Can't Select Waves or Superwaves animator [look here for possible fix]

[nobiology]

I can play laser show just fine, but when I try to change the animator to waves or superwaves (3 or 4) the game pauses for a moment, I get a brief glimpse of waves, and then it resets back to laser show 2.

I've tried clicking the arrow button next to the animator number, and changing the number manually to 3 or 4. Both gives the same result of sending me back to laser show. I've tried before starting a game, and during a game and same get the same thing.

Anyone have any advice?

[Dmytry - added the brackets part to topic]

[5py]

I had the same problem and debugged it. Searched the log.txt (it's in polynomial's steamapp directory) for "waves", and noticed that the game will abort loading waves or superwaves if your FPS is too low.

I tried toning every setting I could find down, set the resolution to 800x600 but the "problem" persists. It won't load any of the wave maps.

Bummer :/

[midnitecarnival]

Geoforce 7 series cards can't display waves in Polynomial. The intentionally patched the game to force it to bounce back to Laser Show or else the game would crash.

So let's see....I have a Geoforce 7 - one ticket in the trash. Toki Tori's DRM causes it to crash on my PC so trash another ticket and now with all the updating that has been done to Magicka, it no longer works and blue screens so a third ticket in the trash.

I wonder if Steam is doing this intentionally to make fun of people for wasting money on indie games.

[nobiology]

Ah damn, I'm working with a 6800 so it's definitely out then. Was hoping I just had a small bug since it actually launched and ran on laser show. Had the same trouble with Magicka you had too.

In this post (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1970230), the dev who introduced the achievement mentioned adding an alternative for those of us with older machines, so with some luck we might get it before the summer event is over and still get the ticket.

[Xpectro]

Geoforce 7 series cards can't display waves in Polynomial. The intentionally patched the game to force it to bounce back to Laser Show or else the game would crash.

Then that's the problem? I'm very surprised, I can run the game at high fps in laser modes. Damn, I have a 7950, I can still run the newer games at very decent fps and I don't understand why I can handle those "waves" with this card.

Very disappointed.

In this post, the dev who introduced the achievement mentioned adding an alternative for those of us with older machines, so with some luck we might get it before the summer event is over and still get the ticket.

I really hope you are right because there's nothing in the system requeriments about those specific cards, I can read something about 256 MB and recommending 512 only (my graphic card have that) but we can't run a concrete part of the game with the recommended specs.

[Dmytry]

i'm trying to get update finished by evening to make sunburn achievement possible on those cards. Re: system requirements, the page says:

"NVIDIA®: GeForce® 8400 and better (e.g. GeForce® GT 260) work well with all effects. "
Note: NVIDIA® GeForce® 7600 GT works but particles do not move to the beat (Waves Animator does not work). Other cards below recommended specifications: Some effects (or entire game) may fail to work. Try the demo first.

This particular GeForce 7 series card failure was a surprise to me too. It's not that card outright doesn't support moving the particles around using a texture, it's that it does it extremely / disproportionally slow to the point that it takes many seconds per frame, but reports support for that feature (so when i was originally looking through card specifications online i thought it'd work ok on that card). So later on i had to add a fix to automatically switch to laser animator that works fine, otherwise it'd just appear to hang.

[Dmytry]

Ok guys here's a fix I want you to try (I don't have GeForce 7 series card around for testing it myself)...

Save this file:
http://dmytry.com/games/temp_public/test_waves_gf7_1/003_Waves.lua
into
c:/program files/steam/steamapps/common/thepolynomial/data/music_visualizers
OVERWRITING the same-named file that is there.
Then you should be able to set Waves visualizer. If that still does not work, try it with this file instead:
http://dmytry.com/games/temp_public/test_waves_gf7_2/003_Waves.lua

Let me know which file works (or if neither does).

[bookhaki]

Got the 2nd file to work, I have a 7950GT :)

[Dmytry]

Got the 2nd file to work, I have a 7950GT :)

Thanks for testing! I'll see how I can detect this condition and enable it automatically if needed (can't do for everyone because it looks slightly worse than without on non-geforce7 cards, and also is bit slower).

[Spotless Mind]

7950GT here too. The 2nd file you posted worked for me as well. Thanks!

[DogGhost]

2nd file works on GF 7600GS but after a moment some of artifacts have shown so I decided to exit. I don't want to risk my GPU.

[Dmytry]

2nd file works on GF 7600GS but after a moment some of artifacts have shown so I decided to exit. I don't want to risk my GPU.
maybe that was the near-death screen distortion, check the videos... e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vh7WMnMU_w

it turned out to be too realistic and freaks out people who got overclocked hardware.

New fixes in
http://dmytry.com/games/temp_public/test_waves_gf7_3/
put both into
c:/program files/steam/steamapps/common/thepolynomial/data/music_visualizers

These are the fixes I am going to put into an update (the fixes will only activate for old cards).

[DogGhost]

maybe that was the near-death screen distortion, check the videos... e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vh7WMnMU_w

it turned out to be too realistic and freaks out people who got overclocked hardware.

I think you're right :) I was afraid of this red rectangle which you can see in 6:45 :) So I'm going to try it again. I am really carefull about this because Starcraft 2 killed my GF 7900 GS and that's why I have to use my old 7600 GS xD

[nobiology]

Thank you very much, this worked for me.

[Dmytry]

Manual fix shouldn't be needed anymore, the proper update is out :-)

[Xpectro]

"NVIDIA®: GeForce® 8400 and better (e.g. GeForce® GT 260) work well with all effects. "
Note: NVIDIA® GeForce® 7600 GT works but particles do not move to the beat (Waves Animator does not work). Other cards below recommended specifications: Some effects (or entire game) may fail to work. Try the demo first.

Well seems a "lost-in-translation" case because in my language (spanish) it's different and there is no warning like that:

Requisitos del sistema (PC)
SO: Windows XP / Vista / 7 (32 o 64 bits)
Procesador: Pentium IV a 1.5 GHz
Memoria: 512 MB de RAM
Gráficos: 256 MB de memoria gráfica, recomendado 512 MB o más
Vídeo: OpenGL: 2.1 , GLSL: 1.2
Disco Duro: 100 MB de espacio libre

I don't know who's the responsible of the translation but this was clearly a lack of info.

Thanks for the fix. :)