Several thoughts crossed my mind. First, it's a little strange that a SXGA resolution of 1280x1024x32 wouldn't work and you have to revert to XGA 1024x786x32. Both were developed in the 1990's. I don't think your test-systems are that old, right?
Second, there are several graphic modes you can set in the IDE when compiling. A program can run in Fullscreen, Windowed, Windowed Fullscreen or Windowed Desktop. Experimenting with some of the Windowed modes might help: even if the max resolution is 1024x786x32, a 1280x1024x32 program should be able to run instead of crashing.
Third, how are you setting your display at the moment? Do you have a function or routine in place that checks if the preferred settings are available? If not, you could try building it using the 'perform checklist for display modes' and 'checklist quantity()' commands. The DB-helpfile lists some stuff that can give you a good start.
rem Screen Management
cls
print "DISPLAY MODES"
print
perform checklist for display modes
for c=1 to checklist quantity()
width=checklist value a(c)
height=checklist value b(c)
depth=checklist value c(c)
print "found:";checklist string$(c)
next c
set display mode width, height, depth
if check display mode(width, height, depth)=1
print "using:";width;" ";height;" ";depth
endif
do
loop
end
Last, you can modify the above code to make a program run at the maximum allowed resolution. You can then implement a percentage based resolution in which you tell sprites to 'appear at 10% of the X-resolution and 56% of the Y-resolution' etc. This will assure your game will run in the same manner on all kinds of systems.
