My Thoughts on the SGDK...

[Guilect]

I must first start off by saying that, when I was young, I tried my hardest looking for a game maker.  I ran into a program called 'RPG ToolKit'.  That program was difficult to use, and understand.  I quickly gave up on that toolkit, and discovered the Scrolling Game Development Kit.  I must admit that it was tough to learn, but my brother(GameDeveloper) helped me to understand it better.  Now I can create games that I have always wanted to make!  In my opinion, the graphics editor is really good.  It's easy to understand and work with, but with one problem.  Everytime I enter the Graphics Editor, the screen begins to flicker.  Not sure if this is my monitor's fault, but the problem is easily taken care of, if I hit the 'Reset' button(the one that resets the colors).  I don't have to many problems with this, other than a message popping up saying, "Type Mismatch."  Then all my files are deleted after the message, so I have to reload game in order to get them back.  I am currently trying to get into the scripting part of SGDK, but I'm not sure were to begin.  I have done some scripting in the past, so I do have some background on it.

I believe I have said all that I wanted to say about the SGDK.  My favorite part is the graphics eidtor(I've made some really good looking game recently!).  I'm just happy that I can finally makes games with a bit of professional quality and no serious problems that will destory my game!

[durnurd]

As a note, the flickering graphics editor has been discussed many times.  It is a problem that has been persistent throughout SGDK's development that is due to some graphics cards' inability to properly render bitmaps in a certain way using DirectDraw in full-screen (or something like that).

Feel free to explain what you were doing just before any other errors that you find occur.  We may be able to help.

[Guilect]

Do you think that the Graphics editor would flicker more frequently if I am using integrated Graphics?  Or does that not matter?

[bluemonkmn]

The graphics editor does not behave differently based on where the graphics come from.  GameDev doesn't really know the difference between integrated graphics and external graphics.  They all end up being a BMP file linked in with the GDP file.

[cbass]

I think he ment his graphics card is integrated in his motherboard.  In which case, the performance of integrated chips are ussually much much lower than addon cards, and drivers are not nearly as optimized or updated frequently.  This shouldn't affect 2d much however.

I will bring this up though.  My dad has an old p3 hp with integrated intel extreme graphics, and when opening many full-screen apps, the screen would flicker, but still show the image except very blurred due to the flickering.  To solve this, we power cycled the monitor, and the screen came up clear.

[Guilect]

Yes, I meant that my graphics are integrated into my motherboard.  I'm getting a graphics card for my computer soon, and it's a Radeon X800GTO 256MB, 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16(It's only $185.00)!   I don't understand too much about graphics cards, but I do know enough about them to pick out some good ones, at a great price.

[pr0c]

Yes, I meant that my graphics are integrated into my motherboard.  I'm getting a graphics card for my computer soon, and it's a Radeon X800GTO 256MB, 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16(It's only $185.00)!   I don't understand too much about graphics cards, but I do know enough about them to pick out some good ones, at a great price.

Are you sure that you have a PCI Express slot? Often boards with intergrated graphic cards leave no slots, not even AGP. I am sure you looked into it, just thought I would mention it..

[Guilect]

Yes, I downloaded a PC wizard to scan my computer for a PCI express slot.  And I referred to the manual that came with my computer just to be extra sure that my computer had a PCI express slot.   One more thing, I also opened up my computer(not the program) to fix a power problem with it, and I noticed the black PCI-E slot!  So everything is fine, and I thank you for your concern.

[durnurd]

On a side note, when I look at this page, I can see about 7 smiley ( faces if I scroll to the right place.  They all blink in unison!  It's spooky!

[bat]

try lowering your video card accelleration... it works for me on both our house pc's