Drakan won't start in Fullscreen mode. (Edit: Fixed.)

[Cake]

hi guys,

so, i've just installed drakan -> official patch 445 -> AiO patch 377/447.
everything runs fine in Windowed Mode (SP and MP both run and look/sound just fine).
but when i start drakan in fullscreen mode, i get get a black screen for a split second, and then a crash - "Engine has stopped working".

using:
windows 7 (64 bit)
GTX 670 (344.11 WHQL)
asus vg248qe (running 144hz)

i've tried:
disabling my second monitor in nvidia control panel
disabling scaling in nvidia control panel
windows XP SP2 compatibility mode
windows XP SP3 compatibility mode
windows 98 / ME compatibility mode
disabling desktop composition
disabling sound (in drakan roit engine options)

i'm not sure what else i can try, so any help would be much appreciated

edit: well, i've found the solution. in nvidia panel, i had to set "Preferred refresh rate (Ancor Communications Inc VG248)" to 'application-controlled' (it was on 'highest available' before).
i must've wasted more than 2 hours trying to get this to work

[Arokhs Twin]

Glad you got it working. Seems to be something to do with refresh rates.. hmm. Well interesting to know if others have the same or similar issue.

[savesthedaystakn]

Thanks for posting this! I was having the same issue but after making the adjustment in the Nvidia Control Panel, the game is (seeming to) work perfectly fine.

[Mechanist]

I can now confirm that an apparently identical problem exists on Radeon cards under Win7 x64.

Start in windowed mode - no problems, everything works fine.
Fullscreen - instant "atikmdag" BSOD.
Trying to start windowed, and then alt-enter into fullscreen causes mad flickering for a few seconds, and then the above BSOD.

Toggling BorderlessWindowHooks in Arokh.ini didn't appear to help any.

So I've created a new entry for Drakan in the Radeon settings, and changed the following settings:
- "Wait for vertical refresh" to "On, unless application specifies" (default was "Off, unless application specifies"),
- "Frame pacing" and "AMD FreeSync" to "Off",
- "AMD CrossFire mode" to "Disabled".

Now it runs just fine.
I didn't try narrowing the crash down to any one of the above settings - but I think it's a safe bet that it was the VSync, after all.

[UCyborg]

"Wait for vertical refresh" setting is only effective for OpenGL applications, unless AMD changed something. I assume you don't have very recent drivers.

Toggling BorderlessWindowHooks in Arokh.ini didn't appear to help any.

It's effective in windowed mode. Also most settings are read from Arokh.ini in Documents\My Games\Arokh.ini rather than the one in Arokh.ini from install folder, unless you've changed PerUserConfigAndData setting. Things that aren't in the user-specific config file are read from global config.

[Mechanist]

"Wait for vertical refresh" setting is only effective for OpenGL applications, unless AMD changed something. I assume you don't have very recent drivers.

No, on Win7 I do have fairly recent drivers; downloaded from the AMD site earlier this year.
They aren't very recent on XP though, for obvious reasons - but that isn't very relevant right now.

In any case, strange things are at play here: after changing that setting, I later tried changing it back to see if it causes a BSOD again... and it didn't!
In fact, I can't reproduce the earlier BSOD problem in any conceivable way.

EDIT: Hmm, wait - I haven't tried reenabling CrossFire yet. That'd be crazy to do, though...
Also, you're right: the "wait for vertical refresh" setting seems to do nothing in Drakan. Of course the Radeon Settings don't mention anything about that setting only being relevant for OpenGL

Not that I'm complaining that it works after all ; it's just that such bizarre, poorly understood problems give me the heebie jeebies.

Also most settings are read from Arokh.ini in Documents\My Games\Drakan\Arokh.ini

Ah, oops... it seems that I got distracted by the dgVoodoo config file in the install folder, and also tried to edit the Arokh.ini file sitting right next to it
Thanks for pointing that out!

[UCyborg]

EDIT: Hmm, wait - I haven't tried reenabling CrossFire yet. That'd be crazy to do, though...

Even if it works, it probably won't do much. Drakan is CPU bottlenecked.

Also, you're right: the "wait for vertical refresh" setting seems to do nothing in Drakan. Of course the Radeon Settings don't mention anything about that setting only being relevant for OpenGL

Not sure if it even worked for OpenGL on the old ATI Radeon HD 4890 I used to have before replacing it with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti. I used ATI Tray Tools as a replacement for Catalyst Control Center and you had to use special separate setting if you wanted to force VSync for Direct3D stuff. There's also D3DOverrider. The latter uses API level hook I think.

Also most settings are read from Arokh.ini in Documents\My Games\Drakan\Arokh.ini

Typed this too fast...

[Mechanist]

Even if it works, it probably won't do much. Drakan is CPU bottlenecked.

Actually no, it doesn't work.
What it does very effectively though, is crash the system - I've since confirmed that these BSOD's were indeed caused by CrossFire being enabled, as per the default settings.

Just disable in in the game profile, and the problem goes away.
If I'm not mistaken, OOTF far predates CrossFire/SLI in any form, so I wouldn't expect enabling it to be of any actual benefit - even if it didn't crash the system.

[UCyborg]

If I'm not mistaken, OOTF far predates CrossFire/SLI in any form

Indeed, you are. BTW, Half-Life 1's default driver configuration on NVIDIA hardware is to use maximum of 2 GPUs. Drakan is set to one, so NVIDIA users have nothing to worry about in that regard.