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Dark GDK / dbCircle and dbDot vs NVidia on Vista

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rbailey64bit
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Posted: 16th Sep 2009 19:39
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Good Morning,

I've been combing the threads but haven't seen this issue answered anywhere. Working with the Gaddis book, if I try the dbCircle or dbDot commands, everything compiles without error and runs, but the display is blank. No dots, no circles. I get the same blank result on 2 different Vista machines I've tried, but the same code runs perfectly on my MacBook under Parallels (XP).

I want to blame Vista, but a classmate has the code working on his machine. Both of my machines use nVidia video cards, while his uses an embedded Intel chipset.

Has anyone else run across this problem?
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Mireben
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Posted: 20th Sep 2009 13:00
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Can you post the code?
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rbailey64bit
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Posted: 20th Sep 2009 16:07 Edited at: 20th Sep 2009 21:41
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// This program demonstrates the dbCircle function
// by drawing three circles to form a bull's eye.

#include "DarkGDK.h"

void DarkGDK()
{
// Draw three concentric circles.
dbCircle(320,240,150);
dbCircle(320,240,75);
dbCircle(320,240,25);

// Pause the program until the user presses a key.
dbWaitKey();
}
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Mireben
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 19:23 Edited at: 21st Sep 2009 19:27
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What happens on my machine is that the circles appear for a split second, then disappear.

Usually a Dark GDK program should have the "while" loop which updates the display every frame. This example has no such loop. I guess the difference between machines is whether they update the display at least once after the program starts or not. If yes, the image will disappear.

Change the code to this and the circles will stay on the screen:




EDIT: In this case, you can exit the program by pressing ESC and there is no need for WaitKey.

I don't know if the code you quoted should work by specification or not, but if it's not reliable, then introducing the loop is a good workaround.
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rbailey64bit
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 19:46
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Thanks for the idea, but I'm still seeing a blank screen here with your code too.

Are you running nVidia on a Vista machine too? if so, which driver are you using?
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Mireben
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 22:53
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Yes, Vista and nVidia card (laptop). The driver is from August 2008.

I'm sorry that this did not help, it seems the problem is not so easy to solve.
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Goonj
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Posted: 22nd Sep 2009 06:37
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i'm having the same problem.
I want to make a snowman program but i can not see anything on the output screen

goonj
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Mireben
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Posted: 22nd Sep 2009 08:55
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Which Dark GDK version do you use? Mine is 7.3.

Have you tried to change the colour of the circles (dbInk)? Just to rule out the possibility that the default drawing colour is black, although I don't think the default colour can be different on another machine.

If nothing helps, I think it would be worth to report this in the "bug reports" forum, with the specs of the computer(s) on which it doesn't work.
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rbailey64bit
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Posted: 22nd Sep 2009 20:30
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I added dbInk to no avail. dbDot and dbCircle are still invisible, but dbLine is visable. Both nVidia machines I am having issues with are running the August 2009 driver (8.16.11.8681) and they are both Quadros.

How does one determine the version of Dark GDK they are running? The readme.txt simply says "Dark GDK - Version 14th November 2007"

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Mireben
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Posted: 23rd Sep 2009 22:44 Edited at: 23rd Sep 2009 22:45
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I have written a bug report about this:
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=158209&b=15&p=0

I know which version of Dark GDK I'm using because I installed it. I don't know if there is a sure way to check the version. On the Dark GDK download page, you can find the basic version and the Nov 2008 upgrade. Then there are threads on the forum from which you can download 7.3 and 7.4 (beta) upgrades.

If you have only the Nov 2007 text in the readme file, and you haven't installed any upgrades, then probably it's the basic version.
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rbailey64bit
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Posted: 24th Sep 2009 02:34
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I appreciate it. Thanks!
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Mireben
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Posted: 24th Sep 2009 22:43
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Please have a look here for a workaround:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=158250&b=22&p=0
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logicandchaos
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Posted: 19th Nov 2009 04:41
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i was working on a game and tried using dbDot and it does not show up, i have vista and nvidea, is that the problem?

logicandchaos
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Mireben
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Posted: 19th Nov 2009 21:27
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Probably, but if you want, you can post the code to confirm if there is any other problem with it.
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Whitewolf007
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Posted: 21st Jan 2010 20:57
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I am having this same exact problem as is the rest of my class at school. We are working from the same book. Lines work find. dbDot and dbCircle do not. Is there still no fix for this? I have applied the nov 2008 GDK update, directx update, etc. I have tried this on Vista 32bit on my laptop and Windows 7 64 bit on the desktop. I was considering buying DarkGDK for 50 bucks but not if they can't even get this thing to work. I'm beginning to think it's a directx issue or maybe nvidia drivers? Either way it's frustrating as hell to search the internet for an answer and come up with nothing except this thread that posts no answers and only a work around.

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thefitgeek
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Posted: 30th Jan 2010 03:00
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I'm having the same annoying problem, thankfully I can still program on my laptop until this is worked out. But doesn't anyone know if there is any effort being made to resolve this?
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scotts7777
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Posted: 6th Apr 2010 21:19
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I'm working through the Gaddis book on Windows 7 64 bit NVIDIA graphics card (laptop). Going into fullscreen always fixes the dbDot and dbCirlce problems.

Add this code to the start of your program :



I plan to finish this book, but I agree that it's really lame they can't fix this problem. Is there any other type of graphics library out there similar to Dark GDK that works better? I'm quite new to all this so I have no idea what my options are for graphics libraries. I really like Dark GDK because it's easy to use, but there must be something that works better.
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