Mouse issues in all(?) GG products.
by Olav Kalgraf · in Torque Game Engine · 05/06/2007 (10:39 am) · 9 replies
Hi,
I've just started evaluating various Torque products for use in my next project, much of what I've seen so far has impressed me from a design standpoint, but I have encountered one incredibly annoying issue. The GG tools I've tried all seem unable to draw the mouse without a massive amount of flicker as well as destroying the GUI in a fairly large rectangle around it.
Is this a known problem? One with a simple known fix perhaps? =)
I'm running GForce 7950 GT on Windows XP SP2.
Just to be clear, this appears to only affect the toolchain. The engine seems incredibly solid in every way. The tech demo for TGEA also works flawlessly.
I've just started evaluating various Torque products for use in my next project, much of what I've seen so far has impressed me from a design standpoint, but I have encountered one incredibly annoying issue. The GG tools I've tried all seem unable to draw the mouse without a massive amount of flicker as well as destroying the GUI in a fairly large rectangle around it.
Is this a known problem? One with a simple known fix perhaps? =)
I'm running GForce 7950 GT on Windows XP SP2.
Just to be clear, this appears to only affect the toolchain. The engine seems incredibly solid in every way. The tech demo for TGEA also works flawlessly.
#2
My suggestions:
Are you overclocking your video card? If so, stop doing so.
Try reinstalling/updating your video drivers.
Try reseating your video card.
If none of those work, you might have a bum card. (Or it could be something else entirely, don't know for sure.)
05/06/2007 (11:20 am)
Never heard of that issue related to any GG stuff, but it sounds like either a driver corruption, or an issue with your video card.My suggestions:
Are you overclocking your video card? If so, stop doing so.
Try reinstalling/updating your video drivers.
Try reseating your video card.
If none of those work, you might have a bum card. (Or it could be something else entirely, don't know for sure.)
#3
05/06/2007 (12:51 pm)
No, I'm not overclocking and don't have issues in any other applications.
#4
Oh well, guess it's just an odd conflict with some software I'm running then. The bug looks like the toolchain apps repeatedly redraw the area around the mouse with varying degrees of success a few times per second. Sometimes it's all black, sometimes it's a slightly corrupted version of the GUI... =/
05/06/2007 (1:00 pm)
(also, my drivers are always up to date)Oh well, guess it's just an odd conflict with some software I'm running then. The bug looks like the toolchain apps repeatedly redraw the area around the mouse with varying degrees of success a few times per second. Sometimes it's all black, sometimes it's a slightly corrupted version of the GUI... =/
#5
Less pronounced visual bugs happen inside the editor without involving other apps, usually related to activating GUI elements, like menus or just selecting an element in the designer area. It appears to be the same issue though as it's the same sized square area blinking.
I'll just focus on the actual features of the system for now and just assume this will get fixed in time or I'll find a way around it or something.
I have severe doubts about the faulty-hardware angle, but I guess I can try to uninstall a few window utilities and see if the situation improves. Have fun everyone. =)
05/06/2007 (1:24 pm)
Hmm, after examining my workflow a bit I found the most visually disturbing version of this problem can be reproduced by fullscreening TGB, then fullscreening another app on top of it, alt-tab back and you(or... I rather =) have a large black+grey blinking rectangle in the middle of the editor. (Indicating an issue with double buffering or something)Less pronounced visual bugs happen inside the editor without involving other apps, usually related to activating GUI elements, like menus or just selecting an element in the designer area. It appears to be the same issue though as it's the same sized square area blinking.
I'll just focus on the actual features of the system for now and just assume this will get fixed in time or I'll find a way around it or something.
I have severe doubts about the faulty-hardware angle, but I guess I can try to uninstall a few window utilities and see if the situation improves. Have fun everyone. =)
#6
05/07/2007 (7:24 am)
Strange. What is your video card? I have TGE/TGB running on a Dell desktop, two laptops (Tablet PC with screwy Tablet drivers and a weird Vaio UX180P), a Mac Mini and a G5. All with either 1) pretty good graphics cards or 2) consumer level crap. I haven't seen the issues that you're talking about. I have seen other issues, usually with the Tablet PC drivers and my laptop chugging away at a virus scan or page file crunching.
#7
I don't get that problem on any of the systems I test with (6 different systems with a variety of configurations, both old and new hardware).
05/07/2007 (8:25 am)
Just adding to the list . . .I don't get that problem on any of the systems I test with (6 different systems with a variety of configurations, both old and new hardware).
#8
I've tried installing it on two other PCs here and I can't reproduce the glitches there. I'm still confident it's not faulty hardware though, when something as basic as splashing a rectangle onto the screen fails it should have shown up in other apps as well, unless of course you use an incredibly unusual pixelshader to do so. The graphics card's temperature is reported firmly in the green, the PC itself has essentially zero load etc. Compared to running games it's always been essentially idle, both on the GPU and CPU.
However, the good/frustrating news is that by uninstalling everything I downloaded for this evaluation and then reinstalling... the problem has... *drumroll* - mutated. Now the corrupted area sits quietly in the lower right corner and no longer follows the mouse, which frankly was a huge improvement. It's also a lot harder to reproduce regularly now. I realize that this makes the entire bug report completely worthless and honestly, I'm past caring right now. My Vista upgrade arrives tomorrow and with luck I'll never see this problem again.(The repainting patterns will at least be a lot different there)
What's funny is that an earlier attempt to reinstall only TorqueConstructor didn't have any effect. =)
So, unless you happen to be particularly interested in chasing down strange glitches I'm perfectly fine with forgetting about it. It's clearly not normal behavior for your product and debugging it is probably next to impossible without sending you my entire PC.
05/07/2007 (1:39 pm)
My video card is an XFX GeForce 7950 GT(610M-xxx, whatever that means). ForceWare 93.71. Running at 1920x1200x32 on the primary monitor and 1280x1024 on the second.I've tried installing it on two other PCs here and I can't reproduce the glitches there. I'm still confident it's not faulty hardware though, when something as basic as splashing a rectangle onto the screen fails it should have shown up in other apps as well, unless of course you use an incredibly unusual pixelshader to do so. The graphics card's temperature is reported firmly in the green, the PC itself has essentially zero load etc. Compared to running games it's always been essentially idle, both on the GPU and CPU.
However, the good/frustrating news is that by uninstalling everything I downloaded for this evaluation and then reinstalling... the problem has... *drumroll* - mutated. Now the corrupted area sits quietly in the lower right corner and no longer follows the mouse, which frankly was a huge improvement. It's also a lot harder to reproduce regularly now. I realize that this makes the entire bug report completely worthless and honestly, I'm past caring right now. My Vista upgrade arrives tomorrow and with luck I'll never see this problem again.(The repainting patterns will at least be a lot different there)
What's funny is that an earlier attempt to reinstall only TorqueConstructor didn't have any effect. =)
So, unless you happen to be particularly interested in chasing down strange glitches I'm perfectly fine with forgetting about it. It's clearly not normal behavior for your product and debugging it is probably next to impossible without sending you my entire PC.
#9
Hmm just read this again... the "it" I'm refering to is not the video card, but the software =P
05/07/2007 (1:40 pm)
"I've tried installing it on two other PCs"Hmm just read this again... the "it" I'm refering to is not the video card, but the software =P
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