Textures flickering

[SenorBeef]

My stone wall, hedge, and bocage textures, and only those textures 'blink' in and out of existance, constantly. They'll look perfectly fine for about a quarter second, then they'll go transparent for just the tiniest bit of time, 2 or 3 times. Its incredibly annoying, because those particular textures are constantly blinking in and out of existance.

This didn't start when I first started playing CM, and since then, I formatted/reinstalled everything (cm, drivers, ect), but for some odd reason, the problem still appears (maybe it appeared in a patch? I can't remember, honestly).

I copied over the scenarios and mods and stuff from the old install, but didn't really install them or anything, so theres no connection there.

I have a gf2 mx, currently running detonator 12.10 drivers (I think), but the problem appears both with detonator 6.33 and 6.5 too. I have a t-bird 800 running on a kt7-raid.. any help would be useful, thanks.

[Schrullenhaft]

What OS are you running ? Do the textures still blink out on a clean, un-moded install of CM (1.12) ? What version of DirectX do you have installed ?

When the textures blink out are you moving around the map or do they blink out while you remain still ?

[SenorBeef]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

What OS are you running ? Do the textures still blink out on a clean, un-moded install of CM (1.12) ? What version of DirectX do you have installed ?

When the textures blink out are you moving around the map or do they blink out while you remain still ?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Win ME and Win2k Adv server. Problems exist on both. ME uses dx8, 2k adv server uses whatever comes as the default.

And, they blink constantly, whether I'm moving or not.

I'm wondering what the connection is... How exactly are brush/ect drawn? Are they sprites? Maybe thats the problem, sprite blinking rather than texture blinking?

[SenorBeef]

On second inspection, they don't actually completely dissapear, they just go half-transparent and sort of blur. I'll see if I can catch it in a screenshot.

[SenorBeef]

I have a shot but nowhere to host it right now. Want me to email it?

[Schrullenhaft]

Stone wall, hedge and bocage textures are mapped onto a 3D frame, so they aren't sprites (like the the trees "sorta" are). What resolution are you running at ? Have you tried a different resolution ? What is your FSAA set at ? Is it "forced" in all applications ?

If you want to, you can send me the screenshots to the email in my profile. I still need to setup a machine with a GeForce in it to check this out myself.

[Schrullenhaft]

I've installed an Elsa GeForce2 MX in an Intel BX-based M/B (P2-400) with Win2K, SP2 and DirectX 8.0a. I've used Elsa supplied drivers (v. 3.06 and 12.40) and CM v. 1.0 and 1.12. There are some definite improvements with the text between 1.0 and 1.12. However white text (especially bitmap text larger than 1-pixel thick used throughout CM) flickers and/or becomes transparent. This is an issue with the earliest and latest NVidia drivers under Win2K.

I did not see any problems with the stone wall, hedge or bocage textures. However I am only using the default ones off of the CM CDROM. I haven't checked the possibilities of scenarios with snow in them (didn't see any walls or bocage).

I'm using the default settings for the driver, which has Antialiasing set for the program to utilize it ("forced" doesn't exist with the 12.40 driver). However will FSAA set manually to 4x or 2x - text gets garbled and mixed in CM.

So, all I can reproduce are text problems, but no texture problems with the default set of textures. Some higher res texture mods might pose a problem, but the defaults aren't.

[ 05-25-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[geekender]

I am having the same problem in Windows 2000. It did not do it in Win98SE. And when you go to type your password to send PBEM, you cannot see what you are typing. Seems to be a D3D problem.

[Schrullenhaft]

geekender - you need to be more specific about the video card and the version of drivers that you're using it with. Some video cards do not have this problem under Windows 2000. The NVidia-based cards seem to be the primary one suffering some problems under Win2K with CM, but work fine under Win9x/ME.

I'd suggest ESC to the desktop and then bring CM back up again. This clears up some text problems in CM (especially once you've come from a 3D screen to a 2D one).

[SenorBeef]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

Stone wall, hedge and bocage textures are mapped onto a 3D frame, so they aren't sprites (like the the trees "sorta" are). What resolution are you running at ? Have you tried a different resolution ? What is your FSAA set at ? Is it "forced" in all applications ?

If you want to, you can send me the screenshots to the email in my profile. I still need to setup a machine with a GeForce in it to check this out myself.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

FSAA is off. 800x600x32, same as desktop. I emailed the screenshot.

[SenorBeef]

Oddly enough, I ran a fresh install of CM 1.01 (I think), and had the same problem. So its not directly related to CM, and likely a driver problem. Which is odd, given that I've used several different drivers - and it once worked properly, it wasn't ALWAYS blinking. I'm not sure how to go about figuring this out.

Is it possible that it results from some physical damage to the video card, perhaps from OCing? (I ran the card at clock when trying to test whether or not I could get rid of the blinking)

I also use a utility called "geforce tweak", http://www.guru3d.com/geforcetweakutility/ , and perhaps one of the settings that it played with caused this problem?

[SenorBeef]

Screenshot to demonstrate what I mean.

Circled areas are the glitches - all areas of a bocage will 'blink' in and out like that randomly, but at the exact time of the shot, only those particular sections were in the middle of 'blinking'

[ 05-28-2001: Message edited by: SenorBeef ]

[SenorBeef]

Double post.

[ 05-28-2001: Message edited by: SenorBeef ]

[Schrullenhaft]

I got your email, but the image posted here is much more clearer in representing the problem. The problem is immensely strange. If it were a hardware problem I would assume that the textures would just disappear or remain permanently corrupted rather than blinking in and out (in an alpha blended way). It could still be a hardware problem, but that wouldn't be my first guess.

I tried to install the GeForce tweaker, but it doesn't like my Elsa 12.40 drivers and won't run. The FAQ mentions working with Detonator 7.xx series for "full" functionality.

As much of a hassle as it will be, you may want to uninstall the GeForce tweaker and see if any of these behaviors go away. I'm not sure if you can get rid of the registry additions/changes with most uninstalls (you may have to manually remove these registry settings).

Some of the Registry settings in Win2K:

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\

nv4\"

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\

NVTweak"

What version of the Detonators were you running when you installed the Tweaker ? Did you upgrade the drivers while the tweaker was installed ?

I'll have to downgrade my current driver and see if I can get this Tweaker installed. I didn't see any similar issues on the Tweaker's discussion forum, but it may still be the cause.

[SenorBeef]

Actually, I just logged into 2k adv srv now.. and I thought I'd seen the same effects here, but I don't. 2k is 'clean' of the flickering bug, but, of course, looks like total crap otherwise in its own right.

I'm leaning towards the tweaker program then - although, I checked the option to clear any alterations I made to no effect. Time to go registry hunting after school..

[Hoopenfaust2]

I've stopped playing CMBO because the graphics do the same thing to me on my mac. I had all my mods installed perfectly and then I added one new one and everything went schizo. I completely erased the game from my hard drive and re-installed. The first mod I installed was the same grass I had before. Bang the problem was back. I then installed a "lo-res" version and the problem was still there. Nobody has helped me with this problem because there seems to be no answer.

I've got : imac DV special edition

rage 128 256 mb of ram

[Lmandrake]

You can add me to the list of people with a similar problem. I have flickering houses and trees. I am using the 12.41 Det3's from Nvidia on an Asus MX card. My OS is Win98 and I have not applied or installed any "tweaker" progs or played around with any of the default settings for my card other than using the reference drivers noted above. System uses a BX board with a 700e, 512mb RAM, aureal vortex 1 sound, and play at 1024x768x16 on a 20' dell trinitron. :confused:

[Schrullenhaft]

Hoopenfaust 101 - Sounds like your resource file is possibly getting corrupted. Applying mods on the Mac is a bit trickier. I'm not sure what version the Mac Mod Manager is at, but have you downloaded the latest version ? Do you have this problem with just the default textures (I assume not) ? You may want to start out with mods other than the grass ones.

Lmandrake - As much as a hassle as it will be, I'd suggest uninstalling the 12.41 Detonators and going back to something older. The WHQL certification, unfortunately, is not really a complete indicator of the quality/testing of the driver. ASUS NVidia-based video cards have been picky about the Reference Detonators used with them in the past and this may be one of those issues. The ASUS-released drivers are a bit older, but they may be more stable with CM. In terms of other games I'm not sure what kind of problems you may see with the older drivers.

Beta 6.31 v.1 (4-17-2001):

http://www.asus.com.tw/Products/Addon/Vga/asuse/enthusiast_hottestdrv.htm

Released 6.31 (12-22-2000):

http://www.asus.com.tw/Products/Addon/Vga/asuse/enthusiast_drv.htm

If you want to experiment and try out other Detonators for their compatibility between your GeForce2 MX and CM (I'd suggest not trying anything above 12.40):

http://www.gamers-ammo.com/nV9x.html

[Hoopenfaust2]

After 4 months of not playing I've just installed the game again. What I'll do first is just install all of gunslingers subdued mods and go from there. Grass and trees are really important to my gaming experience ( wow what a geek) but I could lay off the grass for now. I seemed to be caught up the mods more than the game.

Thanks for your help