Cat10.8 flickering in King's Bounty

[kinney]

That's the thing, with that being the case, it has to be extremely easy to fix the problem which makes it even more ridiculous.

[kn00tcn]

did the dev ever acknowledge this issue existed? what if they code some sort of 'initialization' that the mouse over does so that it will never happen in game?

[kinney]

I would hope this means they were aware of an issue of some sort-
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...easeNotes.aspx

Kings Bounty may display rendering issues.

and

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...easeNotes.aspx

The game Kings Bounty now renders correctly.

I've been on top of this issue for over a year now, and I haven't found one person who said the issue was resolved in 11.6+.

I'm on 11.7 because staying on 10.6 with all the other advancements they've made is crazy but is it really going to be broken forever for 6xxxx users and require 10.7 or older on 5xxxx/4xxxx cards?

I did a good amount of testing WHQLs and a ton of beta releases to narrow it down to a 10.8 and onward issue.. why can't they just do a comparison in what was changed between 10.7 and 10.8 that could cause this?

Considering it did work, and if the code was reverted or adjusted to act like 10.7 and prior, I don't know if a hack like you suggest is even necessary? They already knew how to make it work.
I'm assuming if it's not fixed correctly (10.7 and prior coding), it will pop up in other games, if it doesnt already and I simply haven't played those personally.

[jannypan]

If I reset the driver though it goes away. with 10.8's.

[kinney]

Originally Posted by jannypan

If I reset the driver though it goes away. with 10.8's.

Can you provide a little more information on 'resetting the driver'? Goes away forever? Goes away for your session?

[kinney]

Time for a fix.

[kn00tcn]

Originally Posted by kinney

I would hope this means they were aware of an issue of some sort-

no, the kings bounty dev, not the driver team

[kinney]

Originally Posted by kn00tcn

no, the kings bounty dev, not the driver team

if it worked in 10.7 then it's a driver issue not an issue with the game

[kn00tcn]

i know, but if hovering over a button & getting a tooltip would fix it, that could mean the game can 'execute' the same 'code' that is happening for that tooltip & possibly fix it for good

[kinney]

I'm sure either side could fix it, since the post 10.7 drivers broke it, and the game was designed for earlier drivers.. but it'd be nice if AMD were a little more pro-active and went ahead and took care of this. If any part of the community is asking for a fix, for something that was broken, I don't know why no one cares to fix it.

If a game patch broke it, then I'd be blaming the developers of the game. Since a driver release(s) broke it, I'm here instead.

This is just the way business is done anymore, "buyer beware".

[kn00tcn]

for sure, but it's the priority of what games get looked at (& if beta testers can replicate the issue & then if the driver team can as well)

so in this case, i'd pressure the devs more to try & create a little trick in the game

[Max800xl]

It's fixed! I installed the Catalyst 11.10 Preview 2 (the BF3 + Rage driver) and the flickering in King's Bounty stopped!

I also added a second 6970 since I last tested the game so I'm not sure if the Crossfire configuration has anything to do with it.

Either way I'm happy now . Better late than never AMD

[kinney]

I'll try this out in a bit.

You realize they probably spent 0 time trying to fix the Kings Bounty issue for 6xxx owners.. this was most likely fixed by a change made for Battlefield 3. Be interesting to see if the preview driver specifically BF3 also produced the same results you saw.
I'll never turn down a fix, but I'm not happy with AMD at this point. Just a preemptive response to anyone reading this (not you Max): I know, I know, I'm a meaningless customer that doesn't matter, don't let the door hit me on the way out, they don't need my business if I'm not happy with AMD.

[kinney]

This issue isn't fixed in http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...eDriverV2.aspx, I think what you found was somehow the fix they put into 11.6 took effect on your system. Which doesn't make a lot of sense because it hasn't for anyone else. It might be your particular monitor configuration and video card config that the fix worked with.
I use dual monitors, with the secondary on the right (yes this sometimes matters, I've seen it with Citrix client software even), on a single 5870.


I gave up on a fix realistically at the 11.6 release, but have given up on sticking with the 10.6s as well. They are too old and missing too many features/optimizations to keep using at this point. Using the 11.10preview2 drivers at the moment and they seem OK..
As long as they don't break automatic switchover of the audio stream to HDMI like they did in 11.8, I'll be content as one can be.

[Max800xl]

Sorry it didn't work for you.

I tried the 11.9 and it also works, so I can assume that the "fix" is more related to the fact I'm using crossfire now, rather than the drivers.

[kinney]

Originally Posted by Max800xl

Sorry it didn't work for you.

I tried the 11.9 and it also works, so I can assume that the "fix" is more related to the fact I'm using crossfire now, rather than the drivers.

Sounds like it'd be an easy fix for AMD if it's working on 6series Xfire. There is not a single driver that fixes the issue for 6 series single GPU users. 5 series can use 10.6 (or 10.7 but I found other crippling bugs in that release).

Really discouraging if I spend money on a new card soon to go with a 6xxx, I'm afraid I couldn't justify it to remain annoyed with this bug in my favorite game.

[vadmajom]

AMD finally solved the problem -with catalyst 12.4 driver no more flickering

[kinney]

Originally Posted by vadmajom

AMD finally solved the problem -with catalyst 12.4 driver no more flickering

Your post prompted me to check 12.3whql which I'm still on... no more problem. Makes me wonder when it was fixed? I gave up on trying the drivers out on the game around 12.1 or so.

[Wagnard]

Great !

[kinney]

Before I run drivercleaner to install 12.4 I'm going to install over my current set with 12.2->12.1->11.12 until I find where it was fixed. I'm curious as I'm sure this was fixed through work on another game or engine.
I'm guessing it was fixed in 12.2, because for me that release was particularly solid and 12.3 has been as well. I'm sure 12.4 is more of the same.

And if you read this thread which now stems back to the problem that started TWO YEARS AGO, with the last good driver for KB being 10.7- you'll see stories and excuses range from "it's the games problem" to "works here!" :P

[AdamK47]

Excellent! It took them only 3 years to fix it.

[vadmajom]

Originally Posted by kinney

Before I run drivercleaner to install 12.4 I'm going to install over my current set with 12.2->12.1->11.12 until I find where it was fixed. I'm curious as I'm sure this was fixed through work on another game or engine.
I'm guessing it was fixed in 12.2, because for me that release was particularly solid and 12.3 has been as well. I'm sure 12.4 is more of the same.

And if you read this thread which now stems back to the problem that started TWO YEARS AGO, with the last good driver for KB being 10.7- you'll see stories and excuses range from "it's the games problem" to "works here!" :P

It must be fixed in 12.2 or 12.3 because I had 12.1 before 12.4 and with that driver I still had the flickering "effect".

[kinney]

12.2 fixed my multimonitor profile issue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTBRt...&feature=g-upl
Which has been an issue for quite some time. Over a year, I'm not sure when that bug started- but it stopped in 12.2

That's why I thought 12.2 was such a good release, no obvious gamebugs that I came across and they fixed a long running issue. I haven't gotten to testing 12.2-prior but I will soon.

[kinney]

Confirmed.
12.1WHQL was the last driver to exhibit the KB flickering bug.

12.2WHQL was definitely a solid release- the multimonitor bug was fixed that I noted above and KB flickering. That's it for driver issues that I've come across. Same results with 12.3WHQL.
The only thing noteworthy about 12.2 WHQL is that it reports itself as 12.3, when it's not. This was a known issue that slipped by the Catalyst team according to their Twitter feeds.
I moved from 12.3->12.4 now, no flickering in KB. I haven't done extensive testing but I did notice 12.4WHQL reports itself in CCC as 12.1. We saw this in 12.2, I'm not sure this is even funny anymore. I've read accounts about HDMI audio problems with 12.4 but haven't tested that yet myself.

Overall though anything between 10.8-12.1 was no good for KB and while 5xxxx users could revert to 10.7 or earlier- we now have working drivers for 5, 6 and 7 series users.

edit- Uninstalled 12.4 and went back to 12.3. Had a number of issues that I don't encounter on 12.3, namely driver resets (crashes).

Looking over the 12.2WHQL release notes, the only thing in 12.2 release notes that might have inadvertently fixed the issue is-
"Battlefield – Bad Company 2: Random flickering when playing in DirectX 11 mode."

Either way nice to lay this to rest finally, now that I've got Diablo3 to replace KB. :-P