So despite reading the news that the intel HD3000/4000 weren't supported, I bought this anyway. 'Cause Steampunk! This game is seriously what someone would design as part of a sting operation designed to attract my attention. If you'd have somehow managed to cram Summer Glau in there it would be perfect. Turns out my laptop has an HD3000. I could have sworn it had something other than that, but dxdiag says I was wrong. I know they aren't officially supported, but has anyone gotten this to work at all on one of these forbidden graphics cards? I get a weird thing where the ground is visible, and the interface, but all people and objects are just black shapes.
It all depends on whether your laptop manufacturer lets you get the latest drivers. If you can get the latest ones from them things start looking better. To be honest, however, the HD3k and 4k were rather atrocious to begin with =/
Well, I downloaded and installed what I believe were the latest drivers, from April of this year. Or perhaps they were pernicious spyware disguised as drivers, or I somehow installed them wrong. What's making me scratch my head is that I remember buying my current laptop in part because it didn't have these generic integrated graphics cards (or whatever the term is), which I had a bad experience with before.
If you didn't get what you paid for (i.e. you were purchased the laptop with the expectation that it had a non-integrated graphic card), that's one thing. If you do indeed have a non-integrated graphic card in addition to the HD 3000, your laptop may just not be using the correct graphic processor to run Clockwork Empires (and conceivably your other programs). My laptop, for example, has an HD 4000 for everyday use, and an NVidia processor for things like games. When running a new game for the first time, I sometimes have to explicitly force my laptop to use the right one.
I totally forgot that some laptops do that; good call Alephred! If you haven't done so, Deaghaidh, right-click My Computer, click Manage, and then click on Device Manager. Check and see if you've got multiple Display Adapters and perhaps one or the other is taking over. If that's the problem we can try working through it from there and see if we can get you squared away.
This sounds promising. How do I forbid it to use my inferior integrated card? Do I need to flog it ruthlessly? I think this might be my problem, but as I'm on my phone at work and not at home to investigate, I can't confirm the existence of the non-integrated card.
If you do have a non-integrated card, then I almost always just have people disable the integrated one. Intel can sometimes have problems with that, but it's usually one of the first things I recommend to try.
My NVidia processor doesn't show up in DXDiag either, for what it's worth. If you do have another, better graphic processor hidden under the shirt of your integrated processor (like Kuato, in the original Total Recall), and it happens to be a NVidia card, you can follow the steps I'll list here (graphic cards these days tend to be either NVidia or ATI). Even if it's not the case for you, maybe someone else will find it useful. A quick way to check is to right-click on your desktop, and see if the context menu has an option named 'NVidia Control Panel' (or whatever the ATI equivalent is). If you don't have that option, you may merely not have the drivers installed, or you may indeed not have another graphic card. I'll describe the NVidia process from here on in: Inside the NVidia Control Panel, select 'Manage 3D settings' from the pane on the right. The pane on the left should now show a menu with 'Global Settings' and 'Program Settings' tabs. Select the Program Settings Tab The Program Settings tab allows you to specify how your computer uses your graphic processor(s) on a program-by-program basis. Use the low-power HD3000 for browing the web and writing email, but use your high-power NVdia for playing Clockwork Empires and Dungeons of Dredmore, etc. On NVidia drivers, there's a drop-down menu that list all the programs that lists a bunch of programs. There's another drop-down menu beneath it that reads: 'Select the preferred graphics processor for this program:', with your choice of 1) Use Global Setting, 2) High-performance NVidia processor, 3) Integrated graphics. So. forcing a specific program to use whichever processor is a matter of finding it in the first menu, and specifying behaviour in the second menu. If the program you want doesn't appear on the list, there's an additional step: beside the top menu is an 'Add' button, which is used to add programs to the list that your driver remembers. Use it to pick Clockwork Empires from the list of recent programs, or pick the specific path of the Clockwork Empires.exe. And then specify driver behaviour, as above. Hope that helps.
On the plus side, I was able to get it to use my Nvidia card! On the downside, while it runs smoothly now it is still messed up graphically. Everyone and everything is just a black silhouette.
It's a Geforce gtx 580 M, not sure about the drivers, that'll be the first thing I try in the morning. If it helps at all, this is what things look like now http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=302113151
Just by the by, the GTX 580 M supports up to OpenGL 4.0, so that's one common problem you've avoided.
Wait, you mean if you can get the latest drivers, there shouldn't be a problem / should be less of a problem? :O I mean... despite being HD 4000 my baby never had any issues with other games, and I get a driver update like once a month or two! I seriously don't know whether that means what I want it to mean, or nope it's all same, but just in case dumping my dxdiag or something: Bah, sometimes I feel so computer-illiterate! P.S. Got Win8 too, if that changes anything.
Yep! Drivers are funny, fickle things. Sometimes a new driver will actually cause more problems than it fixes (although that doesn't happen all that often.) Think of it this way: a driver tells your operating system what to do with your hardware, it's kind of like a little manual: "Windows, this is a graphics card, and this is what you do with it and when." But if there are misplaced instructions, your card won't be able to work to its full potential (or at all), which is why having the latest drivers is pretty much always the best idea. Well there's your problem right there! No, honestly, I don't know if Win8 is the problem. I don't use the operating system personally, so I have little experience with it.
The practical question is whether your processor can support OpenGl 3.2. Apparently In practice, the answer is "possibly". You're going to have to determine that for yourself - there are diagnostic tools you can use to do that. The latest possible drivers won't hurt, either. I'm running Windows 8.1 with no issues.
I'm not sure if you understood me, thing is, I discovered the HD 4000 thing before buying it, so now I'm just plain unsure whether I have any chance of being able to play the thing or buying the game would still be a waste of time. Oh, could you link me to any? I just googled for OpenGl 3.2 diagnostic tool, didn't find anything that I imagine is what I need, unfortunately. And yeah, latest drivers indeed!
A guy over in this thread said he used this program to successfully determine what version of OpenGL he could run. I haven't tried it myself, so I can't really advise you, hopefully it works for you.
Ok, drivers are all up to date. Also tried the thing from https://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/terrain-black-problem.9015/ which solved the opposite problem. Yet still I have the background displaying fine, but everything else just black.
This is a bit of a long shot, but did you also try the thing from earlier in that thread? Check and see if your deferred.inl is missing. The way to fix that one is to verify your installation through Steam.
