black flashing screen problem?

from Stardock Forums
is anyone experiencing black flashing screen problem? it's very disturbing and portions of the screen flash on and off. is there any way to prevent refresh rate switch during the bink movie playback that is more graceful? i suspect movies are related as sometimes it's portions of the screen with movies (ie on the splash screen) blacks out. unfortunately on the main screen once into the game it flashes portions or all black for 1/2 second every few seconds, driving me blind.

nvidia 41.09 drivers, xp pro sp1, 21" dell monitor with 120hz refresh rate set properly in drivers, running at 1024x768x16/32 same refresh rate same problems.

moving movies out entirely seems to have alleviated symptoms.
270 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
nope, still happening without movies

i suspect may have to do with forced refresh rate (ala rivatuner) to set the directx mode to 120hz (same refresh rate as desktop) so i can alt-tab w/o 'clicking' of monitor refresh rate change?

trying new drivers in the morning
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Did those new drivers work?
And I think a "forum search" feature is in the works...after the game got released, the forum got swamped and our simple little forum started to show it's weaknesses. :(
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
No, they did not. After driver install, I noticed all the refresh rates for DirectX games (a bug of Windows that was finally fixed in XP SP1) are reset back to 60hz (60fps maximum) after a new driver install.

In the interest of getting framerate maxed out (on 3D games etc.) to their ability, and not limited to 'just' 60, I use RivaTuner's fixed-refresh rate feature where it sets each resolution to their max rate. I set my desktop rate at this as well so as to avoid the 'clicking' that happens when refresh rate is switched, and so I can alt-tab easily. (currently at 120hz)

This has caused me no problems in any other 2D or 3D game. This *seems* to be behind this grief in GalCiv :(

submitting this to the bug thread :/
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I am having this problem too. It makes the game extremely difficult to play for more than minutes. You can tell if it's happening because of a flicker in the menu screen after the opening cinematics. The flickers are in the same shape and place every time. I am running on a geforce4 4400 with newest drivers. I have tried changing anti-aliasing, and color depth but to no avail.