Points of light appearing as diamonds (win32-full-v1.21)

[altitude]

Hi folks.

(BTW, just to let all the introversion folks and testers know, this is a great game. Kudos to you all.)

In any case, i have version 1.21 for windows. My system is a P4-2.8, WinXP SP1, Nvidia 6600GT, running with 2 dvi monitors at 1600x1200 each, DX9.0c (i think) .

Most often, when I start running darwinia, the points of light that appear in the "selection screen" (the one where you select which level to go to) as well as the points of light on the tops of any of the buildings appear as diamonds instead of the standard points of light.

Sometimes, if i change the resolution or go from full-screen to windowed, it fixes itself, but it doesn't seem deterministic to me.

I have screenshots at http://www.funkware.com/~altitude/Darwinia/diamonds

Let me know if there's any other information i can provide.

Thanks!

...alex...

[trickfred]

Yer link's broked. Lose the period.

Edit: That's trippy. Very boxy.

[xander]

I wonder if it has anything to do with this topic: http://forums.introversion.co.uk/darwin ... php?t=1202

Are you, by any chance, running Darwinia on a two headed system?

xander

[NeoThermic]

I wonder if it has anything to do with this topic: http://forums.introversion.co.uk/darwin ... php?t=1202

Are you, by any chance, running Darwinia on a two headed system?

xander

Nvidia 6600GT, running with 2 dvi monitors

Disable the second monitor and run Darwinia, see if that fixes the points of light problem.

NeoThermic

[altitude]

Yes, disabling the second monitor did the trick.

I guess this ends up being a known issue. It does indeed seem to be the same problem as http://forums.introversion.co.uk/darwin ... php?t=1202.

Is there a fix being worked on for this one?

Thanks.

...alex...

[sPank4]

hey, old topic i know, but is there a fix being planned for this??

I didn't have the problem until i got the Rocket Crash problem (now patched). after it had crashed, next time i started it up it had the diamonds.

ill disable my second monitor for the mean time, but id love to see a patch.

[StaticEngine]

I'm having this problem too, on a multimonitor system with a nVidia 6600GT based video card. I used to have an ATI 9600XT video card, and I'm sure the bug didn't occur with that setup. The bug goes away when I switch to single monitor mode, but that's a pain because of my slightly odd setup (1 LCD & 1CRT, CRT is "primary" monitor for gaming, but all icons and start bar are on the LCD because it's bigger and sharper, but it's smears black, making it less than ideal for gaming).

Anyway, I'm wondering, this has some indcations that it may be an nVidia driver issue, unless the billboard/particle rendering code for Darwinia is doing something specific and weird that would behave differently between the two chipsets (ATI vs. nVidia).

Should I alert nVidia of this bug, and try to get them to fix texturing in their drivers for multimon systems, or does Introversion need to take a day away from deving Defcon to fix their code and release another patch?

Thanks.

[phuzz]

I'm getting the same problem with two monitors on a Geforce 6800XT and the Steam version of Darwinia, so it does look like an nVidia issue. Different graphics drivers don't seem to change things.
However, I have found another work-around:
Once you're in-game and in a map. Go to Screen Options and change the Z-Buffer Depth and hit apply.
For me this gets rid of the dimond-y things.
It doesn't seem to make any difference whether Darwinia starts up with 16-bit or 24-bit Z-Buffer, it's just the act of changing it that fixes the issue. Generally, I just start a map, switch to 16, hit apply, then imediately change back to 24.
Hopefully that's a more hassle free option for people than disabling the second monitor (I thought it was a suprisingly big bug to still be unfixed, I guess not everyone knows the joys of dual screens yet )

[NeoThermic]

I'm getting the same problem with two monitors on a Geforce 6800XT and the Steam version of Darwinia, so it does look like an nVidia issue. Different graphics drivers don't seem to change things.
However, I have found another work-around:
Once you're in-game and in a map. Go to Screen Options and change the Z-Buffer Depth and hit apply.
For me this gets rid of the dimond-y things.
It doesn't seem to make any difference whether Darwinia starts up with 16-bit or 24-bit Z-Buffer, it's just the act of changing it that fixes the issue. Generally, I just start a map, switch to 16, hit apply, then imediately change back to 24.
Hopefully that's a more hassle free option for people than disabling the second monitor

That is an intresting fix. Can anyone else who has this issue please try this work around and report back to if it works or not? If so, I'll go ahead and include this in my common bugs topic.

I thought it was a suprisingly big bug to still be unfixed, I guess not everyone knows the joys of dual screens yet

Well, I run dual monitors, but on an ATi setup and don't get this problem. Although it was discoverd a while ago, the only related factor is the use of nVidia cards (there's a few bugs that apply to ATi or nVidia cards only).

NeoThermic

[StaticEngine]

I contacted nVidia tech support, and they stated that it wouldn't be fixed until the developers (Introversion) contacted them and sent them some code for nVidia to debug.

I'm pretty sure nVidia provides this service for free, since games that run bad on their hardware makes them look bad. Introversion should really look into this. There's a good number of people who run multimon these days, and about half the people run on nVidia...

[StaticEngine]

Also, the switching Z-Buffer depth as a fix works for me as well. Good find!

[brandorf]

In the nVidia drivers, you can set individual overides for each program. Setting Darwinia.exe to "Compatibility Performance Mode" (Versus "Multiple Display Performance Mode") seems to have fixed the light issue.