House Party v14 glitches

For posting information about any bugs, crashes, or graphical issues you encounter while playing House Party. Not the place for general, gameplay, or spoiler-related questions.
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peter980
Posts: 1601
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:50 am

Re: House Party v14 glitches

MistyXXX wrote: Fri May 31, 2019 5:05 pm It's not that old to be ancient. Well 2011 or so.
Well that is ancient. It does not even have DX11. And game minimum requirements ask for DX11. And 2GB of VRAM.
That it worked before for you is just pure luck and not intent.

Don't expect game to work better when below system requirements.

DX11 version is "hard" requirement. It is not even question of performance but minimum compatibility level to start it.

You can experiment by toggling parameters for older DX compatibility levels that you can find in threads here (search) and hope for the best.
MistyXXX
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2018 8:48 pm

Re: House Party v14 glitches

It has direct-x 11
Microsoft Visual 2015 to add too.

As I stated everything else is fine in game. Madison, Ashley, Derek, the objects, etc are just fine. It's only the main character mesh that is glitching and causing trouble. Trust me the laptop isn't ancient really as compared to my desktop which used to have Windows Vista (Now Windows 8.1). There are some few MMOs that state I can't play them at all, yet I ran MAX settings on graphics without any FPS problems with one MMO I played. Depends on game I guess? Probably it's because I have the better processor and upgraded the slot to have 8GB of RAM.
Last edited by MistyXXX on Fri May 31, 2019 6:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
peter980
Posts: 1601
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:50 am

Re: House Party v14 glitches

It does not support DX11:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Ge ... 062.0.html

Having DX11 installed as part of Windows does not mean that GPU supports DX11 feature set in games. You just got lucky that up till 0.12.3 game did not fully utilize DX11 feature set, despite listing it in minimum system requirements.


EDIT:
Try any of these switches if they help:
https://forum.eekllc.com/viewtopic.php? ... e+dx#p3574

But that is band aid. Even if those switches work, it does not mean they will work in future game update.
Solution is updating to modern GPU that is above minimum system requirements.
Last edited by peter980 on Fri May 31, 2019 6:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MistyXXX
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2018 8:48 pm

Re: House Party v14 glitches

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=712&p=3574&hilit=force+dx#p3574

I was slightly thinking it might be the culprit, however mine isn't that bad as compared.

Some later drivers made Nvidia Geforce GT 325M support direct x11 a bit better. So I don't think that's the problem. Especially if it's only the main character that is having technical graphical mesh issues.

I'm not worried about it too much, hopefully future updates will be better, if not then there are some major optimization issues now with this game. No offense the graphics tweaking is a bit becoming obsessive as I thought. Especially if the requirements for this game now only run on i7 processors. Bad optimization by tweaking so much. This is why the game is not even complete on its story roles content after so many years. I'm sorry for that, but this why you get problems with a game, because of tweaking so much, when actually it's fine. 12.3 didn't have much problems did it? Later 13.3, you have problems reported by customers. Whatever was tweaked since then is causing the problems and needs to be revert back somehow. FOCUS on the game content and complete this game! I'm just giving facts that what you had was decent, yet over time things started to get worse for people. So why even keep on tweaking? That's my point. Start looking in those areas and fix those issues that are known to cause the issues. Logs of updates will help I hope. I know it will be fixed, eventually. Just lay off the graphics tweaking so much ok. Honestly I can't even state where the game started to have problems, since I didn't support this game until 13.3 version, when I have 12.3, and tried 14.0 with same problems. 12.3 still runs perfect.
ttant
Posts: 987
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:49 pm

Re: House Party v14 glitches

i think, you can keep dreaming about game fix for such old hardware. Yes 2011 hardware is old.
this game is build using recent technologies which sadly, required recent hardware to run.
I have an old laptop too (2009) which is not able to run the game any longer. Even my GPU driver is not compatible with win10 (but still runs fine on win10 x644 1803) !
Even though i can't run the game anymore, i'm glad the support for such low-tech (against nowadays standards stop). I received the low fps warning again and again. even if the display was stiff fine, 8~12 fps is clearly not enough to play such game. so in my pov, better stop supporting such old hardware than keep it supported and got tons of reproach about the display issues.

About directx/direct3d support: One GPU can be directx 11 compliant but doestn't support any part of it. What really matters is the feature levels of direct3d, which are completely meaningless for non-expert. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_l ... n_Direct3D for more details.

HP 12.x use an older version of unity3d which was directx9 compliant. Since HP 0.13.x, the unity3d requirements changed and now, only directx11+ card are compatible. I think neither unity3d team or eekgames team will go backwards (in terms of support of old hardware) for the compatibility: those GPU are deprecated by their manufacturer, no recent drivers were published since ages !

If all recent game were build on old hardware/technologies, nvidia/amd/intel would have gone bankruptcy years ago, as no one would have need something more powerful than a 30 years old pc. We would still have 2d isometric game with (crappy) resolution.

Note : even your windows 7 is no longer maintained properly by microsoft (since january 2015) and will be fully deprecated next year: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/hel ... ry-14-2020

That doesn't mean you won't be able to use it, it just means that all editors can safely stop to support such old system and concentrate their effort on newer stuff to get better display and performance, thanks to new technologies which weren't supported by the newly deprecated hardware.
Note that also standard x86 / 32 bit is being deprecated by all sort of company (adobe, amd, nvidia drop the 32 bit support and i think more and more will join).
MistyXXX
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2018 8:48 pm

Re: House Party v14 glitches

I'm going to be like Katherine now. :lol:

Direct3D-X 11 is a strict superset of Direct3D 10.1 — all hardware and API features of version 10.1 are retained, and new features are added only when necessary for exposing new functionality. So some functionality of grasp.

Direct3D-X 11 was released as part of Windows 7

Direct3D-X 11 came out in 2010.

The GeForce GT 325M was a graphics card by NVIDIA, launched in January 2010. Built on the 40 nm process, and based on the GT216 graphics processor, in its N11P-GV1 (probably A3) variant, the card supports Direct3D-X 11.1.

So same chip, but different board. If that makes any sense? Something like that.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/g ... 325m.c1504

I asked my cousin about this laptop, which I got from him because he was getting a better one anyways after a few years; my samsung laptop got stolen in my car. The Asus N61JV-X2 doesn't support Direct3D-X 11 really well because of the older graphics card variant. The Asus N61JV-X4 does support Direct3D-X 11 because of the newer graphics card variant; like a newer version of the graphics card can take advantages of Direct3D-X 11. As he remembers it came with Direct3D-X 11 when he bought this laptop in 2011.

I know this is weird and he could be wrong? You might get mixed results on the internet. However, it makes sense by the time frame or simply it can take some use of Direct3D-X 11.

So there has to be some reason why everything displays just fine and only the main character is a spiky puff blow fish. It seems to be why and it's really some bad optimization coding itself or something got corrupt when my cousin shared this game with me? Who knows?

If you want take advantages for my card you have to understand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA coding and it's SLI technology. Especially it's Cuda coding. CUDA supports programming frameworks such as OpenACC and OpenCL. The CUDA platform is designed to work with programming languages such as C, C++, and Fortran.

I won't argue, but we'll see how it goes from there in the future updates. I typically use the 64 bit, so I could try the 32 bit version and see if it makes any difference? Though the 64bit version ran better for me. Further most the game was designed to work well and now it only runs on i7 is quite bad optimization itself at the moment as I will say as statement requirements. Sorry, but there is a reason why I don't underestimate my graphics card and there is reason why I download redistribute build updates and not just the update itself.
Last edited by MistyXXX on Sat Jun 01, 2019 2:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.
ttant
Posts: 987
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:49 pm

Re: House Party v14 glitches

Cuda and Sli technologies are purely nvidia technologies, which rules out any other manufacturers (ati/amd, intel, matrox). and in my point of view should be AVOIDED by anyone trying to build a game engine. For me it's like making a website "Internet explorer" only. better use open standards that works for everyone.

About the 32bit versus 34bit, no need. This won't have an impact on your GPU. Only on the memory consumption, as 32bit process can't handle more than 2Gb (thus making data swap from memory to disk). Keep using the 64bit if your os and computer is compatible.

For the artifact, i guess it's due to the mesh rendering. All other objects don't move or being distorted.
To find out if this is really a bad optimization from eek games or unity3d side, the only way i can think of is to find another 3d game build on unity3d (2018.3.1x or more recent version) and see if that game has se same issue.
* If the issue is the same, the bug is from unity3d engine. Maybe an upgrade can fix it, maybe not.
* If the issue doesn't occur, then you might have found something.

"DirectX 11.1 (10_1)" means directx 11 compliant with feature of direct3d 10.3. This is exactly what i try to said in my previous post. This is just a crappy marketing way to sell stuff which is not fully compatible.
If the NPC mesh rendering use anything from feature level 11.0 (Shader Model 5.0, hull & domain shaders, DirectCompute, 16K textures, BC6H/BC7, extended pixel formats), you can get artefacts.

On french (sorry about that) nvidia webpage, 10.1 is written as directx specification: https://www.nvidia.fr/object/product_ge ... 5m_fr.html
so i guess directx11 support is a lie.

About i7 requirement, please take into account thate there is already 10 different generation of i7.
According to steam, CPU requirements are "Intel Core i7 3770 or AMD FX-8350" which are cpu from 2012.
According to https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html some more recent i5 are more powerful than the i7 3770. It just means that pc less than 5 years should run the game just fine. Older maybe yes, maybe not.
Furthermore laptops are not really good as gaming environment. thermal dissipation are really shitty, better use a real desktop tower.

According to unity changelog of 2018.4.0:
Graphics: Fixed Texture2DMSArray SRV on DX11. (1130212)
This may fix (or not) the issue, but we will only know when eekgames upgrade their unity3d engine.
MistyXXX
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2018 8:48 pm

Re: House Party v14 glitches

Direct3D-X 11.1 (10_1)" means Direct3D-X 11 compliant with feature of Direct3D 10.3-That makes sense I guess.

Who knows if the newer graphics card variant of my card can support Direct3D-X 11, which is the newer model of N61JV-the X4 model? The laptop came with Direct3D-X 11 and it states support with newer variants of the card. Same chip, but different board..I don't know? There is A1, A2, A3, A4. Whatever that means? Reading somewhere, it states variants of the Nvidia Geforce GT 325M has support of the Direct3D-X 11. So perhaps it takes a bit of the advantages of Direct3D-X 11, which is nice to have with newer variants of the card. I didn't state full, but some features of Direct3D-X 11 for performance.

If everything else displays fine and it's only the main character, then it's something wrong with optimization coding itself in that area or something got corrupt when it was shared by my friend/cousin by uploading to DropBox.

If lots of people are having issues, my best suggestion is to literally downgrade for compatibility. Not everyone has the computer like Bobby does.

The laptop lists as $689 dollars on Amazon today and few years back it was higher than $700, probably $789.

Think about the computer market and your customer base. I suggest leaving the shaders or whatever as before 13.3 version, when everyone played just fine.

Now you're having many of people crashing on your game as I'm seeing here on forums. That's why I give that suggestion.

I'll see if something clears up in future updates. If the requirements are i7 to just run the game now, that's quite horrible optimization.

There is no reason to go overboard with the graphics when it displays just fine before.

The FOCUS is your game content, not the graphics! However, it's your game, but you have to think about your customer market of support.

I won't lie 12.3 graphics looks wonderful and updating the shaders from 4.1 to 5.0, there isn't much of a difference, I bet.

Note: Thermal dissipation are really !@#$ for laptops, better use a real desktop tower. Um sorry to brag (not trying to), but my ASUS laptop literally breathes like a dragon of hot air, so it's actually fine and always cool.

ASUS or MSI is what my cousin suggests. You can kiss Alienware goodbye cough *DELL*.

Updated: According to unity changelog of 2018.4.0:
Graphics: Fixed Texture2DMSArray SRV on DX11. (1130212)
This may fix (or not) the issue, but we will only know when eekgames upgrade their unity3d engine.

That might be great news?! It seems to be more of a Unity Engine problem. We'll see. However, still there is no reason to go overboard with the graphics. Just stating.

Though looking at this, because I looked at the crash log...it stated something about memory allocation leak in the game UNITY crash log before I deleted the game off the computer. No nothing is wrong with my RAM, it's a bug overload in UNITY! I tested my RAM and it's fine.

https://answers.unity.com/questions/722 ... -leak.html

https://forum.unity.com/threads/memory- ... hes.58469/

So might as well check something here. Graphics cards trying to read the mesh textures could cause building memory leak overloads. The MMO I play now has memory leaks and it causes the game to crash sometimes, well a new expansion came out. Later patches alleviate to completely of no crashing issues, which patches have helped since that expansion release over time. So might as well fix some areas in Unity concerning this issue. So I'm leaving these links here.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: House Party v14 glitches

MistyXXX wrote: Fri May 31, 2019 4:18 pm Nvidia Geforce GT 325M Cuda (1GB RAM)
i5-450M 2.4ghz with Turbo Boost Technology (2.6-2.8ghz)
8GB RAM DDR3
Windows 7 Home Premium

If everything else displays fine, except the main character, obviously it's an animation bug causing memory leaks. I don't know?

I walk around with no issues on FPS, everything else displays fine, just the main character is a walking blow-fish. Then black screen and game crashes after a few minutes. I can try to get the game from my friend again and test the game again to give a screenshot. However, very unlikely I can get to the camera in time. Might have to use my phone?
I'm not sure it's that obvious. If it was indeed a memory leak or other glaring mistake on our part, it wouldn't be just you experiencing the problem. It wouldn't even be just 2, 3 , or a half dozen people, etc. If it was a broad/general issue, almost any player could reproduce it. I could sit around with my GTX1060 or laptop with a 1070 or use its integrated GPU, or other laptop with an old Quadro M2000M and expect to see this issue crop up over time or after a certain number of game restarts, scene transitions, etc.

Your card isn't fully DX11 capable, which is a minimum requirement of ours. Yes, you could force the game to run at lower DX feature levels (NVIDIA says the card is DX10.1 ready), but the functionality of that isn't something we guarantee or support. Windows 7 also only *arguably* supports DX11, and while probably not related to the symptom you're seeing, will become more of a liability as time goes on. Finally, that card doesn't meet our minimum VRAM requirements. The lowest VRAM consumption I've seen on the lowest settings when playing HP is about 1.1-1.2GB, and there's no firm guarantee that your system would be able to make the of any shared memory resources. So, if resource allocation is an issue on your system before the game even has a chance to load the main scene and all its assets, not to mention the fact that you're using an old card (released in late 2010) with old drivers (the latest signed drivers for that card are from December 2016) that likely doesn't support DX11...it's a leap to call the root cause a "leak".

I truly don't believe I've seen reports of this nature (extreme artifacting and/or mesh, rig, or model distortion of a SINGLE character model) more than a few times since I've started working for Eek! in 2017. We've had plenty of folks try to run the game with GPUs that barely meet our minimum required specs or that are even slightly below then, and usually the issues they run into are disappearing things, crashes, flickering, etc. It'd be great if troubleshooting steps could resolve this for you, and while we do keep users with older hardware in mind, we can't stop improving the game's appearance or performance on the vast majority of systems due to issues on 9 year old hardware.
Image
MistyXXX
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Apr 29, 2018 8:48 pm

Re: House Party v14 glitches

I think you don't understand the problem.

The main character is creating a large memory allocation. The memory allocation profiler...you need to work on it!

https://answers.unity.com/questions/776 ... donts.html

There is no reason to have a large allocation on main character. I could play game and have everything run fine. However once I get moving, textures build up on character only to be waste of resources by large amount, and game crashes after a few minutes. All other animations are fine, meaning I can have Stephanie dancing in front of me forever at stand still without crashing. The main source is main character because textures during animations builds quite large of resource of memory. I read others crash logs and that's the problem. It's hard to explain, but I believe this will solve issues. Lower end hardware will have issues loading textures if not set correctly and don't have any clue on what you're doing. Some people might be worse than others, depending how textures grasp with memory. Honestly I seem like nonsense explaining this, but according to the crash logs, the logs are stating memory allocation error everywhere!

The texture arrays! Hint. Google memory allocation unity! The game is asking for too much memory and there is no reason to. I really don't want to explain everything, however this might help the loading of textures and improve the performance of the game. Take me for granted because this makes absolute sense, since reading all the crash logs here on forums.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/ineffic ... on.585643/

https://medium.com/@lynxelia/unity-memo ... 07b43c1daa

https://answers.unity.com/questions/146 ... ation.html
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