I know this is going to be way too short of an article, but it absolutely needs to be seen by people who do not already know it.

ACTIVATE WINDOWS 95 COMPATIBILITY MODE ON CLICK GAME .EXE FILES



What is it?
Windows 95 compatibility mode is a runtime environment where applications will be run as if it was a '95 machine, rather then on XP or Vista. As a majority of people still use windows XP, and a majority of click developers release in either MMF or TGF for the moment, this is dead necessary.
For more understanding on what it is and how it works, read the Windows XP description:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/appcompat.mspx

What it does?
Click games, more specifically those released with TGF or MMF, are extremely prone to crashing on XP machines (and purportedly Vista machines, too). The specific cause of the crashing is very hard to isolate, and appears randomly (though sound processing is no doubt a role in most of the TGF crashes). This includes crashing with symptoms such as:

1) In TGF games in particular, though I've heard cases of MMF; A "Repeating wav file" glitch. At a seemingly random point during runtime, an application will start repeating endlessly and .wav files that are played. At the same time, the TGF/MMF's read/eval/print loop will fail to function unless there is any input from a keyboard or mouse. You can specifically see this in the event that both your sounds start looping, and the game freezes up unless you are repeatedly hitting keys. This error will continue until you exit the application AND the editor, if you are running TGF.

2) Just standard "This application has crashed and burned" messages from the terminal. These will often occur with a slight slowdown, then an complete stopping of gameplay and program failure. These specifically are occurrences not due to in-game infinite loops or bad input crashes, but rather just seemingly random failures that have no easily placeable cause.

Both of these issues will be resolved by activating Windows 95 Compatibility mode.

How to activate it?
Windows 95 Compatibility Mode can only be accessed by the user of the program. Anyone who downloads any klik game must be somehow told to do these specific steps when on an XP or Vista machine:

#1: Right-Click on the Application's .exe file and go to properties
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#2: Under "Compatibility" Menu, select the "Run application in compatibility mode" and then "Windows 95"

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Your game is now running in Compatibility Mode


Remember, you must include something inside of your game to tell players to do this before playing the game. Also, this will not completely eliminate random crashing. I estimate it to take care of 99%+ of the crashing I'd normally experience on my XP machine, but "random crashes" still exist once in a blue moon





Also, heres a tip specifically for TGF users:
I've noticed some people talking about how "sound files get corrupted" in the event editor. I've narrowed this bug down to figure out exactly what occurs:
Upon copying/pasting any event with a "Play .wav" or "Play .midi" file in TGF, both the copied and pasted expressions will now be corrupted, and the sound will cease to operate.

To fix code that has a corrupted sound file (it will display it as "A~xpC.wav"), do the following:
1) Clear ALL the corrupted sound files out, by deleting the "play wav" events for every one that display "A~xpC"
2) Save the game, exit TGF.
3) Restart TGF, load the game
4) Now you must replace every single sound file manually. They will not be saved in the game's pool of sound effects; you must find them elsewhere on your harddrive.