Head Mahone Posted December 27, 2000 Share Posted December 27, 2000 Hey Guys, I've got an NVIDIA RIVA TNT video card in my machine. I'm running Windows 2000 Professional, and have the latest Detonator drivers for my video card. When I run Combat Mission, the menu screen a has what looks like black spray paint from MS Paint on the top of the screen. When I go to select a battle, the writing and letters are blackened out and everything looks distorted. When I pick a battle I can't read the briefing or see the options for experience levels, bonuses, or fog of war settings (OUCH). After I begin the battle everything looks fine and direct 3D runs smooth (although I have seen the uniforms on some troops get distorted as well). The strange thing is, that after I installed the latest beta patch it ran great, ONCE! After that one game, it went back to its old tricks again. I've tried working with the drivers by disabling all of the features and enabling them, but to no prevail. Does anybody have any clues? It seems like I'll have to wait for new video drivers, or a patch from BTS on this one. My Brother has the same video card, running Windows 2000 and is experiencing the same problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, -Head 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeWary Posted December 27, 2000 Share Posted December 27, 2000 It's probably a Win2000 driver issue, like you said, but did you try deleting the CM prefs file and restarting CM? If not, try that first. BeWary ------------------ "Liberty or Death?" Make it "Victory or Pretty Damned Badly Wounded", and I'm yours. - a prospective recruit during the American Revolution. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Mahone Posted December 27, 2000 Author Share Posted December 27, 2000 -------------------------------------------- <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by BeWary: It's probably a Win2000 driver issue, like you said, but did you try deleting the CM prefs file and restarting CM? If not, try that first. BeWary <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> -------------------------------------------- I don't think so. I'm using NVIDIA's latest Win2000 Detonator drivers. I've even tried using their older drivers, but got the same result. I also tried using the TNT drivers provided by DELL (whom I bought the computer and video card from). The game ran fine, but I got no Direct 3D support (so why even have the TNT card). And yes I tried changing the resolution modes and refresh rates, but it didn't help. Thanks for your help anyway..... -Head 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Beman Posted December 27, 2000 Share Posted December 27, 2000 HM, be wary about using the "latest drivers," as they often introduce problems that previous versions didn't have. There are plenty of websites that store up driver files, and give advice on which are most stable, etc etc. Schrullenhaft will probably chime in here with very good advice. He seems to have video cards on the brain. DjB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Madmatt Posted December 27, 2000 Share Posted December 27, 2000 The latest drivers directly from Nvidia are the 6.31 Detonator 3 set. Are these the ones you are using are are you running a newer beta *leaked* set? Do you have any interface mods installed? If so then you may want to just back up your existing BMP folder and recopy it fresh from the CD and try again. This problem has always been there even with the non patched version of CM or did it suddenly pop up? Which brand of TNT is this? and is it a regular TNT or a TNT2 or TNT2 Ultra? I can look to see if there is a new bios available for it. What resolution are you running in? Have you tried bumping it down to 640x480 and see if the corruption is still there? Try going into your bios and reducing the amount of the AGP Aperture to 32 or 16 or even 8 (just to test) and see if that makes any difference. Thanks! Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lugnut Posted December 28, 2000 Share Posted December 28, 2000 This seems to be a problem caused by using NVidia cards in W2000 (I get it too). You'll find that if you 'Alt-Tab' back to the Windows desktop and then back to CM, the screen will be refreshed properly. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Mahone Posted December 28, 2000 Author Share Posted December 28, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Madmatt: The latest drivers directly from Nvidia are the 6.31 Detonator 3 set. Are these the ones you are using are are you running a newer beta *leaked* set? -------------------------------------------- I'm running the 6.31 Detonator 3s. I've even tried the Detonator 2 set of drivers, but it didn't help. -------------------------------------------- Do you have any interface mods installed? If so then you may want to just back up your existing BMP folder and recopy it fresh from the CD and try again. -------------------------------------------- Nope no mods running, and none have been installed on this machine at all. -------------------------------------------- This problem has always been there even with the non patched version of CM or did it suddenly pop up? -------------------------------------------- I've seen it with 1.03, 1.05, and now beta build 24. -------------------------------------------- Which brand of TNT is this? and is it a regular TNT or a TNT2 or TNT2 Ultra? I can look to see if there is a new bios available for it. -------------------------------------------- Just the regular old PCI 16MB TNT, BIOS ver. 1.10. I looked for a new BIOS from NVIDIA, but was unsuccessful. -------------------------------------------- What resolution are you running in? Have you tried bumping it down to 640x480 and see if the corruption is still there? -------------------------------------------- I'm Running at 1024x768 Direct 3D. I've tried 800 and 640, still no good. -------------------------------------------- Try going into your bios and reducing the amount of the AGP Aperture to 32 or 16 or even 8 (just to test) and see if that makes any difference. -------------------------------------------- I checked my DELL OptiPlex CMOS and it did not have this option. I'm running BIOS version A09, the latest one as of a few weeks ago. -------------------------------------------- Thanks! Madmatt <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> -------------------------------------------- No, thank you Madmatt. You guys are great, and so is BTS for having this message board. The strange thing is, that this problem is spermatic! Sometimes it looks good and sometimes it craps out. I'm pretty sure it is a driver issue with NVIDIA. They are some of the first to put out accelerated video drivers for Windows 2000 (and that's a whole new world of its own). I Thank everyone for their replies, and I'll keep a close eye on NVIDIA for updates. Lugnut, I'll try your idea out as well. Sounds reasonable, since the problem only occurs when it wants too. Thanks again, -Head 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Madmatt Posted December 29, 2000 Share Posted December 29, 2000 -------------------------------------------- Just the regular old PCI 16MB TNT, BIOS ver. 1.10. I looked for a new BIOS from NVIDIA, but was unsuccessful. -------------------------------------------- You won't find a Bios on their page. You will need to go to the OEM site. Which brand is it? Diamond, Creative etc...? Madmatt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Mahone Posted December 29, 2000 Author Share Posted December 29, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Madmatt: <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> You won't find a Bios on their page. You will need to go to the OEM site. Which brand is it? Diamond, Creative etc...? Madmatt --------------------------------------------- Its an STB Riva TNT from DELL. I went to STB's site but saw no support for the card. Same thing with DELL, all they had where some old Win2000 drivers. -Head 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeWary Posted December 29, 2000 Share Posted December 29, 2000 I've got an STB Velocity 4400 (a TNT card). It's probably the same thing you have. I can e-mail the bios to you. It is version 1.10 for AGP and NTSC (North America) only. Let me know if you want it. STB was bought by 3Dfx a while ago, and there should be a link to the STB tech support site from www.3dfx.com. You can try here to go directly to the Velocity 4400 page at the STB site: http://www.stb.com/drivers/velocity/vl4400.html I'm not sure, but I think the Velocity 4400 is the only TNT card that STB made, but please make sure that's the right card before you try to apply the bios update. Also, you can try the drivers on that page, but they are very old. They worked fine for me in Unreal Tournament, but I had to upgrade them to the NVidia reference drivers a while ago. Of course, they don't have Win2000 drivers, but might the NT drivers work? I don't know... BeWary ------------------ "Liberty or Death?" Make it "Victory or Pretty Damned Badly Wounded", and I'm yours. - a prospective recruit during the American Revolution. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morphing Cell Posted January 1, 2001 Share Posted January 1, 2001 I use a Creative Labs Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT under Windows 2000 and I have the same problem with the menu too. Lugnut's alt-tab suggestion does make the menu look normal, until a battle is played and the menu appears wrong again. (Alt-tab now would again make the menu normal.) I wonder if you also have this problem: The after-battle report has the 3D battlefield as its background, rather than the white background as it is supposed to have. This problem is apparently related to transparency. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lugnut Posted January 1, 2001 Share Posted January 1, 2001 Yep. The problem seems to be that any white pixels drawn onto the screen come out transparent instead of white. I've found you can help the problem some by editing the game's bitmaps and changing white to a light grey. This won't fix the text or the after-action report screen, though. Matt, has BTS confirmed that this is _definitely_ a driver bug? If so, let us know so we can start emailing NVidia about it - you never know, it might help speed up them fixing it. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Morphing Cell: I wonder if you also have this problem: The after-battle report has the 3D battlefield as its background, rather than the white background as it is supposed to have. This problem is apparently related to transparency.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Sadler Posted January 2, 2001 Share Posted January 2, 2001 Greetings, I'm running a NVidia Riva TNT2 as well on Window 2000 Professional, and have the same problem. I find that everything works fine when first going into CM and playing a game, but once the game is over I start having that problem - white pixels being transparent. I've found ALT-TABing out to Windows and back fixes it, or exiting the game and starting again. ------------------ Jeremy Sadler Webmaster stargrunt.com http://www.stargrunt.com 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L.Tankersley Posted January 2, 2001 Share Posted January 2, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lugnut: Yep.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> You're not the OMAG Lugnut, are you? ------------------ Leland J. Tankersley 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head Mahone Posted January 2, 2001 Author Share Posted January 2, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by BeWary: I've got an STB Velocity 4400 (a TNT card). It's probably the same thing you have. I can e-mail the bios to you. It is version 1.10 for AGP and NTSC (North America) only. Let me know if you want it. STB was bought by 3Dfx a while ago, and there should be a link to the STB tech support site from www.3dfx.com. I'm not sure, but I think the Velocity 4400 is the only TNT card that STB made, but please make sure that's the right card before you try to apply the bios update. Also, you can try the drivers on that page, but they are very old. They worked fine for me in Unreal Tournament, but I had to upgrade them to the NVidia reference drivers a while ago. Of course, they don't have Win2000 drivers, but might the NT drivers work? I don't know... BeWary <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Mines a PCI card BeWary. I don't think that the AGP BIOS would work for it. Also, I've never seen NT drivers work for Win2000. Morphing Cell, that's the exact same issue (to the 'T'). Its a real shame too, although it is bearable with the alt-TABing. Maybe somebody will put out a patch or driver that will fix this problem (good vid-card + great OS + excellent game = crap video). Does anybody have this situation while running win9x with a TNT card? I guarantee its an issue with the NVIDIA Detonator drivers on Win2000. Later Fellas, Head 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeWary Posted January 2, 2001 Share Posted January 2, 2001 Apparently it is a driver issue then with Win2000. I'm using Win98 with a TNT 1 and fairly recent NVidia reference drivers and have no problems. BeWary ------------------ "Liberty or Death?" Make it "Victory or Pretty Damned Badly Wounded", and I'm yours. - a prospective recruit during the American Revolution. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Beman Posted January 2, 2001 Share Posted January 2, 2001 Originally posted by myself: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Schrullenhaft will probably chime in here with very good advice. He seems to have video cards on the brain.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Okay, I guess he won't, just to prove me fallible. Damn, and I had the Pope asking me for advice on how to handle the start of the REAL new millennium. DjB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 2, 2001 Share Posted January 2, 2001 By the time I got around to this post it seemed as if the answer was already fathomed (though it is an unserviceable answer). It seems as if white and off-white items (text & textures) within CM are being deciphered by the NVidia W2K drivers as transparent at some point (as if they were color-keyed for overlay). Apparently some other W2K drivers for other 3D cards have a number of issues that aren't seen in their corresponding Win9x version drivers. The DirectX version also doesn't seem to make a difference with this problem. It's strange since some people reported that the problem "went away" when they installed 'certified' drivers from their OEM (Dell in this case). There really isn't much differentiating these OEM cards from retail cards (other than the occasional BIOS string manipulation for the OEM). So I would have assumed that these 'certified' drivers would have worked for anyone with a similar card. Anyway, it appears that the driver developers need to look a little more extensively at the situation with 3D games under Win2K. NVidia had some problems with S3TC compression in the past (under Win9x) which made some FPS games look real bad (but was eventually fixed). So it is probably on their list of things to look at (I assume that there may be other 3D games exhibiting a similar problem). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lugnut Posted January 3, 2001 Share Posted January 3, 2001 I found that if you went all the way back to the first NVidia drivers for W2K (3.78 IIRC) then the transparency problem was fixed. However this is not much of a solution for me as too many other things didn't run with these drivers (eg Quake3, Maya). The reason some OEM drivers work with CM is probably that they're based on these 3.78 NVidia drivers. (oh, and no, I'm not the OMAG Lugnut) <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Schrullenhaft: It's strange since some people reported that the problem "went away" when they installed 'certified' drivers from their OEM (Dell in this case). There really isn't much differentiating these OEM cards from retail cards (other than the occasional BIOS string manipulation for the OEM). So I would have assumed that these 'certified' drivers would have worked for anyone with a similar card. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morphing Cell Posted January 6, 2001 Share Posted January 6, 2001 Indeed, as Lugnut points out, version 3.78 of NVIDIA driver for W2k does NOT have the problem! Since I use an plain old TNT card, I guess I don't miss out that much by using version 3.78. [This message has been edited by Morphing Cell (edited 01-05-2001).] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki Posted January 6, 2001 Share Posted January 6, 2001 I have a friend who is a text problem where you can't read the text. He has a TNT and is running W2K.I have done everything I know and can't solve the issue. I have tried various Detonator drivers going as far back as 9 months. Even found a set that solved the issue but with no 3d. I run on W2K using a Geforce card with no problems using the same drivers I tried on my friends machine.It must be a problem specific to the TNT cards and not the TNT2 or Geforce. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KAding Posted January 7, 2001 Share Posted January 7, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Loki: I run on W2K using a Geforce card with no problems using the same drivers I tried on my friends machine.It must be a problem specific to the TNT cards and not the TNT2 or Geforce.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well, I have the problem with both my TNT2 Pro and Geforce 2 MX card. But like said, this is only in Win2k. It is very annoying though, because alt+tab doesn't seem to work for me. I haven't had any problems with other games, just CM. KAding 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loki Posted January 8, 2001 Share Posted January 8, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by KAding: Well, I have the problem with both my TNT2 Pro and Geforce 2 MX card. But like said, this is only in Win2k. It is very annoying though, because alt+tab doesn't seem to work for me. I haven't had any problems with other games, just CM. KAding <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> My friend only has the problem with CM as well. What kind of processor do you use and what version of Direct X ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KAding Posted January 11, 2001 Share Posted January 11, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Loki: My friend only has the problem with CM as well. What kind of processor do you use and what version of Direct X ? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> P3-667 Using DirectX 8.0. But I can remember I had the same problem like 6 months ago. That was back in the DirectX 7 days . 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.