Baldur's Gate Graphics Test
The test program was released during the development of...
- Category Traditional
- Size 818.5 KB
- Program by Bioware
Baldur's Gate Graphics Test
The test program was released during the development of Baldur's Gate to check video card capability due to the advanced set of DirectX calls the game needed to do. It is now obselete.
BIOWARE VIDEO DRIVER TEST
PURPOSE
-------
This program tests each of the DirectDraw calls used in the full version of Baldur's
Gate. The program uses 640x480 mode with 16-bit color, which has proved to be
problematic with some video drivers.
REQUIREMENTS
------------
This program requires a video card with 2 MB of memory. This program also expects
to see DirectX 3.01a or greater on your system.
IF THE PROGRAM RUNS CORRECTLY ...
---------------------------------
A background tile should appear. In the upper left corner of the graphic, the following
message should appear in white text.
BIOWARE VIDEO DRIVER TEST
All contents (c) 1998 BioWare Corp.
BALDUR'S GATE: (c) 1998 BioWare Corp. All Rights Reserved.
Baldur's Gate, Forgotten Realms, the Forgotten Realms logo, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,
the AD&D logo, and the TSR logo are trademarks of TSR, Inc., a subsidiary of Wizards of
the Coast, Inc., and are used by Interplay under license. All Rights Reserved. Interplay,
the Interplay logo, and "By Gamers. For Gamers." are trademarks of Interplay Productions.
All Rights Reserved. The BioWare logo is the trademark of Bioware Corp. All Rights
Reserved. All other trademarks and copyrights are property of their respective owners.
In the upper right corner, the Forgotten Realms and Baldur's Gate logos should appear.
"Created using the Bioware Infinity Engine" should be written in white text. The logos
for Bioware, TSR and Interplay should each appear underneath the white text.
The picture behind all of the messages should be a castle wall along the top edge, and
a number of pretty trees in the left side of the screen.
Along the bottom of the screen, you should see a creature (a gnoll) walking back and forth
across the screen. The gnoll should have a small black shadow underneath it as it stomps
across the grass. The gnoll should not be walking backwards.
When the gnoll reaches the middle of the screen, two fireballs should appear above the
creature. The fireballs should move towards the top left and top right corners of the
screen.
The two numbers in red at the bottom of the screen (in the middle) represent the number
of frames per second and the number of VRAM tiles available. For example, "60 64"
represents 60 frames per second and 64 VRAM tiles. The program should be running at
your monitor's refresh rate (see the Settings->Control Panel->Display->Settings menu
for your monitor's current refresh rate).
The program should not do anything else. The gnoll will not do anything aside from
walk across the screen. There should be no other warnings or errors created by the
program. Press ESC or F12 to exit the program.
IF THE PROGRAM DOES NOT RUN CORRECTLY...
----------------------------------------
This program is not really designed to let you know how well Baldur's Gate will run on
your system. It is intended to inform us of potential hardware problems that exist with
either existing video card drivers or with our video routines so that they can hopefully
be addressed before the release of the product.
IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM, PLEASE EMAIL: [email protected]
In the subject of the email please list your specific video card and manufacturer.
In the body please include any relevant information about the problem you are seeing,
as well as any other information about your video card. Specific items that will help
us: video driver version number, directX version number, amount of VRAM on the card.
If you are having a problem, please look through the TroubleShooting section below to
see if it is already classified. This will make it easier for us to identify. If you
do not see the error listed below, please describe what you are seeing.
Example:
-----------------------------------------------------
from:
re: Diamond FireGL1000Pro
There are vertical lines running down my display at
about 5/8" intervals (17" monitor). They are lightly
colored, but not white.
Bios version 1.41, Driver version 4.10.01.2255,
8MB VRAM, DirectX 5.0
-----------------------------------------------------
TROUBLESHOOTING
---------------
There are two general categories of errors. The first relates to displaying the
expected background, and the second relates to the gnoll and fireballs behaving in an
unexpected manner.
I DON'T SEE THE BACKGROUND. WHY?
---------------------------------
Please follow the possible errors below.
Problem: Message: "Cannot create DirectDraw object.
Please install DirectX 3.01a or greater."
Reason: This program requires the run-time version of DirectX 3.01a installed on your
system. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/directx to install the latest version
of DirectX on your system.
Problem: Message: "This program needs to run in DirectDraw exclusive mode.
Please restart after closing other DirectDraw programs."
Reason: The Video Driver Test attempts to get exclusive access to the screen. If this
cannot be achieved, it is very likely that another DirectDraw program has taken
the access. Please close down your other DirectDraw programs before restarting.
Problem: Message: "SetDisplayMode failed for DirectDraw (640x480x16)."
Reason: 640x480x16 is not supported by your graphics card.
Problem: Message: "Neither driver nor HEL supports MIRRORLEFTRIGHT." or
"Neither driver nor HEL supports MIRRORUPDOWN."
Reason: The BioWare Infinity Engine uses the DirectDraw Blt functionality of
MIRRORLEFTRIGHT and MIRRORUPDOWN to reduce the number of animations
on low memory machines. The program has checked the DirectDraw
capabilities, and discovered that neither the driver nor the hardware
emulation layer supports MIRRORLEFTRIGHT or MIRRORUPDOWN. This demo will
not work properly without this capability.
Problem: Message: "Neither driver nor HEL supports BLTCOLORFILL."
The BioWare Infinity Engine uses the DirectDraw Blt functionality of
BLTCOLORFILL to quickly remove an FX surface using hardware assistance
if available. We rely on this feature being available.
Problem: Message: "CreateSurface failed for DirectDraw. We require
a 2 MB video card for running the Driver Test program."
Reason: Like Baldur's Gate, the Video Driver Test program requires a 2 MB
video card. The most likely reason that CreateSurface has failed
is that your card has 1 MB or less of video RAM.
Problem: Message: "GetAttachedSurface failed for DirectDraw."
Reason: The back surface should have been allocated by the DirectDraw
CreateSurface() call.
Problem: Message: "GetPixelFormat failed for DirectDraw."
Reason: The 16-bit mode did not report the pixel format to the program.
Problem: Message: "Failed to create surface for background replacement/Pointer_1/
Pointer_2/FX surface in VRAM."
Reason: The most likely reason is that your card does not have 2 MB of video
RAM, and cannot allocate enough space on the video card to the DirectDraw
surfaces.
Problem: Message: "Failed to create background/gnoll/fireball surface in RAM.
Please close other programs and restart this program."
Reason: It is very likely that you have run out of virtual memory. Please close
some applications and attempt to restart the program.
Problem: Message: Timer thread cannot start.
Reason: The multimedia timers used in InitTimer() could not initialize properly.
This error should not occur.
Problem: Message: "Error in animating."
Reason: If this message appears on a black background, there is a problem with the
Blt routine used to place the bitmap on to the screen, or the Flip() routine
used to switch in between surfaces.
I SEE THE BACKGROUND, BUT ...
---------------------------------
Problem: Message: "Error in animating."
Reason: Depending on the circumstances, it can mean one of three things:
* If this message appears while we see the expected background, and the gnoll
has not appeared on the screen, the problem relates to blitting the gnoll
on to the screen for the first time.
* If the gnoll is in the middle of the screen when you see this message, either
the DDBLTFX_MIRRORUPDOWN for the fireballs has failed, or the combination of
DDBLTFX_MIRRORUPDOWN with DDBLTFX_MIRRORLEFTRIGHT causes the fireball travelling
to the upper right corner to fail.
* If this message appears after the gnoll has walked across the screen from
left to right, there is a problem with the DDBLTFX_MIRRORLEFTRIGHT that
causes the Blt to fail.
Problem: There's a green block in the upper part of my screen!
Reason: Green is the transparent color used in our animations. If the top corner of
the screen appears green, there is a problem with the BLTCOLORFILL capability
in your video card driver. Please contact your graphic card manufacturer for
updated drivers.
Problem: The gnoll has a black background when it walks across the screen.
Reason: The gnoll may also have a black background if your video card does
not recognize the SRCCOLORKEY BltFast() command for colours other than black.
Problem: The gnoll walks backwards as he goes from the right side to the left side
of the screen.
Reason: The driver and/or HEL reports that BLTMIRRORLEFTRIGHT works. In reality,
it's broken.
Problem: There are tree leaves in between the Bioware and Interplay logos.
Reason: There is a problem with DDBLTFX_MIRRORLEFTRIGHT when going from a larger surface
(such as the background) to a smaller surface (such as the tile where the TSR
logo should be located).
Problem: The frame rate drops dramatically when the gnoll walks from right to left
across the screen.
Reason: There is very little we can do about that. Using the left/right and up/down
mirror command can take much longer than a normal blit on some video cards.
Your program should work at your monitor's refresh rate.
Problem: The frame rate is showing a number much larger than the vertical refresh rate
of the monitor. This range is normaly between 60 and 100.
Reason: The Flip() routine is not waiting for the vertical refresh.
FEATURES NOT TESTED
---------------------------------
The following is a list of video features that are present in the final game that are not
tested by this program.
Translucent shadows
Translucent sprites
Sprite color replacement
Various glow effects
Various pixel effects
---------------------------------
BIOWARE VIDEO DRIVER TEST
All contents (c) 1998 BioWare Corp.
BALDUR'S GATE: (c) 1998 BioWare Corp. All Rights Reserved.
Baldur's Gate, Forgotten Realms, the Forgotten Realms logo, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,
the AD&D logo, and the TSR logo are trademarks of TSR, Inc., a subsidiary of Wizards of
the Coast, Inc., and are used by Interplay under license. All Rights Reserved. Interplay,
the Interplay logo, and "By Gamers. For Gamers." are trademarks of Interplay Productions.
All Rights Reserved. The BioWare logo is the trademark of Bioware Corp. All Rights
Reserved. The BioWare Infinity Engine is a trademark of BioWare Corp. All rights reserved.
All other trademarks and copyrights are property of their respective owners.
