Report - Current Bugs and Issues

[sven]

Give me a bit on the file part.

Regarding the slow start time issue you reported: I've just written up a post with strategies for speeding up game load times on the Steam forums. They all involve adding exceptions to your virus scanner, which is not always a great idea, particularly if your system doesn't need it. But it seems like the default windows 10 scanner has recently gotten a lot more aggressive in its scanning of PNGs, and that has been really increasing SiS load times on certain machines.

[SirDamnALot]

When I start a new game (default settings), the Background universe is pitch black and some texts and button captions are not displayed:

sis.png (102.48 KiB) Viewed 24491 times

When loading an old savegame (from 03/2017) the problem does not occour.
r20706 Win7 64bit
AMD Radeon R9 200 series
old sis installer/updater

[sven]

When I start a new game (default settings), the Background universe is pitch black and some texts and button captions are not displayed:

Ok, this is almost certainly a hardware-specific bug related to the new loading / multithreading logic. And, thus, exactly the sort of problem I feared we might start to run into when this build went out to a wider audience.

Just to confirm that the issue is what I think it is, would you go into Options, and enable "Simplified Graphics" (lower left-hand corner). I believe that should fix the issue for you. (If it doesn't, then I need to look in different places when hunting down this issue.)

[SirDamnALot]

Just to confirm that the issue is what I think it is, would you go into Options, and enable "Simplified Graphics" (lower left-hand corner). I believe that should fix the issue for you. (If it doesn't, then I need to look in different places when hunting down this issue.)

You are right, starting a new game with Simplified Graphics fixes the problem.

[sven]

You are right, starting a new game with Simplified Graphics fixes the problem.

Ok, it appears that this problem manifests on my own AMD Radeon R7 250 as well. That's great news, because it makes hunting down and isolating the problem much easier. The less-great news is that this bug appears to be one of the stranger graphics-hardware specific quirks I've seen in a while. I do have a candidate patch up (r20711 r20712 - now on stable). It's ugly, but on my own hardware at least, this patch does appear to resolve the issue.

I'd be very curious to know if the patch fixes the display glitch on your hardware as well.

Many thanks.

edited by sven: I've been able to refine the patch a bit, r20714 is now the 'cleanest' of my various attempts to fix this issue.

[SirDamnALot]

edited by sven: I've been able to refine the patch a bit, r20714 is now the 'cleanest' of my various attempts to fix this issue.

I'll give it a spin as soon as I'm at home from work

[zakblood]

r20714 looking atm as ugly as hell, very pixelated on menus, but not in screenshot so waste of time uploading one to show you

Operating System: Windows 10 Home Single Language 64-bit (10.0, Build 15063) (15063.rs2_release.170317-1834) (clean install, not a upgrade or updated version etc)

game mod off, all pre requisites loaded and upto date on everything driver wise

User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 144 DPI (150 percent)

Chip type: GeForce GTX 960
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Type: Full Device

Display Memory: 12230 MB
Dedicated Memory: 4062 MB
Shared Memory: 8168 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor
Monitor Model: TOSHIBA-TV
Monitor Id: TSB0108
Native Mode: 1920 x 1080(p) (60.000Hz)
Output Type: HDMI

Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 27/06/2017 01:00:00, 893272 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp: Unknown

Description: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)

Driver Version: 6.00.0001.8036 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
Date and Size: 05/01/2017 00:00:00, 5545472 bytes

Windows Error Reporting:
+++ WER0 +++:
No Data
+++ WER1 +++:
No Data
+++ WER2 +++:
No Data
+++ WER3 +++:
No Data
+++ WER4 +++:
No Data
+++ WER5 +++:
No Data
+++ WER6 +++:
No Data
+++ WER7 +++:
No Data
+++ WER8 +++:
No Data
+++ WER9 +++:
No Data

before the test build, game worked fine and looked better

[sven]

r20714 looking atm as ugly as hell, very pixelated on menus, but not in screenshot so waste of time uploading one to show you

This sounds bad. Am I understanding correctly: the artifacts don't appear when you take a screenshot, but do appear in game? (I don't have a Geforce 900 series on hand to test with, so I may not be able to replicate the issue locally.) Can you tell me more about the nature of the graphics bugs?

1) Specifically, is it only certain menus that appear pixelated?
2) Do the initial start menus render correctly?
3) If you navigate to Options and enable "Simplified Graphics" (lower right-hand corner), then restart the game, do the artifacts still appear?

Many thanks.

[SirDamnALot]

edited by sven: I've been able to refine the patch a bit, r20714 is now the 'cleanest' of my various attempts to fix this issue.

I'll give it a spin as soon as I'm at home from work

Fix works like a charm for me

About the issue from Zakblood, I think it is the screenscaling.
on 100% everthing is fine (right), on 150% (same resolution) everthing is blurry (left):

sis.png (547.99 KiB) Viewed 24455 times

Funny thing: when I start an application like firefox while SIS is loading (little splash screen is shown) it switches to 150% scaling and looks bad as above.
When I close SIS, the scaling returns to 100%. I think that was also there before the gfx update.

[zakblood]

r20714 build only, will retest any newer one and reply

also agree with above, seems it's more of a scaling issue than anything else with an increase in DPI the game loading menu's and txt only in game are very blurred

main menu before game starts, and any txt related menu in game, all txt in game etc blurred in the latest build

Simplified Graphics on or off
don't seem to make any difference with txt blurring

artifacts don't appear when you take a screenshot

no sorry i don't mean this, i mean if i take a screenshot in windows on any screen in game, menu or other wise, these look fine and txt is displayed correctly, but that's not how it appears on screen, so any shot taken by me look normal, it's when i sit in front and try and play it looks unreadable kind of etc, so that's the point of not taking any and uploading them and posting them here etc

Untitled.jpg (194.44 KiB) Viewed 24438 times

also found this in game install folder, as there no way of altering ingame display i looked in here and here's it content

fullscreen : 0 0 1536 864

so manually edited it and changed to system default of 1920x1080 and reloaded game and now will check

[zakblood]

made no difference, game altered it back and defaulted to

fullscreen : 0 0 1536 864

build tested r20718

just as bad for me, so must be a scaling issue

[zakblood]

work around that works 100% for me, tested it on 2 different systems, with different hardware, AMD and also Nvidia cards both with windows 10 creator edition etc

Untitled.jpg (190.2 KiB) Viewed 24438 times

Untitled 1.jpg (161.77 KiB) Viewed 24438 times

text perfect and also screen size in game matches system default, in folder file, set by game, not manually edited

tbh, this is a known issue with windows 10 Build 15063 (15063.rs2_release.170317-1834)

had it on another game on test as well, so solution wasn't hard to find or add either, hope it helps others

[Captainspire]

That game lock up again. This time when loading a game.

It has the
Created with r20714
Last saved from r20718

On the file, and I have a file dump if need be. I'm going to see if I can recreate the issue once more.

[Captainspire]

Give me a bit on the file part.

Regarding the slow start time issue you reported: I've just written up a post with strategies for speeding up game load times on the Steam forums. They all involve adding exceptions to your virus scanner, which is not always a great idea, particularly if your system doesn't need it. But it seems like the default windows 10 scanner has recently gotten a lot more aggressive in its scanning of PNGs, and that has been really increasing SiS load times on certain machines.

Also for some reason, things are faster and I didnt do anything. I even made a 95 planet map and it seems faster.

[sven]

text perfect and also screen size in game matches system default, in folder file, set by game, not manually edited

tbh, this is a known issue with windows 10 Build 15063 (15063.rs2_release.170317-1834)

had it on another game on test as well, so solution wasn't hard to find or add either, hope it helps others

thanks for this info zakblood. it appears that i can embed this setting directly into the exe, and i've gone ahead and done exactly that. if everything is working as intended, enabling it by hand should not be necessary in builds newer than r20719.