We've blogged about graphics card drivers before (here and here). However it continues to cause us pain. A constant rate of a few users a week experience problems in Construct 2 caused by poor quality graphics card drivers. This makes it look like Construct 2 is crashing or has glitches, but it's not our fault. Often these problems are caused by the graphics card driver, which is made by your graphics card vendor (e.g. nVidia, AMD or Intel). It's impossible for us to fix their drivers for them, so the only course of action is to update your driver and hope that a newer one works. If that doesn't work, there's nothing you can do.
There are two of us here at Scirra, and we've worked very hard for a long time to make high quality software we're extremely proud of. We aim to create software above and beyond the quality of anything else on the market. Inspired by the words of an appreciative customer, we aim to be conspicuous in our quality.
It is very frustrating for us to experience crashes and glitches in Construct 2 caused by big corporations who cannot write a driver that works for their own graphics card. This tarnishes our hard work, and of course the user assumes it's a problem in our software. It also wastes our time - we're keen to get going with new features in our software, but it feels like we are always busy helping customers with driver problems.
The major graphics card vendors - nVidia, AMD and Intel - are probably oblivious to the woes they are causing us. So I think it is vital to tell them. If updating your graphics card driver fixes a problem in Construct 2, contact your graphics card vendor. Send a support email, file a support ticket, or phone them up. Tell them their drivers do not work with modern software, and it concerns you. Tell them they're not doing good enough and you don't expect to have to update your driver to get a modern, well-written piece of software to work.
If any time in the past you've had to update your or someone else's driver to fix issues with Construct 2, it would be helpful to get in touch anyway to help let them know there is a problem.
The most common problems caused by poor quality graphics drivers are:
- Crash clicking 'New project' or opening another project
- Objects appear as empty rectangles
- Display glitches, like diagonal lines across sprites
If updating your driver fixes the problem, you can be certain the driver caused it. So get in touch. Demand the same level of quality from your graphics card vendor as you expect from Scirra!
Often your computer or laptop manufacturer is part of the problem. However, there are hundreds of manufacturers. The best thing to do is contact the graphics card vendors themselves since there are only three of them, and then hopefully they will pressure their partner companies in to doing better as well. Here are some helpful links:
nVidia submit feedback
AMD email form
Intel email form
Let's hope this isn't a problem forever!