Graphics problems running the game

[mad god]

hello everyone!

I have:
Athlon 1600+
Riva TNT2
DDR ram 256
win 98

the problem: running with D3D (any resolution). very nice and cool picture, nice letters and icons. After some reloads (~12) everything changes: the 3D world seems to be fine, but ALL letters & icons became very rough and just like in bad software mode (even worse).
Quit game (into windows), run again - everything fine again (until certain amount of reloading.
Note: sometimes this happens in the town when I'm switching between characters

if somebody knows what that could be, please answer this question!

P.S. installed the patch - did not helped!

thinks!

oops, not thinks but thanks! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 05-24-2002, 04:35 AM: Message edited by: mad god ]

[Radek]

I have a question rather a solution for you. I have Riva TNT2 Ultra (ASUS V3800). I know the problem with ugly fonts but I also have everything green as grass when trying to run under D3D. I am forced to run in software mode. How have you managed to get a fine result with Riva TNT2 under Winblows D3D? At least temporarily? I was unable to get anything satisfactory even with the last version drivers.

[mad god]

hi, Radek!
You have the same problem with the fonts?
Note, that I getting ugly fonts after a playing the game for a while (save/load, enter town). At the beginning everythings fine - looks cool, but after that....

Well, about 'everything is green as grass': yes, I noted that fact that there is too many green (more than in software mode), but not everything is green... there are other colors (in other words: green is not overwhelming). And this is from the beginning of the game (as difference fonts becomes buggy after a while).

Possible solution: TNT driver allows to change color scheme (in display properties there some advanced options) - maybe you should try to reduce green quote there?

As for the bad fonts: I wander toooooo. This upsets me.

This evening I'll try to install W2K on another drive I will try to see how it behaves there.

New drivers did not help?????? Damn! That was my hope!

Software mode..... what for I bought the Riva than?

[Wyvern]

Hi mad god!!

I'm not the techie guru around here. Certainly wish I were since my best techie folks are not spending as much time on the board.

Have you tried playing the game in software mode? I know you would rather not but it really does look quite fine in software mode and could save you the frustration of saving, quitting and restarting.

The basic problems that we run into with this game is that they had to rush the game to market due to lack of funds. As a result many things were cut from the game and complete compatability with the different vid cards was never perfected. Sometimes we can still ferret out a solution. Sometimes we cannot.

I'm going to hope that one of the real techie gurus will come along and have an answer. You can browse through Saz' Techie Help Desk and see if there is anything in there.

Wyv

[Radek]

Wait when you enter a dungeon. Because green has replaced (I think) yellow, you can switch your monitor off and do not waste electricity. You will see the same picture. R-R-RRAUGHHHH! Oh well, let us switch to software mode.

[Bungleau]

Not that I'm a full-fledged techie or nothin' like that (although I occasionally play one on TV), the fact that it works for a while and then goes bad leads me to think about memory links, general degradation, and things like that. Have you considered....

1. Shutting down all extra background programs before running W&W? Could be something is hanging around back there as the real source of the problem. In particular, things like virus scanners and such can be a problem.

2. Defragging your hard drive. Could be something related to good ol' hardware thrashing.

3. Check your virtual memory settings. If you've got 256MB of memory, something in the neighborhood of 768MB of virtual is not unreasonable.

4. You do have sufficient disk space, don't you? Swapping to a nearly full disk is never good for performance of any kind...

5. What version of Win98? You might check for patches and upgrades related to memory, video, or performance. Poor video might only be the symptom; the root cause may be elsewhere.

Anyway, some thoughts that can at least occupy you for a little bit

[WillowIX]

Maybe this will help (let´s hope so at least, lol...) To run D3D set your resolution to 640*480 and high colour. Some of my games get messed up text cause I run them in hardware mode with 1024*768... And I´ll add one more to Bungleau´s list above:
6) Remove all files from windows/temp. May not sound all that hightech but sometimes you might stumble on a few MB´s! (I once had 1,2GB just lying around there and let´s just say it slowed things down, lol)

[WillowIX]

One more thing... Check your video settings! Make sure 3D hardware is all the way up and under the performance tab that acceleration-->max!

[mad god]

thanks to all of you!

1. I'm always playing the game with out running any background programms, except for scheduler & hardware doctor. No antiviruses!

2. It is a freshly formatted HD (WW is nearly the first thing that settled there) - so this is supposly not a problem!

3. VM.... maybe, but is should take up all the HD(now ~15 Gb free) if I correctly changed VM settings.

4. Yes, yes, I have!

5. This is a hard question... don't know. Maybe I should consider this question along with driver version.

6. should not be a prob, but I'll try!

------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi all! Anybody have Riva TNT2 32 Mb working without problems????
If yes, on what systems????
thanks!
------------------------------------------------------------------

[Radek]

The problem does not seem to be related to the system environment. All games that use OpenGL work. W&W is my only game that uses D3D - and it does not work. The problem is with the driver, not with the memory or hard disc.
I was told once that the problem consists in hicolor coding. Some cards use "655" coding. TNT uses "565" coding. The drivers in the game are prepared for "655" but not for "565". Result? Greening.
I am no expert in Windows. In fact, being an OS/2 fan, I hate them and have them installed only because of games. But if the above is true then we meet another example of inferiority of Windows. Color coding scheme is nothing that should be cared for by an application. And there is no way out. Software mode forever or change the video card even if your video card belongs to the best ones.