blurry graphics

from GalCiv2 Forums
I seem to be having a problem that nobody else is having.  Everytime I start the game the title screen is a little blurry.  The race portraits are blurry too and the planet terrain is also blurry, so pretty much all the little pictures are blurry.  This started on beta 5.  I got beta 6 now and still no luck.  The game worked great before then.  What is going on with this thing!

Here's the debug just in case.

Debug Message:  Version v1.5 last updated on: Thu Jan 11 13:39:19 2007
Debug Message:  GalCiv2 is activated.
Debug Message:  Checking DX Version.
Debug Message:  *********DXDiag info follows.*********
System Info
Time: 3/21/2008, 23:40:36
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Machine Name: JMP
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_qfe.070227-2300)
Languages: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Acer
System Model: Aspire 9300
BIOS: PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.1    
Processor: AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-52,  MMX,  3DNow (2 CPUs), ~1.6GHz
Physical Memory: 894MB RAM
Page File: 459MB used, 1707MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS


Display Info
Display device 1:
Device Name: \\.\DISPLAY1
Card Name: NVIDIA GeForce Go 6100
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip Type: GeForce Go 6100
DAC Type: Integrated RAMDAC
Key Device: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0247&SUBSYS_01121025&REV_A2
Display Memory: 128.0 MB
Current Display Mode: 1280 x 768 (32 bit) (59Hz)
Monitor Name: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor Max Resolution: 1600,1200
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0011.6375
Driver Date: 10/4/2007 17:14:00
DirectX Acceleration Enabled: Yes
 


Sound info
Sound device 1:
Description: Realtek HD Audio output
Default Sound Playback: Yes
Default Voice Playback: Yes
Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0883&SUBSYS_10250000&REV_1000
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Driver Name: RtkHDAud.sys
Provider: Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
Driver Version: 5.10.0000.5523
Driver Date: 12/5/2007 17:30:36
Type: WDM
Other Drivers:
Acceleration Level: 3
Cap Flags: 0
Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0
 
Sound device 1:
Description: SndTDriverV32 Wave
Default Sound Playback: No
Default Voice Playback: No
Hardware ID: *SndTDriverV32
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Driver Name: SndTDriverV32.sys
Provider: SndTDriverV32
Driver Version: 5.01.2601.0001
Driver Date: 10/9/2007 17:04:56
Type: WDM
Other Drivers:
Acceleration Level: 3
Cap Flags: 0
Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0
 
Sound device 1:
Description: SndTDriverV32 Wave
Default Sound Playback: No
Default Voice Playback: No
Hardware ID: *SndTDriverV32
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Driver Name: SndTDriverV32.sys
Provider: SndTDriverV32
Driver Version: 5.01.2601.0001
Driver Date: 10/9/2007 17:04:56
Type: WDM
Other Drivers:
Acceleration Level: 3
Cap Flags: 0
Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0
 
Sound device 1:
Description: SndTDriverV32 Wave
Default Sound Playback: No
Default Voice Playback: No
Hardware ID: *SndTDriverV32
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Driver Name: SndTDriverV32.sys
Provider: SndTDriverV32
Driver Version: 5.01.2601.0001
Driver Date: 10/9/2007 17:04:56
Type: WDM
Other Drivers:
Acceleration Level: 3
Cap Flags: 0
Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0
 
Sound device 1:
Description: SndTDriverV32 Wave
Default Sound Playback: No
Default Voice Playback: No
Hardware ID: *SndTDriverV32
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Driver Name: SndTDriverV32.sys
Provider: SndTDriverV32
Driver Version: 5.01.2601.0001
Driver Date: 10/9/2007 17:04:56
Type: WDM
Other Drivers:
Acceleration Level: 3
Cap Flags: 0
Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0
 
Sound device 1:
Description: SndTDriverV32 Wave
Default Sound Playback: No
Default Voice Playback: No
Hardware ID: *SndTDriverV32
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Driver Name: SndTDriverV32.sys
Provider: SndTDriverV32
Driver Version: 5.01.2601.0001
Driver Date: 10/9/2007 17:04:56
Type: WDM
Other Drivers:
Acceleration Level: 3
Cap Flags: 0
Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0
 
Sound device 1:
Description: SndTDriverV32 Wave
Default Sound Playback: No
Default Voice Playback: No
Hardware ID: *SndTDriverV32
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Driver Name: SndTDriverV32.sys
Provider: SndTDriverV32
Driver Version: 5.01.2601.0001
Driver Date: 10/9/2007 17:04:56
Type: WDM
Other Drivers:
Acceleration Level: 3
Cap Flags: 0
Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0
 


Debug Message:  *********END dxdiag info.*********
Debug Message:  Entering WinMain
Debug Message:  ******* Starting Game Shell *******
Debug Message:  Going Fullscreen
Debug Message:  Preparing to change display settings.
Debug Message:  Using multilsample setting: D3DMULTISAMPLE_4_SAMPLES
Debug Message:  Game Resolution: 1024 x 768
Debug Message:  Running fullscreen.
Debug Message:  HAL (sw vp): NVIDIA GeForce Go 6100
Debug Message:  D3DPRESENT_INTERVAL_DEFAULT
Debug Message:  Refresh rate: 59
Debug Message:  Bit Depth: 32 bit.
Debug Message:  *********Checking D3DDevice Caps***********************
Debug Message:  A full-color cursor is supported in hardware at high resolution modes.
Debug Message:  RGB in format 6:6:6, Masks reported as ff0000:ff00:ff
Debug Message:  Now Fullscreen
Debug Message:  Shell initialization complete
Debug Message:  ***** Initializing Game *****
Debug Message:  Timer Frequency is 0 369e99
Debug Message:  Initializing sound card.
Debug Message:  initailizing bink
Debug Message:  Create setup screens.
Debug Message:  Clear galaxy settings.
Debug Message:  Clear influence.
Debug Message:  Clear up laws.
Debug Message:  Clear first time events.
Debug Message:  Clear wonders and trade goods.
Debug Message:  Clear sector mapper.
Debug Message:  * Collectors Edition *
Debug Message:  Set mouse.
Debug Message:  Set update timer.
Debug Message:  Clear data definitions.
Debug Message:  No files found matching mask C:\Documents and Settings\Josh\My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2\ships\*.xml
Debug Message:  No files found matching mask C:\Documents and Settings\Josh\My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2\ships\*.shipcfg
Debug Message:  Reading Star Names
Debug Message:  Reading Star Names... Done
Debug Message:  No files found matching mask C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalC\Data\CustomMaps\*.gc2map
Debug Message:  No files found matching mask C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalC\Data\Scenarios\*.gc2scenario
Debug Message:  Creating Galaxy
Debug Message:  Killing threads.
Debug Message:  Kiling civs.
Debug Message:  Killing ships.
Debug Message:  Killing rallypoints.
Debug Message:  Killing misc objects.
Debug Message:  Killing stars.
Debug Message:  Killing anomalies.
Debug Message:  Killing space resources.
Debug Message:  Killing colonies and planets.
Debug Message:  killing scenario.
Debug Message:  Clearing Turn Event Log
Debug Message:  Clear galaxy settings.
Debug Message:  Clear influence.
Debug Message:  Clear up laws.
Debug Message:  Clear first time events.
Debug Message:  Clear wonders and trade goods.
Debug Message:  Clear sector mapper.
Debug Message:  Galaxy Size Set: 4 x 4
Debug Message:  Creating Random Map
Debug Message:  Creating Random Map... Stars
Debug Message:  Number of Unplaced Stars: 6.
Debug Message:  Creating Random Map... Planets
Debug Message:  Creating Random Map... Anomalies
Debug Message:  Num Anomalies: 42
Debug Message:  Creating Random Map... Resources
Debug Message:  Creating Random Map... Done
Debug Message:  No files found matching mask C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalC\Data\CustomMaps\*.gc2map
Debug Message:  No files found matching mask C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalC\Data\Scenarios\*.gc2scenario
Debug Message:  TitleWnd: Quit Button.
Debug Message:  Posting WM_CLOSE message.
Debug Message:  WM_CLOSE message received.
Debug Message:  GameUninitialize start
Debug Message:  Killing Galaxy
Debug Message:  Killing threads.
Debug Message:  Kiling civs.
Debug Message:  Killing ships.
Debug Message:  Killing rallypoints.
Debug Message:  Killing misc objects.
Debug Message:  Killing stars.
Debug Message:  Killing anomalies.
Debug Message:  Killing space resources.
Debug Message:  Killing colonies and planets.
Debug Message:  killing scenario.
Debug Message:  Clearing Turn Event Log
Debug Message:  Clear galaxy settings.
Debug Message:  Clear influence.
Debug Message:  Clear up laws.
Debug Message:  Clear first time events.
Debug Message:  Clear wonders and trade goods.
Debug Message:  Clear sector mapper.
Debug Message:  Clear data definitions.
Debug Message:  Killing Galaxy: Completed
Debug Message:  Shutting down sound system.
Debug Message:  Clearing sound and music handles.
Debug Message:  GameUninitialize end
Debug Message:  Device not cleared. 1 counts left.
Debug Message:  D3D not cleared. 1 counts left.
Debug Message:  Destroying Window.
Debug Message:  Main Shell terminating normally

7,324 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Your debug is from Dread Lords, not the beta.

According to that, you are running the game at 1024x768 while your desktop is set to 1280x768.
Have you tried running the game at your desktop resolution? Widescreen monitors may not do 4:3 very well.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sorry about that, I wasn't paying attention. I tried what you said, but that still didn't work.
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Do you have anti-aliasing cranked up in your video card drivers? Anti-aliasing tends to blur the heck out of some games.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
He's got AA at 4X, which is pretty much standard.

The video chip is a NVIDIA GeForce Go 6100, which is pretty weak.
It could be overheating, or wearing out (failing).
Or it could even be the monitor driver.
Monitor Name: Plug and Play Monitor - which means it is not specific to the display.
Problems sometimes happen because of incorrect timimgs due to an incorrect driver.

I realize that it may have started with the Beta 5 update.
But sometimes, hardware failure might coincidentally coincide with a software update.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
If he has a go 6100, then I'll tell you now why his screen is blurry:

NON NATIVE ON A LAPTOP SUCKS!
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm reading online, and apparantly the acer laptops in your laptop range have really blurry screens when non native.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Anti-aliasing tends to blur the heck out of some games.
End of quote


It shouldn't. At most, the "blur" should never, ever be more than a single pixel thick. AA doesn't actually blur anything; it simply mixes the colors of more than one shape into a single pixel, because multiple shapes can overlap a single pixel. It should be more like a photograph in that way: If you look at a photograph on your computer, you will notice that it is fully anti-aliased; there are never jaggies in a photo.

But it may appear to be "blurring" to the untrained eye, so yeah keep that in mind.

Usually, what happens in anti-aliasing is that a much larger image is sampled down to the size of your resolution, so that you're actually seeing an image with a higher virtual resolution than the physical resolution.

Personally, I dislike the jaggies and always try to play games with anti-aliasing on.

From his description, however, it sounds like only certain things are blurry. Which tells me he's probably playing with something turned down.

Go to the "Options", click on the "Video" tab, and turn the "Video Quality" slider all the way up. That might help.

It could also be a low memory problem, so it's falling back to smaller textures - try turning off all unnecessary programs running in the background.

In addition, keep in mind that some things (such as movies) are recorded at a certain size, and if your resolution is above that size, it may actually be scaling everything up, causing it to be blurry.

I always recommend running an LCD at its native resolution, where one pixel on the resolution corresponds to one pixel on the LCD. Unfortunately, LCDs handle different resolutions very poorly.

Would it be possible to get a screen shot? Right now, we're just guessing in the dark. If we could see it for ourselves, we might have a better idea of what is happening.

Edit (becase some replies appeared while I was typing):
Monitor Name: Plug and Play Monitor - which means it is not specific to the display.
Problems sometimes happen because of incorrect timimgs due to an incorrect driver.
End of quote


Umm, the GeForce Go 6100 is, I believe, a laptop video card, so it's an LCD, so timings are not applicable. But a poor driver may be making it go to a non-native resolution, perhaps?
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The blurring effect I mentioned in regards to anti-aliasing typically occurs on Text in the games I've seen it in. It has nothing to do with an untrained eye, antialiasing turned on in the video card in these games causes the text to be "blended" with the game imagery. One pixel width or not, it looks blurry whether your eye is trained or isn't.

I have no idea whether or not this effects this game or not however as I do not have a profile set to enable AA for this game; I don't see it as needing it, at least not at the resolution I run it at.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Umm, the GeForce Go 6100 is, I believe, a laptop video card, so it's an LCD, so timings are not applicable. But a poor driver may be making it go to a non-native resolution, perhaps?
End of quote


That could be.

But if Isiss specifically set the game to the desktop resolution of 1280x768 that should not happen.

I personally have had bad luck with it, but setting 'Fullscreen' to 'Windowed' sometimes helps.
In my experience running in windowed mode makes my screen blurry, but some others seem to have no problem with that.
So perhaps Isiss should try windowed mode at desktop resolution?
It's worth a try, anyway.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't usually use anti-aliasing anyway. This doesn't happen with any of my other games just this one. I tried everything mentioned. Stupid question: how do I post a screen shot? When I hit the insert image button it shows code or something not the image itself.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The blurring effect I mentioned in regards to anti-aliasing typically occurs on Text in the games I've seen it in. It has nothing to do with an untrained eye, antialiasing turned on in the video card in these games causes the text to be "blended" with the game imagery. One pixel width or not, it looks blurry whether your eye is trained or isn't.
End of quote


If the text is too small, yeah, anti-aliasing can be a bit problematic, especially at font sizes where the parts of the font are a single pixel thick and when using low AA settings like 2x where not much variance of a color is allowed.

Older games may not account for AA at all, and can really mess up with it turned on. Especially if they are using their own custom bitmap fonts, which is very common.

The problem is the way text is rendered: Very often we want to render text only a few pixels large, so in order to maximize legibility, the OS will do some tricks like snapping the text to pixel boundaries, making sure the stems are always at least a pixel thick, and even changing the shape of the text at small font sizes to make them more legible. This leads to a "sharp" look because we're snapping everything to pixel boundaries.

It's not that it's really blurring anything - We've been actually doing a lot of artificial "sharpening" of our text for dozens of years.

What I was meaning to say is that it's not a Gaussian blur that we normally think about when we hear "blur" - it won't spread a color over lots of pixels blindly.

I don't usually use anti-aliasing anyway.
End of quote


Then turn it off and see what happens. Even though I'm picky about calling it a "blur," that's how people often describe it.

Stupid question: how do I post a screen shot? When I hit the insert image button it shows code or something not the image itself.
End of quote


Welcome to the Internet. You have to put it online somehow before putting it in the forums. I use ImageShack to host images I want to use in forums. They will give you the code to put into the box.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hey it's working now! I backed up all my important crap on my external hard drive and restored my laptop to when I first got it. I must of did something somewhere along the line that caused the game to act up. I don't know if it was the best solution, but it got the job done! I really appreciate you guys trying to help me out, it means a lot. Thank you and good night!
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hey it's working now! I backed up all my important crap on my external hard drive and restored my laptop to when I first got it. I must of did something somewhere along the line that caused the game to act up. I don't know if it was the best solution, but it got the job done! I really appreciate you guys trying to help me out, it means a lot. Thank you and good night!
End of quote


Congrats Isiss. SOrt of a pain in the butt way to fix things, but if you don't know what got changed that screwed things up, it is an effective fix-it.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Good to hear you fixed your problem :).
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Good to hear you fixed your problem :).