Workaround for ‘TODO’ error
Some people who are running Braid are reporting that it fails to run, and is giving an error like this:
TODO: ‘File Description’ has encountered an error.
For everyone I’ve talked to so far, a successful workaround has been to play Braid in windowed mode. Just add the -windowed option to the command line.
If you are playing from Steam, right-click on Braid, go to Properties, then Set Launch Options, and type:
-windowed
in the box. If you are playing one of the other versions, right-click on the shortcut that runs Braid, go to Properties, then at the end of the Target box, type a space and then -windowed . So the box would look like this:
Meanwhile, I am working on a permanent solution to the bug. I realize that some people have desktop resolutions that are too small for the window, and for them this is not an ideal solution. More news when the permanent fix is ready.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Thanks for this update! I downloaded the demo as soon as I knew it was available and was plagued by this bug. Luckily this fixed it for me.
I just started playing, but I know already that I like this game. Thanks for creating such an excellent game and for paying close attention to bugs and promptly posting workarounds. I appreciate it.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Nope, still get the same error. (windows 7)
April 10th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Okay well my question was answered, there is no level editor, but do you have any plans in the future of releasing one? Or do you unlock it by getting the stars?
April 10th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
According to the readme, you add an -editor switch when running the game, then press F11 to go into editor mode.
Also, reposting here due to relevance: -half worked for me just as well as -windowed did to fix the crashes, and that’s running in full-screen.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Thanks so much, pkt-zer0! I guess I should start reading the readmes from now on, huh?
April 10th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
I’m going to copy what I said in response to another post here too, just to make sure it’s seen. I believe it may be relevant, but I can’t say how, exactly.
“My desktop’s currently set at 1650×1080, and I couldn’t get the game to run unless I used ‘-windowed.’ It worked fine on my laptop without having to do anything, which runs at 1280×800.”
I know the other guy who was running with a tiny resolution had trouble at first too, and my computer’s resolution is pretty high — maybe resolution size is having an effect?
April 10th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Just as a heads up, I still get the TODO error even in windowed mode :(. I hope your fix works. I didn’t realize there was a demo (it wasn’t up on steam) so I actually bought it which make me feel a little annoyed (not at you though).
April 10th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
i’ve downloaded from impulse (and then tried subsequent demos from other sites) and like one of the previous posters, i get just a jumble of boxes:
http://www.differentpixel.com/braid_boxes.jpg
what do you think? a video card issue? is my old laptop just too underpowered to run braid?
pentium 1.8 MHz, 768 MB RAM
mobility radeon 9000 32 MB
April 10th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Wow, am I really the only one that can’t run it even with one of those options set? that’s pretty sweet. Makes me feel special. oh well, i’ve been entertaining myself revisiting the levels in the demo that I can run, since some of the puzzles there I haven’t solved.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Hi, dont want to bother you guys, but how do i change the resolution of the game from 1280×1024 to 1024×860 or 860×640
Can someone please tell me! really appreciated!
April 10th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Hey Mr. Blow, I’m not sure where to put this comment, since it seems like the comments in your latest blog posts have turned into bug reports
. I’ve been playing in windowed mode, however, the game window does not retain its position (between game runs). Is there any this can be set?
I know you treated my time as precious in Braid, so let me reciprocate and just say that I thank you for taking the time to create Braid.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
And.. what about to do for change (the damn) 60hz (yes i have a CRT)
April 10th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Yeah a normal resolution changer would be just fine.
side note: can you guys please integrate 360 controller configs, some people would rather use a controller instead of the keyboard or even be able to configure the key bindings. thanks! love the game so far
April 10th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Hi, how can i change resolution? I have a TV HD with 1360×768 and I can only play in window because full screen is out this resolution and color are horrible. Thanks.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Just a quickie for the linux users out there. It’s working fine in Ubuntu 8.10 with Wine. Windowed helps greatly. My wine setup has dx9, vcrun2005, vcrun2005sp1, dotnet20 and a few other bits installed via winetricks.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Hi!
First of all, I wasn’t able to find any kind of “support” link on the Braid web site, so I’m just posting my problem here hoping that someone will see it…
First of all, kudos for providing a Korean translation of Braid… however I am having some troubles at the moment. While I run a Korean language version of Vista, I would feel more comfortable playing the game in English or German… so I tried adding the -language english switch, resulting in the game crashing on startup.
In fact, all of the available Western languages crash, while the available Asian languages (Korean, Japanese, Chinese) work…
So, just as a guess into the blue, does the game require any font that might not be preinstalled on a Korean Windows? Or what else might be the cause for this strange behaviour?
(and now, the -windowed switch didn’t help ^^)
Thanks
Sebastian
April 10th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Hmm, my previous post disappeared. Was I moderated or something? I was just trying to give some debug advice. Well not that it matters given that my ingenious plan to restart my PC seemed to fix my problem (well actually it made steam do an update that fixed the problem). Did you release an patch already or did steam just forget to give me some data?
Either way, I’ve been playing the game and needless to say it’s great fun. Keep up the good work Mr Blow!
April 10th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Your post is there, it just had to wait to get moderated because it was your first post. If you look up the page you’ll see it there now.
I did not release any patch on Steam… I’m not sure why rebooting your machine would have fixed the problem. Maybe it has to do with the DirectX installation that happens when you install the game; I hadn’t thought it requires a reboot, but maybe in some cases it does.
April 10th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Gah. Sorry for the triple post but it seems my first post has reappeared. Wordpress blogs really need an edit function.
April 10th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
THe new exe fixed the TODO problem for me, actually.
Ingenius game. Really. So I BEG you, put this game on Playstation Store. The dolar can be very high in some countries in the time of crisis… Those 20$ can be 3x or 4x more for me. On the PSS I have my own currency.
April 10th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
How can I change resolution?
April 11th, 2009 at 12:01 am
When I try and play Braid, the screen stays black except for the tutorial text that comes up telling me walk, jump, and menu. I can’t see any of the game, but can hear the music and a sound when I jump. Also, the menu appears to come up fine when i press esc. I can’t wait to play this game, and am mainly just curious if anyone else is having this problem, as I seem to be the only one I can find with this issue.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:18 am
Still having problems…
This time it does not crash at the start. The sound and music can be heard, but the screen is completely black both in fullscreen and windowed mode. Moreover, the window is too long in windowed mode.
Using XP, 2.6 Ghz processor and card Nvidia GeForce4 MX 440 AGP8X (old, I know). Does this meet the requirements?
April 11th, 2009 at 12:51 am
I downloaded the demo. The game looks really nice, but I will not buy it without a resolution changer / way to set resolution to whatever you want (1920×1080 in my case).
Just an FYI.
BTW I have an opty 170 and the 1.010 demo worked perfectly fine (on a gtx 260 core 216 with 185.68 drivers).
April 11th, 2009 at 1:06 am
@Miguel: I guess the problem is that your card does only support DirectX 7 while the game needs at least a DX9-card.
April 11th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Well, using -half seems to be the solution for those of us using low resolutions (1024/600 on my netbook).
You can play the game just fine, but you can’t solve the puzzles (the mouse pointer won’t move).
Waiting for a way to change the game’s resolution (but buying the game on steam as I’m writing this)
The framerate on my MSI-Wind Netbook is low but playable using the -half switch.
Thanks for a great game!
April 11th, 2009 at 10:38 am
I had to restart, now it works. Works in fullscreen mode too.
April 11th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Ok i got mine working ok now with the -windowed command
The best thing to do in addition to this is to select MAXIMIZED from the RUN drop down menu in the properties box. When the game runs it fits perfectly to your screen the only thing is you can still see the start menu bar and thats all, game works perfect tho, giving it a rest for now my head is hurting from thinking too much lol….great game.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I had the same problem at first, but I think it was because I had the wrong Microsoft.NET framework version installed. I ran windows update and it works fine now.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:12 am
@Ricky, Miguel:
I have that problem as well. I’m running XP 64 bit with a Radeon x850. Old I know, but not so old that it shouldn’t be able to handle this game. Very frustrating! I kind of wish there was a tech support forum.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Jonathan,
Just got bought the steam release having the impulse demo version preinstalled, after installing the full version and playing for a while lvl 5 & lvl 6 got locked again just like in the demo….Please help!
JiM
April 11th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
jkdude:
You might be running the Impulse version of Braid still. When Steam installs the game, it puts it into a different place than the other versions install to, so the demo version does not get erased. But if you make sure to launch the game from Steam, it should work properly…
If you are running it from the desktop icon, it’s possible that the icon is linked to the Impulse version.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Jonathan,
it would be possible to add to Steam Achivements something related to finding the hidden stars?
They are very hard to find, at least to show your friends your skills
April 11th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
well in that case my issue is that iu have completed 3 lvls already. is it possible to recover the advance? is it stored at some file or registry key i can copy?
thanks again
JiM
April 11th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
If you have played those levels in the full version, then when you are running the demo, the game still knows what you have done there and what puzzle pieces you got, and that progress will still be there when you play the full version again.
If you are absolutely sure you are playing the full version, try going and talking to the world 4 dinosaur again.
If you are playing the version from The Pirate Bay, which reverts to a demo after a while thankfully and thus turns off world 5 and 6, then go buy an actual full version! Thanks.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
come on, im a decent and long waiting fan of braid for the pc! dont need to get it 4 free
i ll try to go back to the lvl 4 but it doesnt seems to make it…..
April 11th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
The game isn’t even playable (only comes up with a black screen with white text and even that’s choppy as hell), and zero technical support.
No demo on Steam and Steam does not give refunds, even for games that are so buggy they don’t even work.
Neither braid-game.com nor Steam has tech support for the game.
Completely unacceptable.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
I am tech supporting right here, so I am not sure what you are talking about.
Also, Steam has a demo now.
What graphics card are you using?
April 11th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
jkdude: If you want to make sure, then uninstall the Impulse demo, and then you know for sure you are running the Steam version.
Then, when you are running the Steam version, hit escape to go to the main menu. If there is a “Purchase the Full Game” option there, then the game definitely thinks it’s a demo, and this is a problem that you need to talk to the Steam guys about (I’m not in control of whether or not Steam says you own the game).
On the other hand, it’s possible that there is some kind of bug, and even if the game thinks it’s the full version (no “Purchase the Full Game” option on the menu), the areas are still locked. If that happens, then talking to the world 4 dinosaur really ought to work.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Hmm, Steam took the demo back down, seemingly. They are probably working something out and will have it up again before long, I would hope.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Another solution. I got that same error even running in windowed mode because I have an SDTV. When running the game at 1024×768 or probably lower, the only way out is to make up a resolution for the game. I choose 1000×563. That way I could play the game on my TV and have it work.
The way I did it was “-windowed -height 563 -width 1000″
April 11th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Interesting. Hmm, I will keep this in mind when designing the solution for this problem.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Jonathan:
It’s nice that you’re trying to do *something* for support, and it’s appreciated, but (no offense) this is a really poor way to go about it. I hope you’re working on setting up a forum.
I have an X800GTO2. Rebooting fixed the choppiness, but the game is still a black screen with nothing but the white “use the arrow keys to move” etc text. The Esc menu works fine.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
So, it sounds like the bug is that the game is not realizing that your card is not Pixel Shader 3, and the postprocessing step (which requires ps3) is being engaged. You should be able to get around that by putting the option
-no_post
on the command line. The plan is that the next release of the game, available in a few days, will have this problem fixed.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Uhh, I have the same issue is andrew. Same video card too, if that helps
April 11th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
had the common problem but fixed it w/ -windowed. Runs but at 10 fps (fraps) on a decent hp pavillion lappie w/ nvida graphics (8400 or something). As more of a casual gamer i really thought it would run better. A bit dissapointed honestly
April 11th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Hi Jonathan,
Do I have to play the game with the keyboard if I don’t have a 360 controller ? My standard USB controller doesn’t work, and there seems to be no options to set up the control scheme to my joypad.
Started the game anyway, awesome so far, too bad I have to play with the keyboard.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Also, I’m playing on a 1360×768 16/9 HDTV, and the game seems to be 4/3 does not occupy all the screen, not even vertically.
I wanna know, is it normal or should I worry that I’m not running Braid as “fully” as I could ?
Thanks
April 11th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I have this problem with the demo. The demo crashes, and I get a blackscreen if I start the game windowed and than press ALT+ENTER to make it fullscreen, so I can only play windowed, but it’s missing a part of this game because the window is too large.
Since the developer is going to fix it, I’ll buy through steam anyway. I hope his future 2D RPG will be available for PC on Steam as well.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Is there a readme file somewhere with a list of the command line options? Might have been able to figure that out myself (shader would have been my first guess) if I knew that command line flag existed.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Yes, there should be a READ_ME.txt in the Braid folder.
April 11th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Ninomojo: The game only has native support for Xbox 360 controllers (due to the way the visual prompting is done, for example) but you can use a program like xpadder to convert your gamepad input to key presses.
About the HDTV thing, it depends on how your video drivers are set to handle lower resolutions. The game is probably running in 1280×720 resolution; if your video drivers are set to render that in the center of the screen with black around it, then you will get black borders. But if they are set to “aspect” scaling, it ought to work. But it’s hard to say without seeing your video drivers!
April 11th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I have the game installed on both my Desktop and Laptop and I want to be able to move my game-save from one to another. Where is the game-save stored?
April 11th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
xpadder => works, thank!
video driver:
ATI Catalyst 8.3, switched to 9.4, same thing. I tried various settings for lower resolutions (stretch, keep ratio, etc.) all produced the same result.
(card is a HD2900 XT)
>> “The game is probably running in 1280×720″
Is it possible to run it in my display’s native resolution (1360×768), or is 1280×720 the highest resolution the game runs in natively?
I don’t really understand what you mean by “probably”.
My TV set can stretch 1280×720 back to 16/9, but then it’s less detailed than if it were running in 1360. This is not too big a deal anyway it looks good enough that way. Sorry for bothering with that.
Thanks
April 11th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Jonathan,
Thank you for what looks like a wonderful game (I bought this directly over Steam, untested, based on the rave reviews and comments everywhere).
Just a heads up for you/those of your users running Comodo Firewall: My screen went black and the system seemed to hang. Ctrl-Alt-Del did apparently nothing, and I had to restart my computer. Following your advice and running the game in windowed mode worked fine.
However, I wanted to run the game in fullscreen mode, so I did a little more research, and turned off Comodo completely. This worked, so I knew Comodo was the culprit. Even after defining braid.exe as a “trusted application” in the firewall and as a “safe file” in Defense+, the screen would go black on me when running fullscreen.
Disabling Defense+ in Comodo completely, fixed the issue for me, and I’m now able to run the game fullscreen.
Running Braid on Steam under Vista 32-bit/Core 2 Duo E6850/Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra/4 GB RAM. Vista is updated over Windows update. Graphics drivers are pretty recent.
Hope this might be of some assistance to you or your customers.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Jonathan, great job on staying on top of all these problems. I can’t believe you fixed the VSync issue so quickly!
I was wondering: Are you concerned that people will be able to discover all of Braid’s (as yet unknown) secrets by looking through the game files? This obviously wasn’t an issue with the 360 release, but now people will be able to discover things the “wrong” way…?
April 11th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
When gonna be available the mac version of Braid? Thanks
April 11th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Yeah, I’m waiting for Jonathan to just say that he will implement a resolution chooser (I think I can do better than the game guessing for me thank you very much) and I’m buying this on steam.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Chris: There is no “resolution” to choose from. This is not a 3D game. The graphics are 2D, meaning that David Hellman would have to redo them for each resolution for there to be an option.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
People might find things by looking through the game files, yeah. It’s not the way I would prefer for things to happen, but I am not going to let that stop me from releasing the game. I just hope that people play the game For Real.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Interesting, Azrael, I hadn’t heard of this problem (or at least from anyone who had pinpointed it).
April 11th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
neeks: I’ve heard of people reporting weird slowness in Windows 7 and also sometimes Windows Vista. As far as I know these are a small minority of cases and I haven’t been able to get enough information to pinpoint the cause. But if I can figure it out then I will definitely fix it.
April 11th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Johnny Walker, I am aware that the quality of the sprites themselves will not change.
However, there is always some resampling going on somewhere, and I would rather the game scale itself to whatever resolution is available than have the nvidia drivers do it, or in the worst case have my crappy built-in monitor resampler (which does something close to “nearest neighbor” which makes me almost want to barf) do it.
Any current 2d game should be made to run in the native resolution of the monitor imo… it’s 2009 after all. Games with fixed resolutions might still be popular in the “casual” games community and/or were prior to 2000, but I’d like to think that Braid is a cut above that.
From what I understand, the game “auto”chooses a resolution anyway already, we just need to control that. I’m not sure if it’s that easy, but hopefully you can find an acceptable solution.
April 11th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
I’m having a related problem with the demo and the full version. I just upgraded my memory and am wondering if the problem could be with my NVidia…
Anyway, in the demo the music and general gameplay are fine, but Tim himself runs as though he is floating. Not slow, just floating. In the full version, he is practically running through sludge.
What could be causing the full game to run so slowly?
April 11th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
So, no way for change of the 60 Hz? i’ve a 19″ CRT monitor.. and 60hz on that is like to have sun in the eye.. :\
April 11th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
As somebody mentioned above, I also have a problem to run braid on my system using western language settings. However, I was able to run braid completely ok with eastern languages, like, Japanese, Korean, Chinese. As I read through various translated texts done in Japanese and Korean, I see there are some mismatches between those thus I would really like to see what original text is like.
April 11th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Hi there, just purchased the game yesterday, and it’s running fine. However, I am faced with the same problem that was already mentioned by Sebastian: Since I’m from Switzerland, it installed automatically the German version. I am very unhappy with that, though, because I am playing this game not least for the writing, and I’m very likely to write about it (which I would need the original text to quote for). So, even if the quality of the translation would be better than for the average game (which is, needless to say, often far from terrific), I still would prefer playing it in English.
Since there is no regular option to change the language - has somebody come up with one? Will there be a patch to fix it? Or can you do something about the installation (like, doing it via hotspot-shield to fake an US-IP)? …can you do more than one installations on the same computer with the same serial-code?
Would be extremely grateful if Jonathan or somebody else could help me out there - really looking forward to playing the game, but in its current state, I have to consider it as flawed.
April 11th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Laura:
When you press the 0 key during gameplay, what does it say?
Also, what model is your graphics card?
Thanks,
-Jonathan.
April 11th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Lunaticivy: I am working on this Western Language problem and will hopefully have a fix for it but it may take a little time.
Atom: Right now there isn’t a way to go higher than 60hz in the game, unless you play in windowed mode (press alt-enter or put -windowed on the command line). This may be changed in a future version.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Christof: You can put
-language english
on the command-line and the game should run in English… hopefully this helps!
Also if you are launching from Steam, part of the Steam UI lets you pick what language to run in (right-click on the game and select Properties).
April 11th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
@Jonathan
Thanks a lot, works perfectly fine!
April 12th, 2009 at 2:24 am
I have the black screen problem(in both the demo) as well, the strange thing is that it worked the first times I started it, but now it’s always black. Eagerly waiting for a fix for this issue, I don’t want to buy the full version of Braid until I can play the demo properly!
April 12th, 2009 at 2:28 am
Tried the Braid demo and was impressed, but the game doesn’t seem to like alt tabbing, and goes black screen as soon you tab back to the game. Only forced shut down and restart fixes it.
I would buy it instantly if there was a proper windowed mode so i still can access the taskbar. I need to keep attention on other programs. I usually run my desktop in 1024×768, and the window from using -windowed was too large to fit on the screen.
April 12th, 2009 at 3:46 am
I heard from the indiegame blog that you are planning to release a version with more options for weaker graphic cards.
I really encourage you to do so, we’d all be very grateful.
A small config.exe with basic options to switch around according to people’s computers would be great.
Thank you for all your hard work.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:03 am
Hello,
I wanted to try the demo of Braid today but i have one serious problem.
My Braid is in japanese….
and I can find nowhere in menu an option to change the language.
How can I change the language?
Thanks in advance.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:30 am
Jon:
When I press 0 on the full version it says 6.6 fps (targeting 60), postprocess is off, and it says audio status: (nothing there).
The only way the game will run is if I run it windowed. My graphics card is NVidia 5200.
Thanks!
April 12th, 2009 at 4:52 am
for those who are using windows 7
download and install DirectX 9.0c
restart
and run braid.exe
April 12th, 2009 at 6:14 am
Laura: Okay, I will look into this… the next release will be able to run at a lower resolution, and the 5200 will be able to handle that better.
Parnso: Put
-language english
on the command line and you should be fine.
April 12th, 2009 at 6:15 am
Lucian: Alt-Tab does work for every machine we ever tested Braid on… what video card and drivers do you have?
You can put -windowed on the command line to run in windowed mode.
April 12th, 2009 at 6:44 am
Hello,
I tried the demo, yesterday, but it crashes at start with “TODO” error.
So I tried to download the 1.010 version, but still the same error…
And now I tried the -windowed workaround, but it still doesn’t work
I have an Athlon XP 3200+, 2Go RAM, GeForce6800GT, running under Windows XP SP3
April 12th, 2009 at 7:01 am
Thanks i did that, but now I’m getting the “TODO Error” and even in windowed mods I’m getting the error.
When i don’t change the language I don’t get the “TODO Error”…
April 12th, 2009 at 7:34 am
I have experienced the same problem as andrew; I can only see what seem to be the texture planes…The text is barely readable, but I did manage to quit the game (through trial and error). You can see the main screen and the menu here:
[IMG]http://uploader.polorix.net//files/1249/braidscreen1.bmp[/IMG]
[IMG]http://uploader.polorix.net//files/1249/braidscreen2.bmp[/IMG]
[IMG]http://uploader.polorix.net//files/1249/braidscreen3.bmp[/IMG]
I am running windows xp home (SP3), with an Intel(R) 82865G Graphics Controller, Pentium 4 3 Ghz Processor, 1 Gb RAM.
I don’t know if I just need a better graphics card, but I hope there is a solution to this problem; I’ve been waiting a long time to play Braid.
Thanks
April 12th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Hello, first of all i would like to say that this game looks AMAZING congratulations!
Ideally i would like to play this game on my Samsung nc10 netbook. After your suggestion i downloaded the demo to figure out if the game would play on the nc10. First i got the todo error and fixed that using -half after reading pkt-zer0’s post here. My only question now is that when i hit 0 to check the fps it says there that the postprocessing is off.
My os is win xp sp3 home 32bit, direct x fully updated. Gpu: intel gma 945, cpu: intel atom 1.6 GHz, 2gigs Ram
I also noticed the same thing on a desktop computer running win xp sp3 pro 32bit, direct x fully updated, cpu amd athlon 64 x2 3800+, gpu nvidia 7800 gs driver ver. 6.14.11.8208, 2gigs Ram. This computer runned the demo with no other probs whatsoever.
I havent had the chance to try to run the game on my own desktop to see if runs okay i will post back soon.
Again. Great game!
April 12th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Kinda off topic, but…
Jonathan, Braid has the dubious honor of having the most confusing save mechanic I’ve ever seen! Seriously, I never know what’s it gonna do. The options aren’t sub-par either, in that regard. It’s just… very confusing, like on some outmost galactic zen scale or whatever.
Maybe I’m nit-picking, but I think your minimalist design kinda back-fired here.
Yeah I’m definitely nit-picking.
April 12th, 2009 at 8:13 am
To Jonathan: I have a Geforce 5900 FX card in my machine. Braid runs and displays perfectly as long i dont alt tab out of it.
The drivers is forceware 175.19 and I run windows xp.
April 12th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Forgot to mention, i did try -windowed, but the windowed window is not fitting on the screen in the resolution i prefer to run my desktop in, which is 1024×768.
April 12th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Can someone please help me!
The game is running really slow for me and its because its stuck at 1280×1024 and i want to change that res to 1024×860 or 860×640
How can i change it to a lower resolution!
Please answere!
April 12th, 2009 at 10:36 am
I get the error. Tried -windowed and -half and neither helped. Have Comodo Firewall as mentioned by a previous poster. Could be some sort of conflict?
April 12th, 2009 at 11:01 am
You can’t change Braid’s resolution. It is not a 3D game. Even if you’re down-sampling it to a smaller size, your graphics card is drawing it at 1280×1024 and THEN down-sampling it.
Jonathan: Just an FYI, but your homepage still says “PC version coming in Q1 2009″. You’re probably pretty busy, but I wouldn’t want you to miss out on sales!
April 12th, 2009 at 11:08 am
OK. I restarted my computer, forced Comodo into Install Mode (by starting some random installer) and Braid worked fine. Exited Comodo Install Mode, ran Braid and it popped up the box asking if I wanted to allow Braid to run. Selected trusted application and it worked fine. Weird that the pop-up did not display before. Maybe a stupid error with my machine; do not know if Comodo was stopping it running correctly or not. But it definitely didn’t work until I restarted. Just for your information.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Actually Johnny, that’s not 100% correct… if the game renders at a lower resolution, then it will end up drawing fewer pixels, *but* it will be drawing them from source textures that are made for 1280×720, so it will still eat a lot more memory bandwidth from the graphics card than it would if the graphics were made for the lower resolution.
However, it would still be faster, and for that reason the next version is going to support lower resolutions.
SYLver: Right now, you can run the game with
-half
on the command-line. You won’t be able to put together the puzzles yet though, because that doesn’t work in this mode. But the updated version of Braid that I am putting out Monday will work.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:35 am
My laptop has the same graphics problem that Andrew and Alexander have
http://braid-game.com/news/?p=558#comment-5439
It’s a Win2k P4 Laptop with ATI Radeon 7000 IGP ati driver 6.14.10.6430, Directx 9.0c. Debug details: direct3d zbuf, dxt texture, alt pixel ==disabled. Alpha Dithering=ordered. Enable write combining==on or off. Graphics acceleration is set one above ‘directx disable’. Setting graphics hardware acceleration to low will disable directx and give a “TODO error” even when -windowed.
As you may be able to infer from the specs, a video game hasn’t held my attention in probably at least 8 years. Thanks for providing a demo so I could test. Also, thanks for creating inspirational work.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Curt, your hardware acceleration needs to be set all the way up. Braid is effectively a 3D game in the way it uses the hardware.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:39 am
I caved in and bought Braid. The -half commandline option made it playable for me in a window, though im missing mouse use. But ill wait for the monday version. Cheers. Full screen and alt tabbing still blackens out the game for me.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Oh, yes, when I initially had this problem all acceleration was set to max. So, i get the problem regardless of how I turn the acceleration knobs.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:52 am
It may just be that Braid does not run on Windows 2k. VMC didn’t test on that, because it’s just really old.
April 12th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Just tried on same laptop w/ XP Pro and got the same result. Let me know if you want me to try anything else.
Speaking of this being a direct3d implementation, I enjoyed your earlier discussion on the direct2d api alternative
April 12th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Curt, it really ought to work on XP Pro… I will look into it.
April 12th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
athlon 2 ghz and fx 5500 , the new demo runs but crawling at 4 fps with no post and no vsync.
Damn pc gaming, i hate PC for same reaosn please put it on PSN.
April 12th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
So, I tried out the demo and it worked well, so I grabbed this on Steam. Now I have an issue.. which may or may not have been there in the demo, but it’s definitely there now. Both Alt-Tabbing (sometimes), and exiting the game (always so far) reboot my computer. I don’t see any type of BSOD, it just flips to black and restarts. Other than that it seems to run lovely.
Specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 940, 4GB, ATI HD 4870 with Catalyst 9.3
April 12th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
“The ATI RADEON 7000 is a dual display graphics product, which provides 32 MB of graphics memory. The RADEON 7000 is a 2D graphics card and is certified for 2D software applications and 2D Digital Video Editing hardware.”
A lot of people having problems have computers older than dirt. I think it would be impossible to get the game running smoothly on that kind of card.
April 12th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
This is what I get when I run the game…
http://i333.photobucket.com/albums/m370/Josephsiar/braid.jpg
What does it menas °-°??
I have to admit that it looks rather impressive : P
April 12th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Well, Tim — no matter what there is a serious driver problem happening, since even if a game behaves badly it should not be able to crash your driver or reboot your machine.
I see that ATI came out with Catalyst driver version 9.4 a few days ago — I would recommend trying at as the first step. If the problem persists, let me know what OS you are running and I will try it out (I do have a Radeon 4870 here in a box, haven’t opened it yet though).
April 12th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I have 3GB on ram and an Intel CoreDuo at 2.11 Ghz with Wndows XP.
I don’t have graphic card but it never says it needs one.
Thanks ^_^
April 12th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Hmm, Pepe, what graphics card do you have?
It looks like a Pixel Shader 1.4 card or earlier, which would have problems rendering Braid stuff.
I may be able to add support for these graphics chips, but it will take a bit of time (there is higher priority stuff to deal with, like outright crashes).
April 12th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Okay, thanks a lot for the quick answer. I’ll take care of the card as soon as I save some money : P
Thanks!
April 12th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
I get the same result as Pepe, (see previous post’s screenshots). I hope there is an easy solution… I might just need to get a better graphics card…
Hope you can help,
-Chris
April 12th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
So, any news from Hothead on when the Mac version is coming out, Jonathan?
April 12th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
The Mac version is on a bit of a longer timeline. They are making good progress on it, but there is a significant amount of work to go. I wouldn’t try to pin a release date on it yet.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Hey Jonathan, I’m just wondering if there’s a problem with the Steam speed run achievement; I’ve done it three times now, but no love from Steam.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Sorry, I did indeed miss a few things in my post. I agree it shouldn’t be able to crash it like that, and I’m not sure what is actually doing it - just that it’s only happening when I quit Braid.
I did upgrade to Catalyst 9.4 and it didn’t make a difference. However, I played around a bit more.. and with just Steam/it running, it’s fine. When I leave Firefox 3.08 running in the background with 2 windows, 15-20ish tabs, 175mb-ish, then the quit does it. I’m not sure if it’s memory related or something in FF… pretty sure my memory is okay.
The rest of my specs: Vista 32bit SP2 beta, dual screen.
Anyway… while I don’t think it’s my memory, it’s probably not worth the effort tracking it down unless it actually happens to more than just me :(, whatever it actually is…
Beautiful game though, loving it.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Thanks, Jon, for being so quick to reply to everyone’s questions, and so accommodating!
April 12th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Ah!
I almost forgot to tell. I tried Braid in two laptops without graphics card but that have Windows Vista and there was no problem with the game.
Good day ^_^
April 12th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Ah, Pepe’s issue is probably the issue the older Radeon’s are having as well–I believe Radeon 7000 & 9000 is pixel shader <=1.4. Weird that direct3d will not complain about using features that don’t yet exist. I suppose if you don’t explicitly check for version the older version will just happily ignores random bits and pointers in fields which were reserved at that time in history?
April 12th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Basically. I am going to add a check for Shader Model 2 in an upcoming version.
April 12th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Rick: Not sure…. I will test the Speed Run achievement tonight. If it’s broken and I fix it, you should get the achievement automatically when it’s fixed (as long as you do not erase your speed run time).
April 12th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
im running braid on a win vista 32bit business, cpu intel q9550, gpu 4870 catalyst ver 9.3, 4GB ram
runs like a charm, no probs
April 12th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Got it from steam, oh my the game is beautiful. That finale with the princess backwards almost got a tear from me. too beautiful jesus.
As I didnt find a proper contact I am giving my props here and im telling everyone I know to get the name. Congrats for the GREAT game.
April 12th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Got it from steam, oh my the game is beautiful. That finale with the princess backwards almost got a tear from me. too beautiful jesus.
April 12th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Thank you for the beautiful game, Jonathan.
I thought I’d post my temporary workaround to the TODO error. Unlike the other people here having problems, my problem seemed to be a western-eastern language problem. My solution to the problem was simple: (I’m using a Vista 64x, so if you’re any other O/S user, I say you should try to find your respective application.)
- Open Control Panel
- Look for Regional and Language Options
- On your “Administrative” tab, select “Change System Locale” to a Western language and country. I chose “English (United States).”
- The computer will prompt you to reboot your desktop to apply the changes. Do so, and it should work.
I hope this helps for the some of you having the language problems, and I also hope this helps Jonathan figure out anything more extensive about this amazing game. All of that aside, I just played through the game in Korean and then again in English, and I thought the game doesn’t have the same vibe as it is in English than in Korean. Play it through the original language it was meant to be played on, and you’ll get more out of it.
April 12th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Yes, there is some kind of consistent problem when playing in a Western language from Asian versions of Windows. I have no idea what could be causing it, but will look into it over the next few days. Thank you for the detailed report!
April 13th, 2009 at 2:17 am
Can confirm Lifestream’s bug. Brit using a Japanese copy of Vista Ultimate 64. English US must be selected - crash still persists with English UK as the system locale.
As far as changing the system locale goes, it’s no big deal, but it would be nice if it was sorted out. Some random programs and installers require the ‘official’ locale.
Anyway, thanks Lifestream for enabling me to play the game. You’re a gent. And well done Jonathan for getting it onto the PC.
April 15th, 2009 at 8:12 am
xiko:
completely off topic i know, but as i don’t have the game yet and only came here to gather info as to whether it’ll run sufficiently well on a laptop i’m thinking of buying, i don’t think you or anyone else should be posting spoilers. it’s all very well giving ‘props’ here but please don’t spoil surprises in the game for those of us that haven’t played it yet.
April 21st, 2009 at 3:08 am
Thanks for the great game!!!
but i have one request to authors, please make changing controls buttons
April 21st, 2009 at 4:55 am
does exist any cheats for braid pc game ?
is there braid pc game in children mode ?
thank you
April 28th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Hi..
Until now is there a fix for the pixel shader less than 2.0?
i have mobility radeon 9200 with pixel shader 1.4
June 10th, 2009 at 1:44 am
is there a way in windowed mode to prevent braid from capturing the mouse?
it’s really annoying to have braid open and be surfing/working/anything else when braid captures the mouse.
June 10th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Braid captures the mouse because if you are trying to use the mouse on the puzzle screens, it’s hard to do otherwise.
This is typical of how many games work. There isn’t a way to disable it.
June 10th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
The way it has been done in the mac version of Braid is just perfect. Can slide the mouse in and out of the app. =)
Perhaps that’s just MacOS being awesome haha.
Thank you for such a prompt reply, and for a great game Jonathan. Look forward to your next project.