Technical support answers and requests

[Echo]

Hi!

Thanks for checking out our game. The last few months have been really busy as we've been tweaking and polishing Defense Grid. I think this is probably the most fun I've had making a game in my career, and I hope everyone else enjoys it as well.

We're trying to figure out the best place for technical support issues, since both Steam and us (defensegrid.hiddenpath.com) have forums, and I thought I'd start a thread here for us to respond to.

-Michael
Hidden Path Entertainment

[Echo]

----------------------------
PERFORMANCE

Q: I have a multi-core AMD system, and weird stuff happens- the camera goes whacky, everything is sped up, minor movements make huge camera changes, and / or video is choppy.

There is a CPU patch out there for AMD CPUs to adjust the clock speed appropriately. If this applies to you, try downloading the quick install fix at: http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont.../DCO_1.1.4.zip. If that doesn't fix it, please let us know

----------------------------
LOADING

Q: Why can't I skip the splash screens when I run?

A: That's when our initial background loading is being done- we made a choice to optimize in game load times instead of up-front load times. You should have near-instant loading in game and when going back to previous checkpoints or restarting a level.

----------------------------
AUDIO

Q: I have an x-fi extreme gamer sound card. I crash to desktop when playing.

A: Try switching it from entertainment mode to game mode.

Q: I can't hear any sounds. All the sound slider bars are set to 0 volume. Changing them does nothing.

A: (Update) There is a bug we found in the audio engine we are using. We've been in contact with Microsoft, and this should get fixed in a future version of DirectX. We're looking at good workarounds meanwhile.

Workaround that has worked for most people:

(Hidden Path is not responsible for any problems arising from trying this)

The basic problem is devices that don't have directsound support being enabled on the machine. If you go to the device manager and disable the sound device you aren't using to play the game (usually a modem in our experience), you should get sound back. Note that your audio sliders may still be at 0 once you disable the device, and you'll have to try to set them back up to test if the fix has worked.

[Echo]

- holding a few topics for a faq -
(part2)

[Echo]

- holding a few topics for a faq -
(part3)

[*VeLeRoN*]

Not sure if it's the proper thread to report the issue, but when you click, in game, on achievements, it opens steam community with your steam community page, not your DG stats. This must be not intentional, right?

[Echo]

This thread is fine Thanks for reporting.

This seems to be a limitation of the SteamWorks API. The closest we can
take a user is to their Steam community page. From there the user can easily navigate to their games played and from there view the Defense Grid achievements. We have a request in to Valve about this.

[kakkerlak]

I checked my setting for the x-fi modes and only found the x-fi cristalizer was set differend.
I will check tomorrow if it was a glitch or what.


edit:I think just switching modes unglitched it.
with the same settings it does not exit me from the game anymore.

must have been something Creative and there driver coding skills.

editedit:the error came back and after testing it is the x-fi cristalizer that causes it for me when enabled

Hello,

I'm experiencing an issue where the fog effect obscures the whole map. The gray/violet fog which fills the canyons below the level, depending on the map, jumps to the foreground and only the display frame is visible.

This usually happens when the map is first loaded, but can happen any time during game play. Once this occurs, I can't see the map again until I reboot the box. Though I can bring up the game menu and exit the program and the computer seems to run normally otherwise.

I've tried changing resolution, setting quality to low, and disconnecting all peripherals from the computer without any success. I've also updated my video card to the latest drivers and checked for sound card updates.

Let me know if I can provide any other helpful info.

Windows XP Pro SP3
XFX GeForce 8200 MCP Socket AM2+ Motherboard (MCP78)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ CPU
2GB Memory
GeForce 9600 GSO Video Card (dual DVI but only one monitor on)
Dell 2407WFP-HC 21" Flat Panel Monitor (tried 800x600 up to 1920x1200)

[Echo]

kato- we'll look into this. We actually do fog in a custom shader, so it's odd that it's doing that. Can you try setting your graphics card to 'low' or 'medium' and seeing if it happens? (Those use the shader 2.0 path instead of the 3.0).

Thanks for sending your specs, and apologies for the problem.

-Michael

Originally Posted by Echo

Can you try setting your graphics card to 'low' or 'medium' and seeing if it happens?

I did this through the program by going to Settings -> Video and choosing the lowest quality and lowered resolution to 800x600. The problem still occured often. The shader was one of the first things I thought of as a culprit.

I dropped a screenshot online so you could see what the screen looks like. It's probably useful to note that the map usually appears for a brief instant before it goes blank.

[Echo]

yeah, the screenshot helps! thanks!

[Lostie]

First of all thank you for a truly AWESOME game guys! I absolutely love it!

I'm experiencing a few issues however, which are somewhat annoying

1. MAJOR - No sound at all, of any kind, ever! All the sound sliders in-game are set to zero, and when I increase them and press the accept button, it does nothing (they are still zero when I go back to check again). Both my speakers and my headphones are 5.1, connected to different soundcards. Speakers are connected via digital optical TOSLINK to a DTS amp unit (Azuntech HDA X-Plosion soundcard), and headphones (Speed-Link Medusa 5.1) are connected to a Realtek analogue 5.1 soundcard.
I have tried setting my speakers and headphones to stereo in windows audio settings, this does NOT work for either soundcard. I have also tried turning down the Windows sound hardware acceleration features.

2. MEDIUM - Anti-aliasing (MSAA) doesn't seem to work. I have 4 x MSAA enabled in the nVidia control panel, and it doesn't seem to be reflected in game. Therefore most edges are quite jagged, which I am not used to seeing. I have tried with SLI on and off.

3. VERY MINOR - This game does not play well with some desktop widget apps, like Samurize which is what I use. The part of the screen where my widgets are flashes in-game which is distracting and a bit annoying. Turning off Samurize does fix this, but that is not ideal There are many ways to fix this, but as a fellow programmer the only way I know for sure is to set the game window HWND_TOPMOST with the SetWindowPos() API call. This probably isn't worth you guys fixing but hey

4. VERY MINOR - game uses 100% CPU (or 50% on a dual core) after you have ALT+TABBED out to Windows. Again, probably not worth fixing.

My System Specs:
CPU: Dual core Athlon X2 4800+ socket 939 (not overclocked)
RAM: 2GB DDR.
Motherboard: DFI LanParty NF4 UT SLI-D
Graphics: 2 x GeForce 7900GT SLI (not overclocked)
HD: RAID1 array (nVidia nForce RAID controller)
Screen: 19" TFT 1280x1024
Soundcard 1: Azuntech HDA X-Plosion PCI - DTS Interactive 5.1 mode
Speakers: Accoustic Solutions 5.1 setup connected to the X-Plosion card via optical TOSLINK - the amp unit decodes the realtime DTS 5.1 stream
Soundcard 2: nVidia nForce on-board sound (Realtek) - analogue 5.1 mode
Headphones: SpeedLink Medusa Analogue 5.1 connected to the on-board sound
Operating System: Windows XP SP2

[Echo]

Ok, figured out the issue- we're using XACT for audio- it has a lot of great features, but we were never able to figure out how to get it to deal with two sound devices at once. We're still looking into a fix for this, but I'm not sure when we'll be able to fix it. A workaround is to disable one of the sound devices, and then it should work.

I know this isn't ideal, and I'll post as soon as we know more. Make sure to set the device to stereo until we release the surround sound patch (going through test right now).

Thank you for understanding!

We'll add the other issues into our bug database.

[gencha]

I just bought the game and it crashes randomly. The first time it crashed was in the tutorial level. The second time was at rush 5 on level 2. There are no error messages or anything. The game just closes and that's it.

It did create Crash Dumps. So in case those will be helpful, I'd be happy to make them available.

In case my hardware setup is relevant to the issue I'd be happy to provide any details required.

[Lostie]

Originally Posted by Echo

Ok, figured out the issue- we're using XACT for audio- it has a lot of great features, but we were never able to figure out how to get it to deal with two sound devices at once. We're still looking into a fix for this, but I'm not sure when we'll be able to fix it. A workaround is to disable one of the sound devices, and then it should work.

I know this isn't ideal, and I'll post as soon as we know more. Make sure to set the device to stereo until we release the surround sound patch (going through test right now).

Thank you for understanding!

We'll add the other issues into our bug database.

Thank you, that is a very good response

So it looks like I am affected by both of the known sound bugs; more than one sound devices and 5.1 sound The first one is of course hugely more of a severe problem, and I imagine this would affect the majority of people who have purchased a PCI sound card (or an internal modem), because all motherboards have on-board sound too these days and I bet not that many people know how to go into the BIOS and disable them...
There are actually a lot more than 2 "sound devices" in my Windows control panel though, I have EIGHT in total! The following are listed:
NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio
Modem #0 Line Playback
Modem #0 Handset Playback
Modem #0 Line Playback
Modem #0 Handset Playback
Modem #1 Line Playback
Modem #1 Handset Playback
HDA XPLOSION 7.1 Wave Device
I have no idea why there are 6 entries instead of just 2 for modem sound devices, I presume these are all from the internal fax modem that is in my system. Disabling this would be a real pain, as I need it for my work
Also many USB devices like VOIP phones/handsets and USB headphones will show up as additional sound devices too, so I really think a lot of people will experience this bug.

Hope you guys can cope up with a fix for this soon Thanks again for responding, I will be patient now!