Two issues, one game freeze, the other cursor flickering.

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on October 5th, 2010, 2:23 am

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on October 5th, 2010, 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

I recently installed FO on my new laptop, and now whenever I tell a non-Romulan construction ship to build something right at start of match, my game freezes (alt-tabbing and then unminimizing makes it unfreeze.) The freeze occurs right as I click on the building's build button, but before its ghost image shows up for placement. Once the freezing happened in the middle of a match as well (as Klingons, building HWP, other times building HWP did not freeze it), and once it happened when I tried to build a second building (as Feds.)
Another issue is that my cursor flickers when it's in the top fourth of the screen. The flickering gets more intense the further up it is.

My Laptop specs:
CPU: i7 740QM Quadcore, 1.73 Ghz (up to 2.93 Ghz with Intel Turbo boost)
RAM: 8GB
Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 (drivers are up to date)

Some steps I tried to resolve the issue (did not work):
Run FO as administrator and in XP SP2 compatability mode.
Turn vsync on.

posted on October 5th, 2010, 2:12 pm

Have you yet attempted a reinstallation? Seems to solve most issues, and since I don't know what's causing yours... 

posted on October 5th, 2010, 2:19 pm

Trying that now, but now I recall that the install I did was from filefront-hosted FO, not the FO download section (200 kb/sec is slow.) I'll try to speed up the download from FO download section with bitcomet (FTP+P2P behavior=fastest downloading that my connection can handle, aka a Megabyte per second) in case the two site have different files or something.

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on October 5th, 2010, 2:35 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on October 5th, 2010, 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Freezing issue still happening.
Cursor issue still happening too.

posted on October 5th, 2010, 2:45 pm

Peculiar... sounds like an issue with the graphics card, but none of this is in my department. Did you try turning on/off AA and other graphics features?

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on October 5th, 2010, 2:56 pm

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on October 5th, 2010, 3:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Same happens with AA on or off (application controlled, with FO saying disabled, and again with FO saying 8x.)
Anisotropic filtering is set to application controlled, so it should be off in FO. With it set to 2x, same issues.
OpenGL set to triple buffering.
Mipmap detail level set to high quality. Same issues with it set to quality. I could go all thru the four options, but I doubt this is responsible.
And Vsync set to always on.

[Otacon87]

posted on October 6th, 2010, 2:05 pm

Last edited by Otacon87 on October 6th, 2010, 3:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Exactly the same issue over here. Tryed out max Quality settings & max performance. Nothing worked. Romulan building ships work though.
Got an :

E8400
Radeon HD4850
Win 7 Professional 32bit

Newest Drivers installed and my sytem usually causes no problems
Anyone else expirencing these bug? Since we both use an ATI Card i guess that the Graphiccard causes the problem?!

Installed the game via the installer from the page using my Armada II CD. Than patched it and than applied the Multimedia Pack

Edit:
Dont have the flickering mouse cursor.
Playing in Windowed Mode also didnt help
Edit2:
Played around some more, tried older patches. The error occurs in every version of fleet ops i could find. But I used to play the game once with absoluteley no problems so I guess its an ati driver issue. But I won't try an older one, since the new catalyst gave me some big improvements for bad company 2 
Greetings
Otacon

posted on October 6th, 2010, 6:26 pm

welcome to the forums otacon, hope you enjoy your time at fleetops

hope to see u online.

posted on October 9th, 2010, 2:06 am

cursor issue resolved, I disabled aynchronous cursor.

[Nebula_Class_Ftw]

posted on October 10th, 2010, 3:33 am

Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on October 10th, 2010, 4:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

Update:
All freezing causes are the same for both avatars.
Klingons: the issue is actually for the first mining station or HWP selected to place, not the first structure. Selecting any other structures doesn't cause a freeze, but selecting mining station or HWP after any of those still causes the freeze.

Feds: the Antares yard always causes freeze at its first selection, but the mining platform and SF Engineering will only cause it they are the first structure selected.

Dominion: starbase and mining both cause freeze only if they are the first structure selected.

Romulan: no structures appear to be causing freezing.

Borg: Starbase, Incubation Center, and Conduction Matrix all cause freezing. Starbase causes freezing only if it is the first structure selected, others cause freezing the first time they are selected.

posted on October 12th, 2010, 10:21 pm

I'm getting the same problem, i.e.: game freezes every time you try to build a station while playing as anyone but the Romulans.  I managed to fix it by rolling back my video driver.  I have an ATI Radeon HD 5570.  The driver that worked for me was listed on the ATI/AMD site as having a release date of 10/20/2009 or something similar.  unfortunately, I had to restore my computer and now I have the newer driver back, so Fleet Ops is again non-functional.  I'm now having the greatest difficulty putting the older driver back in place.  I can remove the current one, but getting the older one to install correctly seems like it will take pure luck.

posted on October 14th, 2010, 5:12 am

mmm, I'm getting the same (or at least similar) issue, seems that the first building I place causes the freeze - but the game continues to run, even in multiplayer, alt+tabbing out and then back in fixes it.  I've got a radeon 5850 with the latest drivers so could be that, like you're saying.  I'll try and roll them back.

posted on October 14th, 2010, 12:28 pm

I wonder if its a Directx Issue, did you try updating Directx?

If that is not the case, update your OS. Maybe there are some clashes that updates could fix.

If it still continues, then disable UAC (User Control). It could be that the OS is fighting it thinking FO is trying to take over.

If it still persists, download from this site.

If it again still persists, wait till the next patch, sometimes issues go away by the next patch.

If it still occurs, then chuck out that computer and get a better one.

posted on October 14th, 2010, 7:49 pm

I have Directx 11, and Directx is made 100% backwards compatible.

Windows 7 updates regularly.

I set FO to always run as admin, then disabled UAC.

Did download from this site.

It probably will for the Borg at least.

WHAT??? You do realize this computer has 8 GB of RAM, a Directx 11 graphics card, a TB of storage, and a qaudcore that automatically overclocks itself when needed, right? There really aren't better laptops out there dude.


This is quite obviously a driver issue, found on ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5xxx series as of some time ago.
I would rather not use old drivers, as that could lead to the return of the "grey screen of death" that is a random freeze caused by interaction between ASUS G73JH-B1 BIOS and the drivers.

posted on October 14th, 2010, 8:06 pm

Do a google search for Omega drivers. These are usually the latest stable drivers for both Nvidia and ATI cards that have been tweaked and optimized. They are quite good. Whenever I have had driver issues in the past I have used these.