Blurry menu/guis

[Springheel]

I've seen two new 2.0 LPs that have this problem...the menu images, and in-game gui images (maps, inventory icons) are all very low res, but the menu text and models/map is fine. Any ideas about that?

 

Here's one of them:

[stumpy]

might have something to do with some people making the fonts like they are in doom 3 bfg edition.

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/15058-ported-font-code-from-doom3-bfg-edition/

Edited October 12, 2013 by stumpy

[Springheel]

No idea what you mean. What does Doom3 bfg have to do with TDM 2.0?

[stumpy]

even though everyone didn't want the way doom3 bfg handles fonts 2 people decided to do it and I think they may have added there results to the darkmod source.

[Springheel]

Not to my knowledge.

 

Besides, this problem isn't affecting fonts. It's affecting gui images.

[grayman]

There is no SVN record of anyone making font changes in the trunk or 2.00 branch.

[stumpy]

it was just an idea as they kept going on in that forum topic that they were getting blurry font results as bfg uses a different font definition and not true type fonts as its base to create the dat fonts doom 3 uses.

 

 

I have a clean installed version of tdm version 2.0 and am not getting the blurry guis, as the updater didn't over write files that I already had and the crc numbers matched. so I downloaded a clean version cause I was getting bugs to do with the game having problems finding paths it saved to in game and my old tdm setup is built for making maps. am guessing something carried over from version 1.08 and the version 2.0 doesn't like it.

reloading a save caused the game to look in basedirectory/darkmod/maps/<name of fan mission>/<map name>.script instead of basedirectory/fms/<name of fan mission>/maps/<name of fan mission>.script to load the script file of the fan mission.

Edited October 12, 2013 by stumpy

[Serpentine]

Edit : Please ignore this if graphics in a mission are fine.

This only applies if everything looks utterly blurred and terrible.

 

Hmmm, this could be happening if the amount of vmem is not detected. Check if people having the problem are using high end cards with >2gb, 3gb+ is likely the problem.

 

If any of a bunch of that detection fails, it uses _super_ low settings. Can also happen in some cases when files can not be saved into the folder.

[delatroy]

Clean install of v2 today on a GTX670 which has 2GB of ram and the blurry text was something that struck me as something odd straight away. Granted I don't have any experience with what non-blurry versions look like so I cannot say for certain.

 

If any of a bunch of that detection fails, it uses _super_ low settings.

 

Do you mean the video settings or something else? I changed all video settings to max but the text still appears blurry. Is there a txt/cfg file where I can have a look for where _super_ low is defined?

[Springheel]

Would super low settings affect GUI images but not anything else? That's the issue in the OP.

[Serpentine]

Do you mean the video settings or something else? I changed all video settings to max but the text still appears blurry. Is there a txt/cfg file where I can have a look for where _super_ low is defined?

Nah, if your text is just a bit blurry, then its not the problem I was describing.

 

Can you get a screenshot for us? Hit F12 and it should write out an image somewhere.

[Serpentine]

Would super low settings affect GUI images but not anything else? That's the issue in the OP.

Nah, this is something else I think :/ That other thread has the problem where things get... insanely bad. Not sure what's going on with this one - screenshots and console dumps would help.

 

For anyone reading along :

In the console, 'condump' will write out what is in the console into a file.

'condump somefile.txt' will write it out with the name you give it.

Then paste the relevant dump on something like pastie.org or similar and link it here.

[delatroy]

Can you get a screenshot for us?

 

 

[Bikerdude]

Isnt the blurry fonts in those LP vids just a case of low bitrate recording..?

[delatroy]

I have Dark Mod running through steam and I noticed that the blurring also affects the steam overlay text / images. I think it could be some higher-level settings like something in the Nvidia control panel given that the blurring is not only affected the darkmod application but also the steam overlay.

 

I compared how the overlay looks in L4D2 and TMD to illustrate:

 

 

You can clearly see blurring on the text and noise in the image background on first set of buttons. One possibility is that my resolution is simply lower in TDM than L4D2 but as far as I know, TDM's is 1440x900 (my monitor's native) as defined in the cfg file:

 

seta r_customHeight "900"
seta r_customWidth "1440"

Edited October 13, 2013 by delatroy

[Springheel]

I have Dark Mod running through steam

 

How do you run TDM through steam now that it doesn't use Doom3?

 

Second question, why would you?

[delatroy]

Just added it as a non-steam game so I can get the overlay to have it listed as one of my games, to talk to friends, etc.

 

Getting back to my point about higher level jiggery pokery, if you alt tab back to windows while in game, I notice that the gamma / brightness also affects the windows environment. I'm guessing the in-game settings in a round about way are adjusting the Nvidia control panel's gamma and brightness values (and others presumably) hence why the affects are global. I know from experience that this isn't typical.

[Carr0t]

You can load any non-Steam game into the Steam menu, so that all your games are in one place. Whatever you want to play, you know it's in Steam instead of having to search for the right folder under the start menu or whatever. It's especially handy for stuff like TDM which doesn't install any start menu shortcuts or similar automatically (I like my desktop bare of any icons apart from Recycle Bin. Anything I use regularly, which for games is basically Steam and nothing else, sits on the quick launch bar).

 

If you run a game through Steam in this way it'll add the Steam overlay to the game, so you can chat to friends on Steam and such from 'in-game' without having to alt-tab out every time (which for me, frequently crashes TDM, whereas Steam chat via the overlay doesn't).

[stumpy]

I have 1gb of video memory the game is seeing 512mb according to the start up text in the console.

[Serpentine]

I have 1gb of video memory the game is seeing 512mb according to the start up text in the console.

Shouldnt be a problem, its only a problem if it shows 0 or NULL... or just freaks out when getting it

[STiFU]

seta r_customHeight "900"
seta r_customWidth "1440"

Check whether r_mode is set to -1. Having setup custom dimensions alone does not do the trick.

[delatroy]

Check whether r_mode is set to -1.

 

It already is

 

I'm fairly confident it's something else like AA / AF / some kind of filter, etc. You can replicate the steam overlay test to see if you're seeing a blur on your machine.

Edited October 14, 2013 by delatroy

[RJFerret]

I have this problem, the text is so fuzzy, it's not readable, the map too. It appears like JPG which isn't being decompressed more than the initial level. I was shocked to see a video on YouTube with crystal clear legible text. I have an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 with only 1 GB video ram. While downloading missions, the "Mission Status" and "Download Status" headings are very pixelated/blurred. The "Downloadable Missions" and "Selected for Download" text are crystal clear.

 

Similarly, on the main menu, "The Dark Mod" is pixelated/blurry, the menu text sharp.

 

Turning antialiasing off and changing texture anisotropy to 1x instead of 16x has no impact on it whatsoever. I'm playing in 1440x900.

 

PS: Standalone version, no steam.

 

Edited October 23, 2013 by RJFerret

[RJFerret]

For others with this issue, resolved it by changing the value of image_downSize from 1 to 0, IE, altering the line:

 

seta image_downSize "1"

 

to

 

seta image_downSize "0"

 

in the Darkmod.cfg file.

 

PS: Oh look! Parchments have a texture to them, and there's celtic knotwork and scrollwork in background graphics.

[Serpentine]

Hmmm this is going to be an annoying problem to fix, since those cvars are actually fairly useful for people with low specs.

(It shouldnt be triggering them for your stuff, but there's a few ways in which it gets confused)

 

Getting it right however, hmmm.