CMBB display issue in Windows 7

[Paulverisor64]

Today I installed Combat Mission on my new computer.

I uncovered a strange graphics issue where depending on my cursor placement I can or can't see the menu. When I click on Start Game the display of the games is very random depending on how lucky I get as I pan my mouse cursor. When I do pick a game it is very difficult to even get to the place of having the game displayed because the scenario options do not display.

The game screen itself seems legitimate. When I exit the scenario the screen sticks on the exit screen. Upon getting out of the window and getting back into the window I was able to scroll around on my screen until the Exit game option showed up.

Thinking this may be the Vista issue which patch 1.04 was released I tried compatability mode on XP Service pack 2. This did not work and it introduced another issue as the game wanted me to select a resolution out of one at a time choices. The best option that was allowed was a 800 by 600 option.

Getting back into the game there was no improvement in XP SP2 compatability.

Since the time I played Combat Mission successfully I have made several computer changes.

-Windows XP to Windows 7

-Nvidia 8800 to ATI 5850

-19 inch monitor to 32 inch widescreen TV. (Yes the game screen images are stretched considerably, but this I could deal with).

I would really like to get a finer resolution, and absolutely need to get around the strange display issues.

I have read several forum threads in regards to the Vista patch but haven't found anything specific to my situation.

[huhr]

Hi Paul,

I play the game with a 24" widescreen monitor and when I installed on my new machine with Vista it worked fine. I then upgraded to windows 7 and it also worked. I do know that cmbb etc only have a certain resolution available. Perhaps, uninstall the game and try to install the game. I would possibly try the game after each patch to see if it works from the get go. Like usual, background programs running?

[Paulverisor64]

Hi Paul,

I play the game with a 24" widescreen monitor and when I installed on my new machine with Vista it worked fine. I then upgraded to windows 7 and it also worked. I do know that cmbb etc only have a certain resolution available. Perhaps, uninstall the game and try to install the game. I would possibly try the game after each patch to see if it works from the get go. Like usual, background programs running?

It is good to know that some people have had good luck with their CMBB install with Windows 7. Perhaps this is an ATI thing? I do have the 64 bit version of Windows 7 installed.

I did install and uninstall this game a couple weeks ago. The uninstall did not even appear in the uninstall program listing. My disk has version 1.02 on it and I have patched up to 1.03.

I did purchase the game download as well as the disk. I tried installing the download version 1st yesterday but it appears I could not because my licensing expired a couple weeks ago. The download was patched to 1.03.

I am thinking that if I run out of all options I might reformat my computer in a week or 2 and try again.

This is frustrating because I thought that the Windows compatability mode would help me out.

[Schrullenhaft]

I don't believe any of the Windows compatibility settings will do anything for most 3D games. You can pretty much ignore them.

With ATI video cards you are going to see two issues (even with the 1.04 patch).

1) Text in the initial menus (such as the scenario/ops listing) may not appear.

2) Text in game may be blank.

For number 1, the solution is to Alt-Tab out of the game to minimize it. Then re-maximize the game and the text should usually appear. This was a problem with a number of other video cards and drivers in the past, but it has been a problem with the ATI drivers for the last several years.

For number 2, you'll need to download the "Radeon_text_fix.zip" file and extract it. In here there are replacement BMP files for the text bitmaps in the games (there will be three separate folders, one for each CM game). You'll need to copy the '0.bmp', '1.bmp' and '2.bmp' files to the BMP directory. You will be overwriting the current BMP files with slightly modified ones. Once in game you should see your text again (typically yellow on a black background). One problem with this workaround is that in the Save Game dialog box, the characters typed in will appear as thin, black boxes - you'll be unable to read the file names you type.

There's no planned fix for this and I don't know if the ATI/AMD drivers will ever address this problem. Surprisingly ATI/AMD fixed the missing 'fog tables' in the CMx1 series about two years ago and that was completely unexpected. This issue has been around for a bit longer, but I don't think any fix may be forthcoming.

Here's the Knowledgebase article with the Radeon Text Fix. There's a link within the article that will be the download. Inside the .zip file is a readme.txt file that describes what to do.

[Paulverisor64]

Schrullenhaft: Thank you for your well thought out answer.

Unfortunately I haven't shaken the graphics errors.

At 1st I tried the 2 options which you suggested. These did not fix the issue. The ATI fix file even made the list of available maps blank out.

I went ahead and reformatted my computer to hopefully get a fresh take at the install and if not a improved situation at least something showing up different. Things did show up a little different. This time my 1st graphic setting given was 1400 by 1050 which would be a vast improvement over 800 by 600. The strange thing is that the actual in game screen showed up as 1600 by 1200 and my computer only supports 1920 by 1080. The opening screens looked no different than before.

I have attached a couple variations of the opening screen which show how the screen display fluctuates with mouse placement. Sorry my pictures are so small, even at that size however you can see the problem I'm having.

Please let me know if you can think of any more ideas to try.

[Paulverisor64]

Still attempting to figure out the graphics issue.

In googling I see that one thing done to prevent blank screen and lockup is to turn off Anti Aliasing or leave it as application default. My settings in ATI Catalyst Center is application default.

It is very confusing what I see and hear when I open up Combat Mission because so much is not right. I will give a better description of what I have noticed.

1) As soon as opening up game sound plays but screen is blank

2) Moving cursor around uncovers missing icons tab by tab, but moving cursor also makes the icons disappear.

3) When I get the start tab and click it the original screen does not go away. Sometimes left mouse clicking reveals something else sometimes moving the cursor.

4) Getting to the game is very tricky, when I get the quick scenario listing some of the time the games appear, sometimes they don't.

5) Clicking in the screen location of a specific scenario will get it to set up the configuration menu.

6) I can not see the configuration settings. I have found that sometimes hitting printscreen and pasting it in paint I can see the display that I should see which helps me left mouse click a certain area of the screen.

7) When I get into a game there are odd shaped boxes near the top of the screen which flicker strangely.

I have tried figuring something out but it appears it is beyond me and the resources available to fix the problem. It could be that I'm the only one even experiencing this problem.

I do believe the mismatch is between ATI and Combat Mission. I have a similar glitch with ATI and my CAD application where the screen display prior to exiting a part does not go away.

Will Battlefront ever make a modernized version of Combat Mission 2? I would buy it in a heartbeat, for now it looks like the end of the road.

[George MC]

It is good to know that some people have had good luck with their CMBB install with Windows 7. Perhaps this is an ATI thing? I do have the 64 bit version of Windows 7 installed.

I did install and uninstall this game a couple weeks ago. The uninstall did not even appear in the uninstall program listing. My disk has version 1.02 on it and I have patched up to 1.03.

I did purchase the game download as well as the disk. I tried installing the download version 1st yesterday but it appears I could not because my licensing expired a couple weeks ago. The download was patched to 1.03.

I am thinking that if I run out of all options I might reformat my computer in a week or 2 and try again.

This is frustrating because I thought that the Windows compatability mode would help me out.

Have you downloaded and applied the Vista patch? I did that for my Windows 7 64 bit installation and it all works fine (Using a Zotac GeForce GTX 260).

[Paulverisor64]

Perhaps I should try the Combat Mission 1.04 Demo.

Does anyone know if there would be any install conflicts I should be aware of?

[Schrullenhaft]

Which Catalyst driver are you using ? What resolution are you outputting to your 32" TV (which I take is your main display device) ?

For the missing text, buttons and some graphics you need to Alt-Tab out of the game to minimize it. Then re-maximize the game and the text should usually appear. I'm not sure about some of the other things you're seeing ("odd shaped boxes near the top of the screen which flicker strangely"). They're a bit new to me and neither of the fixes I offered will probably address them.

Alt-Tab'ing forces a "refresh" of the screen that seems necessary with the ATI drivers. You may need to repeat this for each of the setup screens. Sometimes you may see a screen element (such as a button) popup because you've moved the mouse at a certain point that the screen was drawing, but few things may popup after that. This was a problem that was seen with a number of other video cards and drivers in the past (Cirrus Logic, 3dfx, Diamond/S3, etc.). It has been a problem with the ATI drivers for the last several years, but I believe it wasn't an issue 3 or so years ago.

To my knowledge the 1.04 version of the game will NOT fix this issue. It is a driver problem that is irrespective of DirectX 10 calls that the 1.04 patch fixes (makes CMBB/CMAK's calls DirectX 10 compliant). You can try the CMBB demo which is now version 1.04, just make sure to install it to a different directory (since it has some built-in limitations that won't let it work with the full version).

The 1400x1050 resolution was strange. CMBB and CMAK don't support any of the newer "widescreen" resolutions. If a Prefs file doesn't exist for the game, it should go through a resolution selection process where the resolution and vertical refresh will be tried and displayed on the screen. You hit a key on the keyboard to select the currently displayed resolution. The game automatically cycles from your current desktop resolution (or the closest CMBB equivalent) at the highest refresh rate available to the video driver, down to a lower refresh rate at that resolution until 60Hz is reached. Then the next lower CM supported resolution is tried at the highest refresh rate supported by the video driver (some of these might result in scrambled screens or errors about being "out of range" on the monitor). Typical resolutions supported by CMBB and CMAK are:

800x600

832x624 (Mac)

1024x768

1152x864 (Mac, maybe PC)

1280x1024

1600x1200 (maximum)

There might be a few more not listed here, but these are the most common ones supported by the CM series.

Each of these resolutions might support anywhere from 60Hz to 120Hz (it depends on your video card's 3D support of those resolutions and refresh rates).

[Paulverisor64]

Schrulllenhaft: I am using 2 ATI 5850 graphics cards with crossfire enabled. My driver level is 9.11.

Oh my goodness, I just solved it! As I was writing this update "I unchecked the crossfire" and wouldn't you know the main problem now has gone away.

This obviously won't be a solution for when I want to play other games but for now life is good. I just happened to recall that when I had nvidia and SLI enabled in another game Silent Hunter III a while back that this was the culprit.

It isn't perfect but I am happy. The one problem I am seeing now is the odd shaped boxes which I talked about a post back.

I'll attach a picture to show what I mean.

You also asked what my native TV resolution is. That would be 1920 by 1080. The game has been showing 1600 by 1200, but when I originally set up it absolutely put me at 1400 by 1050. I don't know if this is linked somehow but that is what my picture imports into paint.

Thanks for not giving up on my problem!

[Schrullenhaft]

It looks like those "black boxes" are endemic to the Catalyst drivers. This CMAK thread on Windows 7 has a few users running into this problem with the Radeon 4200 (IGP) and a 5700 series Radeon.

I don't know if the Catalyst 9.12 drivers will fix this issue or not. You may also want to experiment with the Catalyst 9.10 drivers. Before installing a new driver, COMPLETELY uninstall the current one.

[Paulverisor64]

Per your suggestion I did upgrade to ATI driver 9.12.

As you can see the strange boxes occupy the same location on the screen.

If I rotate the screen the boxes do not move.

Through your link it does appear that I am not the only one to inherit this ATI driver related issue.

I did notice prior to my driver upgrade that there was text in the boxes, but it was clipped and I couldn't read the contents. I didn't notice the text this time around but I'll try some stuff to see if it does show up.

[GDog]

Through your link it does appear that I am not the only one to inherit this ATI driver related issue.

I am one of those unluck SOB's. Jus installed a new ATI HD 5850 and I have those same ugly boxes.

[Chargin Smith]

Is anyone running this game on a high end computer using Windows 7 without any issues?

[huhr]

Chargin,

I run the game fine with my windows 7, no problems i might run it in comp mode not sure though

[George MC]

Running it on Windows 7 64 bit with aGeForce GTX 260 and 4Gb RAM no problems.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Runs of my high spec laptop with Windows 7 with no problems but an NVIDIA card.

[Ankh Morpork]

Anyway of getting Barbarossa To Berlin to work with Eyefinity? I love the game and want to run it in 5760x1080 res