Naive DirectX 9 Question

[Philippe]

In a fit of nostalgia for Privateer, I recently downloaded the Freelancer demo.

It was pretty hard not to notice that I was having my arm twisted into downloading DirectX 9. Besides a nice little warning screen when you launch the program, there are references scattered throughout the thing to the fact that the "trial version" (their word for demo, sort of like issue being their word for bug) would probably not work without it.

I decided to tough it out anyway and not download DirectX 9. I have hazy recollections of it causing problems for other people with CMBO and CMBB, and there is no question in my mind where my priorities lie.

Apart from a few sound scratches that I can probably fix by playing around with the audio deceleration slider, I finally hit a repeatable crash-to-desktop situation that may or may not be related to DirectX 9.

Now obviously if I ask Microsoft about it they'll tell me to download the latest version of DirectX, along with the latest audio/visual drivers. Given some of the threads that I've glanced at in here, these are two things that I don't think I really want to do.

So my question is basically this: will DirectX 9 cause problems with older games ? I gather that installing it is a pretty irreversible step. CMBO works quite nicely on my computer right now, and I really don't want to mess with something that works.

[Schrullenhaft]

Theoretically DirectX 9.0 shouldn't be a problem for older games or older video/sound drivers. The reality is a bit different however. While I have no concrete examples for you, I have heard of older games sometimes having problems with a newer DirectX version. Usually this is a problem related to the programming of the game rather than DirectX itself (which generally should maintain a certain level of backwards compatibility). Same thing holds true for video and sound drivers. Generally they should work, but on occasion they may have bugs (which again are usually related to the driver programming).

Both CMBO & CMBB should work fine with DirectX 9.0. The games themselves don't have an incompatibility with DirectX 9.0. For both of these games there is no real benefit to upgrading DirectX however (though some people have posted here that it has made the games faster - a side effect that I don't believe will be universal for everyone who upgrades). The potential problem may be your sound and video drivers and how well they handle an upgrade to DirectX 9.0. This is the crucial factor in deciding to upgrade. Depending on the age and manufacturer of the driver you may see no problems or you may see problems that you didn't before.

Your decision comes down to whether it is worth it to play whatever game requires DirectX 9.0 and the potential problems you may face (and there may be no simple answer here as to what you'll face). So if you're willing to experiment it may be worth it, but if you don't want any potential frustration you may be better off to leave your video / driver / DirectX setup alone.

[ March 09, 2003, 08:06 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[Philippe]

Strongly suspecting that changing to DirectX 9 would not solve the problem, but realizing that I would have to confront this issue eventually anyway, I decided to take the plunge sooner rather than later.

I haven't done extensive tests on anything, but here is what I have to report on Combat Mission.

The graphics don't look any different, except for the odd distortion of parallel lines in the smoke clouds. I can't say that that is any better or worse, it's just a little different. The lines seem to dissappear a little sooner when you move close to a column of smoke, but also seem less pronounced but more prevalent when at a distance. So on balance, it's probably no better, no worse, though not quite the same. My sense is that the video information is being read a little differently.

What is different, and a potential problem, is the mouse. The mouse tends to freeze on the menu screen. I can clear the freeze by hitting escape and then re-entering the program. The mouse seems to work fairly normally on the menu after that. But I do sometimes get effects like a ghost mouse frozen in a particular spot while the real mouse moves around, or simply no movement at all.

Inside the game the effect is more pronounced, but very interesting. If the mouse is in the playing area but not moving, it becomes completely invisible. That's rather nice, actually. If you move it, it flickers, and seems to have a small square of the background image moving around with it in tandem. But if you put the mouse on the information area, it flickers furiously, even if it isn't moving.

The mouse behaves normally outside the game.

I'm not panicking because I expected that something like this would probably happen.

So here's my question. Is there some setting (mouse flicker feature?) that needs to be turned on or off on the mouse that may be causing this ? That would be simpler (though harder to find) than changing the mouse drivers. Apart from that, should I update my mouse drivers ? That's an easy guess and shouldn't cause any problems, since I'm using a Microsoft mouse.

[Philippe]

Since I'm using a Microsoft mouse, I thought it might be a safe bet to replace my mouse software.

It didn't hurt, seems to have improved response time a bit when I click on things, but has had no effect on the flickering mouse phenomenon that I mentioned earlier.

I'm currently toying with two thoughts. My hard-drive really needs defragmenting. I keep putting it off because it takes so long. However, I'm wondering if un-installing Combat Mission (after saving my bmp folder, of course !), de-fragging my hard drive, and then re-installing would make any sense.

The other thing that that I'm considering is taking another shot at the Microsoft service packs. Sometime last year I installed the second one, didn't like how it worked, and then uninstalled it. I may have uninstalled pack one and two when I did that, if that is possible. I recently noticed that I seem to be missing a video compressor, and I'm guessing that that probably got yanked out when I removed the second service pack in a fit of rage.

I know it's silly to come back in here asking for advice when you already gave me the right answer and I made the wrong choice. Folly, however, is part of the human condition. So my question is, do these two approaches make sense as next steps, or should I spend more time worrying about compiling lists of drivers to update (or avoid updating, as the case may be)?

[Ynori Erup]

I don't think it will fix your CM problem with the flickering mousey thing, but I would sure defrag that drive. I usually start mine before I go to bed- almost every day. I've had far fewer general "issues" with software since I started getting in the habit a couple years ago.

Cheers.

[Philippe]

My hard drive is clearly much happier now that it has been defragged, but, as expected, my mouse still flickers like crazy.

My sense is that something in my system doesn't get along with DirectX 9. I noticed on another piece of software that sound changes seem to cause a hang or slight freeze that was never there before. Could this be what is causing my mouse flicker ? Should my strategy be to figure out what sound drivers I can use and upgrade them ?

(I'm going to try re-installing CMBO, but not quite yet. Copying my bmp folder will apparently take just under half an hour on a 1 ghz machine...)

I really want to solve this. What this flicker is essentially doing is destroying all my hard work on my Hills are Alive mod.

[WWB]

Reinstalling sound drivers might well help. The DX9 install probably overwrote some if the files it used.

WWB

[Philippe]

Still haven't tried re-installing CMBO, but my forays into Windows 2000 Service Pack land were less than fulfilling.

I think I now have Service Pack 3 installed. I say think because I haven't been able to figure out if I was actually successful or not. I did an express install from the Microsoft website, it took about two hours or so (I was asleep at the time). When I got up to finish it, the install Wizard mentioned something about shutting down my computer. Fine, I'm used to that. I hit the finish button, and the Wizard shut off my internet link, but didn't shut down the computer. I did that manually, and am still wondering what the smoking gun is for having Service Pack 3.

Meanwhile, the mad flickering of my mouse in CMBO isn't getting any better. Essentially I can't listen to any music at the intro screen (I find that heartbreaking because of my Hills are Alive mod), and the mouse activity in the game is not fatal, but disconcerting.

So here is my current list of questions:

1) Did I successfully install the Service Pack, and how can I tell ? [i had other reasons besides the mouse flicker for wanting to try the Service Pack...no joy on that front, can't tell if it's because of lack of successful instal, or simply no joy. I suspect the latter].

2) What is the most recent GeForce NVidia driver that is safe (in the sense of "won't cause any additional tsouras") to install ?

3) How do I figure out what sound drivers I need ?

4) Should I re-install my CMBO, and if so, when ?

5) Is there anything that I'm not thinking of or doing ? Has this mad mouse flicker been reported before ?

[Schrullenhaft]

You can find out what Service Pack Windows 'thinks' you have installed by going to Control Panels > System control panel > General (default) tab > under the 'System' heading the third line should tell you what Service Pack is installed.

The current recommended NVidia Detonator is 30.82/30.87 (30.82 is the official driver, while 30.87 is a beta that is very closely related to it - it has some additional refresh rates if you're running at very high resolutions that the official driver doesn't have). Some of the latest GeForce 4 cards won't work with this driver (Ti4800 & the 5000 series). These will require 41.09, which has some problems with FSAA. So if you have a GeForce 4 Ti4600 or older, then definitely stick with the 30.82/30.87's if CM is your 'main bag'. The latest versions that are being mentioned in the forums are betas that have some severe performance problems with CM (and still have FSAA problems too). Despite all of the doom and gloom you hear about how CM will be unplayable in the near future, don't believe all of it. Within a few months NVidia should release a beta or official driver that will eventually work (fix performance problems and hopefully most of the display glitches/bugs).

To determine your sound system setup you'll need to either look at your documentation for your system or motherboard, or look at your Device Manager listing to see what is currently installed. Go to Control Panels > System control panel > Hardware tab > Device Manager button > Sound, video and game controllers listing (click on plus sign) > ignore 'codecs', 'media', 'game contoller' and 'legacy' named items - the rest should relate to your audio hardware. Updating the audio drivers might help (but most likely won't) with your problem. Some audio shares PCI IRQs with other PCI/AGP devices. If this sound is built-into the motherboard there may be no way of avoiding this. If your sound is a PCI card, then possibly placing it in another PCI slot may help to change the IRQ (but you would have to delete the sound device driver first - and this doesn't always work).

I don't think reinstalling CMBO will really help in this case. CM isn't that complex in the number of files that get installed (which is the primary reason of performing reinstalls - files getting corrupted/changed/deleted, etc.). If the executable or associated files were corrupt you'd probably run into crashes attempting to play rather than irritating graphical glitches. The only time I'd really recommend reinstallation is if you've moded the game and you want to start from scratch. These are my opinions however and some people claim that reinstalling 'fixed their problems'...

The mouse flicker is usually associated with the mouse and/or video drivers. Typically I suggest that most people just stick with the default mouse drivers that the OS provides. What type of mouse do you have USB, PS/2 or serial ? An USB mouse may have some problems since it moves data over the PCI bus and thus it may have to share IRQs with other PCI devices (the PS/2 port has its own IRQ that almost never gets shared). Unless you have some special features that you want enabled with your mouse (the scrolling feature works with all of the latest Microsoft apps by default), I'd suggest uninstalling the mouse drivers to see if this helps at all. Any sort of cursor animation or customization could lead to possible problems too (usually cursor corruption).

If your mouse is USB, you may want to disconnect any other USB devices temporarily to see if that helps (since a 'polling' USB device could interfere with the mouse).

[Philippe]

Sad to say I still haven't resolved this one.

But today, in a flash of inspiration, I went into my DirectX control panel and shut down every kind of acceleration I could find.

And what I hadn't done before was to disable the 3D graphics acceleration.

The result did not solve my problem, but was encouraging. My mouse and the sound now work, but I'm now running in some hideously low resolution.

So my sense is that what I need to do now is to fool DirectX 9 into letting me run Combat Mission at a high resolution.

The interim result, hideous in the game itself, is almost charming on the display screen. Normally I use Tank Girl, so it was a funny surprise to see the old standard start-up screen.

So my question now is...how do I reset the game to a normal herz speed and resolution without going through a re-install ? I used to know this two years ago, but I was smarter then, too...

What I don't know, and I guess I'm about to find out, is whether the game will work without acceleration at the higher resolutions. To keep the mouse from going crazy I have to turn acceleration off. I wonder if there isn't some other way to go about this.

[Philippe]

I've just remembered that if you delete the preferences file, you get prompted to set the speed and resolution the next time you start the game.

[And yes, it was quite a surprise to see that video again...]

So I've now gone a full loop. I've got the music at the opening, but no mouse, if I hit escape and go back in I have a mouse but no music, and then a flickering mouse in the game.

If I'm right that the problem has to do with acceleration, how do I fool the game (or DirectX) into letting me run at high resolution without acceleration ? Or is that a contradiction in terms ?