Video Game thread

[ColoradoMarmot]

Dragon Age: Origins - steam install fails to launch (even after manually installing DirectX and Nvdidia's physx).  Installing via EA launches, but significant visual artifacts (the sprites/glow of character effects is 8-bit blocky).  Changing the graphics settings got the game into a state where it will launch, then immediately crash (and then lunch was over).  Will try again and report back.

[ColoradoMarmot]

So I have it installed via origin, and if I drop the video settings down, all the artifacts go away.  But it works!

[Mikero]

I've been trying Dragon Age Inquisition and it just crashes at launch without error.

How'd you install DirectX and PhysX manually?

[ColoradoMarmot]

For Origins I googled the error and found the direct download links for Dx9 and nvidia physX, but that didn't fix the steam install.  The EA install did install correctly, but it's unstable - visual artifacts, and have to downgrade both resolution and texture settings to keep it running, and even then it stutters.

I've tried inquisition on the competition, but the performance is so poor as to be unplayable, so haven't tried installing it.

I've also seen pretty significant screen repaint issues in non-games.  Sometimes the whole screen will flicker black and then repaint, other times it's just part of a widget that visually goes blank before repainting (that's new to the TP - 13 didn't do it).  I'm on a 5K monitor in HDPI mode, windowed less than 4K on the screen.  It seems to be worse when the fusion library is open (but I can't confirm that 100%).  Also seeing a visual lag/repaint if I click and drag one explorer window that's behind another one.

I may try to build a VM from scratch instead of upgrading one originally created with the first TP...maybe there's cruft.  Has anyone else seen these kinds of repaint issues?

[ColoradoMarmot]

Ok, so have some good news.

There definitely was something wrong with the upgraded VM.  I built a new one from scratch (thanks @Technogeezer for the ISO script), and installed the tools.

The Steam install of DA:O worked just fine.  I'm able to launch and play the game - the visual artifacts are gone.  

Trying to resume my old game copied from the other VM fails if the texture detail is on high, but works on medium.  Starting a new game from scratch works with details on high.  Changing from 1920x1200 to 3480x1260 crashes the game.

So I suspect that the new tools install isn't removing the v13 video driver properly.  Doing an uninstall and reinstall didn't fix it in the first VM.  @Mikero does that make sense?

There's still some instability in the video drivers from the crashes above, but it's basically butter smooth at 1920x1200.

Net:  My recommendation is to build a new Windows VM rather than upgrading an old one.  I'm going to replace the others I built off a copy of this new fresh base version.

[Geoffrey84]

Virtual machine Windows 11 x64 ARM

VMware tools installed (two hardware drivers listed as missing)

Logitech joystick not recognised as USB device

DirectX drivers installed manually

IL-2 Sturmovik Great Battles (Dx11 game) refuses to launch

IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 (Dx8 game) crashes to desktop and results in a blue screen / restart

[hakros]

Fallout: New Vegas

Steam: Successfully installed

Fallout New Vegas: Successfully installed, but crashes when trying to start a new game or load a savegame.

I have tried all game patches and mods that people have suggested on different forums and blogs, but without luck.

I have manually installed DirectX too, but the game still does not want to load.

Downgrading game resolution and setting compatibility mode to windows 7, 8 or 10 does not work. 

Is there anything I can do? PS: It is a VM created from scratch, windows 11 is updated to the lastest version as of august 9th 2023, the VM has 16GB RAM and 4 CPU cores. I also added about 8GB graphics memory.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Try maxing the video memory - Mike posted somewhere that there's no real reason to limit it, and it might help.

[patrickc]

---

@hakros wrote:

Fallout: New Vegas

Steam: Successfully installed

Fallout New Vegas: Successfully installed, but crashes when trying to start a new game or load a savegame.

I have tried all game patches and mods that people have suggested on different forums and blogs, but without luck.

I have manually installed DirectX too, but the game still does not want to load.

Downgrading game resolution and setting compatibility mode to windows 7, 8 or 10 does not work. 

Is there anything I can do? PS: It is a VM created from scratch, windows 11 is updated to the lastest version as of august 9th 2023, the VM has 16GB RAM and 4 CPU cores. I also added about 8GB graphics memory.

---

The game also crashes similarly with the Microsoft Basic Display Driver being used instead of the VMware SVGA 3D driver (so it's unlikely to be a VMware graphics issue).

[havardhavard]

So there's nothing VMware can do on their part to make this game run in Fusion? 😥

[ColoradoMarmot]

If it doesn't run on native windows, it's not going to run on Fusion.

[Technogeezer]

I have a question: Does VMware have access to a physical ARM PC or Qualcomm dev kit to test things like this out? I would think that it would help to see if a problem can be reproduced on a ARM PC running Windows 11 natively before spending a lot of time pouring over their driver code and Apple's virtualization frameworks.