Technical Problem: Help Needed

I've started to get a rather worrying problem on most (but not all) of the DizzyAGE games that I've got on my computer.
When I start the games Dizzy is continually jumping up and down (as if I were holding the space bar down) even though I'm not touching any of the keys. On the games with animated title screens he's doing it on the title screen as well.
I'd got a back-up copy of some of the games on a memory stick and tried to play these instead, but they have the same problem.
I've tried resetting the computer, which didn't help, and have done a full virus check on both the computer and memory stick, but both have come up clean. All my non DizzyAGE games are working perfectly and I'm having no other problems with my computer.
It's starting to concern me a bit, so any help that anyone could give would be gratefully received.

have you tried opening a text editor to see if the space bar is stuck down? :tongue:

Have you got a joystick plugged in with the autofire accidently in the on position? It happened to me once.

My joystick hasn't got an autofire, but I tried re-calibrating it, and it solved the problem! Thanks for that; I'm very grateful.
It's very bizarre that it caused problems on some games but not others.

ohhh didn't realise it was a joystick.... :tongue:

i've had similar probs with my gamepad, i think thats why keyboard always works best. i use ps2 controller with usb adapter and always having to reconfigure

You can disable the gamepad / joystick from the game's setup,
or you can try to switch it from analog to digital mode (or viceversa).

With a gamepad, Dizzy jumps either if the 4/8 directional cross is used or the (left) thumbstick is moved up.

Here is where the problem can occure, since the thumbstick doesn't return TRUE/FALSE values, like the cross, so I have to use an interval to consider it was moved enought.
For some gamepads/joysticks this interval can be to small, and the move is processed even if the stick was not acctually touched.

Try to calibrate it, or if it's a gamepad, try to disable it (switch between digital and analog) and use just the 4/8 directions cross.

If needed, I can have this value editable from the .ini file, for people who have this problem and can't fix it in other way. Gamepads are fun, especially if they have force feedback (and the game uses it).

Let me know how many have this issue!

I never use a joystick to play Dizzy games on my PC (I didn't actually know that you could use a joystick!), so that's why I never thought of it as a possible explanation. I suppose the few games that still worked when I had the problem either don't support a joystick or had the joystick option disabled.

personally i can't imagine playing dizzy with anything other than keys.

i think there was a bug in the game engine of RRD v1.0 that meant it didn't support Joysticks, and possibly WWD doesn't either, i can't remember...

i think there was a bug in the game engine of RRD v1.0 that meant it didn't support Joysticks, and possibly WWD doesn't either, i can't remember... They were two of the games that were still working (the others were Dizzy TUCA and Mushroom Pie).