Weird bits of graphic flashing.

[Mickmane]

Friend and I were doing this puzzle last night:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3102755419

Depending on how we were zoomed in, bits of the skyscrapers were flashing weirdly, like just the top brown layer of the 2nd one from the right, then I think one of the other brown ones on the right side.

Both for my friend (on some laptop) and myself (desktop PC), so I'm not sure how much settings/computer specs would help.

Didn't bother us too much, but I thought I'd mention it. :) Great game!

[Personal Finest Shawn]

Yea, this is an issue caused with high resolution textures at certain distances. What is happening is the actual image has a lot of pixels of contrasting color in one spot but when zoomed out your monitor only has so many pixels to show this. So each frame a color from the image is chosen at random to be placed in the pixel on the monitor, causing it to flicker.

This is common in both video games and tv (if you have ever seen a thin striped shirt filmed you might have seen this before).

Most games can fix this by having LOD's, different sized texture images to use at different distances. However two reasons we decided not to do this.

One with the high resolution of puzzles in the game the install size is already larger than what people "expect" from a puzzle game (the install size is 90% just the puzzle images). We didn't want to add to this by including more different resolution images.

Two in a normal game you are moving around a lot usually and don't noticed the textures changing to different sizes at different distances. However since you are so focused on one image in this it looks more jarring when you see it popping between different sizes as you zoom in and out.

I hope to be able to find a filter to help minimize this someday without needing a bunch of different LOD's for each puzzle but so far it was a compromise that seemed the best at the time.

[Mickmane]

Thanks for your quick reply and good explanation! :)

How about not having a random pixel picked at each tick? Just settle some fixed pixel from those available (tied to the zoom distance)? So at zoom x it always uses pixel #y instead of picking a random one?

The flickering wasn't happening when constantly zooming out and in, it was that at specific zoom stages some (different) areas were flickering constantly. Unless we were zoomed in pretty close (too close for either of us).

Thanks again. :)

[Personal Finest Shawn]

Originally posted by Mickmane:

How about not having a random pixel picked at each tick? Just settle some fixed pixel from those available (tied to the zoom distance)? So at zoom x it always uses pixel #y instead of picking a random one?

I wish :). That is something we would have to talk to the people who make graphics cards about. I'm sure there is a good reason they do it this way (been like that since the beginning), but not sure what (probably a speed thing).

[Mickmane]

Originally posted by 𝒜𝒹𝓊𝓁𝓉 𝐵𝒶𝓁𝒹𝓌𝒾𝓃 Wine:

Originally posted by Mickmane:

How about not having a random pixel picked at each tick? Just settle some fixed pixel from those available (tied to the zoom distance)? So at zoom x it always uses pixel #y instead of picking a random one?

I wish :). That is something we would have to talk to the people who make graphics cards about. I'm sure there is a good reason they do it this way (been like that since the beginning), but not sure what (probably a speed thing).

Oh. Thanks for explaining that, too. :)

Can we do something to the settings to fix this, like lower resolution display of the images?

[Personal Finest Shawn]

I don't think so. Maybe something can be done with reshade or Universal Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker, but honestly I haven't had the time to spend looking deep into this yet.

[Personal Finest Shawn]

Luckily it only happens on a few of the images.

[Mickmane]

Originally posted by 𝒜𝒹𝓊𝓁𝓉 𝐵𝒶𝓁𝒹𝓌𝒾𝓃 Wine:

I don't think so. Maybe something can be done with reshade or Universal Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker, but honestly I haven't had the time to spend looking deep into this yet.

I mean on our side. :) Maybe we can do something to the settings?

And yes, this was the only image that I remember seeing this so far.

[Personal Finest Shawn]

"I mean on our side. :) Maybe we can do something to the settings?"
Yea not in game settings. I did mean using reshade or Universal Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker on your side as both programs allow modifying of games beyond the game settings but also are pretty complicated :). Just the only idea I have at this moment.

[Mickmane]

Originally posted by 𝒜𝒹𝓊𝓁𝓉 𝐵𝒶𝓁𝒹𝓌𝒾𝓃 Wine:

"I mean on our side. :) Maybe we can do something to the settings?"
Yea not in game settings. I did mean using reshade or Universal Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker on your side as both programs allow modifying of games beyond the game settings but also are pretty complicated :). Just the only idea I have at this moment.

Ah, thanks!

I don't think my friend would want to do anything complicated, and I just get confused. So we'll leave it as it is.