Graphic glitch pls help

miyri

hi all hope u can help
i installed freelancer on my msi u135 netbook along with FLMM and a few mods, the game loads and runs fine but when i have to go to a menu such as buying ships or reading jobs board the graphics go nuts, il try to be as clear as possible, basically it seams to stretch out all the words and drag them all over the screen basically making it unreadable and therefore unplayable, almost everything else is glitch free and the space battles are perfectly playable.
other ppl on the web claim to run this game on there netbooks without this issue, though the few who have mentioned it seamed to fix it but neglect to share how they did it :(.
anyway i hope you can help as i realy want to be able to play this game on my netbook. also i can post a screen shot of the glitch if it helps, my netbook specs are as folllows
intel atom n450
1g ram
ive tried to be as detalied as possible but if u need more info i will be happy to provide if it will help

i look forward to your replys
many thanks :))

Bullwinkle

miyri wrote:
i installed freelancer on my msi u135 netbook along with FLMM and a few mods,

the game loads and runs fine but when i have to go to a menu such as buying ships or reading jobs board the graphics go nuts

This is the second netbook question this week… it is very cool to hear that Freelancer runs on netbooks!

Questions:

What resolution is Freelancer using? 800x600?
Are you running Freelancer in a window, or full screen?
Do you have this same problem with vanilla Freelancer? Or only with mods?

Your graphics controller and the computer itself should run Freelancer. I wonder about performance, especially with some mods, but the basics should work.

Two features known to cause trouble on some computers:

3D Sound (Options / Audio)
Advanced Shader (some mods add this – I do not think it will work with current Intel built-in graphics controllers (which most netbooks have, for battery life reasons). It is not part of vanilla Freelancer.

Cannon

I have the same problem. The graphics chipset is a GMA3500 on a HP2100.

It looks like the vertex or index buffering is messed up when certain fonts are rendered. This is most noticable on the equipment/ship dealer screens but it effects others to.

I haven’t found a solution although I haven’t looked very hard at what the dx stuff is doing.

I’ve used both 800x600 and 1024x600 (which is the default screen resolution).

It happens in both windowed and full screen mode.

It happens with both vanilla and discovery.

lonestar

Maybe this will fix it guys, Its off the 88Flak sight and I had something like it also happen and this fixed it up.

Font Fix

Thread link was taken from

Bas

Nope, I think he has a different problem.

Screenshots won’t harm, but I guess how it does look at your screen.

IIRC someone stated it ahs to do with the intel chip set which should be a totally rubbish….

Cannon

Oh I think it’s to do with my chipset and dx compatibility.

Did I mention I’m running win 7…

No, it’s not a wide fonts issue. The fonts go crazy, flying all over the screen. They are not readable. I’ll post a SS in a bit.

Vesko

Aye, I’ve had the same problem before mate. I tried running it on 7 before, and it seems it didn’t quite like it…. whenever I opened a menu, it just streched the text all over the screen. Strangely enough, when I hovered over a button, the text returned to normal.

My fix? Back to XP again.

EDIT: Back then, I had an Intel chip built in. Still don’t get why it’s normal with XP.

Bullwinkle

I would be surprised if the chipset is to blame. Intel chipsets are vastly superior to other graphics devices from the standpoint of power budget. They rock for battery-powered devices.

More importantly, Freelancer runs just fine on older Intel chipsets.

Win 7, on the other hand, raises the big Aero flag… there are many known issues regarding changing graphics modes. Aero is made for DX10, and Freelancer is DX8, right?

I don’t have a GMA 3150 to test, but the first thing I would do would be to try the latest drivers from Intel:

Intel Graphics Drivers - GMA 3150

PS: Any kind of gaming will push a netbook (and most laptops) to its limits, so be careful about heat buildup. Heat kills semiconductors and disk drives. Watch for signs of the Intel CPU slowing down – a safety feature – which makes gameplay choppy. Elevating the netbook/laptop and using an external fan to blow air under, over, and around the netbook/laptop can help.

miyri

heres a screen shot i took last night, imagine this but with all the txt jumping around, im running it in 800x600. there is a way of editing the ini files to make it 1024x600 (default neetbook size) which i have tried but it didnt make any difference. im gonna try updating the graphics driver but i think its on the most recent version, also i dont know if this makes any fiffrence but acording to my system i have DX11?! i dont know much about direct x but jsut though i would mention it.
hope this works not quite sure how to upload photos

Vesko

Yep, that’s exactly what I saw on mine. Try to imagine that, but having the text change places 60 times a second.

Try XP on it mate, it worked for me.

lonestar

Did you try that fix? You might have to take ownership of that font folder so that you can do it though. I have Win seven also but my freelancer is not on it but an older xp machine.

But I thought I’d try to help you out some.

Bas

Maybe alternative drivers could help as well

You know, those who aren’t made by intel and so on. (Like omega drivers for ATI)

Bullwinkle

miyri wrote:
heres a screen shot i took last night,

Thanks for the screen shot, Miyri.

I think that you are on the right track with the DX11 vs DX8/DX9 switching. This is a common problem for Vista users, and a less-common-but-still-an-issue for Win 7 users.

Try disabling Aero:

Right-click the Desktop, choose Personalize, then choose one of the Basic Themes. That should turn off Aero overall.
Or, to disable Aero only when running Freelancer: Change the Freelancer icon to “Disable desktop composition”.

I am very curious about this… I hope that you get it to work, and please let us know your results!

.

miyri

thx for everyone who replyed, i have tried all the font fix, updating the drivers and disabling areo but so far no luck ive tried using differenct compatibiltity modes as well. if you think of anything else i would apprecaite it, i dont have any saved games or anything so im not worried about mesing up freelancer. it would be so ausome to play freelancer on my netbook. ive got a couple of things i wanna try myself and will check back in a bit

Cannon

Just a note, I had a brain fart and I have a GMA3150 not a GMA3500…

Bas

Did you search for alternative drivers (though, I am not familiar about if those exist for the intel chipset)?
Have you disabled Aero?

Bullwinkle

miyri wrote:
so far no luck

How disappointing, Miyri! After Vesko’s report that switching to Windows XP fixed a similar problem for him, I was confident that disabling Aero would do the trick for you (heavy sigh).

This is vanilla Freelancer that is causing trouble, right? At 800x600? With 3D sound turned off? Have you tried reducing Video quality in the Options menu (if you can even read the Options menu long enough to change anything)?

I wish I had a similar machine to test for you. The other thoughts that come to mind are almost in the Grasping-at-Straws Department:

Reduce Hardware Acceleration for your video adapter.
Check the BIOS setup for any available adjustments to video. If you can change the amount of memory that the video adapter uses, then set it to the maximum.
Install Windows XP

None of the above feel like “solid leads”. They are just things to try for the sake of exhaustively checking all possibilities.

(Well, Windows XP is a good bet, but it may be a challenge to find all of the drivers for your netbook.)

I will point out that many people run Freelancer under Windows 7, so this is not a universal Win7 problem. They report that FLMM must be run in Admin mode. Otherwise, they report no trouble with Freelancer.

Make sure your user profile on the theStarport is set to send you an email when this thread is updated, just in case someone comes up with a good lead in the future.

@Cannon: Yeah, I knew that you meant 3150!

@Bas: Intel does a much better job with driver support than nVidia ever has.

@Miyri: If you want to try Bas’ idea, the best bet would be to try Vista 32 drivers for your adapter. The Vista drivers are more mature than the Win 7 drivers, and there was a time during the Win 7 beta during which people had good results with the Vista drivers. It feels like a long shot to me, but none of the normal things have worked. :S

.

Cannon

The options window and most other windows work okay. It’s just a few in game windows such as the equipment dealer.

Bullwinkle

Cannon wrote:
The options window and most other windows work okay. It’s just a few in game windows such as the equipment dealer.

Are you using Win 7, too, Cannon?

I wonder what is special about the windows that do not work? You mentioned that you suspect certain fonts. Could you do a quick test of changing the suspect fonts in fonts.ini and/or rich_fonts.ini?

For example, back up fonts.ini then replace all of the fonts with, say, Arial. Don’t worry about the sizes… just see whether it runs.

I just installed Freelancer on my netbook and it runs fine, including the Equipment Dealer. However, my netbook has Windows XP and a GMA 950 (which, logically, is the immediate predecessor to the 3150 :S ).

I was a little surprised at how well Freelancer runs on the netbook! Now I can really take Freelancer with me anywhere I go!

(Just watch out for the heat)

Bas

A class mate told me just today that Win 7 has some kind of Virtual Machine for XP inbuilt, which allows you execute applications the exact way like they are executed in XP.

Another option would be to install Win XP a t a VM - but I am not sure if a VM can handle 3D graphics nor I am sure about the performance…