troubles with hidden panels and level changes

[maciek]

(NOTE: I've got IWD, HOW, and Trials installed, and I'm playing at 800x600)

I'm seeing a fair bit of problems with the hide-away panels ('H' key), and I'm wondering if anyone has seen this, and more importantly has a fix for it. It really ruins the aesthetics of the game.

The problem is this: I like to play with the panels off most of the time, occasionally pausing the game, which then automatically puts the panels back while paused. I find that sometimes if I transition into a different area/region while the panels are hidden, IWD gets somewhat confused, in that the next time the panels are brought back, whether manually using 'h' or automatically (auto-pause of some sort), the side panels come back flashing (alternating between their image and a black or garbage panel).

If OpenGL rendering is on (I usually have this on, fog-of-war looks much better, non-dithered), it gets even worse. In this case, not only do I get flashing panels, but IWD also seems to have trouble remembering what resolution the game is running at... when the panels come back, the world view is then resized NOT to "800x600 minus the panel sizes", but to what looks like "640x480 minus the panel sizes", and it is positioned in the upper left corner, with the remaining gap filled with blinking garbage (like in FPS games where a polygon in the terrain is missing and you can see into the "void"... result of double buffering and the area in question not being updated).

So the trouble occurrs with and without OpenGL on. It happens not always, but once it does it takes a long while to correct itself (i.e., for the panel hiding and unhiding to work properly). It really kills the aesthetics of the game when it happens. For now I've resorted to running at 1024x768 with the panels always on, but the objects are kinda small now in the world view, so I would like to find a way to go back to using above method.

Any ideas?

[ 06-23-2004, 02:31 PM: Message edited by: maciek ]

[Aerich]

Well, I'm not a technical genius, so I'm not likely to have any brilliant solutions. I haven't seen any such problems with mine, but I don't use the drop-away feature much. I would suggest fiddling a bit more with the graphical features; sometimes the performance gets screwy if you have too many going. Try turning off the weather effect and ambient sounds, etc.