View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0024969 | AI War 2 | Bug - Other | May 18, 2021 3:20 pm | Jun 1, 2021 9:35 am | |
| Reporter | MM12 | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 3.000 Begin The Onslaught | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 3.006 Rising Spire | ||||
| Summary | 0024969: Screen flickers aggressively, making the game unplayable | ||||
| Description | Hi, I recently returned to this game with the expansion, and (being a little rusty) I dove into the tutorials again. Sadly, I quickly experienced a problem that makes the game unplayable: the screen flickers aggressively (see screenshot), including in the pause menu, making it impossible to actually see anything useful on the screen. I can still zoom in and out so this isn't a full crash/freeze. I'm on Mac OS 11.3.1 on a machine that should be sufficiently powerful. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| related to | 0024972 | resolved | Chris_McElligottPark | Colorful Mosaics Cover the Whole Screen |
| related to | 0024789 | resolved | Chris_McElligottPark | Visual corruption when viewing certain planets |
| related to | 0025119 | resolved | Chris_McElligottPark | turning off all post processing options reduces but does not eliminate graphics issues on my Radeon 570x GPU iMac 2019 |
| related to | 0025129 | resolved | Chris_McElligottPark | OpenGL option produces no text on start up screen buttons |
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What GPU do you have? |
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AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4 GB |
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In case it matters: 4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3 I was playing the game in 2560x1440 on 144 FPS. The specific steps I took to get this bug are to open the second tutorial, then follow the instructions to go into the galaxy view (Tab), and go to the second planet (just by following the tutorial). At the second planet this always went wrong (in about 5 attempts). |
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Oh wow, that looks absolutely awful. It looks like a bug related specifically to the Metal rendering pipeline. My mac is older and has an nVidia card instead of AMD, but I'll see if I can duplicate it there. I had one other report of this on OSX, as well, recently. |
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Does this happen when you zoom in on something particularly bright? I can't duplicate this at all, unfortunately. |
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One possible workaround would be disabling ship models. If that works, then we will know for sure it's from over-brightness of one of them. If that fails, then it could still be over-brightness from the planet or the warp gate. I may need to simply move to a completely new bloom post processing tool, which is a shame if so, but possible. |
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Thanks for looking into this so quickly! This also happens when I disable 'draw ship models' in the Performance menu. Also, this happens when going to specific planets in that tutorial (Midlander and Farland, but not Sidelander). This is not specific to Tutorial 2 - it happens in Tutorial 3 as well. One thing I noticed is that these planets have enemy units while Murdoch and Sidelander don't. Could that be part of the cause? Please let me know if you need me to test anything specific. |
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I just saw the new patch; just wanted to confirm that the problem is not solved after downloading the new patch. |
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Specifically, this is with the "Show 'Stale Intel' Camera Effect" turned off? That's the only thing that would make any difference in that version. |
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Sorry - after going through the Camera settings menu three times I still can't find anything about 'Stale Intel'. Where exactly should I disable this? |
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It's under display I think, there's a post processing effects section but it is tagged as an advanced field. If you click the "there are x hidden advanced fields" at the bottom, it will appear. There will be some more options soon, related to bloom and some other items that are post processing related. One of the post processing effects is causing your problem (likely based on how it's processing color data from a specific planet), but I don't yet know which one. So adding in more controls will let us isolate it. So far it only seems to affect Radeon cards on OSX, and I do t happen to have that hardware combo. All my macs aren't able to duplicate the problem with Intel or Nvidia. |
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If it helps, I had to go to the Game options and turn on "Show Advanced Settings" before the "Show 'Stale Intel' Camera Effect" option became available under Display options. |
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I was able to find the setting, thanks! (indeed, I had to first turn on 'Show Advanced Settings' from the Game options - just clicking the 'there are X hidden advanced options' didn't show this one for me). Unfortunately, this did not fix the problem for me. I did one more test though - when I enter the planet with my screen zoomed in a lot, the flickering effect doesn't happen. Then, when I scroll around it happens when I see an enemy ship. I can't give you more details because it happens so fast I can't really see what kind of enemy ship is there. It's not a metal harvester though, I can see those without the effect happening. |
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Hey, a friend with a Mac is running into this issue as well. His text: "I am facing the same issue on a Mac with a Radeon Pro 560 4 GB. The game worked with v2906, but is broken in v3002. Once the camera enters an AI planet graphical errors ensure" Could it be that the 3.001 update broke it for this friend in this case? We can sadly not go back to 3.000 to check if it is indeed 3.001 that broke the graphics for him. |
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Hi, I don't know about versions before 3.x but I had this bug on 3.000 (and still on 3.001 and 3.002). It was definitely before 3.001 but after downloading the expansion. Before that I hadn't played the game recently so I don't know exactly when it was still working correctly. |
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This worked on v2906? That is... a huge surprise. At any rate, I plan on making a lot more options in here for getting various post-processing effects disabled or tuned down. I have my suspicions as to what might be causing this (mostly the bloom filter being blown out and having a math overflow error), but since this only happens on Macs with Radeons and no other kind of computer combo, it's hard to chase down. I suspect that essentially the reason it worked in the past was that we were using OpenGL on the Mac, OR because even when you chose metal, it still used OpenGL for certain things (to my surprise). Metal has much higher performance and is Apple's preferred way for folks to use their GPUs in their OS, but the shader compilation path is a little bit different. We are using some slightly older post-processing effects for bloom in particular, because we frankly get a better result out of it in my opinion compared to the latest and greatest from unity. That said, the ability to adjust these things, and/or for me to just potentially upgrade/replace the entire post-processing stack, is something I have to look at. I might be able to get better performance and quality by moving to the new post processing architecture, but I think in order to avoid the flicker I'll need to make TAA at least an option, and on older machines that will be something that will be a performance loss, not a gain. Probably. Apologies for the delay on this problem; I've been trying to keep a lot of plates spinning, metaphorically speaking. |
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Pretty sure it was 2906, I can guarantee it worked on 2816. I just checked our whatsapp group to check at what dates we played. 2909 or 2910 was also fine if that helps at all. I can see that he earned achievements in our game on the 16.05.2021. More options are always nice so I applaud that. I greatly appreciate your work and your open stance on information sharing. |
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This sounds similar to what I'm seeing in https://bugtracker.arcengames.com/view.php?id=24789 (running on an iMac with a Radeon Pro 570 4 GB) The workaround to disable drawing ship models worked on 2.815. |
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Just FYI, I am making progress on the post processing stack. I tried to redo it entirely, was partially successful until I got to bloom on the main battles, and it was just awful. So I've taken a different approach, and am adding more post processing control and a few other options. We should be able to isolate what it is that happens to OSX Radeons with that, and let you just turn off the offending effect. After that... well, we'll have some options, depending on what it is. Sorry for the delay! This has actually been super challenging. |
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Thanks for keeping us updated. I appreciate all the work that goes into this - especially trying to fix a problem that you can't reproduce on your end. Good luck! |
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Whew, okay. This should be something that now has a workaround, as of the latest version that is now out: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Finalizing_Multiplayer#Color_Grading_And_Visual_Updates Essentially, I would try the following: 1. Disable the GUI Glow in the Post-Processing section of the display settings. 2. If it's still a problem, then disable the Planet View Bloom. 3. If it's STILL a problem (wow), then disable FXAA on the planet view. If it's still a problem after all of those, we have a very surprising problem. If step 2 fixes it but step 1 did not, you can try turning back on step 1, and so forth, too. I just have them listed in the most likely order to fix this. The actual bug is a driver thing from AMD on OSX, but this should let you work around it. If they ever update drivers, then I'm assuming it will work like all other drivers for other OSes and other cards on this OS. Thank you for your patience! |
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Hi, thanks for this! I tried all options, and in all cases, it changes some things but doesn't quite fix the problem. I attached a screenshot of what this bug looks like now. This is with steps only step 1, steps 1 & 2, steps 1 & 2 & 3. With step 1 enabled again I get a different view; see the second screenshot. This happens with both 2 & 3 turned off, just 3 turned off, or just 2 turned off. Hope this gives you some more useful information! |
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Okay... I would also disable Beautify 2, in that case. Right now that is the only post-processing effect that is left that would be over top of the GUI. It looks like there is something corrupting things after the GUI is drawn, and there is really very little that happens after that point. That's another option in the settings there. It really looks like fullscreen effects are quite busted in general on your particular driver/hardware combo. That is... intensely frustrating. Potentially there is some other issue, maybe relating to the capabilities of your device. I am not super enthusiastic about adding OpenGL support back for OSX, because it seemed that even with metal enabled, it was causing textures to unpack in a very performance-unfriendly fashion. Perhaps I could make that as an option that is a fallback, versus the default, and it would skip it? All Macs that meet the minimum sys requirements (and even many that don't) have plenty of RAM, an excess of RAM really, so it shouldn't be a problem from that front. |
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Sadly, with ALL post-processing options turned off, it still looks like that first screenshot I uploaded earlier today. Is there anything else I can try? |
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New build is out, and if you choose the OpenGL launch option on Steam or GOG (if you don't see that, Exit Steam and restart it), then you should no longer have the issue. Thank you! * OpenGL support, which we removed from Mac OSX a few months ago on our beta branch, has been returned. ** In almost all circumstances, you should not use this -- Metal will perform better, is more modern, is a better use of RAM, etc. ** However, because of driver issues with Radeon cards on OSX, at the moment OpenGL will be needed for compatibility purposes with that specific hardware combo. ** Please note that, from now on, Metal is used by default, or you can force it to be used by adding -force-metal at the command line. To use OpenGL, you can add -force-glcore to do that. There are of course also start options in GOG and on Steam for making this happen without you having to fiddle with the command line. |
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Hi, thanks for all the time you spent on this. I tried running OpenGL via Steam, but I run into another problem: the main menu becomes impossible to navigate (see screenshot). Therefore I can't really check whether this fixes the issue. Sorry to keep bothering you with this! |
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I can confirm this, my friend with a Radeon Mac is seeing the same when using OpenGL. |
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Okay, I see the same on my machine, and I think I know what that is about. Will fix. Thanks for the report! |
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Thanks! * Updated all of the asset bundles that the game uses to properly support OpenGL on OSX. This was an oversight in the prior release that caused the OpenGL OSX version to still not work properly. |
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Hi, I can confirm that this works again on my Mac. Thanks again! |
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I can confirm that as well. |
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Thank goodness! What a relief. :) I appreciate the confirmation! |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 18, 2021 3:20 pm | MM12 | New Issue | |
| May 18, 2021 3:20 pm | MM12 | File Added: 20210518210153_1.jpg | |
| May 18, 2021 3:29 pm | BadgerBadger | Note Added: 0061659 | |
| May 18, 2021 3:37 pm | MM12 | Note Added: 0061660 | |
| May 18, 2021 3:44 pm | MM12 | Note Added: 0061661 | |
| May 18, 2021 3:58 pm | BadgerBadger | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| May 18, 2021 3:58 pm | BadgerBadger | Status | new => assigned |
| May 18, 2021 4:16 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061662 | |
| May 18, 2021 5:20 pm | BadgerBadger | Relationship added | related to 0024972 |
| May 18, 2021 6:00 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061666 | |
| May 18, 2021 6:02 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061668 | |
| May 19, 2021 3:37 am | MM12 | Note Added: 0061681 | |
| May 21, 2021 5:13 am | MM12 | Note Added: 0061739 | |
| May 21, 2021 8:54 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061746 | |
| May 22, 2021 3:18 am | MM12 | Note Added: 0061747 | |
| May 22, 2021 12:24 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061751 | |
| May 22, 2021 1:44 pm | slake-moth | Note Added: 0061752 | |
| May 22, 2021 2:34 pm | MM12 | Note Added: 0061753 | |
| May 24, 2021 9:15 am | Lictuel | Note Added: 0061796 | |
| May 24, 2021 11:32 am | MM12 | Note Added: 0061800 | |
| May 25, 2021 9:45 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061815 | |
| May 25, 2021 10:23 am | Lictuel | Note Added: 0061816 | |
| May 25, 2021 10:08 pm | xaid | Note Added: 0061830 | |
| May 27, 2021 9:33 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061856 | |
| May 27, 2021 9:33 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Relationship added | related to 0024789 |
| May 28, 2021 4:33 am | MM12 | Note Added: 0061859 | |
| May 28, 2021 11:49 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | assigned => feedback |
| May 28, 2021 11:49 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061874 | |
| May 29, 2021 7:28 am | MM12 | Note Added: 0061878 | |
| May 29, 2021 7:28 am | MM12 | File Added: 20210529132138_1.jpg | |
| May 29, 2021 7:28 am | MM12 | File Added: 2.jpg | |
| May 29, 2021 7:28 am | MM12 | Status | feedback => assigned |
| May 29, 2021 2:30 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061881 | |
| May 29, 2021 3:29 pm | MM12 | Note Added: 0061884 | |
| May 29, 2021 5:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Relationship added | related to 0025119 |
| May 29, 2021 5:47 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | assigned => resolved |
| May 29, 2021 5:47 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => fixed |
| May 29, 2021 5:47 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | => 3.005 Radeon Returns |
| May 29, 2021 5:47 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061897 | |
| May 30, 2021 8:13 am | MM12 | Note Added: 0061903 | |
| May 30, 2021 8:13 am | MM12 | File Added: 20210530093541_1.jpg | |
| May 30, 2021 12:33 pm | BadgerBadger | Status | resolved => assigned |
| May 30, 2021 2:34 pm | BadgerBadger | Relationship added | related to 0025129 |
| May 31, 2021 12:39 am | Lictuel | Note Added: 0061905 | |
| May 31, 2021 2:17 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061906 | |
| May 31, 2021 4:55 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | assigned => resolved |
| May 31, 2021 4:55 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Fixed in Version | 3.005 Radeon Returns => 3.006 Rising Spire |
| May 31, 2021 4:55 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061908 | |
| May 31, 2021 7:31 pm | MM12 | Note Added: 0061914 | |
| Jun 1, 2021 3:23 am | Lictuel | Note Added: 0061921 | |
| Jun 1, 2021 9:35 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0061922 |
