Menu text problem in "Crimson Skies"

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

I recently tried playing Crimson Skies on a new system and discovered that
as long as hardware acceleration is on, some of the setup menus have colored
"blocks" as the dropdown choices instead of text, making it impossible to
see what you're selecting. Since these menus are where you select planes,
weapon loadouts, etc., the game is effectively rendered unplayable. If you
switch to software rendering, the problem goes away -- but the graphics are
poor and the framerate is not acceptable this way. I tried the game on a
second system and I got the same results -- both systems use GF6800GT OCs,
and both use the latest official drivers (71.89.)

I searched the web and found others complaining about this issue, but nobody
had found a solution. I tried changing some of the advanced NVIDIA
settings, but did not find any settings that effected this, and lowering the
hardware acceleration in the display properties did not help. I also tried
all the different "compatibility mode" settings on the shortcut, but these
did not solve the issue either. I called Microsoft (who makes the game) and
they said that the game was not tested with XP SP2, and that it was most
likely not compatible. I saw a post, however, that reported having the same
issue without SP2, so I'm not convinced this is the problem. It seems like
either a DirectX or a graphics card driver issue -- I sometimes get errors
when exiting the game that refer to Direct Draw, which seems related to
this. I also saw a post that said they fixed this issue on an ATI card by
changing the "Alternate pixel centre" option, but I can find no such option
in the NVIDIA settings.

I'd like to get a bit more life out of this game, so if anyone has any
experience with this or suggestions on what I could try, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

Larry

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Larry L. <lalittleREMOVE2REPLY@socal.rr.com> wrote:
> I recently tried playing Crimson Skies on a new system and discovered
> that as long as hardware acceleration is on, some of the setup menus
> have colored "blocks" as the dropdown choices instead of text, making
> it impossible to see what you're selecting. Since these menus are
> where you select planes, weapon loadouts, etc., the game is
> effectively rendered unplayable. If you switch to software
> rendering, the problem goes away -- but the graphics are poor and the
> framerate is not acceptable this way. I tried the game on a second
> system and I got the same results -- both systems use GF6800GT OCs,
> and both use the latest official drivers (71.89.)

The problem is that Crimson Skies uses textures that's not a power of 2.
Older cards handles this fine, but many newer ones doesn't, as they can
employ a few speed-increasing shortcuts by assuming that texures are
always a power of 2 (they almost always are, Crimson Skies and Thief II
are about the only games I know of where they aren't).

The problem is really nVidia's, but since it's an ancient game, don't
hold your breath for a fix coming out, especially since the fix would
most likely slow down most other games by a fraction.

Regards,
--
*Art

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Thanks for the response. So a "texture" issue can actually effect the text
in menus? Is there really no setting that could fix this -- perhaps some
way disabling a specific function on the card so I could read these menus?
It seems like the graphics in the game itself work fine -- it's just the
menus that have a problem.

Do you have any further information on the Thief issue? It might be easier
to find more information on this problem in regard to Thief since this was a
more popular game than Crimson Skies

Thanks,

Larry

"Arthur Hagen" <art@broomstick.com> wrote in message
news:d7kck9$c1k$1@cauldron.broomstick.com...
> Larry L. <lalittleREMOVE2REPLY@socal.rr.com> wrote:
>> I recently tried playing Crimson Skies on a new system and discovered
>> that as long as hardware acceleration is on, some of the setup menus
>> have colored "blocks" as the dropdown choices instead of text, making
>> it impossible to see what you're selecting. Since these menus are
>> where you select planes, weapon loadouts, etc., the game is
>> effectively rendered unplayable. If you switch to software
>> rendering, the problem goes away -- but the graphics are poor and the
>> framerate is not acceptable this way. I tried the game on a second
>> system and I got the same results -- both systems use GF6800GT OCs,
>> and both use the latest official drivers (71.89.)
>
> The problem is that Crimson Skies uses textures that's not a power of 2.
> Older cards handles this fine, but many newer ones doesn't, as they can
> employ a few speed-increasing shortcuts by assuming that texures are
> always a power of 2 (they almost always are, Crimson Skies and Thief II
> are about the only games I know of where they aren't).
>
> The problem is really nVidia's, but since it's an ancient game, don't
> hold your breath for a fix coming out, especially since the fix would
> most likely slow down most other games by a fraction.
>
> Regards,
> --
> *Art
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Larry L. <lalittleREMOVE2REPLY@socal.rr.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the response. So a "texture" issue can actually effect
> the text in menus? Is there really no setting that could fix this --
> perhaps some way disabling a specific function on the card so I could
> read these menus? It seems like the graphics in the game itself work
> fine -- it's just the menus that have a problem.

Yes, it can affect the menus, and no, there's no known workaround except
using software rendering. The problem also affects the Matrox P-series
cards, in exactly the same way (although the color blobs displayed are
different).

> Do you have any further information on the Thief issue? It might be
> easier to find more information on this problem in regard to Thief
> since this was a more popular game than Crimson Skies

The problem manifests slightly different in Thief II, where it causes
some textures to show up with a rainbow effect from some angles. It
ruins the feeling of the game when you creep along a wall that suddenly
turns a psychedelic shimmering multi-coloured hue.

Regards,
--
*Art

 

[deathwarror]

I Found a fix made by an oblivion modder that has also made fixes for thieves and several others. The user name i believe is called timeslip. Url to the fix http://timeslip.chorrol.com/temp/csfix2.7z

I recently tried playing Crimson Skies on a new system and discovered that
as long as hardware acceleration is on, some of the setup menus have colored
"blocks" as the dropdown choices instead of text, making it impossible to
see what you're selecting. Since these menus are where you select planes,
weapon loadouts, etc., the game is effectively rendered unplayable. If you
switch to software rendering, the problem goes away -- but the graphics are
poor and the framerate is not acceptable this way. I tried the game on a
second system and I got the same results -- both systems use GF6800GT OCs,
and both use the latest official drivers (71.89.)

> Larry

I'm currently using two 9600 gt and 182.85 driver

 

[hallowed_dragon]

Useless thread is useless.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey