Vidoe problems - beach turns to a rainbow

[Nitfol]

I've installed Bloodlines, applied the official 1.2 patch and the unofficial 2.8 patch. My computer passed all the tests durign the installation process.

Everything seems to work fine until I get to the beach in Santa Monica - and then the video just bugs out completely.

The first time I got there, the beach itself was a random rainbow-coloured pattern. OTher times, the rainbow colours intrude into the rest of the picture.
Sometimes the background just goes completely black, and sometime the game freezes almost completely (I can still move around but *very* slowly).
And some text turns into random bit patterns - I can still read subtitles and dialog boxes, but my dialog options and the labels on dialog buttons are unreadable.

If I go to the pier, the problems remain but are less severe - just some rainbow colours on e.g. wooden structures.

If I leave to the parking house or to the beachhouse, the problems go away.

Has anybody else experienced this problem?

[haydox]

What are the specifications of your computer.

I have an Athlon64 3000+, 1Gb of PC3200 RAM with a GeForce6600 128Mb graphics card, and even my computer 'lags' a little when i first turn the corner onto the beach. The beach appears to be a demanding area!

Sounds to me like either your graphics drivers need updating or your computer just isnt generally powerfull enough to support your current graphics settings.

[Nitfol]

I don't have the computer specs available right now (out travelling) but I'll look them up.

But I don't think it's a matter of too little CPU power or too little RAM - I've had my share of those with earlier computers and the symptoms tended to be quite different. Also, with the current problem, when the computer doesn't freeze (which only happens occasionally), I have the same performance as in the OK areas, it's just that the graphics - and only some parts of them - freak out.

So I'm leaning towards this being a problem with my graphics card. I'll try updating the drivers - unless this is a known compativility problem with certain
cards, which is why I'd like to know if anybody recognizes the problem.

I suppose we can rule out a program bug since in that case more people would see it, right?

[haydox]

Originally Posted by Nitfol

I don't have the computer specs available right now (out travelling) but I'll look them up.

But I don't think it's a matter of too little CPU power or too little RAM - I've had my share of those with earlier computers and the symptoms tended to be quite different. Also, with the current problem, when the computer doesn't freeze (which only happens occasionally), I have the same performance as in the OK areas, it's just that the graphics - and only some parts of them - freak out.

So I'm leaning towards this being a problem with my graphics card. I'll try updating the drivers - unless this is a known compativility problem with certain
cards, which is why I'd like to know if anybody recognizes the problem.

I suppose we can rule out a program bug since in that case more people would see it, right?

If other people experience it it may well be a program bug. However personally i think it sounds like your graphics card hasnt got certain features (Shaders etc.) or doesnt have enough memory so cannot fully load the graphics, resulting in random 'patterns'. However, from past experience updating drivers often solves problems like this.

[Acleacius]

It sounds like Video drivers to me also, I have tested alot of the patches and played the game since release, never heard of this problem, only the frame rate slow down at the beach which is common.

[Nitfol]

Originally Posted by haydox

What are the specifications of your computer.

OK, I checked the specs:

CPU: 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 with 1GB of RAM
Video Card: NVidia GeForce FX 5600XT with 256 MB of RAM
Video Drivers: Ancient!

I'll try upgrading the video drivers before I do anything else.

[Nitfol]

I downloaded and installed the latest nVidia drivers, and it solved the
problem - now everything seems to work fine, and in fact the animations
run smoother than before.

Thanks for the help!