Permanent (?) graphics glitches upon exiting game

[Lochlann]

I dug up SMAC/X the other day, and I've been having a great time playing through it again. Makes a nice break from Civ V. The game seems to have created an odd graphics glitch in my computer, though, one that persists after exiting the game and rebooting the machine, and I can't for the life of me figure out how to fix it.

I'm playing on a laptop, Vista64, and for a while everything was fine. As expected, the game would hijack the native resolution/color scheme/etc. while it was running, but everything would return to normal upon exiting the game. However, the other day, the machine froze up when I exited the game, and I was forced to reboot; since then, my computer's graphics display has been...off. Small images, such as thumbnails and certain desktop icons and whatnot, are now severely distorted. They are highly pixelated, grainy, etc., almost as though they were being displayed in 8-bit color (or less). Some larger images are fine; others are also distorted, though not as severely. This is happening for everything: desktop display, webpages, image software, etc. Videos and movies appear to display correctly; they do appear a little grainy, but that could just be in my head, a product of heightened attention resulting from this issue.

I've tried everything I know of to correct whatever has happened, including uninstalling and reinstalling the video drivers. (I'm running the plain old Intel Series 4 Chipset Family adapter that comes bundled with the laptop.) Nothing helps. I've rebooted numerous times, I've tried starting and exiting the game in various ways, I've tried toying with my resolution/color depth/etc. settings in order to trigger some sort of reset; nothing.

It seems ridiculous to think that a game this old could have permanently affected the graphics display of a Vista64 system--persisting even through driver reinstallation!--but that seems to be what I'm looking at. Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone have any advice? Thanks in advance.

 

[scient]

1. Get unofficial patch (some folks claim directdraw doesn't work properly in SMAC otherwise).
2. Make sure you have values set below in Alpha Centauri ini. If they don't exist, add them under correct header.

[PREFERENCES]
ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=0
[Alpha Centauri]
DirectDraw=0

This should get the game running at your desktop resolution and do away with any artifacts after exiting. Note, if you installed SMAC/X to program files on vista then ini file will be in your virtual store dir. Otherwise, it's in the same dir where game exe's are.

C:\Users\<current user id>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\<SMAC dir>\

 

[Petek]

If scient's suggestions don't help, you might want to run DXDIAG in case it finds any problems. Other possibilities:

* Do you have a restore point from which you can do a system restore?
* You may have had a hardware failure in the graphics subsystem. Do you have any utilities or diagnostics programs to check this?

 

[Lochlann]

Thanks for the advice, both of you. I tried your suggestions, but the situation remains unchanged. Details:

1. I downloaded and installed the new .exe files from the Unofficial Patch, and then made the .ini additions. However, this produces a crash in the game, whenever I try to scroll the map in any direction. The game starts fine, with the changed resolution and everything, and it also functions fine until I scroll the map; then I am dumped back to the desktop. This seems to be a product of the DirectDraw addition; the game plays fine with the VoxelAlgorithm value changed to 0, but setting DirectDraw at 0 crashes it every time. (I gather that this very crash is one thing that the patch was intended to address...? Not sure why it's happening.)

In either case, the overall graphics problem wasn't affected. I tried starting a game with both values changed to 0, then exiting the game properly (without scrolling the map, so as to avoid the crash), hoping to "trigger" a proper game loading & exiting sequence, but this changed nothing.

2. DXDIAG lists no errors whatsoever.

3. I tried Restoring the computer to a point just before I installed SMAC/X, but the graphics situation remains unchanged.

4. I am fairly unschooled in the finer points of software/hardware maintenance, and I know of no diagnostic programs that might target the issue. Can you recommend any? Unfortunately I'm stuck out in the desert in the Middle-east (wrapping up Peace Corps service), with no real access to tech support. I do have reliable internet access, though (obviously).

The problem seems to be intensifying. Or spreading, whatever. More and more small icons/graphics are taking on this distortion. Again, it boggles my mind that the game could have "broken" my computer's graphics rendering in this way. But I don't know too much about systems and whatnot, so, maybe it's not as far-fetched as it seems to me, I dunno.

Any other suggestions? Thanks again.

 

[Petek]

Do the graphics problems persist if you boot into safe mode? You might want to uninstall/reinstall the game, although it seems unlikely to help. See here for detailed installation instructions (ignore the stuff about Hamachi). If scient doesn't have any other suggestions, you might want to post in our Computer Talk forum, with a link to this thread. It sounds like, at this point, you have a problem with your laptop, not with the game. I don't know of any diagnostics programs for your system, but someone on the Computer Talk forum might know, or be able to offer other advice.

ETA: If you haven't already done so, check your hard drive for errors. It's possible that your problems were caused by the unexpected shutdown of Windows.

 

[Lochlann]

Yes, the problem persists in Safe Mode. I have tried uninstalling the game and re-installing it--I had to, following the computer restore process--but without effect.

Thanks for the advice. I agree, it does seem to be a laptop issue now, howsoever it was originally caused. I do wonder how it was caused, though, so I'll try to follow up in that other forum, and maybe in some other places. Fortunately the problem is more irritating than catastrophic; I can live with some icons and thumbnails, and the occasional full-size picture, being screwed up. As long as it doesn't worsen.

Unrelated question: does Scient's patch screw up the music in the game? Suddenly I'm not getting any in-game music at all. The sound effects and everything are fine, it's just the music that is missing.

 

[scient]

I make one change to ambient sound in SMAX but that's it. And only then I'm correcting a text string. Try resetting your ini file and see if it fixes audio or mess with these.

[Alpha Centauri]
ds3d=1
eax=1
Main Volume=100
Voice Volume=100
Music Volume=125
SFX Volume=50

On another note, do any other games cause graphics issues after you exit?

 

[Lochlann]

Just wanted to return to this and note that the graphics glitches seem to have stabilized. The corrupted icons/thumbnails/etc. have stayed the same, but no new such files have been affected, and everything else has remained okay. I'm willing to chalk this up as one of those "huh?" moments and let it be.

On an unrelated note: Scient, have you had any luck in increasing the 2049 unit limit, fixing that string table bleedover issue you mentioned in the CGN forums (back in May)? I've encountered the limit with my current playthrough, and the game crashes upon attempting to create units above the limit. (I understand that the coding issue is a thorny one; just figured I'd check to see if any work had been done. Sorry, I'm sure you're tired of fielding such questions...)

 

[scient]

I ended up rolling the patch back in my build for next release. I've been really busy past few weeks. Hoping this weekend to sit down and work on SMAC/X some more. I can see about posting a temp fixed exe with just that patch removed if you'd like. Otherwise, will be a few more weeks until I can get my act together to release v2 of unofficial patch.

Hopefully down the line when I learn more about internals of game, I'll start expanding limits of caps. Going to be more cautious from now on, surprised I missed that crash in my testing before releasing it.

 

[Lochlann]

I can see about posting a temp fixed exe with just that patch removed if you'd like. Otherwise, will be a few more weeks until I can get my act together to release v2 of unofficial patch.

Assuming that it isn't too much trouble to create a temporary .exe with the unit cap removed...yes please! I, and I imagine lots of others here (and on the other boards), would be very grateful.