Graphics problems on a notebook

P3D · #1 February 9th, 2009, 11:54 PM

I can run Dominions3 on my old Dell laptop with XP.
However, when I try to run the game on my newer one (ACER Extensa, Intel 965 chipset, with Vista) the graphics does not work as designed. Specifically the 3D animation.

At the start screen it flickers, the menu options remain visible when I select them and disappear only 1-2 seconds later. In-game, the GUI does not have background (leader icons, recruiting/army interfaces). Turning off the animated background helps - if i restart the game, everything looks fine, except the battle replays. Units starts to flicker, disappear and reappear.

Anyone has an idea what causes this?

Omnirizon · #2 February 10th, 2009, 12:00 AM

I vaguely recall hearing about issues with vista and dominions. but maybe I just imagined that, maybe its just my internal burning hatred for microsoft and its planned obsolescence through gratuitous innovation in an attempt to break backwards compatibility for everything and force everyone to upgrade to something they don't need, essentially wasting resources and everyone's time.

maybe that's all it was.... but I swear there really was something with vista and dominions.

fungalreason · #3 February 10th, 2009, 06:29 PM

It sounds similar to the issue issue Aezeal is reporting here:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42196

Unfortunately I have no idea what it might be. I use Vista at home & with dominions 3 in windowed mode, but haven't experienced anything like that. It does sound like a video driver issue.

Poopsi · #4 February 13th, 2009, 06:28 AM

hmm, I have no trouble running dominions on my asus netbook. However, I do have noticed a decrease in graphics performance, despite the fact that nominally this computer has a better card than the former one (128 MB versus 32)

EDIT: could be a procesor matter, though. Dominions is fairly processor intensive. Duh, I feel dumb. *turns on super performance mode*

P3D · #5 February 13th, 2009, 04:09 PM

Well, my first thought was that the Vista DirectX 10 emulation is to blame. The game is running without problem on a much weaker laptop (Dell Inspiron notebook, Celeron 1.6GHz, some very basic integrated graphics, XP).

Are you running Dom3 on Vista, too?

Lingchih · #6 February 15th, 2009, 12:26 AM

No. Sorry. Running it now on a Macbook Pro with two graphics cards though. And it runs Great. (Sorry. I am a Mac fanboy).