[Solved] [Linux] Graphics glitches in challenge levels

[tyggerjai]

My formicarium looks fine, but in the challenge levels, I get jagged graphics with white washout. The first time in a level it's not terrible, but it gets worse if I replay a level in the same session. If I quit and restart the game it goes back to just "ugly". Screenshots with two really bad and one kinda bad:

https://imgur.com/a/LlSCo

It doesn't seem to change with graphics settings - I can be in any preset or combination of vsync/quality/framerate.

Running Debian Jessie, Nvidia GTX760 with proprietary nvidia drivers. Triple monitor setup - it does the usual steam trick of opening on the "main" screen which is actually a portrait mode side screen, but again, it doesn't seem to matter what resolution or orientation it's in.

 

[tyggerjai]

Re: [Linux] Graphics glitches in challenge levels

Also - playing level 1.2, when I complete one objective (certainly when I build enough soldiers), the screen starts strobing and flashing. I managed to finish the second time through by being close to having enough of both soldiers and workers - when the flashing started, I could actually create new brood tiles because the cursor tile would show empty ground when over tiles that were empty, but flashing whiteness over tiles that were full. That's going to be tricky to get a screenshot of ...

Otherwise, it's a really fun game!

 

[MikeSlugDisco]

Re: [Linux] Graphics glitches in challenge levels

Shall pass these on to Matt. Thanks for the report!

 

[Matt]

Re: [Linux] Graphics glitches in challenge levels

Hi tyggerjai,

thanks for bringing this to our attention. Those are some pretty ugly glitches. I wonder what's going on.

It is, of course, compulsory that I ask you to check your graphics drivers are up to date and that you're running on the right GPU if using a multi-GPU system.

With that out of the way, I'll tell you that I packaged the Linux build with three graphics API's. Assuming you're booting from Steam, you can force the game to use one of them by using the following options (right click the game in your Steam library, go to Properties, click the 'Set Launch Options...' button on the General tab, and add one of the following options (depending on which API you want to test):

• "-opengl3" (without quotes) for OpenGL3. It should run but there will be graphical artefacts
• "-opengl4" (without quotes) for OpenGL4. This is probably the default you are opening up in. Seems to work best.
• "-vulkan" (without quotes) for Vulkan. I've never had this working, but it might just be a problem on my end, so feel free to try it out.

I'd be interested in knowing if you get any particularly different results with either of the above flags (if you want to test all three, that would be great).

If you could also play about with the graphics settings and see if any particular settings mitigate or stop the issues, that would be very interesting for me.

 

[tyggerjai]

Re: [Linux] Graphics glitches in challenge levels

Opengl3 is a totally different look - glitches are gone, although it looks like texture is gone as well to an extent - fair tradeoff. Opengl4 looks like what I was using, yes.

https://imgur.com/a/ouPNo

I'll double check my drivers - I think I updated recently, but sometimes the graphics drivers aren't updated with the rest of the system.

 

[tyggerjai]

Re: [Linux] Graphics glitches in challenge levels

Oh, wow, embarrassingly old drivers. And apparently because upgrading them is a bit of an ordeal I'll be doing a lot to this machine next week, so it'll get an upgrade than, and until then I'll play with opengl3. Thanks for the response, I'll let you know how the upgrade helps.

 

[tyggerjai]

Re: [Linux] Graphics glitches in challenge levels

Graphics drivers. That's really embarrassing, sorry. On the bright side, an easy fix, and now it's really schmick. Thanks for your time!

 

[Oozenthor]

"-vulkan" (without quotes) for Vulkan. I've never had this working, but it might just be a problem on my end, so feel free to try it out.

Vulcan crashes for me too, just as the start menu loads. OpenGL works fine so no real drama. emailed you the crash log anyway.
(on linux crash logs hide at ~/.config/Epic/EotU/Saved/Crashes/ if anyone is looking for them.)

 

[Matt]

Great to hear that the drivers sorted it out for you, Tyggerjai! That's my favourite kind of fix

And thanks for letting me know that you have the same problem, Oozenthor. I'm curious to find out more about that crash, I shall have a look into it sometime, once the problems in the OpenGL version have been smoothed out.