Rainbow Death Crash -- Possible Solution -- Please Read

There is a new tab, Drivers, in ZCL (Zlaunch).

This allows you to set the video driver for windowed and fullscreen modes.

The options are:

DirectDraw
DirectDraw (No Acceleration)
DirectDraw (Safe)
DirectDraw (Window) --should be the same as DirectDraw, but, it's a separate driver in Allegro.
DirectDraw (Overlay)
GDI (Slow)

The GDI driver is the Windows Graphics Driver Interface, and @Russ reports that using this video driver cured the problem that he had with the 'rainbow death crash'.

I would like any users who routinely experience this 'rainbow death' issue to try this, and post in this thread if setting the GDI driver fixes it for them. This is something that you can do from ZCL in 2.53.0, but you can also set this in older ZC versions by adding this line to your ag.cfg file (2.50.2 and earlier), or zc.cfg (2.53.0 and later).

gfx_cardw=GDIB
gfx_card=GDIB

If any of you experience this issue, please try this, and let us know if it solves the problem for you.

The other drivers options for gfx_cardw and gfx_card are:

DXAC : DirectDraw, with Acceleration
DXSA : DirectDraw, Safe
DXWN : DirectDraw, Windowed
DXOV : DirectDraw, Overlay mode. -- Some users have had problems because Allegro automatically selects this on start-up for their system.



Here is where to set this in ZCL (2.53.0+)

http://timelord.insomnia247.nl/zc/zc...rivers_gdi.png

Thank you.


P.S. DirectDraw (Overlay) should only be used on systems that have GPU support for overlay mode. If you experience a condition where ZC fails to start, check allegro.log; and if you see errors regarding overlay mode, then allegro is trying to set this for you. You will want to manually select a different video driver.