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 Post subject: BUG: Blue/Red Shadows
PostPosted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 5:46 pm 
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Levy

Joined: Sat Aug 26, 2006 2:34 pm
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Hi there,
here it is my first thread on the board.

I played Massive Assault quite a bit last year without problems, and I have recently purchased Domination.

I have checked for this issue in the forums without luck, so I suppose it wasn't discussed yet (except from a small comment from Tryptamon in this topic regarding blue shadows).

The following bug affects both Massive Assault and Domination, and I am experiencing it on two different machines:

PC#01:
Software: WinXP, SP2, .NET Framework 2, ATI Catalyst 6.8 (tried also with 6.4 and 6.3), DirectX 9.0c.
Hardware: ASUS K7N8X, Athlon XP 2700mhz, Radeon 9600 Pro AGP (128mb ram), Nvidia nForce Audio (integrated chipset).

PC#02:
Software: WinXP, ATI Catalyst 6.8, DirectX 9.0c.
Hardware: ASUS K8VX, Athlon 64 3200+, ATI X1300 AGP (256mb ram), SoundMax Audio (integrated chipset)



While the overall graphics looks good, there is an annoying bug involving the shadows of the units (trees and static units such as bases are ok): the shadow of each movable unit is of the same color used to represent its player, such as Red or Blue, instead of being black. The overall result is very similar to "see-through" effect which lets us see our units even when they are covered by a structure or a tree, only applied to unit's shadow.

After experiencing the bug I launched Massive Assault 1 and noticed that the bug was there as well, and slightly worse (the cities are 'colored' as well, and there is no way to turn this off). It has been some months since the last time I played Massive Assault on PC#01 with no graphic glitches, and I have reinstalled WinXP since then even though I didn't change its hardware configuration. I then noticed that the same problem applies to PC#02 as well.

An interesting aspect is that the shadows of trees and static meshes are looking good, and it is probably so because the projected shadows algorithm Domination used for the tree shadows (which Massive Assault didn't have) is different from the one used for the units, which was probably ported almost directly from the first Massive Assault (if a developer is reading, he could confirm or deny it :)).


At first I thought it was related to the new ATI Catalyst Video Drivers, so I reverted to the 6.4 (and 6.3, just in case) without success; I don't think I was using even older drivers back then, though the issue could still be related to ATI cards.


As you can see from the configurations posted above, apart from the video card of the same company (although different models), the two configurations are not exactly alike. Does anyone know of a solution for this problem?

Of course, every other game or app works graphically fine (from latest to older ones).

Thanks in advance.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 8:45 am 
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Levy

Joined: Tue Sep 05, 2006 8:41 am
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Iґve got exactly the same Problem with the blue shadows.

Domination with the latest Patches
Barton 2.3 GHz; 2GB Ram; Radeon X1600Pro; Catalyst 6.8 (I also checked older Versions down to 6.3)

any solutions?

p.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 2:55 pm 
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Developer
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Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2003 4:53 am
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Fixed only in the latest patch for Massive Assault Network 2.
You can read the full story at:
http://www.massiveassaultnetwork.com/ma ... ?news_id=1
http://www.massiveassault.com/forum/vie ... hp?p=25763


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 11:19 am 
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Levy

Joined: Sat Aug 26, 2006 2:34 pm
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However this is the Domination board, not MAN2, and the bug also affects Domination.

Since the bug was solved for MAN2, it would be nice to apply the same fix to Domination as well. I understand that the developers would want us to buy the latest installation, but it is by no means a replacement for Domination since MAN2 is an online game that lacks all the single player features and campaigns, which are the main reasons I bought Domination in the first place. And, even if it was (and as I explained it isn't the case), it isn't honest behaviour to say to get MAN2 in order to have the bug fixed, even less since the developers are aware of the bug and know how to fix it. Furthermore, the two games share almost the same engine.

If that is the attitude toward paying customers I may as well avoid to buy future games from this company. If you know what the bug is and how to fix it, it is fair play to release a patch which resolves the problem for all of your games which share the same problem, moreover if these games are currently on sale.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 4:13 am 
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Developer
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I just replied to let you know that this bug has been finally treated.

It's not the critical bug and you can uncheck "Shadows" in Graphic Settings of MA and Domination in order to fix it. Or play the game on non-ATI graphic cards.

After all, it depends mostly on publisher shall we release or not the new patch. And publishers are unlikely to deal with this since both games were released a while back.

Best,
Nick.


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