[casual_games] If Vista is going to be such a problem...

[Matthew Douglass]

Alex,

 

OK, had another thought and realized more about what was going on and I need
to correct my earlier email.  I do see the error message your QA dept sees
if I try to get to the game via the Start Menu instead of via the Games
Explorer.  

 

Since Parental Controls blocks the entire folder in which your game is
installed to, I think I am going to have to take the following steps to work
around the Start Menu shortcuts not working:

 

1)      Create a stub executable in a folder separate from the game

2)      Link the start menu shortcut to the stub executable

3)      Have the stub executable make the check with parental controls to
see if the game will be allowed to run (this can be done via
IGameExplorer::VerifyAccess).

4)      If it can run then go ahead and run it, otherwise throw up an error
message explaining why.

 

Definitely a pain in the butt to do all this, but I don't see any other way
to get start menu icons working.  Shame it is that way.

 

Matthew

 

From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Matthew Douglass
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 10:51 AM
To: 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [casual_games] If Vista is going to be such a problem...

 

Alex,

I'm not sure why your QA department is seeing the behavior you are - but
it's not what we've seen in testing with Vista RTM.  WE get a much more
normal message that the game has been blocked by parental controls.  I've
attached screenshots from that.

Matthew

 

From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Alex St. John
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 10:32 AM
To: casual_games at igda.org
Subject: [casual_games] If Vista is going to be such a problem...

 

During the break I promised to ask my QA guys to give me a report on the
exact behavior of parental controls in the RTM version of Vista.  I have a
couple interesting screenshots that I'm not sure will make it up in my mail
but they show the error dialogs Vista throws when a user clicks a game that
has had parental controls applied to it.  

 

So IF a game is registered with the Vista game explorer and parental
controls are enabled  to apply to that game Vista throws an error dialog
that offers to delete the LINK to the game from the game explorer.
Interestingly Vista throws a different error for games parental controls
apply to that are supplied with Vista by Microsoft.  The only substantial
change in behavior between the beta and RTM was the change that prevented
Microsoft supplied links from being deleted but continued to offer to delete
Non-Microsoft game links.  I think it would be interesting to ask Microsoft
why they presume to have the OS delete our game links when parental controls
apply to them, but not their own.  

 

Both error messages make no mention of parental controls being enabled as
the reason the game link is broken which is certain to be very confusing to
any consumers who encounter these errors.  

 

-Alex

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