Gray bar on Tiberian Sun menu?

[Bengolly]

I loaded the Tiberian Sun/Firestorm with the installer provided on this site and it seemed to load fine.  However, when I try to start the game and select anything from the menu (like new campaign) I only see a vertical gray bar.  If I click around the bar I can hear it selecting something, but I can't see anything.

 

The strange thing is, when I print out a screen shot it shows me what I should be seeing (the window with the difficulty slider and the ok/cancel buttons), not what I actually see on my screen. 

 

Can anyone help with this?

[Nyerguds]

Hmm... that seems like some kind of graphics card issue then. You might want to start by updating your graphics card drivers.

[beano]

I have the exact same issue, very disappointing.

 

I "installed" the one from the EA site, did the registry edits, set compatability mode to XPSP2 and everything else.  Eventually got it going and got this grey bar issue.  Removed it and installed the installer version but got the same issue.

 

The laptop's brand new so I think the graphics should be up to date (standard intel HD on a Core i3) but don't know where to look for updates (Packard Bell web site is down).

 

Anyone got any thoughts?

 

Did notice one strange thing - I went to take a print screen of this and when I pasted it, everything was fine - the menu was there!! Sure enough when I went back to the program it was there.  When I press the Windows key to get out of C&C and back to Windows the menu flashes up, and remains there til I come back. Sadly, when I open a new menu from that one I have to repeat everything again - tedious to say the least.

[Revolutionary]

The laptop's brand new so I think the graphics should be up to date (standard intel HD on a Core i3) but don't know where to look for updates (Packard Bell web site is down).

 

With older games some times this is the problem.

      What OS are you and are your graphics drivers all up to date?

[beano]

Windows 7 (64 bit) and according to Windows the display drivers are up to date.

 

The isntaller says it works with all versions of windows, including 7/64-bit but I can't get it to work.

[Tore]

Try to update DirectX I'm using Windows 7 64-bit and it works perfectly.

[beano]

Just done that but it looks like Direct X hasn't been updated since Win7 came out.  Tried it anyway and the installer looked like it was doing something, but when it was finished TS still has the same grey bar problem

[Tore]

DirectX has been updated many times since the release of Windows 7.

 

And have you tried running TS after you rebooted?

[pichorra]

Try to use ArsClip to get an screenshot of the problem. Just open the program (it does not need instalation), take a screenshot, paste in paint and send to us. This tool seems to capture what you are seeing in the screen.

 

Also, Did anyone know what resolution TS run by default? I think it is 640x400. If you open SUN.INI and edit the resolution to 640x480 or 800x600. should work. Maybe your videocard do not support "Broken Resolutions".

[Nyerguds]

TS supports 640x400, but the default is 800x600 I think.

[Slade]

Hello,

 

I'm here to speak about the same issue that happened to me tonight.

I've downloaded the game and put it on my C:/ folder, set the compatibility to Windows XP SP2, but when I run the game, the menu is glitched and I can only see a gray bar in the middle.

Also, when I take a screenshot, it looks normal, but I can't perform it.

 

My computer is an HP laptop with an IntelCore i3 CPU and I use Windows Seven 64bit.

All the drivers are up to date.

 

I've tried to resize my own screen to 800x600 and run the game with it, nothing changes.

 

Thanks a lot for your help !

[pichorra]

hmm... The screen issue look like this:?

[Nyerguds]

Eh? That's Dune 2000... and that d2k issue is fixed by putting it in high colour in the game options.

[pichorra]

...i want to know if the error LOOKS LIKE the Dune2000 ones. Yes, Dune2k error can be fixed changing from High Collor from 8-Bits ones. TS do not have that options, it always runs in High collor (16-bits).

[Revolutionary]

@ beano and slade do you know what graphics hardware your laptop/computer has? It is possible that simple your graphics chipset doesnt support TS properly (i belive Tore had some problem like this which resulted in poor game play)

The only soulutions i can think of is trying to reinstall your video drivers and/or checking you have no background/ desktop programs running which may be causing the glitch.

 

@ Pichorra and Nyerguds, Offtopic but i had to turn down the graphics from high to 8 bit Acer computer (dont know what the graphics card is, think its intergrated) to stop that bug appearing every where, menus and in game.

[Nyerguds]

...i want to know if the error LOOKS LIKE the Dune2000 ones.

Then you usually use a QUESTION MARK. It's rather common to make the difference between a STATEMENT and a QUESTION

[Slade]

@ beano and slade do you know what graphics hardware your laptop/computer has? It is possible that simple your graphics chipset doesnt support TS properly (i belive Tore had some problem like this which resulted in poor game play)

The only soulutions i can think of is trying to reinstall your video drivers and/or checking you have no background/ desktop programs running which may be causing the glitch.

 

My graphics card is Intel HD Graphics.

[pichorra]

...i want to know if the error LOOKS LIKE the Dune2000 ones.

Then you usually use a QUESTION MARK. It's rather common to make the difference between a STATEMENT and a QUESTION

Wrong Button.

 

Slade: Try to do what Revolutionary says, try to low the graphics performance, you can do that Editing SUN.INI, In the [Options], add a Line:

 

DetailLevel=1

 

Where "DetailLevel" can Be 0 for Low, 1 for Medium, and 2 for High.

 

[edit]

I've founded the "VideoBackBuffer" option in Game.exe code, Slade, you can put that too into SUN.INI into [Options] and [Video] , since i don't know where it should be puted.

 

VideoBackBuffer=1

 

if those things works, please let we know.

[Nyerguds]

Wrong Button.

There's the "edit" button to fix that

[Slade]

Okay so I tried to change the .ini file to see if anything goes better when I launch the menu. Nothing happened, I still have this eerie gray bar in the middle of the menu. I've closed my post-it note to check if it was disturbing the game's resolution, it didn't. I have set the graphics on Low, Medium and High (thanks to your "DetailLevel" linecode), no sign of improvement.

 

However I've noticed that when I press the Start button for Windows and when I go back to the game, the gray bar suddenly turns into the selectable menu I've been looking for. This would be good news if I could select anything on the menu, it looks like it is on a "standing still mode", I can't see if I pick up the GDI or the NOD campaign on whatever difficulty I want to, so I don't want to imagine what would it be if I'd like to play a Skirmish map.

 

I've closed every program, except Mozilla Firefox and the ones necessary to run my computer, no influence on the game whatsoever.

[Tore]

Hmm, is there a file called ddraw.dll in your TS folder?

[Nyerguds]

pichorra: Hyper said somewhere on PPM that the VideoBackBuffer option in TS is read, but 100% unused by any code. So it has no effect.

[Slade]

Hmm, is there a file called ddraw.dll in your TS folder?

 

Nothing with this name in the game folder that's for sure ! Would this be the key to the solution ?

[Tore]

No, it's not that then.

 

Hmm, there was a obvious solution to this problem, I just can't seem to remember it.

 

Consider these things:

- Graphics driver settings

- screen resolution (sun.ini)

- DirectDraw acceleration

- Compatibility settings

 

Could you also tell us the model of your HP laptop? It's usually near your keyboard, and usually starts with dv [something].

 

[Slade]

I can already tell my laptop model : it's HP G62 (here's a picture from the HP homepage).

 

From my screen resolution, it was 800 x 600 pixels and I put the game under Windows XP Service Pack 2 compatibility.

 

As for the DirectDraw acceleration, I don't know what it is.