Geneforge 1 (Steam) Crashes + Weird Mouse Issues

[Anonymous]

I'm currently playing the Geneforge 1 Steam release. I'm having an issue where, when I create the profile myself, my mouse seems bounded to the lower-right corner of the screen. But then, when I move the cursor back and forth to the corners, each time I do so, the game expands my reach. So when I've touched all four possible corners like 5 times or so, I can reach the entire window. The area where my mouse can reach expands each time I touch the four corners.

I tried to also use the profile included within DxWnd and the game just crashed after showing a heavily distorted spiderweb software logo.

I can't find out how to attach files in this editor, but I'll post them on pastebin.

My DxWnd configuration: http://pastebin.com/dUN2spe8
The included DxWnd Configuration: http://pastebin.com/M81p9WuZ

Log of the crash with the included DxWnd configuration: http://pastebin.com/QkGRknmM
Complete (all options ticked) log of the crash with the included DxWnd configuration: http://pastebin.com/4vEGgBgs

[gho]

It's extremely difficult to detect and fix problems on online releases unless I buy them myself.
First of all, you didn't specify if the initial problem escription refers to the game with or without DxWnd. If not, I understand why you're trying to seek DxWnd for a fix. If yes, please tell us what's wrong with the regular steam distribution. Also, it cound be useful to know your current OS (Win7, 8, 8.1, 10?)
The DxWnd log shows one problem:
Steam seems expecting the gema to run at 116BPP color depth, while the DxWnd configuration leaves the desktop at 32BPP. You could try setting the DirectX emulation to "none", or manually setting the desktop to 16BPP (on Win10 this is not even possible!).

[Anonymous]

The initial problem of the bizarre mouse cursor thing is indeed a problem exclusive to dxwnd. It's noted in this thread as well - http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/19034-nalyd-teaches-you-how-to-run-geneforge-1-4-in-a-window-in-ten-easy-steps/

The author there claims that "there will be some brief weirdness on startup. This should resolve itself quickly, and your desired version of Geneforge will now be playing in a window. You may experience some difficulty with the mouse not moving to all parts of the window. To resolve this, simply move your mouse cursor the four corners of your screen."

If there's an easy way to do it, I would be more than willing to buy you a copy of the game on Steam. Could I send you a steam key via PM?

Interestingly, setting the DirectX emulation to "none" creates the crash. If I set it to Hybrid the crash goes away and the game plays, but I still have the mouse boundary issue.

[gho]

Sharing the steam key seems the most reasonable and quick way.
You can PM using the SourceForge PM feature, or just write to ghotik2002@yahoo.com.
For greater security, just put the compress the username/key in a text file, copress it with WinRAR using a strong password and send the attach in a forst mail and the password in a separte mail.

[gho]

@Name Here, thank you for the gift. I started taking care of Geneforge1, and I got it working perfectly.
Here what I did:
1) added to DxWnd Geneforge.exe with the full Steam pathname. DxWnd must have administrative rights, as usual.
2) In the DxWnd default configuration, I checked only the "Input/Force cursor clipping" flag
3) started the game from Steam interface
I must say that, adding DxWnd, the mouse handling seems even much smoother!
The testbed was on Win10.
Of course this doesn't mean that the problem is fixed. If following the same directions you get a different result, things may get a little harder. Let's hope also that a simpler xWnd configuration will reduce also the chances of a game crash!

update: launched also Geneforge 2 & 3 with same configuration and good results.

update 2: I tried to run the game with a configuration more similar to the one you sent me, and it seems that the weird mouse bounding effect is caused by the DirectInput / DirectInput8 hooking. In the Steam release DirectInput hooking seems not necessary, so just unckeck it. Of course, this effect is not properly correct, so I'll try to fix the bug just in case there might be some game that does require it!

[Anonymous]

Strange. When I try this, my mouse jerks to the bottom-right when I move it in a direction. It's properly bounded now, but every time I move my mouse in any direction it auto-corrects to the bottom-right. Even with Input/Correct Mouse Position off.

I am using a trackpad if that matters (on my laptop).

[Anonymous]

I think this may be a duplicate of:

https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/general/thread/7f4a86eb/

This sounds like exactly the same problem I'm having.

edit 1: Incidentally, changing the window initial x/y does impact this problem. At 0/0 it's substantially reduced, though the game still isn't playable. When I set the window to "Desktop center" the problem is so substantial I cannot move my cursor at all - it gets immediately autocorrected to the bottom-right corner no matter how large the mouse movement.

edit 2: Attached log with relevant options ticked.

[gho]

Please, help me doing three things:

1) try the game setting the "Input\Keep cursor fixed" flag
2) if that doesn't help, uncheck it and capture the log again, but this time setting also the Log flags "Win events" and "Cursor/mouse".
3) check if you by chance have installed some software that alters the mouse behaviour, like the "Mouse without Borders" referred in the other thread about Theme Park World.

[gho]

Oh, my! Geneforge 4 looks different. The cursor clipping doens't work unles the cursor is positioned within the game window at the game start, otherwise you keep seeing the two cursor, the game sprite and the system cursor wandering on the whole desktop. It's good that now I have the whole series, I'll take care of this difference.

[gho]

One may wonder how Geneforge games are working on plain Win10 without DxWnd. Here's what I got:

Geneforge 1: fullscreen, but occupying just a small area at the center of it. The mouse is moving quite jerky
Geneforge 2: requires 16BPP desktop and doesn't start. Is it possible to set Win10 to 16BPP? I believed the answer is "no".....
Geneforge 3: much better - it can stretch to occupy the whole desktop and can run in 32BPP color depth. Ok.
Geneforge 4: incredibly, same behaviour of Geneforge2: it needs 16BPP desktop
Geneforge 5: runs ok on 32BPP desktop and can let you chose different resolution and window / fullscreen mode. Too bad that fullscreen doesn't change the screen resolution and doesn't stretches, so it is almost identical to windowed mode, apart the missing title bar and possibility to move around.

To me, it was quite a surprise that 5 games that could possibly have the very same graphic engine show almost each one a different behaviour on Win10!

[gho]

I found a weird behaviour causing random errors in the cursor clipping.
The dll in the attached file should eliminate this problem, just replace the contained dxwnd.dll with the copy in the DxWnd install folder.
I include the exported file for the forst 4 episodes. The 5th and last one has still something to understand and fix, though it could be playable setting the window dimensions equal to the selected screen resolution.
I noticed another problem that I should fix, though it's not so severe: sometimes the games fail the mouse clipping operation at startup. To recover is necessary to Alt-tab to another program and then click again on the Genegorge window: the get focus operation fixes the cursor clipping.

[Anonymous]

This still has the issue with the autocorrection to the bottom-right that I noted earlier. I am not using mouse without borders or anything similar that modifies the mouse. Keep Cursor Fixed does not fix this.

Also, when I try to log dxwnd with the dll you linked to here, geneforge crashes immediately. I can log properly with the publicly available version (v2_03_49_build.fix3), so that's the version I used.

Attached is the log with the options you wanted attached.

[gho]

I'm afraid I've got some work for you ....
The log you sent shows thet the program receives cursor coordinates that move to the right bottom corner: let's see some piece of it. At the beginning

DefWindowProcW: hwnd=1e26c6 msg=[0x200]WM_MOUSEFIRST/MOUSEMOVE(0,10f0232)

then, at the end

DefWindowProcW: hwnd=1e26c6 msg=[0x200]WM_MOUSEFIRST/MOUSEMOVE(0,0)
DefWindowProcW: hwnd=1e26c6 msg=[0x200]WM_MOUSEFIRST/MOUSEMOVE(0,10001)
DefWindowProcW: hwnd=1e26c6 msg=[0x200]WM_MOUSEFIRST/MOUSEMOVE(0,10000)

It seems obscure, but it's not: the cursor position in written in the upper/lower word of the second MOUSEMOVE message, so

10f0232 = 010f, 0232 = (271, 562)
0 = 0000, 0000 = (0, 0)
10001 = 0001, 0001 = (1, 1)
10000 = 9991, 0000 = (1, 0)

That parameter should be received form outside the program, but to exclude the possibility that I made some mess in my source code, I'd like to exclude the part of code that processes window messages. Please, follow these instructions:

1) turn DxWnd off
2) edit dxwnd.ini with notepad (or your favorite text editor) ans add the following line just after the [window] section:

[window]
debug=1

3) turn DxWnd on and modify the Geneforge configuration. You should see that a rightmost "Debug" tab is appeared. Set the "Disable WindowProc hooks" flag as shown in picture
4) try Geneforge with this DxWnd configuration. Is the problem still present?

[Anonymous]

Sadly yes, the problem is still present.

Attached is my log with that additional option.

[gho]

Uhm.... I'd like to ask you a final test: uncheck the Input "Correct mouse position" and "Force cursor clipping" flags. In practice, uncheck all possible options about mouse input.
If the problem will be present, I suspect there could be some reason external to DxWnd.
You said you're using a trackpad: that should not matter but if you have a USB mouse, another experiment could be to attach it to the laptop and see what happens.

[Anonymous]

Doing that works, but the mouse moves outside the game window and if I move the mouse to the bottom-right it moves quicker than moving it to the top-right. It's not playable because clicking in the game also clicks in the windows 10 environment.

Attached is my log for it without those options.

edit: Also, like I said earlier, if I do dinput hooking (with 0, 0, 800, 600 boundary) the movement movementum works exactly as expected, but the mouse is bounded by a random boundary in a small square in the bottom right. And if I touch the corners of the boundary, it expands. I'll attach that log too. That one I'll call dxwnd-semi-working.7z

edit 2: I'm also attaching my windows tasklist to help you eliminate any possible source of outside influence.

edit 3: Tried a USB mouse, same issue.

[gho]

A quick & dirty solution could be to unckeck the Input "Correct mouse position" but leave the "Force cursor clipping" checked. This way the mouse should not move by itself, but it is likely that the mouse is not "clipped" (that is, the mouse moves outside the game window). If that happens, you click on another window and then back to the game window: this should fix the clipping and the cursor should no longer move outside the window.
This, of course, until I understand and fix this crazy problem.

[gho]

The attached dll fixes the missing clipping of the cursor when the game starts up. Now, the "Force cursor clipping" option should assure that the cursor is bound within the game area from the beginning and will stay there unless, obviously, you don't Alt-tab outside.
I checked it several times and it always worked.
If the unckecking of the "Correct mouse position" doesn't alter the cursor position, the game should become playable this way.
In any case, the Geneforge series conforms all its oddity: the fix works on the first episode only, all the others don't clip the cursor in this way.

[gho]

Good news. I understood the reason for the strange clipping effect, eliminated by moving the cursor to the corner of the screen, and also the reason why Geneforge 5 behaved so differently: it has a brand new OpenGL graphic rendering.
Though I just released a v2.03.50 release that makes Geneforge games playable, I'm going to fix it again and this time the dinput configuration should be much simpler.

[Anonymous]

Awesome!!! You're the best <3. What was the reason?

[gho]

It's a little complicated: dinput has two ways to detect mouse position, the asolute and the relative. The absolute gives you the mouse coordinates, but the relative (the one used for instance in FPS) makes the system cursor invisible and keeps moving it to a fixed position (usually, the center of the screen). then, in an endless loop, it detects the cursor movement and move the cursor back.
In DxWnd this mechanism was emulated detecting the cursor movement without bringing it back, then when the invisible system cursor reached the desktop border, no further movement was detected. But moving the cursor the opposite way you were giving more space to the cursor ...
Maybe the best way to understand all this confused reasonong is to force the system cursor as visible (there's a DxWnd option for that) and look at the behaviour of the two cursor.

Anyway, I fixed the problem replicating the dinput schema exactly, but unfortunately this is giving side-effects on other games. What I can do now is to release a temporary fix to copy over the v2.03.50 release that works for the whole Geneforge steam series, replacing the dxwnd.dll and importing these new exported files, while I work for a release that is good for everything.

[gho]

@Name Here: I posted DxWnd v2.03.51, that has big improvements in the directinput handling and, by the way, has exported configurations for almost all the Steam game pack (Avernum, Avalon, ....).
The only drawback is that if you will upgrae to this release, some mouse configurations will have to be updated, otherwise if you play with the old DxWnd configuration the results won't be so great!
Maybe it's safe to make a backup of the full DxWnd directory before doing the changes.
Cheers.

[Henrique G]

Hello!!!
I'm trying to get Geneforge 1 running... I tried your config, but when the game runs it just crashes with a generic windows error message when I open it. BUT, if I go to the options and change DirectX Emulation from "Primary surface" to "None", it opens, but the screen is misaligned (see print). Any ideads? It's a Windows 10 x64 dual monitor rig.
Thanks in advance.

[gho]

First easy thing to try is to virtually eliminate the dual monitor setting the Video / "Hide multi monitor" flag.
This evening at home I'll try the game with the current dxwnd release and current exported file and I will see if I can replicate the problem. Are you running on Win10 or else?

[gho]

Whart a crazy thing! The problem occurs also on my pc (that is not a dual screen, so forget my previous suggestion) and is present at least since release v2.03.52. It is present on the first two episodes only (Geneforge 1 and 2), and seems due to a bugged attempt to move the window position in a weird coordinate.
But when I first released these games, they all worked. I must investigate if I did something wrong inherited from older releases!

Found! The problem is absent in release v2.03.51 and present in v2.03.52.
Now I'll have to watch the differences....