Black text background

[dorjun driver]

As the screen shot shows, the text background is black. This only happens in windowed mode and on all screens I've tried starting the game with and without -altFont and/or -deepColor to no avail. My NVIDEA driver is next to latest (the new driver doesn't scale properly and won't run Rhino 3D.)

Any clues?

Dorj

[Erik Rutins]

Try minimizing the Window and then restoring it. I've seen this glitch in a few cases when moving between apps while playing. Never happens if you don't switch away from the game, in my experience.

[dorjun driver]

Thanks Erik, I'll give it a shot.

By the way, do you ever sleep?  If not, will you share with the rest of us?

tick tick tick

No joy.

It happens from the get-go. From the resume game screen onward.

[Erik Rutins]

I do sleep, but definitely not enough...

So you're seeing the black text background even when starting up WITP AE for the first time, from a clean boot, without any app-switching at all?

[dorjun driver]

Yup.  And I just checked WitP VANILLA in windowed mode and it's doing it now as well.  It must be something unrelated.  Perhaps there's a bit of crap leftover from uninstalling the latest NVIDIA driver.  I'll take another look under the hood and get back to you via email.

[krishub1492]

Please post any resolution to this problem because I'm having it too. Only in windowed mode.

[jazman]

Same here. NVIDIA card, too.

[jazman]

I just had it happen again. I had a list of ships in Pearl Harbor open, and I sorted on Flt damage. I clicked on the scrollbar to scroll down (holding the mouse on the scrollbar), and it flipped into this black text background mode. Windowed Mode, -altFont, -deepColor. NVIDIA drivers 186.18

[dorjun driver]

Ok.  All I have right now is stuff I can reproduce.  To wit:

Simply minimizing and restoring does not alleviate the issue.  What does work, for me, is to close any information screens (intel, ops, or whatever) so you're left with just the map.  Then maximize the window--really ugly @ 1920x1080, return to a normal window.  Minimize the window and restore.  About 3 times out of 5, this will work.  The other 2 times the window will be filled with gibberish.  But fear not! All that's required is the opening of an info screen, closing it, minimizing the window and restoring it again.

I suppose all the above would be hunky dory if the results were persistent. But they aren't.  Without moving the cursor outside the WitP AE window, the font background reverts to black after about 8-10 minutes.  Hell, I don't have to move the cursor at all. I can just stare at the screen and the background goes black.  And no, I was on acid yesterday.

I've been incrementally dummying down this box in hopes that something will pop up.  Or out.  It may require another GPU driver rollback.  Shudder.  As a rollback would break a bunch of stuff, I'm loath to do this.  I'll keep at it and let you know.  I just have to make sure the pod bay doors will still open.

Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do...

Oh yeah. 9500 GT. Driver nv4_disp 6.14.11.8618 (ForceWare 186.18)/XP Firmware 62.94.4B.00.91

[michaelm75au]

Does problem still exist if you remove the "-altFont, -deepColor"?

[dorjun driver]

Yup.  See original post.

[dorjun driver]

Ok. I watched the Daily Show, lowered the hardware acceleration, reenabled write combing and rebooted. AE came up with black text background (BTB). Following my own advice, I maximized the AE window with the results below.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Looks a lot like Stephen Colbert doesn't it? It appears something isn't closing properly.

Being a bit of a masochist, I fired up AE in full screen only to find BTB. A quick Alt+Tab Alt+Tab fixed it.

My next trick will be to shut down the system, unplug it, wait for the damn thing to drain, and go to St. John via Bonaire. During hurricane season. Did I mention I'm a masochist?

More on Monday. With any luck.

[jazman]

I don't see this problem anymore since I started running the game with CPU affinity and high priority. I once saw a few small glitches that were quickly wiped out by minimizing / restoring.

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: jazman

I don't see this problem anymore since I started running the game with CPU affinity and high priority. I once saw a few small glitches that were quickly wiped out by minimizing / restoring.

I suspected this was the case with the video artifacts.

Bill

[dorjun driver]

Setting priority to High does the trick.  Pumping to Realtime is downright spooky.

For multi-core/multi monitor users, Google "prio".  There are other tools available, but this works pretty well.

Now, enough chit-chat.  Time to play!

[Erik Rutins]

Please give the new public beta hotfix a try as well.

[dorjun driver]

As I type.

[Lasalle]

I had this problem too and the August hotfix fixed it.  But now with 1084eit has reappeared.  Plus I can't reload my save games and the game won't run.

[dorjun driver]

I had to remove the -dd_sw switch to get things back to "normal" after the fix.

[michaelm75au]

ORIGINAL: Lasalle

I had this problem too and the August hotfix fixed it.  But now with 1084eit has reappeared.  Plus I can't reload my save games and the game won't run.

What command switches are you using? eg -dw_def etc
Does the game run, yes or no?
If yes and the game runs, then can you load saves?
What error shows?