Flickering

[Sendai-Ono]

About an hour into the game and noticing there's always, more or less noticable, a slight flickering. When going to the place with the children and the beck, it's clearly visible and there's even something like the shape of the dialogue text box hanging in the air, even outside of dialogues. Hard to describe.

So yeah, does anyone else encounter this issue? Is it a problem on the game's end or mine? Does it maybe have to do with my screen's refresh rate, since the game, for some reason, runs with 40 fps.

It doesn't ruin the experience, just slightly annoying.

[James Spanos]

Most AGS games run at 40 fps, it might be your screen's refresh rate. If you run winsetup.exe, from the game's directory or settings from the library option, you can disable or enable vsync see if that helps, and u can also set 85hz crt monitor option on.

[Sendai-Ono]

You know what's funny? I took a record of the game during a scene where the flickering is becoming REALLY annoying, but it doesn't show in the video. Uploaded it anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ22Huq1HUg

I thought turing v-sync off was the solution, but nope, still there, and I've noticed that the flickering (and the shape of the text box in the air) only appears during dialogues, and stays afterwards til I switch to another screen.

So yeah, any ideas?

Btw, I didn't hear of AGS before, but find it nice, that there's an Open-Source PnC Adventure game engine.

[James Spanos]

Try changing the renderer from opengl to direct3d or to software[this is in winsetup], or running the game on windowed [alt-enter].

[Sendai-Ono]

So far I tried using Open GL, which didn't do the trick. In the rather long dialogue with Mr. Briden, the flickering started reappearing and became increasingly worse, and honestly, if I had to take a wild guess, I'd say that there are, well, some remains of windows overlapping, and the more of those windows, triggered via choosing a dialogue topic, the worse the flickering becomes. If that makes any sense.

I'm gonna try playing in software mode now, but I don't have high hopes that'd change anything.

[Sendai-Ono]

Btw, what's really bothering me is that I don't have any kind of exotic rig. It's a 5800X and 3070.
Most games (and by that I mean above 99 %) run out-of-the-box without problems whatsoever.
Screen is a 144 hz FHD thing from LG.

I don't get it. But thanks for trying to help, I'd be really enjoying the game if it wasn't for the graphical glitches.

[James Spanos]

1) Right click The Excavation of Hobs Barrow,
2) Properties
3) Betas
4) typing in that text input box "testformactest" WITHOUT QUOTES, hitting check code
5) Hitting the blue button that will appear (i believe it will write "Opt into mactest")
6) The game will begin downloading files and once that's done, you'll have the same but hopefully the issue will be resolved!

This is a newer version of the engine.

[James Spanos]

I'm really sorry you're having this kind of trouble, but this is honestly a first time I see this issue. What resolution are you playing the game, and what is your desktop native resolution, that might help in me trying to replicate this!

[Sendai-Ono]

Originally posted by James Spanos:

1) Right click The Excavation of Hobs Barrow,
2) Properties
3) Betas
4) typing in that text input box "testformactest" WITHOUT QUOTES, hitting check code
5) Hitting the blue button that will appear (i believe it will write "Opt into mactest")
6) The game will begin downloading files and once that's done, you'll have the same but hopefully the issue will be resolved!

This is a newer version of the engine.

Hey, that seems like a measure that could really do the trick. Gonna try it out asap, thanks.

And no hard feelings, if I bought this game from, say, Ubisoft, I'd be pissed, but I have a weak spot for small indie studios (which you maybe even aren't) making sweet little games. Really enjoying 'Hob's' so far.

Oh yeah, almost forgot: I run the game at 1080p, which is also the screen's native resolution, and it's a 144 hz device.

[Sendai-Ono]

Well, running the 'beta' version breakes the game in that there aren't any hotspots displayed on the bottom of screen anymore, only names of persons. PLUS after I switched back to the non-beta version and hit 'continue' in the menu, it said something like incompatible save data.
Luckily the game let me load the autosave, so I only had to replay the dialogue with the vicar.

Yeah well, that honestly didn't help much, but thanks for trying. Any other ideas? I was thinking, that maye it has to do with other apps running in the background, like the browser. What's bugging me is that I seem to be the only one encountering this issue, and like I said, my PC doesn't tend to have problems running games properly without much fiddling around.

As sort of a last resort, I will try setting a 40 fps cap for the game in Nvidia's app, but I really don't think that's the problem.

[Sendai-Ono]

Since Windows (or Nvidia) won't let me record the flickering on-screen, I took a video with my mobile phone. I could send it to you, so you get an idea of what I'm actually talking about to begin with.

Google Drive maybe? Not sure how that works anyway.

[James Spanos]

Google drive works.

[Sendai-Ono]

Did it work? Not feeling too good about having some 'private' data stuck around the internet. But I think I need to give you access permission anyway.

However, I'm 10 hrs in the game now and pretty sure it's going straight towards the end. The flickering didn't go away, but I guess I kinda got used to it, although it's somewhat headache-inducing.

[James Spanos]

I deleted the link post, and asked request for it my email is (led*********@gmail.com)

[Sendai-Ono]

Yeah, I noticed and (hopefully) gave you permission. Not too familiar with Drive.

[James Spanos]

You did, checking!