Penumbra: Overture Vertex Shader Error + Fix on Geforce 200 series card

[Psytronic]

Hey guys, just got Overture through the HIB pack, but immediately ran into an error reporting that my video card did not support Vertex Shaders.

Firstly, I'm running Windows XP 32-bit, SP3. My video card is a Nvidia Geforce 250 GTS. I updated my drivers to the newest version (197.45), but that wasn't an immediate fix.

To get the game working, I used the Nvidia Control Panel to create a profile exclusive to Overture, and through that set all on/off toggles to off and all other functions to "application controlled". That did the trick, and I then individually enabled/switched each function to my preferred setting whilst trying the game after applying each setting individually.

In short, the "Extension Limit" function should be switched to OFF.

If that doesn't solve your problems and you're running a similar system, try doing what I did. Create a profile for Penumbra and switch off all functions or change them to "application controlled". It's likely going to be the same issue for any of the newer Geforce series, though.

[jens]

Hi, Thanks for reporting!

Did you have to make the profile for the Control Panel, or does the game work if you only make sure that Extension Limit is OFF? Asking so that I know if I write a support article about it.

Extension Limit should only be ON as far as I know if you are having problems running older OpenGL programs and the default is that it is OFF. Or at least I thought so! Was your own by default or have you turned it on earlier to run some other game/application?

[Psytronic]

Very welcome. I was a bit frustrated when the error showed up, so I thought I'd try and put the word out about it.

It should be unnecessary to have to create a profile exclusively for Penumbra to toggle Extension Limit to OFF, but I would certainly recommend creating an exclusive profile as a precautionary measure, to prevent the error showing up by happenstance in the future.

So yeah, it works when it's toggled to Global Setting, and the corresponding Extension Limit option is toggled OFF in Global Settings.

The Nvidia Control Panel software should automatically recognize the game, so users can simply select its profile from the dropdown list in the Program Settings tab. If it doesn't show in the list, they can use the "Add" button to direct the Control Panel to the location of the Penumbra.exe file (which, in the edition of the software I have, installs to the C:\Program File\Penumbra Overture\Redist subfolder).

I'm not sure why the function was on, suffice to say that it had not caused issue with any games in recent memory. It's possible it was on by default, although I would imagine I'd changed the toggle when I was trying to resolve a crashing error in another game.