BUG -- ATI video card display issues Thread - Liquid Cubed

We've researched the problem, and believe there's an issue with ATI video cards from versions 1.0.0 to 1.0.1 that will display the user-interface incorrectly. This issue should be resolved in the upcoming version 1.0.2.
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Edited by: [ZanMgt]Aaron

well for me, everything looks awful just as UI.

Edited by: ZeusLT

I am having the same problem, when will the fix be released?

We're going to be working on this (and the other remaining show-stoppers) this weekend. I'll update the thread immediately once its fixed, though the official release might not be until Sunday evening or Monday afternoon.

Can you confirm that both of you have ATI video cards? You can check this by going to the Direct X Diagnostics Tool:
1. Go to Start > Run (With Vista/7 just go to "Start")
2. Type in: "dxdiag" and press "OK"
3. Under "Display" confirm the name of the video device.

Thanks for the feedback! This really helps!

Yep I got ATI card "RADEON X800/X850"

Alright, we still seem to be having the vertical streak problem with "legacy" (display drivers 10.2 and less), but the scewered interface should be resolved for newer videocards with Liquid Cubed version 1.0.2.

We're going to diagnose this further this upcoming weekend.

Edited by: [ZanMgt]Aaron

Just downloaded 1.0.2 and still have the texture problem pictured in the first post (textures seem to be 2x vertical size).

Got an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570

If there's anything else I can do to help just ask, would love to test this out!

@zarat

For now we need to debug this locally, but if you like we can send you a PM when we think we've got it fixed.

Yeah that would be great
If it weren't obfuscated I'd probably figure out the problem myself, but I can understand that you don't want someone to steal those ideas.

Good luck fixing the problem!

Yeah it's really just our liquid algorithm we'd like protected at the moment, but security is only a delaying tactic, so we've got to do something constructive with the research soon, you know?

We're sort of gimped by not having a post 10.2 ATI video card at the moment, but we think we've got it fixed this time. 'Mind being a guinea pig and giving 1.0.2A a shot? If it doesn't work, let me know and I'll see about getting you a non-obfuscated version (sans algorithm) if you'd like to go over the shaders from your end.

We really appreciate the help!

Still bugged, can't see any difference to 1.0.2
The intro/logo is affected, and the UI, the actual blocks in the world view look ok I think.

If you can get me a reduced non obfuscated version (eg. with just the UI rendering?) I can go through it and look for the problem.

Or you could just dump anything except the logo. Since the intro is affected too it would probably enough to figure out what's wrong.

@zarat

I'll send you a copy of the open-source app (stripped down to the essentials of course!) tomorrow afternoon, around 6:00pm Germany time.

Good luck, and thank you!

(And to those of you with ATI cards out there: Yes, we're going to be ordering some ATI video cards so this isn't an issue in the future!)

Edited by: [ZanMgt]Aaron

Aaron](And to those of you with ATI cards out there: Yes, we're going to be ordering some ATI video cards so this isn't an issue in the future!)

Yay

Found the problem, they should be able to fix it in the next update

It might very well fix the problems (screenshot #2) with "legacy" drivers too.

Edited by: zarat

Thanks to Zarat's wicked-ninja coding skills, we'll be uploading a hotfix tonight.

Crossing our fingers to see if this resolves the legacy driver issue as well!

The hotfix (1.0.2b) is available by running the" wyUpdate.exe" inside your LiquidCubed folder. We'll have a standalone 1.0.2b uploaded tomorrow. Please let us know if this improves the situation for ATI videocards!

EDIT:

Standalone version of 1.0.2b can be downloaded from the link below (You should use wyUpdate if you already have a previous version of Liquid Cubed on your computer)
Zanmgt.com

Edited by: [ZanMgt]Aaron

Works for me. The camera issue from 1.0.2a is gone too.

I love those water pumps

It doesn't work for me ...
Same as Before

--------Edit---------

does it supports pixel shader2 ?!

Edited by: ZeusLT

From what I've seen it should work on shader model 2, though I can't guarantee it. While the shaders are compiled for model 2 the way the device is used may not be; the lower shader models have a lot of restrictions which may have accidently been violated.

Just to clarify, are you getting an error as in screenshot #1 or screenshot #2 ? Myself I've only got the error from ss #1 , so maybe ss #2 is totally unrelated after all.

Edited by: zarat

Well I got error as in 2nd screenshot and I got ATI card with pixel shader 2 .. probably that's the problem. I hope this will get fixed

We've confirmed there's still an issue with the legacy (10.2 and older display driver) ATI videocards...

It seems that the interface has been repaired for the legacy videocard, as you used to be able to see the terrain colors gray, green, etc and now you only see everything blue... I'm thinking it's actually just drawing the very upper-left part of the screen, but stretched for some reason.

Zarat, would you happen to know of an ATI shader diagnosing tool that'll function for the legacy video cards? PIX fails to output any data, and I can't seem to find the old ATI 2006 PIX patch (although its unlikely to run on the 2010 version of PIX).

Either way, we'll give manually reverse-engineering the display issue from a legacy machine a shot this weekend.

EDIT:

Standalone version of 1.0.2b can be downloaded from the link below (You should use wyUpdate if you already have a previous version of Liquid Cubed on your computer)
Zanmgt.com

Hmm, strange that PIX would not work, I thought it didn't require hardware support for its basic functionality because it just replaced the dx9 dlls by a proxy which records and forwards the calls. Don't know any other tool for DirectX, just something for OpenGL.

Some ideas:
- When using 4d positional vectors make sure the w (4th) component is one, not zero. I'm not sure if it matters when you're using shaders, but standard 3d logic divides by w. Some hardware may map a division by zero to infinity and produce something like that image.
- If you can locally reproduce it (and thus rapidly test new versions) take the minimum UI sample you made for me and keep reducing it until it either works or you just draw a single triangle/quad. If drawing a single triangle doesn't work you should be able to easily tweak it until it works.
- You can go into the DX control panel app (from the DX SDK; use the 32 bit version of the panel, as your app is 32 bit too) and turn on the debug version with maximum debug output and validation. In the project options chose to enable unmanaged debugging and watch the debug output panel in VS. It gives a lot of warnings when you do something strange.

[edit] I tried the last point myself, and I didn't get any significant warnings, so you probably don't need to bother to try that one. (Those warnings tend not to depend on hardware.)

[edit2] Got a few more problems, nothing too serious though, but worth to mention: my cursor is just a horizontal line on ATI, not a cross; on my nVidia PC I got a proper cross. Not sure if it's an ATI/nVidia thing though. Also I just got the camera problem again where you only can turn in 22,5 degree steps. Happened after ctrl+L and chosing a level to load. Restart didn't help, but when I started an older version (1.0.1) and went back to 1.0.2b it suddenly worked again. Are you storing settings somewhere besides the startup map? Also I got a crash once when turning on fullscreen via F4. Can't reproduce the crash/camera thing though.

Edited by: zarat

PIX back in 2006 required a special plugin to function with ATI videocards, or so my research tells me. I've contacted AMD's Developer support but they have not returned my messages, so this will probably have to be tested one step a time to discover the problem.

I'll have Nathan go over your (very much appreacited) ideas for the shader code to see if there isn't an "Aha!" moment to be had, as well as see about resolving the camera and the fullscreen bug.

Settings are stored in the Settings.xml in the LiquidCubed folder. This should only store the last map opened as well as the Autosave time.

Thanks again Zarat!

Zarat wrote: [edit2] Got a few more problems, nothing too serious though, but worth to mention: my cursor is just a horizontal line on ATI, not a cross; on my nVidia PC I got a proper cross. Not sure if it's an ATI/nVidia thing though. Also I just got the camera problem again where you only can turn in 22,5 degree steps. Happened after ctrl+L and chosing a level to load. Restart didn't help, but when I started an older version (1.0.1) and went back to 1.0.2b it suddenly worked again. Are you storing settings somewhere besides the startup map? Also I got a crash once when turning on fullscreen via F4. Can't reproduce the crash/camera thing though.

The horizontal line issue should be fixed in 1.0.3, but the camera "22.5" degrees we weren't able to recreate. We also weren't able to recreate the fullscreen F4 crash.

Zarat wrote: Some ideas:
- When using 4d positional vectors make sure the w (4th) component is one, not zero. I'm not sure if it matters when you're using shaders, but standard 3d logic divides by w. Some hardware may map a division by zero to infinity and produce something like that image.
- If you can locally reproduce it (and thus rapidly test new versions) take the minimum UI sample you made for me and keep reducing it until it either works or you just draw a single triangle/quad. If drawing a single triangle doesn't work you should be able to easily tweak it until it works.
- You can go into the DX control panel app (from the DX SDK; use the 32 bit version of the panel, as your app is 32 bit too) and turn on the debug version with maximum debug output and validation. In the project options chose to enable unmanaged debugging and watch the debug output panel in VS. It gives a lot of warnings when you do something strange.

We had tried the first idea, but the other two I must have missed. We'll give those a shot for 1.0.4 to see if we can't fix legacy... I know we're close...