StarCraft fix holy cow!

squall leonhart said:

The reason starcraft has color issues is because of the AERO feature on windows seven desktop so if you switch to a Windows Classic theme and open your resolution window it will work you open starcraft and bingo you can still tab out and do other things in windows which you cannot do if you kill explorer.exe... I have a batch file I use that does all these steps with one click... If you want it let me know...

forcing the classic theme does not work either.

Do you have all teh compatibility setting set for your EXE for all users before doign this... I now have 13 people using my bat file that puts it to Windows Classic Theme and opens the resolution and they set teh compatibility for the EXE and it wworks every time

Compatibility settings have absolutely no impact on the colours issue. neither does classic theme (other then forcing starcraft to run entirely in directdraw software, and thus much slower).

squall leonhart said:

Compatibility settings have absolutely no impact on the colours issue. neither does classic theme (other then forcing starcraft to run entirely in directdraw software, and thus much slower).

Have you actually looked at the compatibility settings. One of them is setting it to run with 256 Color and a lower bit which is what Starcraft was designed to do. You just proved with that post that you have no clue what you are talking about. Turning to windows classic theme turns Aero off which allows Starcraft to put windows explore in the background instead of on top. Before you go shooting your mouth off learn more about software how it works and what you are talking about. I have also discussed this issue with my programming professor and he agrees with me and has over 12 years of Microsoft programming experience.

Yours Truly,
Your friendly neighborhood programmer

squall leonhart said:

Read through the thread. i know more about this issue then anyone randomly chiming in and adding their "Fixes".

Windows automatically forces 256 colours, and disables DWM prior to starting the game.
End tasking explorer doesn't solve the freeze, neither does affinity tweaks.

setting windows classic disables Acceleration for 2D (GDI and Ddraw) which one can do via the Dx Tools anyway (neither work).

The colour issue has nothing to do with the themes, Explorer causes a palette issue regardless of acceleration being available or not, regardless of themes, regardless of apps running.

Pausing Explorers threads prevents explorer from updating and intruding on the 8bit palette.

I have also discussed this issue with my programming professor and he agrees with me and has over 12 years of Microsoft programming experience.

Tell your professor to act or stfu. Microsoft programmers got shit all experience compared to the guys who write emulators in their spare time, Who btw have run the game through debuggers, decompilers and the like and still can't isolate the palette intrusion in the game and patch it out without killing activity in the shell.

Edit:
Combination Testing.
It seems the recent Compatibility updates did help, however you need the following.

Classic Theme with 256/640x480 compatibilty
Windows Aero Basic\Standard with 256/640x480 compatibilty
Windows Aero Glass 256/640x480 and Disable Desktop Composition.

And the consistency test FAILS.

I was able to run SC just fine with Aero glass on, but a reboot later and nothing i do fixes it.

So yeah, stuff your fix. Inconsistency relying on unknown circumstances trumps all.

So the fact that me and 13 others are running my fix consistently without any issues yet if we run an Aero's theme it tanks doesn't mean jack shit... You think you know all and don't... You have issues on your own machine. Wide real time tests mean more then simulated tests... If you set compatibility to all users for all settings it works but if you leave out one part of my fix it tanks yet it always works if I do everything and my 13 friends did the same. Its why game companies do Betas its called a broad spectrum test. Learn more about the fact that multiple things impact a situation then just one. Occasionally you can run it with Aero on but it is not consistent cause as you say Explorer updates and combined with Aero bam problem. So stuff your so called knowledge and actually have multiple people run fixes and multiple combination of fixes instead of it all based on a single machine and your configs. This is the one fix that the 14 of us has had work 100% of the time. So have a nice day with your fake knowledge and narrow tests.

Edit:
Combination Testing.
It seems the recent Compatibility updates did help, however you need the following.

Classic Theme with 256/640x480 compatibilty
Windows Aero Basic\Standard with 256/640x480 compatibilty
Windows Aero Glass 256/640x480 and Disable Desktop Composition.

Edit
And the consistency test FAILS.

I was able to run SC just fine with Aero glass on, but a reboot later and nothing i do fixes it.

So yeah, stuff your fix. Inconsistency relying on unknown circumstances trumps all .

Your lack of Reading disturbs me.

Mudlord says (10:51 AM):
*Okay, I feel like posting on that forum
*Jeez, some people SICKEN me
*it manifests in even the DX7 SDKs test apps
Mudlord says (10:52 AM):
*Clearly it can't blit to the primary surface right, so we need to render to a 32 bit texture with a pallete look up texture using shader emulation instead!

new direction.

providing a patch to sun for scaling/stretching support in virtualbox.....

Moochmaker said:

For some reason your solution doesn't work for me. The colors are still messed up on 7 for me. :?

As I said, it doesn't work. No matter how I try, it won't work. Application specific patches OR if the dev got off thier arse and did a alternate renderer, will fix the problem. Since Blizzard is developing SCII, its in thier best interests not to do that.

So, your screwed.