Multicolour Buildings in Background

[Soul Reaver]

I'm currently talking with Steam support about this issue too, but so far they don't seem to have any idea of what's causing this problem either... so I might as well ask here since I'm at my wits end.

I'm using a 2.4 Athlon computer, with a 64Mb GeForce 4200 Ti video card, and I have 512 RAM. I'm running this on Windows 98 SE.

The problem I'm having is that all the buildings in Half Life 2 in the background (that is, buildings that cannot actually be reached) appear tinged in bright colours, and change colour when I move around - the colours are yellow, blue, red, purple, etc (but they are all only one colour at any one time - and if I stand still, they'll stay whatever colour they are). I've included two screenshots to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

It first became noticeable early in the game when I was escaping from Civil Protection across the rooftops, but it happens at later stages of the game as well - basically, if there are buildings in the background, it happens.

I've tried tons of stuff to fix this, including running Half Life 2 at the lowest possible graphical settings, verifying the gcf (or whatever they're called) files, making sure I had the latest drivers from nVidia, doing a complete reinstall of EVERYTHING (Steam, Half Life 2, source engine etc) and so on... nothing works. Neither my video card nor my computer are overclocked and they are well ventilated, so I don't think it's an overheating issue either.

I know that I'm not the only person who has had this happen to them, as I found it mentioned in a forum archive somewhere, but the person only mentioned it in passing and didn't say how they resolved it, which really sucks.

((Incidentally, I also have problems in that installing from my DVD ALWAYS results in a corrupt install (that needs a gcf verify to fix) despite the fact that I take very good care of the DVD and tried in in two different drives. Also whenever I play and then quit Half Life 2, Steam will have an illegal operation error when I try to close it. However, I do not think these problems are related.))

 

[Shasta]

Windows 98? Come forward 8 years join us in 2006 when you are ready. Seriously.

 

[Soul Reaver]

First of all, HL2 ran fine on this same machine over a year ago. I can't figure out why it's not working fine now.

Secondly, Windows 98 is officially supported by HL2, so it shouldn't be the issue.

Thirdly, everything I want to run tends to run fine... except HL2 now, for some reason, which is likely entirely unrelated to my using Windows 98 (see above). So... why exactly should I upgrade again?

And finally, I laugh at you XP users every time your crappy machines crash irrevocably and have boot sector corruption and the like and then you can't fix it because your 'clever' operating system did all the thinking for you and thus destroyed any possible means of recovery. And before you say "that doesn't happen" - that (or similar such events) has happened to so many people that I know that I stand firm and secure in my choice.

Seriously.

Now, could someone give some constructive advice?

 

[mordy]

I'm not exactly sure how to help, but..

Was the problem always there?

Are you running the game in 32-bit color mode?

Try reverting back to older drivers, it helps sometimes especially with older cards.

Check your Nvidia Control Panel. Set your Global Driver Settings to their Default settings, and then if you have a Profile for Halfe Life 2, either set it to default or delete it.

 

[Soul Reaver]

The problem's always been there since I installed the game recently, but on a past install (on more or less the same machine) I didn't have this problem.

I've tried the game in both 32 and 16 bit colour modes - same problem either way.

The problem won't be my profile, since I've done a full reinstall and that didn't help either... and I already reset to defaults once to try and fix this.

However, the 'try an older driver' suggestion is a good one. I forgot about that - nVidia's newer drivers often cause problems with some programs/cards, so maybe that'll fix it. And I'll try that default settings thing too.

I'll try your suggestions in the morning. Anyone else who has good ideas, don't hesitate to drop them off here too and I'll give them a shot too.

Until then, thanks for the reply mordy!

 

[mordy]

Perhaps at the past install when you didn't have the problem, you were using older drivers

Don't give up after trying just one or two different drivers.. try a whole bunch, especially try the last set of driver releases that pertained specifically to the GeForce 4. I use a laptop so I don't know where to look for those. I know it might take a while to do that but it's worth it.

Hopefully that works out for you, good luck.

 

[Soul Reaver]

Damn, no luck. I tried a number of different drivers and all of them had the same problem.

Any other ideas?

 

[Shasta]

And finally, I laugh at you XP users every time your crappy machines crash irrevocably and have boot sector corruption and the like and then you can't fix it because your 'clever' operating system did all the thinking for you and thus destroyed any possible means of recovery. And before you say "that doesn't happen" - that (or similar such events) has happened to so many people that I know that I stand firm and secure in my choice.

Well, I keep my machine running just fine, never had any major problems, so if other people do, wel they shouldn't be so stupid. Take all the safety labels off things I say, and let anyone stupid enough to use something the wrong way (eg- bleach is not a good drink) then it will at least thin out the herd. If people want to mess with their PC without knowing what they are doing, well, too bad for them. Just like people that try to use an operating sytem that is almost a decade old, when PC's and software has a habit of being outdated within 6 months. Do you think that software developers really put much effort into making their product totally compatable with something that old? Even if they list it as "compatable". And what about your drivers. Most manufacturers have stopped offering driver support for win 98. What does that tell you?

You are trying to run a game that was not really designed to run on your OS, with drivers that were not really designed to run on your OS.

Clearly you have made up your mind on this issue, but surely, you can't honestly expect there to be no trade-offs by running such an obsolite system.

 

[Soul Reaver]

My question is: "how do I get this game to run properly?" I know this is possible on my system, since it ran properly before on the same system (indicating there is no 'trade off' due to my OS - the problem lies somewhere else).

Regardless of if you run XP problem free: I run 98 largely problem free. This is the only unfixable problem I've had in 4 years. I have functional drivers for everything I run. All my other games run. All my other programs and utilities run. If I say "I want to do X on my computer", I can do X. So WHY exactly do I want to go to all the effort to back up all the piles of junk on my harddisk, format, and reinstall everything?

And now either offer some advice on how I can get the game running on Windows 98 or stay out of it- Half Life 2 is not important enough to me for me to bother reinstalling everything else I have just to get it to run.

So, please, any CONSTRUCTIVE advice?

 

[Adabiviak]

I ran 98SE problem free and frankly only updated for the driver support. I've never plugged anything into XP that it didn't recognize and have work right away, nor have I had any problems with XP. (Seriously, whenever I hear about all these OS problems, I wonder what people do to their computers.) Did Steam update itself? Maybe you need an older version of Steam - I've had a couple of Steam updates make HL2 worse until the next one came out.

 

[Soul Reaver]

Steam ALWAYS updates itself. I suppose it's possible that this is the cause, but if that were the only cause then I would suspect other people besides myself have this problem too... yet I've only heard of it mentioned once, with the person (unfortunately) not providing any clues as to what caused it or how/if they fixed it.