Constant flickering when playing

[TimSurway]

Hey

I recently bought a new computer with these specs

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ with an NVidia GeForce 7600 GS graphics card and 2GB of ram.

When I load up Medieval the screen flickers wildly throughout. I've checked the minimum specs and mine reach it easily so i was wondering if you guys have any advice on how to get this damn game to stop flickering.

Thanks

[GrnEyedDvl]

Get the AMD Dual Core Optomizer, and make sure your drivers are current. Just because the computer is new doesnt mean the drivers are the most current ones out there.


http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/...1_9706,00.html

[TimSurway]

installed both the Optimizer and the latest drivers but the problem is still occuring. any other advice?

[SonOfCrusader76]

Get the AMD Dual Core Optomizer, and make sure your drivers are current. Just because the computer is new doesnt mean the drivers are the most current ones out there.


http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/...1_9706,00.html

Is there an Intel version of this optimiser for Core 2 Duo? If so, could you post a link?

[GrnEyedDvl]

Are you playing on maxed settings?

[TimSurway]

Are you playing on maxed settings?

yes

[GrnEyedDvl]

Well there kinda is, its part of Windows Update. Read this that I posted in another thread:

Actually thats not quite correct. Some games have issues because a thread finishes before its supposed to and its waiting for the results from another thread, but if there is no wait time built into the code it will crash because of a missing variable. AMD and Intel both have multi core management software and theres a Windows patch that has to be manually installed for some software including games to run properly in a multi core situation.

For Windows XP
Windows articles
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909944
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256

These patches are NOT automatically installed through Windows Update. You either have to select them in the Other Updates section or do a direct install from Windows update. You can go to Add/Remove programs, check the Show Updates option and look for KB896256 to see if you already have it.

AMD Patch
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...mdcpusetup.exe

AMD Dual Core Optimizer
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont...ties/Setup.exe

Windows patch with Intel support
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...v4-x86-ENU.exe

There are also some registry entries you can make to force optomization of dual core processing but use those files first.

Try those then reboot your machine and see if its any better, if its not then we need to take a look at your dxdiag file.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Does that happen if you turn them down?

[TimSurway]

i've tried basically all the different types of settings, it doesn't help at all. One of the main reasons why I bought a computer with good specs is to play this game so you can imagine my frustration.

[Lacirtemis]

Core Affinity.
Start the game, alt tab out of it, start windows taskbar (ctrl alt delete) and in the processed tab find the exe for the game. Right click on it, choose set affinity, and uncheck either core 0 or core 1.

You will have to do this each time you start the game, or you could google how to set the game to just run on one core for good.

[TimSurway]

Tried the affinity thing, still no good.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Core Affinity.
Start the game, alt tab out of it, start windows taskbar (ctrl alt delete) and in the processed tab find the exe for the game. Right click on it, choose set affinity, and uncheck either core 0 or core 1.

You will have to do this each time you start the game, or you could google how to set the game to just run on one core for good.

The optomizer fixes that problem, thats why he saw no change when he did this.


Do what Hallie suggested but I think the default is 1024 x 768. For widescreen I am using 1440 x 900 on a 21 inch. Make sure you are doing this on your vanilla game. Each mod has its own cfg file that you will need to change so it matches your vanilla settings when you get them right.

[TimSurway]

my .cfg preferences file only says

[video]
widescreen=0
[game]
allusers=1

[Halie Satanus]

I had this same thing after downloading a mod which changed the resolution in the preferences.txt (should be in your preferences folder), the ones set by default should be 1024x576, if not try doubling (2048x1536) if you have a wide screen.

[TimSurway]

can't seem to find that folder, whereabouts is it?

[makanyane]

^^excuse the RTW modder above

its actually in the .cfg file in M2TW, the settings are under

[video]
anisotropic_level = 4
anti_alias_mode = off
antialiasing = 0
assassination_movies = 1
autodetect = 0
battle_resolution = 1024 768
bloom = 1
building_detail = high
campaign_resolution = 1024 768

they should be changeable from within the game options screen, but it might be defaulting back I suppose... ?

The problem I had with RTW graphics was a very weird psychedelic effect and flickering, that turned out to be caused by the game trying to use the AntiAlias settings in the preferences file, without the graphics card accepting it as a change....

that was an ATI card and problem was having anti-alias setting selected that said 'let the game decide' - and umm basically that didn't work!

[Halie Satanus]

Meh, RTW rules...

[GrnEyedDvl]

Thats what your vanilla .cfg file says??

[TimSurway]

that's the only .cfg file I can see in any of the folders.:\

[GrnEyedDvl]

Well thats what the problem is then, you should have all kinds of settings in there.

The file name should be:

medieval2.preference.cfg

Check and make sure you have the right file. If it IS the right file something got screwed up somewhere. Go into your Video Settings in the game and hit Auto Detect and then Apply Settings. This should save the settings to your .cfg file, then you can tweak the settings however you like.

If that doesnt save the settings to that file let me know and I will send you my settings, but as some of them are hardware dependent you might need to edit a few of them by hand.