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[Pishtaco]

This is a problem someone has run into with Stacker:http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=2455.msg348806#msg348806

I'm sure I've read about something like this happening with other GM games, but I can't remember whether there's a standard straightforward way to fix it or not. My guess about what the problem is, is that it's a sprite with some alpha transparency being drawn onto a surface, and then that surface later being drawn onto the screen; the problem is that the surface isn't coping with the alpha properly.

Any suggestions?

[ChevyRay]

Argh, yeah, the boulder is a finicky little thing.  I know what's wrong, I just find it hard to test for.

Hey Derek, I don't know if you've fixed the surface transparency issue (black squares around sprites) but here's the fix for it:

Call this code after you've drawn to the surface, before you reset surface target:

draw_set_blend_mode_ext(bm_src_color,bm_one)
draw_set_color(c_black)
draw_rectangle(0,0,width,height,0)
draw_set_blend_mode(bm_normal)

It's caused by some oddity in the way Game Maker handles transparency in surfaces. What this code does is set the blending mode to write to the alpha channel only then it blanks it out.

EDIT: Oh right, as for getting "Trying to use non-existing surface" errors, you can prevent that by checking surface_exists(surf). If the surface doesn't exist immediately re-create. If that isn't enough to solve the problem loop through that code a few times with 100ms sleep() calls in between to give it some time to clear the VRAM.

Hey, thanks for that, Sean!

[Pishtaco]

Thanks!