Pixelated Shadows?I would appreciate some help!

[HGRC]

I've had ugly, blocky, pixelated flickering shadows in the campaign map since I got Napoleon a couple of weeks ago. I don't mind in the battle map, the overall image looks neat enough, but it is driving me nuts in the campaign map. I have all the latest Nvidia drivers, all the latest Intel drivers (because of the extensive online research that I've done about the issue I thought that could have something to do with it) all the sound drivers are up to date. My laptop runs the game at everything ultra perfectly fine, smooth gameplay, no lags whatsoever. It is just the freaking shadows that are all over the place.

I contacted Nvidia, they assured me there's nothing wrong with my card. I have contacted Sega, and they are a laughable bunch, to be honest. I don't even know if I am in contact with a real person or a freaking bot, because they keep sending me mails with steps to follow that I have already done a million times (re install the game, verify caché etc etc)

If anybody has experienced this also and knows a workaround, anything... I would greatly appreciate it. Hell I would even send a pizza, but I don't know how sending a pizza from Spain to anywhere overseas would turn out.

Thanks a lot!

[general molotof]

Hi,
First of all if you are considering this blocky (which is somewhat):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...?id=1094939012

Then you are out of luck because i think this is the best (with 4x AA) napoleon total war shadows can look (i have the game for many years and played it on at least three different systems with no better results).
I don't know, if someone ever had better shadows, i would also like to know!

[HGRC]

Hi General molotof,

Yes they are blocky, but have you noticed? During winter, I guess because of how the light source renders the shadows over the map, the shadows in the campaign map are more stable, the pixelated effect is LESS noticeable, but then, when the season changes, because the light source changes too, the shadows are rendered from another angle and they become much more noticeable and they are all over the place.

Thank you for responding, yeah I guess I am out of luck, I am currently exchanging emails with sega support and I know they have no clue of what to say. I don't think there's a solution and that the whole thing is a game related issue, but...since I am no expert...

[Leonardo]

I've had ugly, blocky, pixelated flickering shadows in the campaign map since I got Napoleon a couple of weeks ago. I don't mind in the battle map, the overall image looks neat enough, but it is driving me nuts in the campaign map. I have all the latest Nvidia drivers, all the latest Intel drivers (because of the extensive online research that I've done about the issue I thought that could have something to do with it) all the sound drivers are up to date. My laptop runs the game at everything ultra perfectly fine, smooth gameplay, no lags whatsoever. It is just the freaking shadows that are all over the place.

I contacted Nvidia, they assured me there's nothing wrong with my card. I have contacted Sega, and they are a laughable bunch, to be honest. I don't even know if I am in contact with a real person or a freaking bot, because they keep sending me mails with steps to follow that I have already done a million times (re install the game, verify caché etc etc)

If anybody has experienced this also and knows a workaround, anything... I would greatly appreciate it. Hell I would even send a pizza, but I don't know how sending a pizza from Spain to anywhere overseas would turn out.

Thanks a lot!

Sometimes it might be necessary to go back to an older video driver. Have you tried that?

[HGRC]

Oh man, no I haven't. I'm too scared I would screw everything up. Anyway, since I installed Napoleon I have gone through 3 Nvidia drivers, so... I don't know which version would be the correct one.

Thank you for your help

[Leonardo]

Oh man, no I haven't. I'm too scared I would screw everything up. Anyway, since I installed Napoleon I have gone through 3 Nvidia drivers, so... I don't know which version would be the correct one.

How about using the universal video driver that Microsoft provides and will always be installed during the installation of Windows.

[Sirlion]

The way NTW renders shadows is very simple. The light source is always one and unidirectional. Whenever the camera looks the way it is supposed to, the shadows look neat and cleaner from artifacts. However as soon as you move the camera in any other direction the light source is not casting, the shadows will look progressively worse and more pixelated. There is nothing you can do about it.

[HGRC]

Oh well, thanks a lot for the info! Now I will stop looking pointlessly for any solution. I finally installed GEMFX, and although the pixelation and the flickering is there, using some of the effects makes it less noticeable so, I will just live with that I guess. And overall it looks spectacular, even more so in battles.

Thanks everybody for your help! I really really appreciate it.

[HGRC]

Hi Sirlion, I have a question regarding this issue, hope you can help me. Browsing around I found another post regarding shadows in which you suggest that there are some values in the fx shadows tables that you can tweak to change shadow resolution. I found the tables (opening them with PFM) but I didn't touch anything since I don't know how or in which format would I save that modified table. But my question is: and this is ONLY regarding Campaign Map shadows ( I don't mind Battlemap, overall looks ok, doesn't bother me much, it's the flickering pixelated tree and unit shadows in the Campaign Map that I want to find a solution for); is there a way to fix those shadows? Or disable them in the Campaign Map, but keeping them in the BattleMap? Would doubling the resolution (as you pointed in some other post -long ago I am sorry-) of the shadows fix this problem? If so, how would I save that modified table? Mod format? Movie format? Would it be as simple as that or would I be messing dangerously with the game files? I don't know how to mod, but I recently made a tiny little mod that removes infantry dust for Napoleon and I posted it (pretty happy with that really) and looking around the files in PFM made me think there is maybe a "workaround" or a solution for the shadow problem, again, in the Campaign Map. Like, disabling the swaying of trees animation, something like that would make it more bearable. Well, sorry about the long post, and I hope you can help me. Thank you for your reply. I have to say I really appreciate your work a lot, I have used (and currently using) many of your mods over the years.