Issues with video/resolution

[ringerthrawn]

I just got my new Alienware with Vista 64 installed. All my drivers are up to date as is my version of WITP. I have been playing this game since it came out, but have never seen this issue before and can't find anything in this forum that comes close. When I launch the game, after the splash screen the intro video plays in the middle of the splash. Then the text of the main menu (where it shows the version number), and the text in the scenario selection area is inversed. Any ideas?

[DuckofTindalos]

Turn off the intro. Change the name of your VIDEO folder to NOVIDEO.

[ringerthrawn]

Its not just that. When I play the text isn't show, the game is very choppy, and unplayable. Text is only shown when you run the cursor over where the text should be, and then it is inverse highlighted. When I play in windowed mode it works just fine. I don't understand why it is doing that.

[DuckofTindalos]

Well, if you've been playing it on older systems, and the problem only arose when you got your new one, then ipso facto it must either be your hardware or software. My guess would be the 64-bit Vista.

[wdolson]

Some games have performance issues with dual core Pentiums.  I haven't heard of your specific problems, usually it's just some functions are slow.  (From what I have read, dual core AMDs do better at emulating a single core for games that were not written for dual core processors.)

Vista is known to have a lot of problems and Alienware makes hardware that is optimized for real time games, which means very high end graphics.  WitP is not a real time game and the graphics are somewhat old school compared to the latest fads in gaming.

There are actually quite a few differences in DirectX between windowed mode and full screen mode.  The game code itself doesn't have many differences between the modes, only that to support the DirectX differences.  If the game runs fine in Windowed mode, but not in full screen, it may be an issue with DirectX for Vista 64, possibly combined with some hardware or driver issue.

If it works in windowed mode, I'd suggest continuing in Windowed mode.

The advantage of windowed mode is that when running a support utility like WitP Decoder or the WitP Utility swapping back and forth is easier.

Bill

[Nomad]

Try this and see if it fixes your problem - substitute WitP for morrowind.

If you are having problems with frame rates when running Morrowind try doing this, Right click your Morrowind shortcut> Click the compatibility tab> And tick the boxes that say disable desktop compositon, disable visual themes and disable display scaling on high DPI settings> Click apply and enjoy increased performance!

[ringerthrawn]

Morrowind? I will google that, but what is it?

[Nomad]

Morrowind is an RPG game that is a few years old. Some people with Vista have simular problems as you describe. The procedure described will not harm your machine at all, it might not do anything, but it might help.

[ringerthrawn]

Yeah, didn't fix anything. Just hate running the damn game in windowed mode.

[rtrapasso]

It might be worth checking if there are updated drivers for your video card (and other components). Even if it is a new machine, updates come out very frequently, particularly if someone starts reporting bugs to the manufacturers.

[ringerthrawn]

Yeah, it is up to date. I can run COD World at War and COD 4 just fine. Really wierd that a text based (for the most part) game is running so poorly on my new kick-butt system.

[Erik Rutins]

Make sure your video drivers are set to the defaults, sometimes they come in "high performance systems" set with certain options forced on, which can create issues.

WITP runs fine on our Vista 64 test system, so I assume it's a software/driver issue or perhaps your specific hardware configuration, though I'm betting software/driver. Can you post a DxDiag file?

[wdolson]

What do you have running in the background?  Every piece of graphic as well as many other things require what's called a resource handle.  Windows has a limited number of these and if the limit is exceeded, weird things begin to happen.  WitP is extremely demanding on resource handles, when you exceed the system limit, WitP will start doing all sorts of weird display things.  If you temporarily exceeded the limit, rebooting the computer will take care of it.

If the computer loads a bunch of resource handles for other things on boot, then there won't be that many left over and the game will consistently have graphics problems when you load.

The fact that it happens in full screen, but not in windowed mode tells me that this may not be the problem because it should be showing up in both modes if it is.  GDIView is a utility that displays how many resource handles programs are using: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/gdi_handles.html

The program tells you a lot of information, but the most important thing for your purposes is the far right hand column, which is the total GDI handles for each particular program. 

Bill

[usecase]

I know this is a necro thread, but I've got the exact same issue with my new i7 box running Windows 7RC-x64. I've tried any number of compatibility permutations, and updated my device drivers. Happy to post a dxdiag if that's helpful.

Personally, I don't care if I never play WITP again, but I'm really looking forward to AE - would hate to have to play it in windowed mode!

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: usecase

I know this is a necro thread, but I've got the exact same issue with my new i7 box running Windows 7RC-x64. I've tried any number of compatibility permutations, and updated my device drivers. Happy to post a dxdiag if that's helpful.

Personally, I don't care if I never play WITP again, but I'm really looking forward to AE - would hate to have to play it in windowed mode!

Well, you can post it, but i am not an expert in that... some problems that you might explore:
1) Some folks report problems with DirectX 10 - problem is solved when reverting to DirectX 9.x

2) Make sure you only have one copy of the drivers running at once - check to see using Task Manager (one guy had multiple copies running for some reason... he got rid of the problem when he managed to stop multiple copies from loading.)

[usecase]

Windows 7 has native DirectX 11; the drivers are fine (insofar as I can tell).

This is more of a possible heads up for Matrix - Windows 7 isn't _that_ far away from FCS. I can play the game in windowed mode, so it's not the end of the world.

[wdolson]

AE and WitP tend to play well with newer versions of Windows and DirectX, so Windows 7 shouldn't be a problem.  I had to use windowed mode for debugging with AE and it took a while to get used to it, but on a wide screen monitor, I find I like it better than full screen.  The overall picture is pretty close to full size on a regular aspect ratio monitor.

Bill