Flickering screen problem, can't open in windowed mode, any ideas?

[Gundammit]

For some reason after reverting to the regular steam program after using some beta version they were testing Space Empires started to get really bad screen flicker. I had a look around and found that if you open it in windowed mode then it prevents it. However whenever I use the '-window' command or other variations of it it doesnt work. All that happens is you see the Space Empires window flash up for a second and then it exits out.

I have tried the commands both in launch option and in the target field of the shortcut properties and I just get the same thing happening. Is there a way to force it into windowed mode in a txt. file? Or is there some update I haven't installed? Anyway hopefully someone can help because it is actually unplayable atm.

Thanks guys.

[Pooks]

When you start up the game, in the first menu that pops up, press 'setup' and then change the resolution, at the very top it should have an option titled 'windowed'. It can be pretty easy to miss, I myself missed it for awhile and felt pretty bad when I noticed it, but after reading around it's a common mistake.

As for the flicker, fist of all try going in to the same 'Setup' option from the first menu and change the 'Video Memory Usage' from 'Auto' to 'Safe', this caused my video flicker to become MUCH more managable, it would only happen once or twice ever fifteen minutes or so and most of the time I'd usually missing it through blinking. Another good note is that the game seems to flicker bad when there are certain software open or 'Maximized' on the desktop, I know skype has caused an increase in flickers when I have it open to view, merely tabbing the window so it is out of view usually fixes this for me.

I hope this helps.

[Gundammit]

Thanks a lot Sildori! I don't even have to play in windowed mode, if I play with 'safe' video memory it's fine. Much appreciated, now I can get back to playing!

[Rex Bellator]

I had flickering as well. I tried two things: I played at a lower resolution (1280x800) and I turned on Clear Type under Windows 7 control panel. That worked well for me.

[razmoudah]

Ack. The first day I played the game it wasn't bad, not great but tolerable on the screen flicker. But now I've got another Firefox Window minimized that I hadn't before and it's suddenly gotten much worse. Much, much worse. I've tried adjusting the video memory usage, but setting it to safe actually made things worse, not better. This is very annoying as I'd only found the game on Steam rather recently, and I'm liking most of the changes I've encountered so far from SEIVD. Switching the display driver just forces it into Windowed mode, and although that fixes the flicker problem (or at least seems to make it go away) I hate playing a game in window mode, I vastly prefer to play in full screen. Also, even with the display driver at its default if I set the resolution to Window that seems to help as well, but I only get about the a third the fps (since I turned it on to monitor it, thinking the problem might be connected).

I think until the developers can bother with fixing the problem I might just right off playing SEV, and maybe uninstall it altogether and not bother coming back since it seems the problem has been around for a very long time.

[razmoudah]

Well, after digging around in the game files (which are actually mostly .txt files) and finding the .pdf with all of the extra help info for modding the game (explains why everything except the code that actually runs the game is in .txt files, better for the modders) I finally found the solution to the screen flicker problem. In the directory for the game (SpaceEmpriesV) you go into the directory (or folder) SE5, then into Data, and open the file Settings.txt. Towards the top of the file (it is a loooooooong one) is a setting labeled "Support Multithreading" you simply switch the value from "FALSE" to "TRUE". I haven't done a long game secession trial with that change yet, but I instantly went from the screen flickering at times several times per second to none at all from game load up through loading a saved game and playing a single turn. For the past couple of days I couldn't even make it through the splash screens without multiple flickers. I think it's rather pathetic that the problem was just simply the game not letting DirectX utilize Multithreading if you had a multi-core processor, and with the exception of a few very earlier Vista boxes who doesn't have a multi-core processor? Even in 2008 they weren't exactly rare for gamers to have and they've only become far more common (to the point where it's hard to find someone with a smart phone that doesn't have a multi-core processor, heck even the 3DS and PSVita are multi-core).

[Gundammit]

Cheers for the help razmoudah, I'll remember to do that next time I play.

[razmoudah]

You have to do the change to the file before you play, as it isn't a listed option, but it does work.