Bugs or intended?

[kenoxite]

Apart from the game keep freezing and the mouse pointer crazyness I'm also experiencing a couple of oddities but I'm still not sure if they are intended or not.

- The camera wobbles continuously. I first thought it was the insanity system kicking in, but checking my inventory screen showed quite a healthy brain (at least it said I was doing OK so far). Maybe that hit in the head from the beginning is the cause?

- The shadows of candles, etc seem to behave quite strangely. A kind of shadowy area is shown either on the top of the screen or on the sides of the camera. At first I thought it was caused by the light radius, but that theory didn't hold when I noticed that shadowy area moved from place to place when moving the camera around while standing still. It didn't seem to obey any law of physics that I'm aware of, so that might be a bug. The light and shadows should keep being consistent (consistently flickery) while you stand still.

- The in-game mouse pointer seems to be quite off from the center of the screen. I mean while playing the game, not in the menu area. Example: while I was trying to grab a book from the floor I ended interacting with another one half a meter away. Also, trying to opening the doors of cupboards is a minigame in itself for me right now (Find the "hand" spot!). EDIT: It seems to be OK when playing in windowed mode.

[jens]

1. Intended for the first 2 levels of the game, it should decrease as you progress.
2. Not sure what you mean. Do you have SSAO on at a low sample? Could be that maybe.
3. This could be to a strange resolution you are using, try another resolution one step up or down.

[kenoxite]

1. Knowing you guys that's what I thought, but I just wanted to be sure due to the rest of weird stuff going on.

2. Here's a video showing it. You'll notice that shadows start to act like crazy as soon as I move, shifting from one place to the other and creating black areas all around the screen. You can also see there the problem with the misplaced hand icon (or pointer) when I try to open that cupboard doors. But, having played a bit more, I think that's because the skewed and wobbling camera the player has to suffer there. You'll know better. I also tried to pick up those matches (can't remember the correct name) but that seems to be impossible at that stage.

Later in the third level, where the vision doesn't wobble and you can appreciate everything more carefully, I noticed that the lighting area projected by candles turns totally black (as in "no light projected") depending on the angle you're looking it at from. I think this is easier to grasp, but I always can make another video showing that later.

3. I'm playing at 848x480, which is a natural resolution (it has a 16:10 screen, up to 1680x1050). I tried to up it to 1280x800 (the next "safe" resolution) but the framerate dropped under the 10s, so I didn't go past the menu screen.

[jens]

Hmm, that looks like some sort of graphics card driver issue. Have you tried to uninstall the driver, reboot and install the latest driver available?

[kenoxite]

I already have the latest. I have in fact one ahead the latest. ASUS stopped releasing patches (if ever) the same year I purchased the notebook (2005 IIRC). The official Catalyst drivers can't be installed in this kind of built-in graphic cards, so my only option was to keep those relic drivers or install the ones offered here, which are the most recent to be found anywhere AFAIK.

I'll guess I'll try to reinstall them later but, anyway, how's with Amnesia being so picky with all this driver thing?

[Thomas]

You have a laptop?

Check A.1.4:
http://frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-3754.html

That should enable you to get the current driver version!

[kenoxite]

That's what I used to update my drivers back then. I'll reinstall them later as I said, even if I have the latest version already. But that'll be probably tomorrow.

TBH I was just expecting two outcomes when launching Amnesia for the first time: a) I wouldn't work at all (seeing those videos with all those filters, advanced lighting and all that fancy stuff seemed to suggest that) or b) It would work as any Penumbra in the lowest settings (which is rather fine even with my computer). But so far it's been c) Erm... maybe...? Maybe not!

Gah, I'm getting all the adrenaline rush I was hoping for with Amnesia... but for the wrong reasons.

[kenoxite]

OK, I finally reinstalled the drivers. But let me post my dxdiag. While I've posted my dxdiag in another thread, it wouldn't hurt to have it here also.

Highlights:
- ASUS M6V (notebook/laptop)
- Intel® Pentium® M processor 1.86GHz
- ATI MOBILITY RADEON X600
- 1.5Gb RAM

The "fixing" process:

1. The ATI case. Just following the usual procedure, Miss.

• Downloaded the latest ATI drivers, again.
  
• Uninstalled the actual ATI drivers, Catalyst panel and anything ATI I could find. Rebooted.
  
• Installed the downloaded drivers, again. Rebooted.
  

2. Oh, by the way Mr. Steam, where were you yesterday at 10PM?

• I just wanted to make sure Steam was innocent, so I decided to "Verify the integrity of the game cache", just in case.
  
• Steam finds that 164 files failed to validate (!)...
  
• so I wait until Steam redownloads those corrupted files. How did they get corrupted, only Gabe knows. Probably something related to ancient eldritch rituals.
  

3. All the clues are gathered. All the suspects are into custody. Time for a recap.

• Amnesia is launched. Windowed mode. If something goes wrong I want a safe escape route through the desktop this time.
  
• I "continue" the game in the "test" profile I created yesterday, which was saved right in the place the video I posted above was recorded.
  
• The lighting is displayed correctly this time. Time to light my victory cigar. But, wait...
  
• After a couple seconds the game freezes
  

4. A head in the box. This wasn't over after all.

• I terminate the Amnesia.exe process and restart the game again.
  
• I decide to Start a New Game this time.
  
• The voiceover works as normal. The screen only shows a black void. A few minutes after the speech is done the screen starts to slowly lighten up. All I can see through that eternal fade out is a world that moves at a rate of 1 frame each 30 seconds, and I'm being generous here.
  
• I terminate the Amnesia.exe process. Pyrrhic victory. Case closed. A sad saxophone can be heard in the background.
  

So, conclusion:

• The lighting problem is solved
  
• Why? No idea. It was reinstalling the drivers or verifying the cache in Steam, but I'll never know as I didn't launch the game between those two steps.
  
• While the lighting is good now I can't play the game anymore. At least I was able to do so before "fixing" this issue.
  
• The "trapped mouse pointer" is also probably there. I haven't played the game in full screen since yesterday to try that.
  
• The misplaced hand icon issue in the beginning (see video above) hasn't been replied to. I still don't know if it's intended or simply a bug caused by the skewed view.
  

Suggestions:

• It'd be nice to add the advice to verify cache in Steam in your troubleshooting thread. It might help someone, and I'm sure most of your players use the Steam version, even if purchased from your store (as I did).
  

[kenoxite]

So I finally tried to launch the game again, if only to grab some screens and logs. This time I set both shadows and textures to "low" manually (I always use the standard global "low" setting, which set them higher). Windowed mode.

EDIT: I also deleted the "main_settings.cfg" file before launching it again, as it was suggested in another thread.

After loading the saved game I noticed a couple things:

• The game isn't frozen. You can still rotate the camera, but the speed is the one I described when you start a new game. Slowest than an slideshow.
  
• As soon as you move the camera the actual visible area is reduced to a small square, while the pixels of its border are repeated endlessly (I know there's a term for this, but I forgot which one).
  

Just let me show you:

^_Just after loading the savegame. Lighting seems to be OK and the game runs fine, for only a couple seconds.


^_When I turn the camera the game displays the screen that way (and at the ultra-slow speed mentioned). Unfortunately it can't be appreciated in this shot, but the right area of the screen has also the same "endless pixel" effect as the top part.

I've also uploaded the hpl.log of the game in a couple of states:
- After starting a new game.
- After loading the savegame mentioned above.
In both cases I was forced to stop the Amnesia.exe process manually in order to close the game.

I hope this helps any.