buggy flickering parts in my big dungeon, what is the cause?

[Komag]

whoa, I'm getting hypnotized and mesmerized by the fur test thing... (posting from laptop), gpu starting to heat up, no glitches yet...

[Leki]

whoa, I'm getting hypnotized and mesmerized by the fur test thing... (posting from laptop), gpu starting to heat up, no glitches yet...

if GPU pased the test:
SW
- try to update drivers (remove old one)
- try to reinstal Direct X (i dont like this)
- is your GPU or CPU overclocked? Then switch to normal speed.
- try another test - for whole system (including memory and CPU) - something like this: http://www.sisoftware.net/ Lite: http://www.sisoftware.net//?d=dload&f=s ... 64&l=en&a=
- try your dungeon on your laptop

HW
- check your monitor cable
- check you power supply - it can be gone as well and power output is low (its common issue, life time of overloaded power supply is short if you have "common one")
- if you have cablemenagenet on your power supply, try to connect to another one (branch - is this propper name for this? - can be overloaded)
- check your SLI/Crosfire bridge (if you use multi GPU)
- remove your GPU ant use integrated (if you have it). Othervise try another GPU.
- ...

[Komag]

It's not my video card (which honestly is good news). (I let furmark run for 90 minutes, not a problem in sight)

I get the EXACT same flickering on both of my other laptops, which have wildly varying graphics cards from my desktop, and all three computers get the same flickering regardless of graphics settings in the game, including low rendering mode, every texture setting, windowed/borderless, v-sync on/off, etc.

So it's something in the dungeon, which is disturbing.

[msyblade]

On the flicker, when the near wall disappears and you can see the 2x2 room to the back left with a torch in it; is that accurate? I mean that room does exist right there? or is it possibly a remnant from somewhere else? Also, have you restarted from beginning to try and replicate the bug? This is very troubling because I cannot FATHOM what would cause this other than GFX or Memory corruption.

[Komag]

the parts you can see through the walls are really there, yes. I have a flippin' ton of stuff going on under the hood in this project, but my main suspicion has been all the daniv wallsets I'm using somehow building up in the dungeon memory or something, I just don't know. The bug only shows up in certain areas when facing certain directions, and this includes some areas that have no custom wallsets anywhere on the level. Most bizarre is how areas that were completely fine could "go bad" later on.

I have a couple ideas of further tests I can do to test it before resorting to another full playthrough as each one takes me many hours, like over a dozen

[Komag]

So this is eerie, I'm testing some things on level 8 where I first noticed the bad flickering (I had actually noticed one light acting weird through a wall back on 5 but thought nothing of it), and I decided "Let's start deleting things and see if we can't narrow down whether some entity is causing this". So I decided to start out by just nuking the entire level with a big 'ol huge allEntities i:delete() command. It didn't fully work at first, but I kept narrowing down what wasn't deleting (it was giving the error "atempt to call method 'destroy' (a nil value)" until I finally zeroed in on the square and printed the name and it was "party", haha! So you can't destroy the party, I guess that's good!

Anyway! After deleting frickin' everything in the level (leaving a lot of black walls/floors where alcoves/gratings/etc used to be), the flickering is gone, solved. But man the place looks really weird and haunted when EVERYTHING is gone!

So at least now I have an avenue of trying to hone in on the culprit, or something like a culprit, to get a better clue...

[Komag]

HA---LLE-LU-JAH---HALLELU-JAH---HA-LLE---LU---JAH

Problem diagnosed, mystery fully solved!!!

Long story short, I busted out the graph paper to help me with tracking, and then I proceeded to spend over three hours systematically destroying different sections of the map (man, weird stuff can happen when you annihilate large swaths of dungeon!) to see when the flickering would stop. I finally discovered that it was a build-up of invisible items hanging around which were used in conjunction with my setup for earthquake damage (yes, I have quake damage for the party and monsters )

The items are not supposed to stick around, and most don't, but for some reason a few do. I'll try to ensure none do, but if I can't help it then at least I can periodically search and destroy them all so the problem won't persist.

This issue also has solved another problem I was facing, disturbingly worsening performance on the affected levels. After cleaning out all those items, now performance is MUCH better, smoother, not perfect, but totally livable I think.

I'm a happy camper right now!

[Neikun]

That is some pretty useful information there.

Graphics card failure or invisible object build up.

I wanna get a picture of Ron Burgundy, but instead of "That escalated quickly" it'd be "That deescalated quickly"

[Xanathar]

Here it is!

(should be broken, not brocken, but hey I don't give a ... a rock).

[Numberouane]

Hi Komag!

We all know you are almost done with ur mod and Im getting mad with all the little tips u spread here and there : )
WHEN ? WHEN? WHEN?

Can you shake us please ?



Im happy you found it anyway!