[Workaround] Stuck green all over the planet on AMD cards

EDIT: by moderator:
If you are affected by this, there is a workaround for this issue as a mod here:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-client-fix-for-green-planet-bug.71444/
===========

I upgraded from my Nvidia 560 GTX to an AMD R9 380 4G and now when I highlight the whole planet such as when commanding a fabricator to make metal extractors on the whole planet, the green highlight doesn't go away. You can see what I mean here. This lasts for the rest of the game.



There's also a quirky texture at the edge of the spawn points. It shimmers when you move.

Ah that is certainly odd. I'm not sure if this would be the case with you as it was with me back when I was using an amd card, but are you running AMD gaming evolved or Raptr by any chance?

If so disable the overlay that it applies as any program that tries to apply an overlay to PA tends to cause issues. Let me know if this was the case with you.

SWITCHED is the key of the problem.
You need to remove all remaining parts of your old driver with the famous tool "Display Driver Uninstaller"---just google it and do what it tells you, the issues should be solved afterwards!

Yeah as others have said, try the DDU tool and reinstall latest AMD drivers. I'm running an R9 280 without issues so it should work fine.

There's also a quirky texture at the edge of the spawn points. It shimmers when you move.

Got same exact issue, reinstall drivers with DDU. Running on a Fury X 4gb card. Installed PA today.

Another Fury X owner here, I experienced similar issues which I described ... but didn't take pictures of in a past thread (namely in that it was unrelated to my mouse framerate issue and not my focus):
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/returning-player-severely-low-fps-on-mouse-movement.69196/


The 'fix' for the shimmering edge artifacts on visibility rings, missing mouse cursor in some situations, lack of paths displaying, etc, is to downgrade to the 15.6 OpenGL drivers instead of using the latest 15.7 / 15.7.1 / 15.200's or 15.201's. Everything past 15.6 has issues with PA.


You don't need to downgrade your driver-package and you can keep the latest base installed. Just unpack the 15.6 drivers, use 'expand' command on the GL components and copy them into the bin_64 folder. Eg, C:\Steam\SteamApps\common\Planetary Annihilation\bin_x64\


Alternatively, I put up the 15.6 OpenGL part of the drivers HERE.

EDIT: Also because someone else is going to run into another problem that I'm already aware of. If you set texture "quality" in CCC to anything less than High Quality, textures will have a white edge / gap between them on planet surfaces.

-Setting performance for texture quality reduces coordinate floating-precision.

Thnx for the info. You saved me and others quite a lot of hassle. I will also be trying your mouse fix you linked in your own thread.

I got a Zowie FK2 and it polls at 1000Hz @ highest DPS on a 1440P 144JHz monitor. I assume I extract the DBGHELP.DLL to bin_x64?

edit: I copied the dll files directly into bin_64, PA does not start. :|

Yep, it'd be unpacked into the \bin_64 folder, just like the AMD OGL driver files.

-I have not re-verified my mouse fix with the expansion and haven't been playing PA recently. So I'll take a look if something has changed by chance, especially with the release of the expansion pack.

EDIT #2: -- ignore those questions --

Few questions though if you don't mind:
-Did you hear a beep before the game crashed / closed?
-Did "PA_Hooks.txt" get output into the \bin_64 folder? If it did, if you could you PM me a copy/paste of the contents this may be very helpful in seeing where things stopped.
-Which OS are you running? Windows 7, 8.1, 10?


EDIT: It may also be worth mentioning that I'm not sure it's still needed (the input coalescing fix). It'll take me a bit as I'm updating the game now on Steam.

Same applies with the 15.6 GL drivers. I'm assuming that they work ... yet I haven't tested that either recently. Shall know shortly.

Update:

Verified, 15.6 GL drivers (with 15.200.1062.1004 base -- latest 15.7.1 release) working properly on my Fury X (no edge artifacts) on the new version.

I can also confirm that my input coalescing fix no longer functions, so you won't need to ship me the log (there is no log generated). --- Looking into this next.



EDIT:

I've re-tested the game without my external input coalescing and do not believe it to be necessary any longer as of the latest builds. None the less, I have provided an updated version if you're still suffering from performance problems for whatever reason.

Version 1.2 has been adjusted for and tested on build 85423. The reason that it stopped working was one of the hypothetical scenarios that I listed in the readme. The game's use of functions in dbghelp expanded to include functions that I did not export (no passthrough support for them).

PA Input-Fix 1.2.zip
MD5: 4CF763A8E0E8C0A7AADEC17D6FB22702


That said, please do not use versions under 1.2 on the latest version of PA. I have gone ahead and taken 1.0 and 1.1 offline as they no longer will permit the game to start.

Hmm strange with the opengl files. I will try extracting them tonight manually instead of using your files.

If you say I don't need the input fix I trust ya.

Pretty much you're fine here unless you experience choppiness and stuttering ingame while moving the camera or using the mouse in any way. It honestly feels like it's been addressed by the Uber dev team from what I can see.

Of curiosity, what happens with the 15.6 drivers when you attempted to copy those in? The game instantly terminates, crashes?




To help you out a bit with unpacking so that you can give that a shot yourself and play with various drivers.



The folder that has the files you're looking for will look something like this:
C:\AMD\AMD-Catalyst-15.15.1004-Software-Suite-Win8.1-Win7-64Bit-June20\Packages\Drivers\Display\WB6A_INF\B185614\

example batch-file to expand the .dl_ files
========================
@echo off
for %%f in (*.dl_) do (
echo Processing %%~nf
expand "%%~nf.dl_" "%%~nf.dll"
)

echo done
pause
========================

Also note that you don't need any special tool to unpack the drivers. Just run the installer, and cancel / exit it. The AMD installers leave around everything extracted in C:\AMD\ when closed before completion (they don't clean up after theirselves). In this case that's a good thing since it makes it easier on us.


EDIT:
One good source of getting at older version of drivers is the Microsoft Update Catalog, there's actually a ton of AMD drivers up there:

https://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=Graphics Adapter WDDM2.0 - AMD Radeon
(only will work in Internet Explorer)

The listing doesn't have to be specifically for your card as the driver components are unified and modular. 7zip works great for unpacking cab archives.

Copying the dll files directly to bin_64 folder and then running pa stops loading. I can see the pa.exe process which tops off at 16mb and just sits there.
I'm on windows 10.

I have raised a bug report with amd regards to opengl issue linking ur post.

Yep, that's the best way to deal with it long term. I've also reported this issue to them.

-The more people that report PA not working right, the better the odds we have of AMD fixing their OpenGL drivers -- which are clearly broken in the newer releases.

Btw, might be worth trying to run the game as administrator, also try compatibility mode for Windows 8.1 (someone in another thread found these two options prevented a lot of issues under Windows 10).

Same issue, game doesn't load just sits there in task manager. Downloaded 15.6 beta driver. Tried using the ones you provided but extracted via 7 zip. Same issue.

I give up.

same issue here with my AMD laptop, the game runs well, but playing in green is not nice :C

Back with some more testing for you guys.

~30mb 7zip of OpenGL drivers that 'seem to' work with PA (~390mb uncompressed)
They have only been tested to some small extent under Windows 8.1, my currently installed OS. Back when I had Windows 10 on my rig the 15.6 drivers were working (on build 10240 RTM).


I don't know which (if any of them) will work for you guys, but this should provide alot more choices to try. So hopefully one of them will work.

Driver Collection.7z
MD5: 5CD9641904031DFD32D50F73A0DFC3F7

Included GL drivers:
14.4
14.7
14.8
14.9
14.12
15.4
15.5
15.6

-The above driver files worked with the 15.200.1062.1004 base drivers in starting the game, selecting a landing point, building a vehicle factory, and producing a few units (without artifacts). That's the extent that they were tested to, other than 15.6 which I played a complete game under.

14.5 = black planet surfaces
13.12 = hardlock
13.10 = black display, game unresponsive
14.6 = blocks for particles during construction
14.4 betas = bad texture alignment and tearing [14.4 release version seems OK]


EDIT: I suggest shutting off FreeSync if you're using earlier than 15.6 GL drivers. The earlier releases will basically cause vsync-off at all times, even if you set an FPS cap / limiter.

Tried a few on windows 10. No progress.

Can we get a statement from uber on this? Or we on our own to fix this?

I'll ping @jables and @bgolus as this looks to be a specific problem related to the latest amd graphics arch (can everyone confirm exactly which card your using, I think this may be a bug with the new texture compression tech on Tonga and Fiji not included in earlier gcn cards).

Sure, I'll start it off and hop on that bandwagon of announcing hardware.

-Likely already known, yet I'm on an ASUS R9 Fury X here. I can attest to that the issue is present on Windows 7, 8.1, and 10. 15.15 drivers have the issue, it's only the 15.6 GL and under that're clear of it.


This certainly points to that it's something that happened with the shift in drivers during the R300 and Fury's launch ... but I can't test (as I don't own the cards to) the newer drivers on any other AMD hardware than that Fury.

EDIT:

Also worth noting that the new Oculus SDK drivers have the same issue. (15.200.1062.1005)