Video Issues.

AMD 64 x2 4200+
2 gig ram
Nvidia 6800 GT 256
Driver 6.14 (Downloaded latest Nvidia Driver, but yet to install it)
Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
Windows XP

No problems thus far.

I'm using an IBM Thinkpad X30 with an Intel 82830M Graphics Controller w/ 48M built into the motherboard. I know it is sub par, but it worked with no issues on Starfury, which I thought was the basis for the SEV engine. In fact I have never had a problem in the past at all.

In SEV I either get horizontal distortion in various screens in reguler mode or continual flashing in safe mode. I can stop the flashing by selecting my actual cad from the start up screen, but then the display clips off the bottom not allowing access to the bottom row of buttons and not allowing me to zoom out by pulling the mouse to the bottom.

Well, all these machines sounds like real power houses, so before poeple get too frightened, I better post my laptop stats (where I have played SE5 up to this point).

Sony Vaio
1.4 ghz centrino processor
512 GB ram
Mobility Radeon 9200 with 32 mb video ram

I even use desktop rover to control my mouse and keyboard. No problems whatsoever unless I try pumping the video up to 32 million colors. Only 16 million works for me.
I've heard some peoeple saying this game requires a really power computer to play, I haven't seen evidence of this thus far. HOWEVER, before I get flamed to oblivion, I have only played to turn 44 so far, and the largest space battle I've been in has involved maybe 15 ships total. The largest ground battle I've been in has involved 100 troops.
---
The goggles... they do nothing!

Weber Fan, as long as it works that is good! )

Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe MB
Intel 3.4Ghz Single Core Pentium 4
3GB Dual Channel RAM

Dual Nvidia 7950 GX2 Video cards (SLI Mode) 2GB Video RAM

no issues.

had some minor issues at the beginning, but updating the Nvidia drivers corrected some artifact problems on the LCD screen.

I'm running on the following specs (Some items ommited, I'm not a fan of digging out manuals for stuff like motherboards):

ATI x1800XT 256MB (Running next-to-most-recent drivers; the most recent caused problems with World of Warcraft that were unnaceptable)
AMD 3500 on an AM2 Socket (single core)
2GB of 533 Ram (DDR2)
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy (I think)

I'm getting intermittent white flashes, and if I minimize while playing at a resolution higher than my desktop the game can't seem to re-size the play area correctly, resulting in being unable to click on anything below / to the right of the 1024/800 resolution my desktop runs at (even though the game displays at 1280x1024). May have the exact numbers wrong, but idea should still be the same.

AMD 64 bit 3000
2 gb RAM
NVIDIA 7800 256

I have the game (admittedly large game) slow down after about ten turns, then if I save and quit and start SEV again, speed goes back to normal.

Ok, so I am running in a

Pentium IV 1gb ram, windows XP
64mb gforce4 card

I installed the demo, and was only able to play after I change my desktop resolution to 1024x768 pixels. Then I was happy playing a long waited game when I built my first ship, yeah. But take a look at this

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/8136/sevka8.jpg

I think it is a graphics issue, but I dont know what to do. I want to buy the game, but I am afraid of having the same problens with the complete game. The game is supposed to run even in 32bm graphic cards (they said nothing in the website about the minimum graphic card needed).

Please help.

I tried the demo out on 3 pc's and pretty much have the same problems listed here on all 3. 2 laptops 1 desktop. 1.4 1.8 3.4 mhz machines. 1 Intel and 2 radeon based graphics. One thing I noticed when I had to use task mgr to shut down one time is that the game was using 100% cpu usage all the time. I checked all 3 and it was 100% on all 3 machines except when the game was minimized. Even with low low settings. I don't recall any game, either online or stand alone requiring this amount of cpu usage constantly. This is generally not good for pc's especially laptops. I typically ( actually every time)get access violations by turn 60

I've been able to reproduce the same video error on two different computers: a laptop with a 1.5 GHz Banias generation Pentium M, with the Intel Extreme Graphics 2 and a desktop with a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 with Intel graphics.

Using the ALLTECH cheat code, I build a large fighter, then I pit 5 of them from Race 1 against 5 of them from Race 2. When they fire at each other, the game locks up, the CPU goes to 100% usage, and I have to kill the process to continue.

I also notice that I get what appears to be a null pointer arithmetic error, where the game is trying to access something at memory location 0x00000004.

I really like the game, but with these kinds of errors, including having the game lock up during a game and not being able to progress past that point even with reloading an earlier turn, there are some issues that require attention.

Sothryn

Same here, but if and only if I'm using my CRT, none on my LCD.

Dell 9300
NVidia 6800Go 256mb
Latest drivers.
Audigy2

The white flashes are incredibly annoying making the game pretty much unplayable for me.

I had white flashes after I pressed the "Manual" button on one of the popups. It started Adobe Acrobat in the background and then seemed to be fighting with it for focus.

I thought it might be focus related, so I made sure that nothing was running in the background.

But like I said, if I switch to my LCD instead of the CRT, the flashes no longer occur. Sadly my LCD is broken so I can't really play on it.

If the LCD isn't flashing, the CRT might be set to a refresh rate it can't handle. Try changing SEV to Windowd mode and/or changing your CRT's refresh rate and enabling V-sync in your video card drivers.

Beyond that it might be just a weird display bug. :/ Make sure to email MM about it, .

Nope it's not a refresh rate like flash. It's the screen going white for a split second. It is in fact a white flash, the kind you might get when you switch in and out of D3D.

I thought it might have been an issue with the dual monitor setup, so I disabled the lcd and still no luck. Plus it appears that somebody else is having the same problem yet with a different card. So I'll just play something else and wait for a patch. No biggie.

Hits self in head five times. I did not notice this was for comp specs only. Not posting mine here but sent the data to the Comments, Suggestions, Technical Support email for SEV.

I play on LCD only, get the flashes.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

I'm having the same issues on a Toshiba Satelite Laptop with Intel 82852/82855 Graphics Controller 64 MB. I downloaded the latest drivers for the graphics card along with updating the Directx last night and was still having these problems. Either the background is garbled with horizontal static or the icons for facilities or ship equipment is.

I ran through the same scenario (space battles) as in my previous posting (ALLTECH cheatcode, running simulator) using cruisers, frigates, weapons platforms, and satellites. None of these types caused the application to hang up. However, any time I add in the fighters, whether alone or mixed with other types, the simulation will lock up, freeze, stop working, fail to respond!

None of the items listed in the fix list for patch 1.08 indicate a fix for this problem, so I will stick with just having the demo version until I see enough positive listing on here to feel that the game is out of Beta testing.

System Information:
AMD Athalon 64 X2 Dual 4800+
2.41 GHz 1.75 GB of Ram
Geforce 7950 GX2 512MB

Problems:
I have the cpu affinity problem, but thats easy enough to workaround.
Graphics wise, if I use Video Memory Ussage: Safe, half the screen is black, and the game is unplayable (I can't even start a game as I can't see the buttons on the bottom half of the screen). Otherwise, with it set to Auto, the initial menus work, but the system display area has 2-3 strips that are like the Hall of Mirrors effect you get from double buffering when the buffers aren't being cleared properly and are only sporadically being written to (sometimes I get trails as my mouse moves through them, flickering between 2-3 buffers). The actual menus overlay these bands, so the game is playable, I just have to rotate the system to odd angles to be able to see things, and I can't see the whole system at once.

In tactical combat, it's unplayable, almost the entire play area is dominated by HoM areas, with only about the top 1/8th updating correctly (again, the menus overlay the HoM and display correctly, but as I can't see my ship or enemies unless they are to the north, it's not playable).

I've tried all 3 3d device settings, and though the lesser ones degrade performance, they have no other impact, seting the graphics to their lowest settings makes the mouse trails a bit less likely, but doesn't really make it playable. Different resolutions and color depths don't help. Windowed mode is better in the main play area, but combat is still mostly broken.

I have screenshots for both issues, but nowhere to upload them to.

Infinite loop in the following code when using fighters:

00667DFB mov edi,dword ptr [esp+4]
00667DFF mov ebx,dword ptr [esp+8]
00667E03 mov dword ptr [esp],ebx
00667E06 mov esi,dword ptr [esp]
00667E09 sub esi,edi
00667E0B jno 00667E12
00667E0D call 00402ED8
00667E12 sar esi,1
00667E14 jns 00667E19
00667E16 adc esi,0
00667E19 add esi,edi
00667E1B jno 00667E22
00667E1D call 00402ED8
00667E22 mov ebx,dword ptr [eax+8]
00667E25 cmp esi,dword ptr [ebx-4]
00667E28 jb 00667E2F
00667E2A call 00402ED0
00667E2F cmp dword ptr [ebx+esi*4],0
00667E33 je 00667EAF

[Above line jumps]
00667E35 mov ebx,dword ptr [eax+8]
00667E38 cmp esi,dword ptr [ebx-4]
00667E3B jb 00667E42
00667E3D call 00402ED0
00667E42 mov ebx,dword ptr [ebx+esi*4]
00667E45 cmp edx,dword ptr [ebx+10h]
00667E48 jne 00667E5C
00667E4A mov ecx,dword ptr [eax+8]
00667E4D cmp esi,dword ptr [ecx-4]
00667E50 jb 00667E57
00667E52 call 00402ED0
00667E57 mov ecx,dword ptr [ecx+esi*4]
00667E5A jmp 00667EAF
00667E5C mov ebx,dword ptr [eax+8]
00667E5F cmp esi,dword ptr [ebx-4]
00667E62 jb 00667E69
00667E64 call 00402ED0
00667E69 mov ebx,dword ptr [ebx+esi*4]
00667E6C cmp edx,dword ptr [ebx+10h]
00667E6F jge 00667E85
00667E71 mov dword ptr [esp+4],edi
00667E75 sub esi,1
00667E78 jno 00667E7F
00667E7A call 00402ED8
00667E7F mov dword ptr [esp+8],esi
00667E83 jmp 00667EAF
00667E85 mov ebx,dword ptr [eax+8]
00667E88 cmp esi,dword ptr [ebx-4]
00667E8B jb 00667E92
00667E8D call 00402ED0
00667E92 mov ebx,dword ptr [ebx+esi*4]
00667E95 cmp edx,dword ptr [ebx+10h]
00667E98 jle 00667EAF
00667E9A add esi,1
00667E9D jno 00667EA4
00667E9F call 00402ED8
00667EA4 mov dword ptr [esp+4],esi
00667EA8 mov ebx,dword ptr [esp]
00667EAB mov dword ptr [esp+8],ebx

[Jump moves to here]
00667EAF test ecx,ecx
00667EB1 jne 00667EC1
00667EB3 mov ebx,dword ptr [esp+4]
00667EB7 cmp ebx,dword ptr [esp+8]
00667EBB jle 00667DFB
[Loop: Returns to first line in this list]
... forever!!!

Wow, how did you view all that code and figure out which instructions are being executed at any particular time? Do you need a special program to do that?

I have Visuall C++, and I can do the same thing with all of the programs that crash on my computer. It's a free download from microsoft.

-----
With all these people, you would expect one of them to carry an iguana around...

As Thy Reaper mentioned, I used Microsoft Visual Studio to capture the running code and find what was causing my Fighters freeze, while my CPU was running at 100%.

Version 1.08 fixes the Fighter simulator bug! Yes!
I can now watch Fighters fight in the simulator!
In fact, I'm happy enough with the current patch that I ordered the Full game.
But, I know there are still more bugs to quash, so I look forward to future fixes and changes that make the game even better.

1 gb ram
3.2 ghz p4 ht
radeon 9700 mobile

After about 50 to 90 turns I (more or less randomly, but usually AFTER combat) get a crash to desktop with a buffer error. It looks like its having memory access issues but my system memory is fine. Has anyone found a workaround for this buffer issue thing? I'm really getting fed up waiting to play a game I bought a week ago....

My problem explained here: http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/611#comment-4442

In short: "Primary Display" selection doesn't use hardware, selecting "Radeon..." forces 1024x768 windowed mode

Asus P5W DH Deluxe
Core 2 Duo 3.33GHz
Dual ATI Radeon X1950XTX in CrossFire mode, Catalyst 6.9/video driver 8.282.0.0
DVI LCD
SB Live! (first system), SB Audigy 4 (second system)

I got the white flickers and slight display errors whenever I ran at 16-bit colour; try 32-bit (if you haven't) colour to see if the flashes vanish.

Oh, and 2Gb RAM

sysop: the "edit" link doesn't work, unable to connect to SQL database.

Thats random error, just hit "refresh" a few times and it'll go away.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Yup...the edit button went away
heh

I ran into the same problem the second time I tried the game. It worked first time no problems, but the second I had to mess around with my gfx settings in windows.

To be honest, nothing seemed to work. However the last thing I tried was got my gfx control panel to detect displays. And that seemed to get it working again. But I've got an Nvidia, so I don't know if Radion has a 'detect displays' option. If it does, give it a try.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

LordHavoc are you talking about the buffer error or the flickering error? So far no combination of settings changes has worked for me (including safe memory mode.) Honestly I don't care if a game has minor bugs or balance issues, but CTD's just after some fun combat really, really suck. I just don't understand, how can someone release a game with such blatent bugs? Did anyone even play it at all?

Yes, it was played, but not all developers have the deep pockets (like blizzard does) to push off release "untill its done".

Also, testing is a LOT harder than it sounds, lets not forget, because you have to deal with so very many differen't system configurations.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

I've yet to see any definitive answer on the flickering problem. I'm trying to run the game on a toshiba satellite as well, but have the white flickers on full screen. Have tried playing with my graphics settings and what not, and still no luck. It seems as though the flickering problem is not too rare.

Of course they go away with windowed mode, but the game is hardly playable for me in windowed mode since the game window is bigger than my desktop and the automatic scroll functions will only work in one or two directions.

Playing with the flickers is not an option as it seriously strains my eyes and gives me a headache.

The flickering problem is also found in Star Fury. And I've only encountered this kind of problem from this game developer.

Are the rest of you people playing with the flickers or did anyone solve the problem?

When I use a 1280x800x32 resolution the graphic on some windows get screwed, here is a screenshot:

http://it.geocities.com/s_noffke/GraphicIssue.jpg

It works fine with a rsolution of 1280x800x16.

This is my video card: Intel(R) 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller [Display adapter]

Edit: Oh, my monitor flickers too...

I've been having the same corrupted or misdisplayed graphics on some of my screens, most regularly research and ship design. I've been using 1280x1024x32. It never entered my feeble mind to go down to 16 colors. Now the graphics look clean and clear. I have the Intel(R) 82915G/GV/910GL Express chipset.

And my monitor flickers as well.

Thats not a video card, thats onboard video memory. Slight difference there in terminology, huge in performance.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Still the graphics should not get all screwed...

Actually, since thats just video memory, you don't meet the minimum requirements for the game.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

I would understand if it was anything related to 3D rendering, but that's just a plain 2D background image and not a 3d image (which doesn't give any problem). It also doesn't explain why everything work smoothly with 16 bit images instead of 32...

Oh, I shoulda read closer. That is wierd.

That said, programming is wierd, complex, and involved. You'll see errors that make no logical sense... because the logic in the programing makes no sense untill you try to fix it. So I'm going to guess this is another of those cases.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

SEV, all versions up to 1.17.

PROBLEM: CTD happens when you elect to attack an enemy ship or fleet during your turn with a ship or fleet that still has enough movement to engage the enemy ship(s). If you destroy the enemy ship or fleet and click "Close" on the combat window, the game crashes to destop with an Access Violation error.

The problem only manifests itself when using any screen resolution higher than 1024 x 768 (16 or 32 bit mode makes no difference). I have not tested "Windowed" mode yet.

Also tried using both the latest "Dell" and straight nVidia versions of the drivers with no effect.

Specs:
Item Value
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer Dell Inc.
System Model Dimension XPSGEN5
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 4 GenuineIntel ~2999 Mhz
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 4 GenuineIntel ~2999 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. A02, 5/24/2005
SMBIOS Version 2.3
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)"
Time Zone Eastern Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 2,048.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 1.19 GB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 3.85 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

[Display]
Item Value
Name NVIDIA GeForce 6800
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00C1&SUBSYS_024510DE&REV_A2\4&390FD548&0&0008
Adapter Type GeForce 6800, NVIDIA compatible
Adapter Description NVIDIA GeForce 6800
Adapter RAM 256.00 MB (268,435,456 bytes)
Installed Drivers nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version 6.14.10.7730
INF File oem24.inf (nv4_NV3x section)
Color Planes 1
Color Table Entries 4294967296
Resolution 1600 x 900 x 60 hertz
Bits/Pixel 32
Memory Address 0xED000000-0xEFEFFFFF
Memory Address 0xD0000000-0xDFFFFFFF
Memory Address 0xEE000000-0xEEFFFFFF
IRQ Channel IRQ 16
I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB
I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF
Driver c:\windows\system32\drivers\nv4_mini.sys (6.14.10.7730, 3.04 MB (3,189,376 bytes), 8/11/2004 18:08)

Sincerely,
Kahn

Is there a way to get SEV to create a logfile? It refuses to believe that it can do anything other than RGB emulation, and therefore even moving the mouse can't manage more than about 1fps...

2.6Ghz CPU, 2Gb RAM, Geforce FX5900/128Mb. It'll happily play halflife2 at a reasonable rate so it should cope with this!

I'm wondering whether it's picking up a couple of virtual graphics drivers (one for better performance with VNC, one for Novell's Zenworks) rather than the real one, although it only gives me the option of the primary video card in the settings.

Just updated to latest Nvidia drivers with no change.

Steve.

Any attempt to construct a Ring world or sphere world results in an error message:
"Access violation at address 0072039E in module 'se5.exe'. Read of address 000000C4"

I'm using a fresh install of SEV with patch 1.44
OS:WinXP (With DirectX 9.0c)
CPU:Athlon 64
RAM:1gb PC2100 DDR
Video:Radeon 9550 256mb DDR (latest drivers)
Sound: Creative Labs Audigy (Latest drivers available)

I even tried switching to the latest Omega Drivers just to see if it would make a difference, it didn't.

Also, regardless of any setting chosen (resolution combinations and bit-depth combinations, windowed or full-screen) the game runs in a windowed state, that must be manually re-adjusted to fit the screen.