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AppGameKit Studio Chat / Strange AGK Studio graphic glitches (video)

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YesItsASpoon
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Posted: 16th Jul 2020 06:00 Edited at: 22nd Jul 2020 18:00
I have an AppGameKit game (Dum-Dum) in the Steam store. It's generally been working very well.

However, I installed it on a new laptop this week & got some strange glitching! Take a look:


I included the laptop specs in the YouTube description. I've never encountered this issue on any computer before now. No customers have complained about it either, but I'm worried it could be a matter of time, especially if it's happening because of newer hardware. FWIW, I've tested other non-AGK Steam games on this laptop (e.g. Worms Clan Wars, Tabletop Simulator) and had no problems.

Has anyone experienced anything similar to this?

EDIT: further testing revealed the compatibility problem is only with games compiled using AppGameKit Studio! There are no problems when the same code is compiled using AppGameKit Classic! See my additional posts below.
haliop787
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Playing: With reality.
Posted: 16th Jul 2020 08:21
I dont get it, is this your desktop.or an entire Agk app?
If you see the glitches outside of your app game kit app, its not Agk fault unless Agk takes control of your entire windows GUI which i hardly doubt.

You should check your video.card drivers, Windows Update , Bios update (not recommended)

If this is an AgkS bug, it means it is effecting the OS. (Which still i dont think it goes that far beyond its own scope)
Nadav "Haliop" Rosenberg
Lets make the world great forever.
fubarpk
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Playing: AGK is my friend
Posted: 16th Jul 2020 08:46
i agree with haliop787 about video drivers perhaps the programs are using the vulkan renderer and your machines drivers dont handle that so well

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YesItsASpoon
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Posted: 16th Jul 2020 16:29 Edited at: 16th Jul 2020 16:30
Sorry, I should have clarified-- this is the entire AppGameKit game. It's designed to look like an old 1985-era operating system. The graphical issues do NOT go outside the AppGameKit app, and other non-AGK Steam games don't have this problem.

Prior to posting here, I did the following:
- ensured the video drivers are up to date
- compiled using the most-recent AGKS, as well as an older version from last December
- tried forcing OpenGL using #renderer "Basic"

It looks like there's a wild random element at times, but not ALL times. For instance, the sprites will randomly switch which image they're displaying, the position & scale of some sprites may jitter while moving, etc.

The most obvious difference between this computer & the others I've tested on is that it's recent hardware (e.g. using a 10th Generation Intel Core i3). I thought this could potentially be an issue with newer hardware? At the very least, if anyone can confirm that they're NOT having these problems on a similarly spec'd machine, then that might help narrow down what's causing it.
blink0k
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Posted: 16th Jul 2020 23:15
is the image with all the arrows one of your sprite sheets? Is it one of the assets of your game?
YesItsASpoon
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Posted: 17th Jul 2020 02:16
Yes, it is one of the sprite sheets. The user's mouse is replaced by one of the sprites from that sheet, so it is interesting that here it's sporadically grabbing the whole sheet instead.
blink0k
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Posted: 17th Jul 2020 02:53
Did you rebuild the app when you put it on the new laptop?
Did you rebuild it with a later version of AppGameKit?
YesItsASpoon
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Posted: 17th Jul 2020 04:23 Edited at: 17th Jul 2020 04:23
None of that.

It's for sale on Steam, so initially I downloaded the same "retail" version that everyone else has purchased/downloaded.

When I discovered it was glitching out, at that point I did try multiple things including re-compiling with an earlier version of AGKS, copying the files directly over to the laptop (instead of downloading the DRM version from Steam), and forcing OpenGL instead of Vulkan. Nothing fixed it. Just to be clear: its the exact same version that all of my customers have launched, and I (and beta testers) have also tried this exact same compiled version on multiple computers without problem.

This is why I'm assuming it's a problem with the specific laptop. I'd love to know if anyone else has experience running Windows builds on similar specs.
blink0k
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Posted: 17th Jul 2020 06:00
It does appear to be specific to your laptop although i have 2 or 3 laptops that use integrated intel graphics and i have never seen this happen
It appears to be appearing at very specific points. like when you click on an icon or a window title.
What is your frame rate set to?
What does your graphics device settings look like?
kragoth74
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Posted: 17th Jul 2020 09:24
What's the graphics card ? Maybe you are running out of GPU memory, may be worth checking with GetImageMemoryUsage()
YesItsASpoon
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Posted: 19th Jul 2020 05:03 Edited at: 19th Jul 2020 17:01
PROGRESS! (of a sort)
I did more tests with streamlined code (see below). When compiled with AGK Studio on my work computer, it had the same random jitter problems on the new 10th gen i3 laptop.

However, when I compiled the exact same code on my same work computer using AGK Classic, IT RAN FINE on the new i3! There's apparently something unique about how AppGameKit Studio compiles it that's causing the problem!

YesItsASpoon
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2020 17:55 Edited at: 22nd Jul 2020 17:56
I sent the new i3 laptop to its owners this week, so I no longer have access to it for testing. But I'm left feeling nervous about its compatibility problem.

Just to recap: Windows apps compiled with AppGameKit Studio do not run properly on the laptop with the following specs. However, the same code compiled with AppGameKit Classic seems to run perfectly on this laptop with no issues. The compiling is done on a separate system; the final compiled game has never exhibited problems on previous computers until it was downloaded to this specific new laptop.

Quote: "10th Generation Intel Core i3-1005G1 Dual Core Processor
Integrated Intel UHD Graphics
8GB DDR4 2666 MHz RAM (4GB OnBoard + 4GB DIMM)
256GB 2242 NVMe TLC SSD Storage
Windows 10 Home"


Ideally, I assume it would be good to get some external confirmation before reporting this as a bug. To that end...does anyone have a 10th Generation i3 that they could test an AppGameKit Studio app on? Possibly using the test code in my previous post?

If other 10th Gen i3 computers don't have this problem, knowing that could help refocus where the problem is. And if others encounter the same problem with this hardware, that's definitely something I'd like to report to the AppGameKit devs.
SFSW
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Posted: 22nd Jul 2020 22:43 Edited at: 22nd Jul 2020 22:43
As haliop and fubarpk suggest, that also looks a lot like video memory corruption to me. Almost as though your image indexes are cycling/blending over time during certain rendering operations. Differences in rendering behavior between Studio and Classic might account for such differences between them, but it's tough to know for sure with limited info to go on.

- What specific UHD chipset does the laptop have?

- And what specific driver was being used (latest could mean full release <ie 27.20.100.8425> or beta, so specific driver version could be helpful)?

- Does the behavior change at all (test code or game) if you replace the 'Sync()' with 'Render2DFront():Swap()'?

I would lean toward a driver glitch as a possible most likely reason, followed by some kind of resource limitation, and finally a bug in Studio. Might also be a combination, but I'd start at the driver/setting/resource possibility first for a while, then maybe report it as a bug with as specific system configuration details as you can provide.
PSY
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Posted: 23rd Jul 2020 15:52
@YesItsASpoon

Just to clarify. The code you posted 3 posts ago ( Posted: 19th Jul 2020 05:03 ).
Did you use #renderer "Basic" when compiling it with Studio?





PSY LABS Games
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YesItsASpoon
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Posted: 24th Jul 2020 06:43 Edited at: 24th Jul 2020 06:45
Thanks for your responses. Since I no longer have the laptop in my possession, I unfortunately can't do any additional testing or check the specific UHD chipset/driver version.

What I can clarify is that this was a brand-new laptop right out of the box. Completely new and unused. When I discovered the problem, initiating a driver update resulted in Windows stating the best driver was already installed. So if it's a driver issue, Windows doesn't yet recognize that there's a better driver available. Using #renderer "Basic" did not solve the problem.

SFSW, like you, I would very much like to assume that this is some sort of unique glitch that won't affect my potential customers. But I'm worried that it isn't. I assume anyone else selling Windows games on Steam might be similarly worried: if a Steam user bought a game that appeared to be this badly broken--while the rest of their game library worked without issue--I think they would reasonably assume that it was the game that was the problem. They would return it for a refund. This would be even more reasonable if they were using a brand-spanking-new computer with up-to-date drivers like the one I discovered the issue on.

In any case, I reckon I've done my due diligence in bringing this to the attention of the forum. I'll leave this post for now since I can't be any more help without the laptop. With luck, if others are able to test on similarly-spec'd new hardware, we may be able to confirm if it's a random one-of-a-kind fluke vs. a more widespread problem.
SFSW
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Posted: 24th Jul 2020 06:59 Edited at: 24th Jul 2020 07:07
I can relate and understand I've had my share of strange device-specific problems for sure. What you might be able to do is simply put together a small test program using the alternate rendering method I described above that you can send to the owner of the laptop to try. Additionally, you could request a msinfo report on their system they could ZIP and e-mail to you that would give you some very helpful hardware and software configuration information about the system. So hopefully, you still have a way to contact the owner.

If it was a new out-of-the-box system and the owner didn't manually update the display driver, it could be using a pretty old default driver which might contribute to such an issue. I found that using older display drivers (pre-2016) with some GPU's/chipsets could cause some problems with the newer rendering initializing and methods found in Studio. And this could be in the range of possibility for a system like that. Worth checking into just so it could be eliminated as a possibility so the search can focus elsewhere.

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