White flashing in MM7 when using Hardware mode (GOG)

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merchant's skeleton
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White flashing in MM7 when using Hardware mode (GOG)

Unread postby merchant's skeleton » 13 Feb 2015, 22:13

Hi guys,

Really wanting to play MM7 in Hardware mode, but no matter what I do, am unable to eliminate the seizure-inducing grey flashes that strike every 10 seconds or so. Have the GOG.com version.

Here's my PC specs:

Intel Core i7 4.0GHz
GeForce GTX980 4GB
Windows 7 64 GB

Have Grayface's latest patch installed, but have tested without and still get the same problem.

Reason for wanting to use Hardware over Software (where I don't get the flashes) is

a) the hideousness of software mode (particularly screen tearing on buildings, doors, and the tops of hills, etc).

b) the weird walking thing seems to be much worse in Software mode, where your party can't seem to walk straight ahead or backwards without veering at a strange angle, like you're being buffeted by winds.

Have scoured the length and breadth of the internet on this topic. Most references are a couple of years old now, but previously solutions seemed to centre on:

- reducing background interference from Windows (eg. windows open, items open in the System Tray, etc)
- fiddling with the compatability settings (eg. disabling visual themes and desktop composition, etc)

None of which seem to eliminate it.

One other thing I tried was using the NVidia Control Panel's 3D settings on the MM7 executable to switch most settings off. Probably the best result I got for reducing the flashes was switching off V-Sync. The flashes remainted but were quicker and centred in the middle of the screen, so less noticable. However the screen tearing I experience in Software mode came in.

Is this still happening for others? Has anyone managed to hit on a solution for running this on modern machines without the flashing? Alternatively, has anyone managed to figure out to fix the moving glitches in software mode? I can deal with the graphics in Software mode if my party wasn't moving like they are drunk...

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 16 Feb 2015, 10:25

Play in windowed mode. That will eliminate the flashing.

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merchant's skeleton
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Unread postby merchant's skeleton » 16 Feb 2015, 20:25

Yeah, have tried that, and it's one option but it does require changing the resolution to 800 x 600 from my monitor's native 1920 x 1080 every time I want to play it, otherwise the window is just too small.

Unless anyone knows a way of making the window larger while running at a higher resolution?

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Unread postby GreatEmerald » 16 Feb 2015, 23:31

No, that's pretty much what I'd suggest doing. On Linux you could write a script that would automatically change the resolution when you launch it and change it back when you're done, although I'm not sure if that's possible on Windows.

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Unread postby GrayFace » 19 Feb 2015, 22:30

Probably won't help, but try opening a movie (e.g. with MPC), pausing and minimizing it and then running the game.
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Unread postby waltc » 19 Mar 2015, 00:02

merchant's skeleton wrote:Yeah, have tried that, and it's one option but it does require changing the resolution to 800 x 600 from my monitor's native 1920 x 1080 every time I want to play it, otherwise the window is just too small.

Unless anyone knows a way of making the window larger while running at a higher resolution?
With mmtools you can run with significantly higher resolutions than 800x600--I'm running now @ 1280x960--but I run the game with the GF 1.6.2 patch and *always* run it fullscreen (hardware accel only) without any problem at all--Win8.1x64/10TPx64 (if anything Win10 so far is looking more compatible than 8.x for older Windows games) but I can run my M&M games in either without a problem. I'm running an HD 7850 2GB card @ 1.05GHz--game runs flawlessly.

I would suggest that you visit the nVidia control panel and that you turn off "Adaptive vsync" if you have that enabled for this game--I had another game with an adaptive-vsync option and I turned it on with my Radeon--which doesn't support it, of course--and I got flashing in the game every 5-10 seconds until I went back to vsync-off/on. That was the first thing I thought about when I saw you have a 980. That might fix you up immediately--hope so. If not, then next I'd advise you to go back into your nV cntrl pnl and set *everything* for this game to "application controlled" and work up from there to see what driver-forced settings work and which don't. My Radeon let's me set any level of supersampling FSAA that I want (which works with the game running in hardware acceleration, I was surprised to see *any* improvement but it's there.) I also force 16x Anisotropic filtering through the AMD control panel, etc.

Good luck--oh, yeah...I mentioned this to someone else in another post...if you haven't picked up the Gog 2.0.0.x-installer version of the game (Gog has its own names for its games based on the version of the Gog installer used; the earlier version was ~1.0.0.x)--you *definitely* want to get that version and install from there if you are running Win8 or newer...it makes running mm7setup.exe much easier with these later OSes.


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