Vista compatability?

[jjsonick]

Has anyone had a chance to try out Ren'Py in Vista? Any issues?

edit for extra info:

One thing in particular I'm worried about is that Vista apparently restricts programs from writing anywhere besides My Documents -- and how that might mess up the Save Game/Load Game functionality when playing Ren'Py games.

I'm going to avoid getting Vista for as long as I can myself, but I would also hate for people with Vista to not be able to play my game.

[Haeleth]

One thing in particular I'm worried about is that Vista apparently restricts programs from writing anywhere besides My Documents -- and how that might mess up the Save Game/Load Game functionality when playing Ren'Py games.

You needn't worry about this. Firstly, there are many places other than My Documents where any application can legally write, even under a normal user account; secondly, Vista goes to great lengths to work with older software, so a program that tries to write somewhere restricted like Program Files will still work.

(When a program tries to write something within Program Files, Vista just stores the changes in a special per-user, per-program folder, so to the program everything behaves exactly the same way as it did on older versions of Windows, but other users and other programs won't be affected.)

For correct Windows support, of course, saved games should be placed in the proper location, which is a subfolder of the user's Application Data folder. If Ren'Py isn't already doing this, it's easy enough to get the location just by passing CSIDL_APPDATA to SHGetFolderPath(). But that should merely be desirable, not essential.

[PyTom]

For the next few releases of Ren'Py, I plan to just take advantage of vista's backwards compatibility. I may at sometime in the future look at SHGetFolderPath... but I don't see a need to rush on that, especially since it doesn't seem to be present in 98, which _should_ still be supported.

[Zasheir]

renpy.exe fails to load when I open it in Vista, no matter what compatibility mode I set it to. There's no error message or anything - nothing happens, even after the UAC acknowledges that I want to allow it to run (the UAC only comes up when I right click it and say Run As Administrator, which my account is anyway; normally it just shows the loading mouse cursor for a few seconds and then stops). I checked the task manager and no new processes are opening up when I try this.

I don't think it's anything I installed, because I'm running it on a fresh laptop (Dell Inspiron E1705, if that matters). Any advice as to how I could fix this would be appreciated, but it's not an urgent matter since I still have an XP computer running.

[Jake]

renpy.exe fails to load when I open it in Vista, no matter what compatibility mode I set it to.

Bear in mind that (IIRC) Ren'Py is built on PyGame, and PyGame is built on SDL, and SDL doesn't have listed support for Vista. It could well be out of PyTom's hands...

[DaFool]

Wow...I thought Vista was the consumer rights' worst nightmare.

Turns out its becoming true. So you want software to run corporate products the way THEY want you to run it? Vista is the best!

But for independent content producers like ourselves, this effectively seals it.

Hopefully the Blade Engine will take care of Visual Novels for Vista. The rest of the world will take their Ren'Py along with their Mac, Linux, old versions of Windows, etc.

Vista is counter the philosophy of Ren'Py and independent amateur game-making and content production anyway.

[Jake]

Hopefully the Blade Engine will take care of Visual Novels for Vista. The rest of the world will take their Ren'Py along with their Mac, Linux, old versions of Windows, etc.

I don't know... Blade seems to have its own share of compatibility problems, although it seems to be more a case of not publishing requirements properly/completely. And is it really a good thing to partition the community like that, with half totally unable to get at the other half's games?

Vista is counter the philosophy of Ren'Py and independent amateur game-making and content production anyway.

As much as I don't like most of what I hear about Vista - and I already have a Mac, so I don't see any immediate reason to upgrade my XP machine - I doubt it's really a permanent 'fault' as such. People had the same kind of odd compatibility issues when XP launched as well; progress comes at a price, and total backwards-compatibility is a hindrance of new technology as much as a help to old. I expect that within a couple of months common libraries like SDL will be able to work around any problems they may or may not have with Vista - at least the home versions - and it'll get listed as a supported OS. It didn't take long for most things to adapt to XP's idiosyncrasies, I expect the main difference is probably trying to work out which particular edition of Vista you actually want.

[PyTom]

Obviously, I consider a lack of Vista support to be a major problem, and a fairly unexpected one. I want to solve this ASAP, as I consider it important that NaNoRenO games be compatible with Vista.

Could you check to see if any sort of traceback is being created? Look for the file traceback.txt in the Ren'Py directory, and let me know if it contains anything of interest.

Also, please consider trying to run console.exe in a command line. I'd like to know if there's any output that way.

If you can let me know which version of Vista you have, I'd appreciate it. I need to know if this is specific to Aero, or if it's common to more than one version of the platform.

Finally, I'd like it if other Vista users could take a look and let me know if they have any problems. I'm trying to get my hands on a copy of vista to work with, but no luck so far.

(If someone could offer me a remote desktop on a vista machine, it would really help this process.)

[mikey]

Heh, heh, so that means that older ATP Releases which have no settings and no saves (password-save system) are Vista-okay?

And on a serious note, will there be a need to release Vista patches for older Ren'Py releases?

Hmmm, this is a good incentive, actually, to test the various games we've done on different platforms and see what's what. I've not had any troubles running any of our ATP games in a Win environment, not the MMB ones, not the Allegro one and not the Ren'Py based, but I don't think I was completely thorough.

I need to find a Vista somewhere...

[Zasheir]

It isn't creating a traceback.txt file. However, running console.exe in a command line did give me some stuff. I've attached a screenshot of it.

I'm running Vista Home Premium with the most recent updates. I've tried Ren'Py with Aero on and off, and this screenshot was from when it was off with XP SP2 compatibility mode on.

[PyTom]

Okay, I've developed a fix. Download the re.py file from:

http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Windows_Vista

and place it into the directory containing renpy.exe. This file patches renpy to compensate for a change in Vista.

The fix will be included in 6.1+. I'll be writing it up more, along with ideas on how to include it in future releases. Basically, you have three choices:

- Re-release your game, using Ren'Py 6.1.0 or later.
- Re-release your game, including re.py as part of the distribution.
- Do nothing, and hope either (a) that your users find the instructions above, or (b) microsoft fixes vista.

Blah. I'll write up more in the morning.

[mikey]

Wow, you are from another planet or something, that was an instant fix! And it just proves that the most important advantage of Ren'Py is the support.
*hands PyTom a pint of well-deserved cold... ginger ale* (What? I don't drink! ^_^)

Hmmm, so now I need to think about the options for our games. Also, we need to think about the RAA at some point - does this fix work with *any* Ren'Py version (read: any released Ren'Py game). Hmmm, there probably wasn't that much time to test all of them.

[DaFool]

PyTom rocks as usual.

EDIT: Just put a disclaimer on RAA or Ren'Py games regarding Vista Compatibility. I certainly can't be bothered to port all old game directories to 6.1 and repackage, but maybe someone else can.

[PyTom]

*hands PyTom a pint of well-deserved cold... ginger ale* (What? I don't drink! ^_^)

I'm more of a root beer man.

Hmmm, so now I need to think about the options for our games. Also, we need to think about the RAA at some point - does this fix work with *any* Ren'Py version (read: any released Ren'Py game). Hmmm, there probably wasn't that much time to test all of them.

While I haven't tested every game, I believe this fix should work for all games. I've tested it with Ren'Py 6.0.0, and with Garden Society Kykuit, so that pretty much brackets the games we have.

Does anyone know where to submit vista bug reports? I have a fairly good bug report I can send in, but there doesn't seem to be a place to send it to.

I think I'd like us to make an effort to go and repackage as many games as possible, and to release them with this fix. It's not that much effort on a per-game basis, and like it or not, vista is going to become more popular as time goes on. I don't want to hurt the community by not supporting it, especially because XP compatibility mode does not fix this.

I'm planning on repackaging the games I was responsible for packaging. That includes Moonlight Walks (English and Czech), Broken Hearted, and (with mikey's permission) various ATP games.

[Misuzu]

Does anyone know where to submit vista bug reports? I have a fairly good bug report I can send in, but there doesn't seem to be a place to send it to.

Yeah, I've got a location. Lemme try to dig it out from my spam box ><. It worked when I was on Vista Beta, but I don't know if the page is active anymore.