violations are impossible. An AccessViolationException occurs only when verifiable managed code interacts with unmanaged code or with unsafe managed code.

This exception is new in the .NET Framework version 2.0. In earlier versions of the .NET Framework, an access violation in unmanaged code or unsafe managed code is represented by a NullReferenceException in managed code. A NullReferenceException is also thrown when a null reference is dereferenced in verifiable managed code, an occurrence that does not involve data corruption, and there is no way to distinguish between the two situations in versions 1.0 or 1.1.

Administrators can allow selected applications to revert to the behavior of the .NET Framework version 1.1. Place the following line in the <runtime> Element section of the configuration file for the application:
Copy Code

<legacyNullReferenceExceptionPolicy enabled = "1"/>

I've seen this stack trace on this forum a few times, GdipDrawLineI() is prone to cause an access violation.

I beleive I have a fix for this. Double-buffer your DataGridView.

Now, annoyingly, the DoubleBuffered attribute is protected, so you have to derive from DataGridView & set it yourself. Something like this should work:

 

class DBDataGridView : System.Windows.Forms.DataGridView

{

  public DBDataGridView() { DoubleBuffered = true; }

}

http://notgartner.wordpress.com/2005/05/26/a-class-a-day-systemaccessviolationexception/

I encountered the same problem (AccessViolationExceptions on an
IOCompletion threadpool thread), and tracked it down to Panda Antivirus
software, which had an access violation inside pavlsp.dll

The "culprit" turned out to be my anti virus scanner (NOD32). This post - http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/viewfeedback.aspx?feedbackid=d86baf6d-9dcb-408f-8fd8-efebc237edc8 - got me to try and exclude the server exe from being scanned. Having done so the server no longer crashes.

I now believe it must be a bug in the .NET 2.0 remoting framework that doesn't handle exceptions that may be thrown in the unmanaged socket layer of Windows. Reading the stack trace, it seems a callback from an unmanaged, socket-related, dll back to managed code goes wrong.

I'm filing a bug report on this one...

After a couple of people blaming firewalls and antivirus', I will disable it all and see if there's a difference. I'll let you know the results.

EDIT2: Didn't help. Later on I might try it in safe mode... (has helped before... it hopefully will again )

EDIT3: Different error while in safe mode.

[bluemonkmn]

Thanks for the info.  I will check back with the OpenTK author.  Maybe we will have you run some of the plain OpenTK text programs to see how they run.  It's not surprising that you get a message about requiring OpenGL 1.5 when running in safe mode.  I think no hardware acceleration is available in safe mode.  But that does suggest that the program got far enough to pass minimum requirements when you weren't in safe mode, which means the problem is something else, and not a lack of hardware requirements.

[bluemonkmn]

Here's something to try.  Download OpenTK from http://www.opentk.com/ and look in the folder Binaries\net\Examples and run Examples.exe.  See how well the various examples in there run in your environment.

[durnurd]

At least on my system version c works perfectly, except at the end when the message pops up, the text overflows the box to the right, and the box is too tall, but that's probably due to the text not done in OpenTK.  On my friend's computer, it complained about not having OpenGL 1.5, so maybe that should be a link on the main page at some point for download.

[Jam0864]

this sucks, the net examples come out with that same system access violation error i got with sgdk2.
the other examples run...

[bluemonkmn]

At least on my system version c works perfectly, except at the end when the message pops up, the text overflows the box to the right, and the box is too tall, but that's probably due to the text not done in OpenTK.  On my friend's computer, it complained about not having OpenGL 1.5, so maybe that should be a link on the main page at some point for download.

I don't think OpenGL 1.5 is a software version.  I think it's a feature/specification level to which the hardware/driver conforms.  I'm not sure about that, though.  I'm just calling GL.SupportsExtension("VERSION_1_5") and failing when that returns false.  I'm not sure what it means when that returns false.  It was just a suggestion from the folks at OpenTK.

this sucks, the net examples come out with that same system access violation error i got with sgdk2.
the other examples run...

I posted about the simplest .NET 2.0 test application possible at http://sgdk2.enigmadream.com/support/DotNet2Test.zip if you want to try to run that just to test .NET 2.0 on your Vista installation.

[durnurd]

I don't think OpenGL 1.5 is a software version.  I think it's a feature/specification level to which the hardware/driver conforms.  I'm not sure about that, though.  I'm just calling GL.SupportsExtension("VERSION_1_5") and failing when that returns false.  I'm not sure what it means when that returns false.  It was just a suggestion from the folks at OpenTK.

Well, the DirectX version of any SGDK2 game worked on that computer, so hopefully this 1.5 thing is not a real requirement.

[Jam0864]

I posted about the simplest .NET 2.0 test application possible at http://sgdk2.enigmadream.com/support/DotNet2Test.zip if you want to try to run that just to test .NET 2.0 on your Vista installation.

Hello World!


EDIT://oh btw, it became apparent that my graphics drivers were not loaded in safe mode.
The highest resolution I could achieve was 800x600 and games ran really, really slow... like REALLY slow.

[bluemonkmn]

OK, I updated the program to not require version 1.5 and to output more debug info.  Now it will try to create a log file in the directory where the program is (so make sure if you're running on Vista that the program is in a directory that you and the program are allowed to write to).  This debug info comes from OpenTK.  If you can get the info about what OpenTK is doing I can send it to the OpenTK development folks and see if they have any tips.

http://sgdk2.enigmadream.com/support/TVSGDK2d.zip