AMD 22.8 series breaks game again

[nathangun]

I have a AMD graphics card on my laptop, my desktop has a Nvidia which all games work.

However, Shock Force 2, Cold War and Black Sea (steam versions) seem to work fine but Battle for Normandy, Fortress Italy, Red Thunder and Final Blitzkrieg I'm having issues, nothing appears in the 'saved game' and the 'Scenario' lists.

[Schrullenhaft]

nathangun - Typically the 'saved game' and scenarios/campaigns are located in your User account's 'Documents' folder. Specifically:

CMBN:  /Users/'user account name'/Documents/Battlefront/Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

CMFI, CMRT & CMFB:  /Users/'user account name'/Documents/Battlefront/Combat Mission/'name of specific game'

If you have more than one account on this computer, then you would need to login to your computer with the account that was used during the games' installation. If there is only one account or you are already using the account that was used during the installation and you cannot locate any of the 'saved games' or scenario files within the above listed directories (within the '../Game Files' directory), then you may want to reinstall all of the non-Steam games. I don't know if right-clicking on the installer and using 'Run as Administrator' during the installation helps or not, but it is something you can try if you get the same results. Also, temporarily deactivate any anti-virus/security software you are running to make sure that it doesn't interfere and possibly quarantine/delete some of the files during installation.

For a game that has already been activated on the computer, there shouldn't be a need to reactivate the game, unless something changed about your computer since you originally activated it, including reinstalling Windows or some sort of significant hardware change.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Schrullenhaft

[Bufo]

With the new 23.4.1 driver the white flash problem still persists.

[Schrullenhaft]

I suspect that it may take awhile for AMD to resolve this issue. In the AMD Bug Report thread (on AMD's site, linked earlier in this thread), one user mentions that there are a significant number of missing OpenGL extensions after the 22.6.1 driver (22.7.x and on). CM may be using an OpenGL call that requires one of these missing extensions. The question then becomes on whether AMD intends to re-add these missing extensions or if they consider them 'deprecated' and not worth supporting anymore. That decision (on AMD's behalf) may depend on how many other games have issues due to this missing support in the driver.

If AMD firmly signals that they do not intend on supporting these OpenGL extensions anymore, then Battlefront either needs to find a way to replicate the missing behavior with newer OpenGL calls (not an easy task) or somehow engineer a switch in the code to turn off 'screen shake for explosions' for AMD drivers (via an option checkbox) - also not necessarily an easy task. If the issue comes down to Battlefront needing to make the changes, then it is possible (depending on the complexity of the possible fixes) that a long term fix may not come about until the Engine 5 release. That is just a guess on my part.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Schrullenhaft

[nathangun]

I fixed my issue, my computer reverted back to 'read only' for files in the documents folder. So I turned off the Controlled folder access.

 

Edited April 6, 2023 by nathangun

[Jiggathebauce]

1 hour ago, Schrullenhaft said:

I suspect that it may take awhile for AMD to resolve this issue. In the AMD Bug Report thread (on AMD's site, linked earlier in this thread), one user mentions that there are a significant number of missing OpenGL extensions after the 22.6.1 driver (22.7.x and on). CM may be using an OpenGL call that requires one of these missing extensions. The question then becomes on whether AMD intends to re-add these missing extensions or if they consider them 'deprecated' and not worth supporting anymore. That decision (on AMD's behalf) may depend on how many other games have issues due to this missing support in the driver.

If AMD firmly signals that they do not intend on supporting these OpenGL extensions anymore, then Battlefront either needs to find a way to replicate the missing behavior with newer OpenGL calls (not an easy task) or somehow engineer a switch in the code to turn off 'screen shake for explosions' for AMD drivers (via an option checkbox) - also not necessarily an easy task. If the issue comes down to Battlefront needing to make the changes, then it is possible (depending on the complexity of the possible fixes) that a long term fix may not come about until the Engine 5 release. That is just a guess on my part.

Guess I'm not playing combat mission anytime in the next several months, lucky if i get to this year. I'm not swapping to legacy drivers everytime i want to play just CM.

[Redwolf]

1 hour ago, Schrullenhaft said:

I suspect that it may take awhile for AMD to resolve this issue. In the AMD Bug Report thread (on AMD's site, linked earlier in this thread), one user mentions that there are a significant number of missing OpenGL extensions after the 22.6.1 driver (22.7.x and on). CM may be using an OpenGL call that requires one of these missing extensions. The question then becomes on whether AMD intends to re-add these missing extensions or if they consider them 'deprecated' and not worth supporting anymore. That decision (on AMD's behalf) may depend on how many other games have issues due to this missing support in the driver.

If AMD firmly signals that they do not intend on supporting these OpenGL extensions anymore, then Battlefront either needs to find a way to replicate the missing behavior with newer OpenGL calls (not an easy task) or somehow engineer a switch in the code to turn off 'screen shake for explosions' for AMD drivers (via an option checkbox) - also not necessarily an easy task. If the issue comes down to Battlefront needing to make the changes, then it is possible (depending on the complexity of the possible fixes) that a long term fix may not come about until the Engine 5 release. That is just a guess on my part.

Or do what X-Plane does:

 

[Jiggathebauce]

29 minutes ago, Redwolf said:

Or do what X-Plane does:

 

Is there a ready to go one? I'm not too savvy on making my own workaround for OpenGL 

[Redwolf]

8 minutes ago, Jiggathebauce said:

Is there a ready to go one? I'm not too savvy on making my own workaround for OpenGL 

Well, not for CM. It is unknown whether the calls that are wrongly or not at all implemented in AMD's new drivers are all in this Mesa library.

But the point is - since it is open source you could fix it yourself, unlike the AMD Windows drivers.

Chances are that the Mesa drivers are indeed more complete than AMD's new drivers because some people have been running CMx2 on Wine without complaints, and that uses the Mesa backend on AMD and Intel graphics hardware. Also, it works for X-Plane, which is also an old OpenGL game (or rather, their extensions).

[Bufo]

17 hours ago, Redwolf said:

Or do what X-Plane does:

 

I have just tried this. The game doesn't even start up, just crashes immediately.

[Jiggathebauce]

Apparently AMD is implementing the fix! Just asked on their forum when it will hit for users, wether in a new update or something. Really looking forward to the performance improvements with no Flashes!!!! Can't wait to play the new cold war module when it hits as long as the game works well

[Darrell999]

Thanks for sharing that!  Please let us know if you find out more details.

[Jiggathebauce]

Response from AMD:  fix is currently available in the internal driver builds only. The fix is likely to get promoted to the public driver soon. However, at this moment, I can't provide an ETA for this fix.

I'm thinking next driver update should have it implemented based on that. 

[Codreanu]

On 4/12/2023 at 9:59 AM, Jiggathebauce said:

Apparently AMD is implementing the fix! Just asked on their forum when it will hit for users, wether in a new update or something. Really looking forward to the performance improvements with no Flashes!!!! Can't wait to play the new cold war module when it hits as long as the game works well

Awesome, I've been taking a break from CM since the drivers started breaking things so it'll be great to get back into it again. Big thanks to everyone who helped out by reporting the issue so we could get it fixed!

[Redwolf]

Now they just need to fix everything else:

https://www.techradar.com/news/amd-drivers-are-bricking-windows-11-systemsagain

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-driver-bug-corrupts-windows

[nox_plague]

Yes folks here is the official AMD thread would be great if they let us Beta test it to make sure it's really fixed.

 

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

[LeBlaque]

Anybody brave enough to see if the most recent drivers 23.4.2 fixed the issue? (e.g. @Jiggathebauce @Bufo

Edited April 21, 2023 by LeBlaque

[Codreanu]

55 minutes ago, LeBlaque said:

Anybody brave enough to see if the most recent drivers 23.4.2 fixed the issue? (e.g. @Jiggathebauce @Bufo

Just tested it and it's fixed! Game still loads super fast too. There still seem to be some graphical issues though, U.S. rifle squads in CMBN have giant antennae sticking out of them and some vehicles have similar problems and the bocage can look weird at certain angles too, tested it with and without mods.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Codreanu

[Jiggathebauce]

55 minutes ago, LeBlaque said:

Anybody brave enough to see if the most recent drivers 23.4.2 fixed the issue? (e.g. @Jiggathebauce @Bufo

Given the type of response that i got and the timing,as well as the changelog, I'm gonna bet it's not what we are looking for

[Codreanu]

54 minutes ago, Codreanu said:

Just tested it and it's fixed! Game still loads super fast too. There still seem to be some graphical issues though, U.S. rifle squads in CMBN have giant antennae sticking out of them and some vehicles have similar problems and the bocage can look weird at certain angles too, tested it with and without mods.

Addendum: The graphical issues are on some scenarios really obvious but on others are practically invisible. Here's a random quick battle where everything looks fine, maybe it has something to do with the time of day? Regardless, the flashbang explosions are gone so the game is actually playable now.

Also getting some out of memory crashes on big maps like Seelow Heights in CMRT that I'm not getting with 22.5.2, update seems like a bit of a mixed bag.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Codreanu

[Bufo]

1 hour ago, LeBlaque said:

Anybody brave enough to see if the most recent drivers 23.4.2 fixed the issue? (e.g. @Jiggathebauce @Bufo

I will test it later during the day. Those artifacts (black lines) came in with one of the earlier updates, it is not new.

[Bufo]

I confirm, white flashes are gone with 23.4.2.

Finally 

Edited April 21, 2023 by Bufo

[Jiggathebauce]

Well hot dog, i guess I'm downloading tonight

[LeBlaque]

11 hours ago, Codreanu said:

 

Also getting some out of memory crashes on big maps like Seelow Heights in CMRT that I'm not getting with 22.5.2, update seems like a bit of a mixed bag.

@Battlefront.com, et. al. Thanks for the test and great feedback.  The out-of-memory error seems like a "driver-killer" as I experienced this as well on a large CMRT e-mail battle with drivers after 22.5.2.  Despite the flashbang being resolved in newest, if the game crashes that is a fatal flaw.  Do we all need to do ANOTHER separate trouble ticket for BF and AMD??

Edited April 21, 2023 by LeBlaque

[chrisol]

Yes, flashbangs gone for me... thank goodness ! (now to get CMBN !)