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Issues, Workarounds & Localization

 
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Polygons sometimes going wild since Crucible expansion (Corrupt Scorpion Model?)

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Blinjay
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2011-12-10 00:15:17 UTC  |  Edited by: Blinjay
Specs:

Windows XP SP3
ATI Radeon HD6770


Didn't happen before the patch. The polygons only seem to go crazy when I am zoomed in close to my ship... I'm hoping this isn't hardware as I've had the video card for only a few months and it hasn't given me any problems yet.


Image:

http://i.imgur.com/SeYfA.png
Mizuki
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#2 - 2011-12-10 18:05:46 UTC
I've had that happen before, but not since Crucible expansion went live on TQ. Try updating drivers first.
Blinjay
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2011-12-10 18:53:24 UTC
I just updated Radeon drivers last night. Current driver version: Catalyst 2011.1025.2152.37348.

I'm starting to think this is software-related based on some new examples.


Here is another example from today. It looks like the scorpion model is what corrupted this time. This is a mate's scorpion up close.

http://i.imgur.com/8ukDd.jpg


Moments later he went out the wormhole and came back in and it looked like this:

http://i.imgur.com/Cxx8o.jpg

As you can see only about 8 polygons are where they *should* be and the rest are offset and rotated updwards by about 90 degrees.
Blinjay
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2011-12-10 19:04:08 UTC
UPDATE

*Another* corrupt scorpion... this time it's a Caldari Customs official:

http://i.imgur.com/SoMFS.png
Blinjay
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2011-12-12 14:48:32 UTC
Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?
CCP Cascade
#6 - 2011-12-12 17:00:23 UTC
Hi there,

Have you tried running the repair tool? It could be that the version of the model on your drive is corrupt.

Associate Technical Producer - Core Technology Group
Jarnis McPieksu
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#7 - 2011-12-12 18:48:47 UTC
Usually random polygons like that are the first sign that your video card is about to give up the ghost...

If you get exact same style visual corruption in more than one game, it is 100% certain. I know, it requires you to play something OTHER than EVE Online, which may be a problem...
Maevra
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#8 - 2011-12-12 20:31:03 UTC
The alternative could be bad graphics drivers. Since you recently updated them, you may wan't to consider rolling them back to see if that was the problem, or maybe reinstalling the current ones in case it was just a botched install. Alternatively, there have been some other problems with radeon cards and xp floating around the forums too (where stuff was turning red or something). Search for those, and see if what they're doing there might affect you.
Reaver Glitterstim
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#9 - 2011-12-12 20:55:33 UTC
I've been having this happen a lot with a lot of different ships lately. It started a little before Crucible actually. It reminds me of the Tyrannis display bug with the Catalyst. Perhaps it is something similar.

For me, it has been mostly the target painter that has been causing display issues. Having a target painter active causes certain levels of zoom from my ship to have the screen assaulted with a flurry of red and white flashing. I'm assuming the target painter graphic is getting painted in the wrong areas and that the graphical anomalies aren't seen from a distance due to being covered up by the space around them. Or something like that.

And yes, before you ask, my graphics drivers are quite up to date.

FT Diomedes: "Reaver, sometimes I wonder what you are thinking when you sit down to post."

Frostys Virpio: "We have to give it to him that he does put more effort than the vast majority in his idea but damn does it sometime come out of nowhere."
Maevra
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#10 - 2011-12-13 06:20:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Maevra
Just a little follow-through, but here's some of the threads I was mentioning earlier
EDIT: I think the links will probably link to one of the dev posts in the topic, I was kind of lazy about finding them...
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=439233#post439233 No resolution listed in this post

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=444125#post444125 Resolved by user, caused by remnants of old/bad gfx drivers

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=39261 Similar (same?) problem, allegedly solved in recent patch, may not have worked for everyone? (there was a solution listed inside as well) Also, dealt pretty much specifically with radeon cards.
Reaver Glitterstim wrote:
And yes, before you ask, my graphics drivers are quite up to date.

"Up to date" doesn't equal stable. Occasionally, they will release drivers that work in all their internal tests, but miss case #1134293 specific to your computer, causing "bad things" to happen. This is very similar to how CCP and other companies accidentally tend to break things in patches. Obviously, testing for every PC/whatever on the market is entirely implausible. Also, there are a multitude of factors that can cause the driver to fail, especially with the different number of companies that actually assemble the cards (such as EVGA, and so on). Alternatively, other things could go wrong, such as a botched install or old drivers not getting completely and properly removed.

A few things to check
1) run dxdiag (it won't actively fix anything, and in some cases won't detect problems, but it's kind of like checking to make sure your PC is plugged in: it's quick, it's cheap, it's easy, and probably won't damage your computer. Always go with the simplest solutions first)
2) reinstall/rollback drivers, make sure old remnants are gone (see the second post for more info on that)
3) I had a third, and forgot it. If I remember it, it'll go here.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Graphics_Problems <--------Read that if you haven't already

Also, somewhat unrelated, but always make backups of important data on your PC (especially before screwing with drivers/hardware) and make sure there isn't any malware on you computer.
Blinjay
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#11 - 2011-12-15 05:18:41 UTC
I *think* I solved it. The solution for me was this:

1. I attempted to run the EVE repair tool as suggested by CCP Cascade - This FAILED due to an IO error.

2. Intuitively, I decided to run CHKDSK (My Computer -> Right click on C: -> Properties -> Tools tab -> Error Checking - I made sure to check both boxes and click Start. The system notified me that the check would run on startup, so I rebooted.

3. CHKDSK utility detected a bad cluster - it happened to be a file in C:\Program files\CPP\EVE\bin... I seem to remember it being a PYD file.

4. After reboot I retried the EVE repair tool. Among the files that were repaired was the resDX9Caldari.stuff file (perhaps the Scorpion model resides in this file?), as well as a few others.


Anyway, so far no problems. Thanks for all the support. I hope my hard drive isn't failing!


-Blinjay
LeHarfang
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2011-12-15 09:09:42 UTC
A bad cluster will always makes your files corrupted and yes, it looks like it was the file for rendering caldari stuff, so i guess some of the scorpions data was all random, does explaining why the shading and vertices were rendered wrong, since it was using broken data.

Gratz on finding the error!
CCP Cascade
#13 - 2011-12-15 11:03:02 UTC
Interesting!

Thanks for sharing how you resolved the issue in the end. Hopefully others will find this if they have similar problems.

Associate Technical Producer - Core Technology Group