Frictional Games Forum

On the title screen, the graphics are very clippy, like solid black lines blink in and out, when I'm in the game, whenever it appears that a light source is in view (the lights in the first room) big black chunks appear and disappear. If I turn my back to the lights, the game runs ok, but it runs slow, if I pull out the flashlight, the same thing happens.

I have a widescreen monitor, but even at the native resolution (1440x900, or the same AR 1280x800, which is selectable in the options) the same problem happens, but it's worse at higher resolutions.

-------- THE HPL ENGINE LOG ------------

Initializing FMOD.
Number of hardware 2D channels: 32
Number of hardware 3D channels: 63
Number of total hardware channels: 95
Creating Engine Modules
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Creating graphics module
Creating system module
Creating resource module
Creating input module
Creating sound module
Creating physics module
Creating ai module
Creating scene module
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Initializing Resources Module
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Creating resource managers
Misc Creation
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Initializing Graphics Module
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Init low level graphics
Setting video mode: 1152 x 864 - 32 bpp
Init Glee...OK
Setting up OpenGL
Max texture image units: 16
Max texture coord units: 8
Two sided stencil: 1
Vertex Buffer Object: 1
Anisotropic filtering: 1
Max Anisotropic degree: 8
Multisampling: 1
Vertex Program: 1
Fragment Program: 1
NV Register Combiners: 1
NV Register Combiners Stages: 8
ATI Fragment Shader: 0
Creating graphic systems
Renderer2D created
Creating screen buffers size 1152.000000 : 864.000000
Creating programs
RendererPostEffects created
Renderer3D created
Adding engine materials
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Initializing Sound Module
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Initializing Game Module
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Adding engine updates
Initializing script functions
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User Initialization
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Game Running
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ERROR: Entity file 'emerl1_lights_emergencylight.ent' was not found!
WARNING: Parent 'group1' couldn't be found! Failed to attach 'emerl1_emlight11' to 'emerl1'.Attaching directly to mesh.
ERROR: Entity file 'emerl2_lights_emergencylight.ent' was not found!
WARNING: Parent 'group1' couldn't be found! Failed to attach 'emerl2_emlight11' to 'emerl2'.Attaching directly to mesh.
ERROR: Entity file 'light1_light.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'light2_light.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'light3_light.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'bench1_furniture.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'locker1_furniture.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'locker2_furniture.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'locker3_furniture.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'locker4_furniture.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'locker5_furniture.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'locker6_furniture.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'lockedlocker_furniture.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'glowst1_item_glowstick.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'dynamite1_item.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'bottle1_kitchen.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'crate1_other.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'crate2_other.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'door1_door.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'cardbox1_other.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'idcard1_item_id.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'pain_item.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'NAME_other_small.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'flare01_item.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'flare02_item.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'blocklocker_misc_block.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'lock1_object.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'NoteEntrance01_item_note.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Entity file 'lockopen1_object.ent' was not found!
ERROR: Couldn't create material 'door_metal_12.mat'
ERROR: Couldn't create material 'door_metal_12.jpg' for object '_collider_box_1'
ERROR: Couldn't find particle system file 'acidparticle.ps'
ERROR: Couldn't create particle system 'Steam01' of type 'acidparticle'
ERROR: Couldn't find particle system file 'drops01.ps'
ERROR: Couldn't create particle system 'WaterDrop01' of type 'drops01'
ERROR: Couldn't find particle system file 'drops02.ps'
ERROR: Couldn't create particle system 'WaterDrop01' of type 'drops02'
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Statistics
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Medium framerate: 112.410510
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User Exit
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Exiting Scene Module
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Exiting Input Module
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Exiting Sound Module
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Exiting Graphics Module
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Exiting Resources Module
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Done with tilesets
Done with fonts
Done with scripts
Done with particles
Done with sounds
Done with meshes
Done with materials
Done with Gpu programs
Done with images
Destroyed all textures
Done with sound entities
Done with animations
All resources deleted
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Exiting Physics Module
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Exiting System Module
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- Deleting lowlevel stuff.
Physics
Sound
Input
Resources
System
Graphics
HPL Exit was successful!
Deleting ATI shader to 0

What is your card and do you have the latest drivers?

Nvidia FX5900XT. And I have the newest drivers

Lower resolution, turn off motion blur, turn off bloom, turn off AA, turn off AA.

See if it gets better.

Did all that, same thing happened.

I'm getting the exact same thing, only happens when looking at a light source. My graphics card is a GeForce FX 5200. I tried turning off all advanced graphics settings and lowering the resolution; nothing helped.

thats strange, i didnt got that with my fx5200 and i think the fx5900xt is better then it :s
try some older drivers but no to old

I'm having the same problem with a GeForce FX5700. I tried the latest stable drivers and the latest beta drivers. The problem remains the same: Lights produce flickering black boxes and other graphical glitches. Can anyone help? I'd really, really hate to play the game on my laptop where there's no surround sound and a smaller screen.

Edit: It's worth noting that there's random flickering of horizontal lines on the title screen and all sub-menus. This would seem to imply that it's not any special functionality of the graphics causing the problem (since there are no shadows being drawn and no motion blur, etc going on in the title screen.

I really hope someone can track down this problem. This is the kind of game I'd like to buy... except that it's not working.

I also have a widescreen monitor like the original poster, but this couldn't be the problem if I set the resolution to 1024x768, right? Hmm... maybe I'll try switching to analog instead of digital.

This must be some kind of setting that is messing up the game graphics. Not really sure what it could be, do you have any special programs running that might be messing it up?

Certainly nothing that should be messing with graphics. Aside from the regular drivers I don't have any other utilities. I've tried the game from a fresh restart but it gives the same problem. It's really strange. The issue hasn't occurred on other games. Seems odd that only the GeForce FX series is having this problem, and only occasionally. I wonder if the other people with this problem are using DVI? I want to try analog, but my friend managed to lose my VGA cable, so that's not going to happen any time soon. Plus, it seems unlikely that something so specific could have anything to do with digital vs analog output.