Strange Graphic Bugs

[Krynus]

I'm replaying PS:T for the first time in a number of years, and I have a pretty up-to-date computer nowadays (P4 2.6GHz CPU, 1.25 GB RAM, GeForce 7800GT video card). The game is mostly running smoothly, except I've noticed two things:
1) Occasionally, the circles around characters (and around NPCs/monsters/etc.) disappear (this bug is not *horrible*).
2) A good number of spells cause the screen to go haywire, showing pixelated 'white noise' rather than the spell effect (this is the best I can think of to describe it :S) and making the character portraits/parts of the HUD turn black.

I've tried using software video settings, but they just made the game run really slowly. I've tried running the game under Win98, WinNT and Win2K compatibility modes to no effect.

Has anyone else experienced these problems? Can anyone give me a suggestions as to how to fix it?

[sunnerz]

Yeah, i just have the same problem now. Before i updated my nVidia drivers, half of the pc and npc characters would disappear from time to time. Turning on software transparency fixed this but made the game really slow. Now i've got the newest drivers, which fixed the original character disappearing problem, but has stuffed up all the spell effects. I'm running xp as well, which probably has something to do with it.
it would be great if someone could help...

[Ravager]

Generally, the newer NVidia drivers don't work that great with these Infinity Engine games (like Planescape), so using older drivers helps, but it depends on your graphics card, if you have a 7000 series like Krynus seems to have you might not be able to downgrade them too far as the drivers won't support the graphics card.

[sunnerz]

well, i've got a geforce 4 mx i can use so i'll try going back a bit with the drivers and see what happens.
thanks for the advice

[sunnerz]

the old drivers worked perfectly (a 2002 nvidia driver), thanks for the tip.

[UnableX]

Originally Posted by sunnerz

the old drivers worked perfectly (a 2002 nvidia driver), thanks for the tip.

I have the same problem, so I tried to download an older driver, but without luck.
I also have a Nvidia graphics card ( NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4200 ) , so if you can tell me which specific driver you downloaded, maybe the it will work for me as well, I would appreciate it very much.

[sunnerz]

The driver i used was

Windows XP/2000
Version: 29.42
File Size: 8.25 MB
Release Date: June 11, 2002
WHQL Certified

from http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html

Hope it works

[Darvon]

My system is similar to the one listed in the OP. (7900gt, Opteron 144, WinXP)

Using the lasted NVidia drivers would cause some spell effects to make big blank rectangles appear on the screen. Turning on both Software Blitting and Transperancy would fix the visual artifacts, but make the game run at a crawl.

I found installing the old 56.72 drivers (from 2004) fix the spells and make the game run at normal speed, however it also makes the computer usless for everything else. So tommorow morning I'm installing a second copy of windows onto an old hdd specifically for running PS:T with the gimp drivers.

The hoops we have to jump through to get old games to work eh?

[Darvon]

Update:

A simpler 'fix' is to go into your device manager and disable your video card driver when you want to play PS:T. Your computer will reset, and when it loads back up it's using the windows default display drivers and the game runs flawlessly.

Then when you're done playing you just go back to the device manager, select enable, the computer resets and you're back to normal.

As always though, YMMV.

[Vorlin]

The best solution I've found avoids fiddling with your drivers, instead you adjust your graphics acceleration. To do so, right-click on your Windows desktop, select 'Properties', click on the 'Settings' tab, then click on the 'Advanced' button. This will bring up a new panel, select the 'Troubleshoot' tab. You should see a bar allowing you to set your graphics acceleration (it's probably set to the extreme right ('Full') at this point). For my card I had to turn it down 3 notches (i.e. 3 to the left from 'Full', or 2 from the right from 'None').

This disables D3D acceleration, and fixes the problem for me with no in-game side effects that I've seen up to now (you will see cursor trails on the menus prior to actually entering the game, but this stops once you are playing). Note: don't adjust this with the game running or it might lock it up, adjust it first then launch the game.

I noticed no performance hit from doing this, YMMV. Other cards/drivers might require more or less fiddling with the precise acceleration (I'm using a GeForce Ti-4200 with the 93.71 drivers). Make sure to remember to restore your previous acceleration level (probably 'Full') when not playing Torment.

[Darvon]

That acceleration slider seems to do the same thing as completely disabling the drivers, just it's a lot less hassle. Nice find