Important: Update your video card drivers. Really !

[PopsiclePete]

One thing I often see since the release of Episode 5, people having trouble running the game with the new visual effects turned on even if they have pretty good video cards. Let me tell you this:

Update your video card drivers.

The thing is, Standoff now uses the lastest OpenGL dev toolkits that were released in May, so even if you think your driver is good because you got the lastest just a few months ago, really, it's not.

The last time I played standoff I was on a P4 system with a GeForce 6800 and it seemed to play just fine. Now I read the graphics recommendations in the FAQ and they surprised me as it seems have you made more improvements than I thought. As such I just wanted to confirm. With the NVIDIA 8.15.11.8618 drivers my new GTX 275 equipped system should be able to play the upgraded version of standoff at full settings at 1920x1200 or am I worrying over nothing?

[Quarto]

Standoff has changed a lot since the previous episode. We do know you wouldn't be able to get it running smoothly with everything enabled with that 6800 you used to have.

..But as for the GTX 275... we don't know. It's gonna be up to you to tell us . We're not a professional team, we don't have access to all these different cards during testing, and I don't think we've had any opportunity to test it on a GTX 275. I would hope it can do just fine... but honestly, I don't even know what a GTX 275 is . Stupid graphics card manufacturers constantly changing their naming schemes to confuse us...

Originally Posted by Quarto

Standoff has changed a lot since the previous episode. We do know you wouldn't be able to get it running smoothly with everything enabled with that 6800 you used to have.

..But as for the GTX 275... we don't know. It's gonna be up to you to tell us . We're not a professional team, we don't have access to all these different cards during testing, and I don't think we've had any opportunity to test it on a GTX 275. I would hope it can do just fine... but honestly, I don't even know what a GTX 275 is . Stupid graphics card manufacturers constantly changing their naming schemes to confuse us...

Thank for the reply. I guess I will have to be the tester on this one. I will get back to you on how it fares.

[Iceblade]

Well, GTX 285 works maxed out on 1024x768 resolution (haven't tried wide screen yet however), probably would work on higher resolutions as well.

Edit: yep works with max settings even with highest resolution....dang it sure is pretty.

Just tried the first mission of episode 5 and the first Simulator mission and they worked fine at max. I probably should go back and restart from the beginning however. It has been so long that I am having to get the hang of the differences in shield strength and such all over again. I also saw what you mean by the game crashing. Happened the second time I ran a mission. One other thing is the the new pilots lounge screen is not displaying. I still have the one from episode 4.

[PopsiclePete]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

One other thing is the the new pilots lounge screen is not displaying. I still have the one from episode 4.

The new room is only showing in Episode 1, episodes 2-5 still use the same room from before.

[Wedge009]

Originally Posted by Quarto

Stupid graphics card manufacturers constantly changing their naming schemes to confuse us...

Aye. I had to do a bit of research on current card models just to keep up with what's recent and what isn't.

[karloch]

Working perfectly with settings maxed out in a nVidia Gerfoce GTX295. Resolution is 1400x1050.

[Darkmage]

Works perfectly at 2560x1600 all settigns maxed on Linux under wine on 260GTX core 216

[Wedge009]

Out of curiousity, anyone yet tested on a Radeon HD 4850? Or at least HD 4000 series?

[Mace]

Out of curiousity, anyone yet tested on a Radeon HD 4850? Or at least HD 4000 series?

It works on all recent cards, but there is a catch using your card manufactors drivers or the general ones from ATI; If you manage to install catalyst drivers on a clean installation, it runs fine.

My problem is this; My favorite gaming rig next to a console is a pentium4D Jack of all trades, HT, ext64 the works, stable as hell and able to run just about every game(plus I can feed just about any type media to it, floppy discs excluded). I upgraded the system with ASUS AH3450HD/512MB on AGP(Ati does not support this card rigged up by asus, so I am dependent on asus drivers), And now I can not even get SO to run properly anymore; Both standoff and SO start up with the title screen, the intro music and dialogue start, and keyboard and mouse get locked out.

From the ATI forum I understood that the catalyst driver error with my specific card only occurs under XP, so I think this weekend would be a good oppurtunity to switch to windows 7.

I will be playing the game on my gaming setup, and am willing to report any issues I encounter; I have the following hardware on hand to play around with;

Dell Lattitude D820 notebook with Nvidia Quadro GPU option(256MB), Windows XP SP3, 2GB RAM. Dx9.0c
Selfbuild Athlon64x2 3800, Ati Radeon x800 PCI-e(256mb), Windows XP64 SP2, 4Gb RAM. DX9.0c

I will be playing on:
Converted HP evo D530C(P4D(emt64), Ati Radeon AH3450HD(512mb) AGP,Windows 7, 4GB RAM. DX10.1

If you want I am willing to do some testing to cool my guns while I tried to complete a mission five times over

(and if you are wondering why i use the compaq for gaming, it is the only system that looks decent in the living room where I have the big screen, and best sound)

[Vidmaster]

using a Radeon 4780 X2, recent driver and cataclyst control center.
Having invisible ships or worse just black screens (-> HDR enabled). Of course only when Ep 5 is installed. This SSSSSOOOO sounds like a driver problem but as I stated, I got the recent ones.


Could it be that ATI just doesn't have a driver capable of running this?

Running other OpenGL games no prob.

[Dundradal]

It could be an ATI issue (it certainly seems that way). I've mentioned it to Alex and he plans to look at it in the future.

[Vidmaster]

damn, so no Standoff tonight :-(
Well anyway, keep up the work.

[Dundradal]

Just play with HDR turned off.

[Vidmaster]

doesn't work, it's INVISIBLE SHIPS NO MATTER THE SETTING.
Downloading and reinstalling my driver, just in case.

Feedback tomorrow.

[Dundradal]

Hmm now that's different. Alex will have to look into this.

[Mace]

Originally Posted by Vidmaster

doesn't work, it's INVISIBLE SHIPS NO MATTER THE SETTING.
Downloading and reinstalling my driver, just in case.

Feedback tomorrow.

Try this option(works on my X800 card),
In catalyst control centre; look down the setting branching tree for "3D", there go to "More settings", and "Alternate pixel centre". (Or something like that, I'm running the dutch version of Catalyst on that system), this fixed the weird garbled floating nebula way in the distance, distortion of the landing bays, and weird misdrawings(white lines between textures) of the capships close by.

[Wedge009]

Originally Posted by Dundradal

It could be an ATI issue (it certainly seems that way). I've mentioned it to Alex and he plans to look at it in the future.

If I may ask, what video cards did you have available for testing? Maybe it's worth starting a new thread to compile a list of cards which are known to work/fail? Unless, of course, we have both conditions with different people with the same card.

[Bar-None]

I just recently got my Raideon 4870 and it didn't like Standoff at ALL! So I wasn't able to do another full play-through like I wanted to in anticipation of Episode 5. I haven't really put all that much effort into it, busy schedule and all. Things are calming down now, so I'm going to try and fix it and give it a playthrough.

I'm excited!

[Grimloc]

Playing in Linux (Ubuntu 9.04) using Wine 1.1.27 and Nvidia's proprietary drivers (first v. 180 distributed with Ubuntu and now 185 compiled separately), Standoff plays very well with all of the graphics features...

...except anti-aliasing. Any degree of anti-aliasing causes the on-ship menus to tear a la scrambled cable (big, black, diagonal bars roll down the screen), and in-game objects (the cockpit, space, ships, etc) are all black. I can tell that the frame rate is very low in-game as well. I would chalk this up to some Wine peculiarity, but my computer's a dual-booter, and it does the exact same thing with anti-aliasing set in XP using ~2-month-old Nvidia drivers.

Just thought you should know about this. Fantastic job on this project, folks! You've helped to reinvigorate a community like I've never seen before.

[spec]

I can't wait to play through the whole game with the new updates. However, I'm getting the same problems as the others with the invisible ships. The game doesn't work with the enhanced lighting or bloom. It does seem to work with the enhanced starfields, though.

Heres what i've noticed:
-In the tactical database, random black polygons can be seen.
-In the simulator menu, green and white polygons of the ship you pick to pilot can be seen. If I change the ship, then the regular model appears for a split second.
-In the briefing room, None of the wireframes appear in the briefing.
-In flight(sim or mission), i can see the hud and targeting brackets. Everything else is black.

I have screenshots of all the problems that I brought up. I took them them in windowed mode if that makes any difference, but the bugs are the same as they are in fullscreen.

I'm running windows xp sp3 with an e5200, ati hd4670, and the catalyst 9.7 drivers. I did a clean install with secret ops and the two standoff packages.

[Falcon988]

Have you tried upgrading your video drivers man?

[spec]

Yeah, I have the latest ATI drivers. They were released last month.

Here are the screenshots.

[PopsiclePete]

Ok guys, we read you, the ATI drivers don't seem to be able to use our shaders functions. We will look into it, see if it's a problem coming from ATI's drivers or our own implementation.

In the meanwhile, just unselect "Enhanced ligthing" and "HDR" (only those two need to be unselected) from the options menu, and you'll be able to play, even if with just a little bit less of eye candy.

[Vidmaster]

Originally Posted by spec

I can't wait to play through the whole game with the new updates. However, I'm getting the same problems as the others with the invisible ships. The game doesn't work with the enhanced lighting or bloom. It does seem to work with the enhanced starfields, though.

Can confirm that.

I HAVE THE RECENT DRIVER!

It's independent from Starfields, Widescreen, Resolution and Compatibility Setting.
I am running Vista 32, not XP, therefore it's independent from the OS too.

Hope you get it fixed soon. And you should probably fix the Prologe: Assault on Pirate Base too, it's still the MOST DIFFICULT MISSION IN THE WHOLE GAME.
Probably overacting a bit but I really hoped you would fix that one. The game is nicely balanced in most other missions and like last time, I had no problems winning every mission up until Ep4 (starting with the final Ep5 tomorrow) but this one mission... ...24 tries

[Wedge009]

Originally Posted by PopsiclePete

Ok guys, we read you, the ATI drivers don't seem to be able to use our shaders functions. We will look into it, see if it's a problem coming from ATI's drivers or our own implementation.

Aww, no pretty Standoff for me either, then. :/ So only the Intel and GeForce GPUs were available for testing?

Oh well, no hurry. You've all put in a lot of effort already.

[Quarto]

Originally Posted by Vidmaster

Hope you get it fixed soon. And you should probably fix the Prologe: Assault on Pirate Base too, it's still the MOST DIFFICULT MISSION IN THE WHOLE GAME.
Probably overacting a bit but I really hoped you would fix that one. The game is nicely balanced in most other missions and like last time, I had no problems winning every mission up until Ep4 (starting with the final Ep5 tomorrow) but this one mission... ...24 tries

Well, you know... it is all your fault . This mission is as hard or as easy as you make it - it all depends on how many friendly fighters you have. If you lost most of your Stilettos and/or Gladii along the way, you're gonna have serious problems at this point. Episode 1 is very, very much about taking care of your far-too-few ships.

[Vidmaster]

didn't loose much ships, just one Stil. The mission simply throws to many reinforcements at you.

Hey, ATI will release 9.8 soon, maybe that will fix the problem.

[Lt.Overload]

Originally Posted by spec

Yeah, I have the latest ATI drivers. They were released last month.

Here are the screenshots.

Looks like mine.

I love the new episode 5 update

however I am seeing mission crashes on me even when I restart the game the large battles I drop out of the game.

seems like a memory leak. I am running the game at res 1680x1050 no anti alis or anisotropy.
HDR effects enabled
The game runs smooth as can be even with all settings max even with anti alis and anisotropy enabled max on both settings I switched it off to see if crash issue would be fixed no luck.

system specs

Vista ultimate 64 bit
quad core Q9650
xfx 780I Motherboard
8 gigs of 1066 kingstin hyper X ddr2 ram
2 8800GTS 512 G92 video cards in SLI
6 segate 2tb drives raid 0
enermax 1000 watt power supply

[spec]

Oops. That thumbs down was an accident. I didn't mean to put that in there.

I appreciate the extra work the team is doing on top on the countless hours already spent.

Standoff is already fun without the extra eye candy and the sim is keeping me busy.

[Vidmaster]

I need to add to my list of ATI problems that JumpEffects don't work either.

[Dundradal]

You don't see the jump point opening?

[Lt.Overload]

Originally Posted by Dundradal

You don't see the jump point opening?

I don't

[Vidmaster]

no, dont see any jump effects in the cutscenes

[PopsiclePete]

With or without the "Enhanced lighting" option ? Lots of things uses the new GFXs, such as the flack and jump animations; there is no need to list them all for us, because if one thing using an effect doesn't work, the others won't either

Alex is working hard on a fix for you ATI users, but in the meantime you have to play without the options "Enhanced lighting" and "HDR".

[Iceblade]

any ideas what is causing the crossbow jump crash. It is not related to the jump effect and I don't think it is something simple like a missing ship that is called or other normal crash problem (first it would have been fixed before release and there is no error message). It isn't related to the enhanced star fields either.

Perplexing.

[Vidmaster]

Originally Posted by PopsiclePete

With or without the "Enhanced lighting" option ?

Without the Enchanced lighting option, I dont see any JumpEffects. With EL I more or less see nothing, remember?

[Starkey]

I´m on ATI bug testing today. You ATI owners will be enjoying Standoff in OpenGL very soon, Alex´s new patch looks promising.

[Wedge009]

Oh good. I'm wondering whether or not to try the current release in all my copious spare time. (:

[Wedge009]

For your information, Catalyst 9.8 has been released.

[Starkey]

I´ve downloaded it... but it doesn´t seem to have made much of a difference in my ATI machine.

[Vidmaster]

it does on mine. Crysis runs even better now.

Sorry guys but the missing ships HDR problem is NOT JUST ATI.

I have a Nvidia 7600GS and I have exactly the same problem as the other users.

All works well except HDR/bloom/enhanced space etc, I just get the same as these guys so I can assure you there is a problem and its not just ATI cards.

The game plays great, even with AA and AS, but I'm missing out on the the HDR candy, which is a shame.

Cheers.

[Quarto]

Did you try all the standard stuff - updating DirectX, updating your drivers, etc.?

WOW, that was a SUPER quick reply.

I've tried the latest drivers but NOT the Direct x, I'm currntly on 9.c which I'm sure is the most up to date version for my card.

I will have a look though.

Cheers.

[Triple-B]

I asked in ohter threats to, but again i repeat. i hope someone can help

in standoff and in prophecy, i use the enhanced starfield patch.

i am using the newest graphic card drivers, but still i cannot get beyond of 640*480, even if 1024*768 is choosen. the game displays always 640*480

i am using an nvidia geforce 8800 gt

[Quarto]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I've tried the latest drivers but NOT the Direct x, I'm currntly on 9.c which I'm sure is the most up to date version for my card.

There are many versions of DirectX 9C - just like the graphics card drivers, DirectX continually gets updates. I remember having the exact same problem you describe (I have an 8600) during development, when I first tried to run the new DLLs - turned out that a DirectX update was indeed necessary.