AMD 22.8 series breaks game again

[Jiggathebauce]

On 1/18/2023 at 11:35 PM, Schrullenhaft said:

This is the process to use the:

AMD Bug Report Tool

Depending on what videocard you have and what other games you may run, the 22.6.1 and 22.5.2 drivers both seem to work fine with all of the CM games to my knowledge.

Previous Windows 10 64-bit AMD Radeon drivers (ignore that it says it is for the RX 6500XT, they will work with any Radeon RX 4xx and newer)

Went ahead and reported it twice to AMD, the first time i forgot to leave my contact info for them. Here's hoping they address it in the next update...

[Rasputino]

I get a white screen with version 23.2.1. The problem is not fixed. I have the RX570.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Rasputino

[Jiggathebauce]

11 hours ago, Rasputino said:

I get a white screen with version 23.2.1. The problem is not fixed. I have the RX570.

New driver? Looking forward to see how it works when i get home...

[Jiggathebauce]

5 hours ago, Jiggathebauce said:

New driver? Looking forward to see how it works when i get home...

Ok, so while performance in general seems to have improved A LOT with 23.2.1, Explosions near camera are still flashing the screen white and making play unenjoyable. Reporting it again to AMD

[Bufo]

On 2/15/2023 at 12:11 PM, Rasputino said:

I get a white screen with version 23.2.1. The problem is not fixed. I have the RX570.

I confirm, also reporting.

[Codreanu]

On 2/15/2023 at 7:17 PM, Jiggathebauce said:

Ok, so while performance in general seems to have improved A LOT with 23.2.1, Explosions near camera are still flashing the screen white and making play unenjoyable. Reporting it again to AMD

I also felt like I was loading into missions a lot faster which is weird because I figured that would be a hard drive/CPU thing unless it's loading stuff into VRAM? Still functionally unplayable but at least it's unplayable in a different way now.

[Jiggathebauce]

5 minutes ago, Codreanu said:

I also felt like I was loading into missions a lot faster which is weird because I figured that would be a hard drive/CPU thing unless it's loading stuff into VRAM? Still functionally unplayable but at least it's unplayable in a different way now.

Omg yes! I loaded a saved game in under a minute, usually takes up to 5, long enough for the landing screen song to play multiple times. I'd have time to make food during loads usually. Scrolling and input lag virtually gone too, and it was REALLY bad in CMCW.  

I think maybe i need to upload a video of how bad the white flashing is, if stuff is dying during an artillery strike the game is practically unplayable. I may as well be throwing flashbangs at myself in a COD game. 

[Hetzi]

Still not fixed with the new 23.2.2 Driver...

This is getting more and more annoying!

[Jiggathebauce]

Hmm ... I'm not thrilled that for half a year at least, AMD card owners have been unable to play CM2 titles except as flashbang to the face simulator.  Here's what I'm going to do:

I'm going to signal boost on AMDs forum, another user has already posted there, but i think another thread specifically calling out CM and multiple driver updates screwing it up is warranted.

Also, I have a steamdeck, bought CMCW on bf website and i believe we have access to steam key correct? If so, I will see if steam deck doesn't have this issue

I will add that this solution is highly impractical, it's basically a console and it will be extremely weird to play CM with a gamepad setup and potentially on my television screen.

I am not pleased at the moment with AMD.

 

 

Edited February 23, 2023 by Jiggathebauce

[Jiggathebauce]

Response from someone in the AMD forum:

"Probably missing some specific ogl code extensions that game devs used.

 

Send a bug report, or maybe getting the game dev to contact AMD and let them know what coding they used?"

 

Anyone opened a ticket with Battlefront?

[Schrullenhaft]

Battlefront is aware of this issue and are looking at it. However this issue is more likely in AMD's court. The 22.7.1 drivers brought in a bunch of OpenGL optimizations and it is one (or several) of those optimized routines for implementing OpenGL that has caused these problems.

These optimizations have brought some welcome speed improvements to CM for Radeon users. CM loads multiple times faster than it did before. However they have also caused problems that everyone in this thread is aware of now. I don't know how hard it would be for Battlefront to reprogram some of the visual affects in CM that are affected by these optimizations. Using different calls/methods to reproduce some of the effects may be complex enough to almost not be worth the effort. At its simplest it may result in an option to turn off certain effects for compatibility purposes.

If AMD were to address this issue there could be a couple of possibilities:

AMD figures out that some of the optimizations need refining and are able to find a fix and maintain the speed improvements.

or

AMD realizes that the optimizations are incompatible with certain OpenGL calls. This results in a decision to:

1) Consider the incompatible calls as deprecated in their OpenGL implementation - this can be a likely scenario if the calls are older and there are others that are considered suitable replacements (however harder they might be for programmers to implement). The optimizations all remain in place and potentially benefit the majority of OpenGL programs, but CM suffers.

or

2) Possibly reverse/sacrifice some of the optimizations in order to make CM work with their current OpenGL implementation. This would result in a driver that wasn't as fast in all respects as the current ones, but it may still be an improvement speed-wise over earlier drivers. Depending on what programs were affected by the optimizations this could take several possible paths.

           a) If several significant programs were affected and only a few changes are necessary (and thus most speed improvements remain), this could be the driver base for OpenGL going forward. Future drivers will have these fixes and CM will continue to work with newer drivers.

           or

           b) If only a few programs are affected and/or many optimizations have to be dropped or engineered in a manner that significantly reduces the performance benefit the optimizations originally provided. Then AMD could release (if it found that the effort has significant enough demand) a 'beta' driver that may be a 'dead end'. Future updates would NOT utilize this as a base for OpenGL, but instead implement the full OpenGL optimizations of the previous driver. This 'beta driver' would have some speed improvements and compatibility with the latest Radeons, but this would potentially be the last driver supporting certain OpenGL calls in a manner compatible with CM.

I have seen in the past when AMD has reached out to Battlefront to get more info on certain bugs in their drivers. However even with the intense initial interest in fixing the problem it took 9 months to get a driver release that fixed the problem (which was more significant in its effect than the problems experienced here).

Edited February 28, 2023 by Schrullenhaft

[Redwolf]

... or just bring your own OpenGL. We aren't the only ones having problems with AMD/ATI:

 

 

[chrisol]

Was looking forward to the new Steam releases of CMBN and RT, but in current AMD state I'll have to wait until there's some kind of resolution... real shame as just not playable since the AMD driver "update" in 2022.

[Jiggathebauce]

I hope battlefront company will push AMD to fix this because a good chunk of the steam users who will play the current and soon to release titles are AMD users- when they leave mostly mixed or negative reviews this will turn people off from trying the game and reduce sales. AMD's lack of promptness and attention on this will affect BFC's bottom line. 

[LeBlaque]

Need to echo what is in here.  Extremely frustrating that the drivers that I must use from AMD that actually work (22.6.1) are nearly nine months old.  I would think some level of "pushing" from Battlefront is in order here as AMD catering to a self-described "tiny company" is not practical unless they are regularly pressured that a half-dozen driver iterations have not solved the OpenGL problem.  Frankly, I point the finger at both Battlefront and AMD for not addressing this issue in a timely manner.  To forego a driver upgrade to fix 5% of my gaming time is just unreasonable; Battlefront and AMD should not expect this!  And the flashbang effect is not tolerable, therefore I cannot upgrade if I want to continue playing the CM series of games....

... Note, I have seen no one post yet an "out of memory" message in CM Cold War after the email turn played out in the most recent drivers.  Reverting to 22.6.1 fixed this as well. 

 

[nox_plague]

@LeBlaque @Redwolf @Schrullenhaft @Hetzi @Codreanu @Bufo @Rasputino @sbobovyc @Vacillator 

 

Everyone please go to the AMD forum and add your reply here.  Also like the replies of everyone else.

https://community.amd.com/t5/drivers-software/amd-driver-issues-with-opengl-in-combat-mission-games/td-p/587742

The squeaky wheel gets the grease at these businesses.

Also if you haven't submitted an AMD Bug Report Tool please do that as well.

It's been 9-months and this issue needs to be resolved.  Additionally, people with newer 7000 series GPUs will never be able to downgrade, making CM painful to play going forward.

(I see some people in this forum have already commented on the thread, sorry if you've already done so)

Edited March 21, 2023 by nox_plague

[Vacillator]

In my case I'm using an Nvidia GTX1060 so I can't really add much over at AMD.  I was just trying to be helpful .

[Redwolf]

My AMD graphics chip works fine for CMx2.

It's in a Mac and the driver is written by Apple

[nox_plague]

Also if anyone uses Twitter please reply to this tweet to see if we can get support to pay attention through this channel

@Redwolf yes I know, you and I both have Radeon Macs (which I've been using to play CM most of the time) but I want to play it on my more powerful Windows machine.  AMD needs to fix this.

[LeBlaque]

@nox_plague Done... we'll see if posting makes any difference. I still think BFC needs to regularly pester them, and if they are doing so, they should post that to the community so we know what's going on. 

 

[Bufo]

15 hours ago, Redwolf said:

My AMD graphics chip works fine for CMx2.

It's in a Mac and the driver is written by Apple

Also mine works fine under Linux, but unfortunately only for the titles that are on Steam. 

[Redwolf]

22 minutes ago, Bufo said:

Also mine works fine under Linux, but unfortunately only for the titles that are on Steam. 

What's the status of the Wine patches for CMx2, anyway?

[Bufo]

6 hours ago, Redwolf said:

What's the status of the Wine patches for CMx2, anyway?

I guess still pending, but I make my own patches. With Steam you can select a proton version down to a specific game, so I set CM games to use my own patched proton, while the other games use the standard.

Edited March 22, 2023 by Bufo

[Jiggathebauce]

1 hour ago, Bufo said:

I guess still pending, but I make my own patches. With Steam you can select a proton version down to a specific game, so I set CM games to use my own patched proton, while the other games use the standard.

Is this how you get it to work on steamdeck? 

[Bufo]

4 minutes ago, Jiggathebauce said:

Is this how you get it to work on steamdeck? 

I don't have a steamdeck, so I don't know about that.