Extremely Bad Lighting Problem.

[stoneblind]

This is not Max Payne II: The Fall of Max Payne, from what I am seeing. I took a screen shot of an extremely annoying lightning problem that happens throughout the entire game. Tends to appear more in dim lit areas. Look below and see for yourself, but make sure you paste the link into your address bar so you can see it. If you still cannot get it to work, post and tell me to attach it so you can see it.

http://www.geocities.com/stoneblindness/visual3.jpg

I will make this question simple. What in the hell is wrong here and what can I do about it? >.< I posted up a previous topic about this but no one replied so I decided to retype it again to make more people aware.

System Information:
- Intel Pentium 4 1.3GHz processor with 384MBs of RAM.
- Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 128MBs DDR 4X.
- Microsoft DirectX 9.0b.
- Nvidia Forceware 52.16.
- Tweaked with Riva Tuner 2.0 Candidate 14.1.

I play the game without the CD using a crack with all settings on high along with FSAA set on 4xS and AF set on 8x. I tried switching things on and off here and there and nothing happened. I also tried playing the game with the CD and nothing happened. I desperately need help. T_T This game looks so 16-bit like this.

Thanks for the help!

[lolo603]

u mean max being too bright or the square boxes thing appearing on the wall???

well i guess the first thing u have to do is to start the game, and in the startup dialog box, make sure the game is running @ 32 bit colour... turn AA to 6x samples, and use anistropic filtering... put a check mark on all the visual settings available... now start the game w/ all graphics settings maxed out, see if it helps w/ the problem...

[stoneblind]

Allow me to clear up that little bit of confusion. I was referring to the blocky box thingies all over the place of the lighting. =P Everything else looks just fine, and I am quite aware of the things that Direct X 8 based graphic cards cannot render in this game and whatnot.

I tried doing as you suggested, but I saw no changes, so I decided to turn everything as low as it could get; I still saw those annoying blocks everywhere. I even tried turning off sound, using D3D Software T&L rendering, etc. They were still all over the place. > < Basically, it seems that regardless of what settings I changed, be it lowest possible quality to extreme high quality, those damn lighting boxes remain.

I just hope to God that others have this same problem and it has been addressed to Remedy.

[Ruger]

I didn't ever notice it until I played after looking at that pic you posted just now.

I suppose my eyes are not so finely tuned, but that doesn't count for much I guess, speaking as someone who doesn't get what the big deal about anti-aliasing is.

[stoneblind]

I guess everyone has there little obsessions when it comes to gaming. =P As for me, I am a big time quality freak. Antialiasing and Anisotropy are probably my biggest graphic obsessions. Max Payne 2 stunned the living hell out of me because I was able to set AA on 4xS and AA on 8x and get phenomenon performance, whereas if I were to use those same settings on Unreal 2 or Unreal Tournament 2003, my performance gets crippled. No need for Quincunx or lowered settings on Max Payne games. =D

Anyways, yeah, those blocky box thingies are a major thorn in my graphic obsessed ass at the moment. o.o

[MarkusRMD]

Ugh, that does indeed look pretty ugly.

It looks like bilinear filtering for the lightmaps is disabled. This is not something the game would ever do though.

Can you ensure you have all your settings on defaults in the graphics card control panel AND RivaTuner? I could easily see this as a result of "tweaking" driver settings.

[stoneblind]

I gave resetting all of Riva Tuner tweaks back to their default settings a try along with the small tweaks that the driver allows users to access through Display Properties. I did not notice a thing. o.o

On the assumption that the game would never disable bilinear filtering for the lightmaps, if Riva Tuner had not caused this, do you think that it could be Nvidia's current drivers? I remember that previous drivers had strange visual affects in certain videogames such as AVP2 that have been completely fixed in newer drivers.

There is one thing that I think Riva Tuner could have done though. Ever heard of patch scripts? Riva Tuner provided patch scripts that do some unlocking / locking features with the drivers and some other tweaks. I was experimenting with them.

I'll see what happens if I reset all Riva Tuner settings to defaults, uninstall Riva Tuner, and reinstall my Nvidia drivers. I guess that could get rid of all the tweaks and patch scripts applied.

Thanks for the assistance! I'll put up another post here if I figure out the solution to this thing.

[ Edited ] See below.

Edit: I tried resetting to defaults and uninstalling Riva Tuner along with reinstalling the drivers, but the blocky lighting still remains. I'm out of my league when it comes to anything beyond the checkboxes and settings here and there; no way I can say that this is inside or outside of the game itself. Sounds like you might want to get a hold of your Remedy buddies and address this; it could be happening to many others.

i have seen similar problems on my 9800pro . It looks like a precision problem(banding?)

Here are 2 pics done with a radeon9800pro cat 3.9(AA,AF@application preference) max. in game setting , no AA , no AF, trilinear filtering

http://www.gaeugf.ch/ted/mp1.jpg

http://www.gaeugf.ch/ted/mp2.jpg

[stoneblind]

I was thinking along the same lines you were when you mentioned banding; I thought it as color banding in my previous topic of this. Although it's unfortunate, I'm glad to see that there's more having the same issue with visuals to show us. I suppose this isn't just a problem for specific cards and their drivers; I own an Nvidia GeForce and you have an ATI Radeon; could be strictly within the game itself, although others may beg to differ; I'm sure this'll be addressed to Remedy for upcoming patches. Thanks for posting dude.

[MarkusRMD]

One more thing ... are you sure you have texture detail set to "high" in the Max Payne 2 options?

Medium and Low scale them down, although still it probably shouldn't look like this. It looks almost like this if the textures would be DDS compressed.

Also, your driver d3d control panel should be set to "default" or "quality", not "performance" - the lightmaps do not have mipmaps but if the driver for some reason autogenerates them and uses a lower mip level, blockiness may appear.

One more thing ... are you sure you have texture detail set to "high" in the Max Payne 2 options?

Medium and Low scale them down, although still it probably shouldn't look like this. It looks almost like this if the textures would be DDS compressed.

Also, your driver d3d control panel should be set to "default" or "quality", not "performance" - the lightmaps do not have mipmaps but if the driver for some reason autogenerates them and uses a lower mip level, blockiness may appear.

yes i have everything at max details and drivers settings are all on default.

My first thought was also texture compression on lightmaps so i tried to disable them ( i have an option in the drivers where i can disable dxt compression in d3d) but no change.