Geometry Games FAQ

The geometry games share a common foundation, and this FAQ applies to all of them. In the questions and answers below, the term application refers to whatever application you are currently using, such as the Torus Games, KaleidoTile or Curved Spaces.

General

G1. When I paste an image onto a face of the polyhedron in KaleidoTile, the image’s transparency gets lost. What must I do to preserve transparency?

G2. My question doesn’t appear on this FAQ. What should I do?

Mac OS X

M1. What version of Mac OS X do I need?

Windows

W1. I downloaded application.zip without difficulty, but when I unzip it I find only the supporting files (Languages, Help, Textures) — the program itself seems to be missing. Where can I find it?

W2. The application tells me it Can't find an “OpenGL driver” for my 3D graphics hardware. What is an OpenGL driver and where can I find one?

G1. When I paste an image onto a face of the polyhedron in KaleidoTile, the image’s transparency gets lost. What must I do to preserve transparency?

First take a look at the application’s built-in help files (choose Help… from the application’s Help menu). If they don’t resolve your question, please submit it via the Geometry Games Contact Page for a more-or-less prompt reply.

Windows has marked the file application.zip as “blocked” because it was downloaded from the internet. To unblock it, right-click application.zip and choose Properties. At the bottom of the Properties windows you should see the message “Security: This file came from another computer and might be blocked to help protect this computer”. Click the Unblock button sitting just to the right of that message, then click OK. The file application.zip is now unblocked. Unzip it and you should find the program itself (application.exe) as well as all supporting files.

W2. The application tells me it Can't find an “OpenGL driver” for my 3D graphics hardware. What is an OpenGL driver and where can I find one?

Geometry Games software uses the standard cross-platform OpenGL graphics library, which in turn uses your computer’s graphics circuitry to draw the games. A piece of software called an OpenGL driver forms the bridge between OpenGL and the graphics hardware. On most home computers this all happens automatically and you never need to think about it. Computer manufacturers like HP and Dell pre-install a high-quality OpenGL driver on every machine they ship, so if you bought a standard PC, the geometry games should run fast and well. If, however, you installed (or re-installed) Windows XP yourself, then please read on…

Microsoft Windows XP comes with an OpenGL driver that ignores your computer’s good, fast graphics processor and instead draws the games using “software rendering”, which can be 200 times slower, too slow to be usable. If you installed Windows XP from a distribution disk or downloaded a driver from Microsoft Update, you got Microsoft’s crummy driver.

To correct the problem, you need to download a good driver from the web site of the company that manufactured your graphics processor. To determine who manufactured your graphics processor, go to Start : Control Panel : System : Hardware : Device Manager, click on the ‘+’ next to your computer’s name to see the list of hardware types, and then click on the ‘+’ next to Display Adapters to see what graphics processor your computer has. Most likely you will have Intel Integrated Graphics, an AMD (formerly ATI) graphics card or an NVIDIA graphics card. You’ll see its model number as well, which you’ll need momentarily.

Intel Integrated Graphics. Go to Intel’s download page, choose Graphics from the menu on the left-hand side of the page, select your graphics processor’s model number, and follow the instructions.

AMD (formerly ATI). Go to AMD’s download page, select your model number and operating system, and you’ll arrive at a page where you can download a driver and find installation instructions.

NVIDIA. Go to NVIDIA’s download page, select your graphics processor’s series (for example, an NVIDIA GeForce 6200 counts as the “GeForce 6 Series”) and operating system, and you’ll arrive at a page where you can download a driver.