Getting Crossfire Back In Serious Sam HD After 11.8 CAP 3 (not a fully working solution)

UPDATE 2: Now that you can set custom profiles in CCC, you might be able to force GRID’s profile for Serious Sam HD. (I don’t have Sam installed right now.)

UPDATE: It seems radeonpro is NOT applying itself, so I guess the only options are to stay on an older CAP, find a CAP switcher, get a faster single GPU card, use a crack (which would disable achievements and multiplayer), somehow trick steam into loading renamed .exes (could an NTFS junction work?), or have Croteam make us a copy of the game exe that’s named as GRID.exe, since attempting that yourself just closes the renamed .exe and launches SamHD.exe.

The latest CAP disables crossfire in the Serious Sam HD games due to crashes happening near water. This should be a game issue that also affects SLI. I assume The Second Encounter will act the same as my testing of The First Encounter.

But if you don’t mind the possible crashing and want to get your framerate back to where it was before, just force the Race Driver GRID profile in radeonpro.

Unlocking BRINK’s Famerate In Singleplayer

You may have noticed how awful Brink feels and looks in motion when playing the campaign or challenge modes, totally different from what your framerate counter displays. Here is how to get around that nonsense. The main idea is 1-you will run a local dedicated server, 2-you set what campaign or challenge to load, 3-you connect to it.

First, install the dedicated server in the tools section of Steam. While that’s downloading, go to the launch options of Brink in your games list and add ‘+set win_allowMultipleInstances 1‘ so that Brink’s executable can run more than once at the same time. (Otherwise you wind up having to launch the game first, then alt-tab to launch the server second.)

Once installed, check the ‘\Steam\steamapps\common\brink dedicated server‘ folder and you should see example .bat files. Edit an existing one, or copy into a new file, adjusting the server name and ports as you want them. Everytime you want to launch the server, just run the .bat file. Push the quit button or type in ‘quit’ in the console for the server to shutdown.

Now it’s time to tell the server what campaign and maps to load. Instead of memorizing server console commands or map names, I would make a .cfg file for every map of each campaign so that it’s very simple to quickly start playing on the mission that you left off in your campaign. Every .cfg file will look like this:

si_rules sdGameRulesCampaign
applyServerConfig Standard
campaign set campaign_#TEAMNAME#
si_playMode 1
si_onlineMode 2
si_needpass 1
g_password #YOURPASSWORD#
si_maxRank 4
si_botDifficulty #NUMBER#
net_serverAllowHijacking 0
spawnServer mp/#MAPNAME#.entities

Replace #TEXT# as necessary. You can have spaces in your password, quotes don’t seem to be needed (eg: ‘g_password hello world‘). Change the campaign team name to ‘resistance‘ or ‘security‘. To play the Agents of Change DLC maps, add ‘_dlc1‘ to the end of the campaign line (eg: ‘campaign set campaign_security_dlc1‘).

Bot Difficulty: any: -1, easy: 0, normal: 1, hard: 2

Resistance map names (in order of campaign): aqarium, seetow, terminal, resort, ccity, refuel, shipyard, reactor

Security map names (in order of campaign): aqarium, terminal, ccity, sectow, shipyard, reactor, resort, refuel

Agents of Change DLC map names (in order): lab, founders

Challenges: enable server hijacking then selecting a challenge as 2 player and public should join your server, or any other for that matter (source)

OR I think I managed to make a .cfg that works:

si_rules sdGameRulesChallenge
applyServerConfig ChallengesCoop#NUMBER#
campaign set campaign_challenges
si_playMode 1
si_onlineMode 2
si_needpass 1
g_password #YOURPASSWORD#
si_maxRank 4
net_serverAllowHijacking 0
spawnServer sp/challenge_#NUMBER#.entities

Set your coop player amount to a number between 2 and 4 (eg. ‘applyServerConfig ChallengesCoop2‘ for a 2-player game). Change your password just like a campaign server, and then change the challenge map number to the challenge you want: Be More Objective: 06, Parkour This: 05, Escort Duty: 01, Tower Defense: 03 (eg. to have a Parkour This challenge, the last line would be ‘spawnServer sp/challenge_05.entities‘)

So once you make your .cfg files (or use mine), place them in the ‘\Steam\steamapps\common\brink dedicated server\base‘ folder. Launch your server with your .bat file from earlier and type ‘exec security3‘ if you want to play the 3rd mission of the security campaign and your .cfg file for that mission is named security3.cfg. Then launch the game and go to Freeplay, search for LAN servers, and you should see your local server ready for you to join. If your router’s ports are open, you can have your friends join your server as well. There is a handy script to open and close the ports via UPnP, so that you don’t need to bother opening your router admin settings as long as UPnP is enabled.

Now you can play Brink the way it’s supposed to be! It may seem complicated, but once all this is set, you just exec the .cfg you want from the server console window, nice and simple.

Source for original .cfg file and discussion: Steam Forums
More information on some of the commands, or using additional ones: BrinkBase.de
You can also type commands in the console window and sometimes the values and what they mean will be displayed (eg. typing ‘si_botDifficulty‘ in the server console).

Improving Unreal Development Kit Crossfire Performance

Simply rename UDK.exe found in the Bin32 folder to AliceMadnessReturns.exe. Make sure to have the latest CAP, and it still works even with my sparkling spots fix, which uses 11.2 dlls.

The Alice profile is almost as fast as other profiles like Crysis 2, but without flickering of the water or other artifacts.

The following screenshots are of a 4870×2.

Fix For CityEngine Startup Crash

Here’s a similar situation to the Cities In Motion issue, this particular CAD software also has a problem running on ATI/AMD drivers newer than Catalyst 10.4, or at least 10.4 looks reliable enough to function properly. After launching, amdkmdap has a driver reset when the 3d rendering panel appears, crashing the application.

The fix is nice and simple, just place the appropriate OpenGL driver into the program’s folder where CityEngine.exe is.

If you have any other OpenGL game or application that is crashing after 10.4, try this fix or the Cities in Motion one.

For 32-bit: atioglxx.dll
For 64-bit: atio6axx.dll

Your card should support 10.4 drivers in the first place, I have no idea what you would do if you’re using one of the latest Radeons or if you’re using an nVidia card.

Improving Hydrophobia: Prophecy Crossfire Performance

Once again, like the Section 8: Prejudice trick, grab RadeonPro (since it’s a steam game) and simply use the Half-Life 2 crossfire profile. Apparently other profiles flicker or do not scale as well.

Credit goes to spyre who noticed this… months ago. I’m not sure why it’s still not in the CAPs or drivers.

Improving Section 8: Prejudice Crossfire Performance

After a fair amount of testing, the Dark Void profile gives the performance boost of the FEAR profile without the flickering.

So what you need to do is grab RadeonPro so you can make a profile for the game. You can’t simply do the exe rename trick, as it has a launcher that blocks you from starting from the game exe directly.

Once inside RadeonPro, push the ‘add a new profile’ button and select S9-Win32-F.exe from the Binaries/Win32 folder of the game. Go to the tweaks tab and click ‘manage custom profiles’, then add Dark Void as ‘ShippingPC-SkyGame.exe‘. Now to fix the launcher issue, go to the launcher tab and select ‘Games for Windows Live’ from the dropdown, then pick the actual launcher exe, which is S9.exe in the root folder of the game.

This should do it until a profile gets built into the drivers. Enjoy!

Divinity 2 Stutter Fix

Apparently, Divinity 2 has some kind of stuttering going on, making things look much worse than the actual framerate. This is not part of the game like the poor choice to lock the main menu at 30fps (which then unlocks once you’re in game, just like Enemy Territory Quake Wars).

Luckily, there’s a simple fix. If you haven’t seen this posted around, what you do is go to the compatibility tab in the properties window of the game’s exe and check on ‘disable desktop composition‘. I don’t think ‘run as administrator’ is needed, but you can check that on in addition to the desktop composition toggle.

No idea how widespread this is, if it’s just for Windows 7/Vista, or if it includes Nvidia cards, or if it’s tied to specific generations or drivers.

Cities in Motion (and possibly other OpenGL games) Startup Crash Fix For ATI/AMD Cards

UPDATE: I was curious as to what this FAQ item was for Atom Zombie Smasher, so I tried the demo. Nothing appears, just the exe starts up. Seems the same atigktxx.dll trick does the job for this game as well, it loads up just fine now.

Looks like Cities in Motion is an OpenGL game with the exact same issue that The Polynomial had for a few months. On drivers after Catalyst 10.4, it appears crossfire is breaking the game from working, and there is no way to disable it on a 4870×2 like myself. Some single gpu cards may be affected, so you might as well try this, too.

The simple fix should be placing 10.4′s atigktxx.dll into the game folder. Here’s an alternative fix that may or may not work for you if you have tried this atigktxx trick.

Do note that the file is from the 64-bit Vista/7 drivers, I’m not sure what the effect will be on 32-bit, XP, or on the latest 6 series cards. If you have crashes or freezes that happen after the game menu has loaded, then you might have a different problem unrelated to this. The beta, demo, and final release all should act the same. If the demo worked before (on drivers after 10.4) while the final does not, then you probably have a different issue.

Fix For The Polynomial Startup Crash

FINAL UPDATE: This post is a mess… this should not be a problem anymore for anyone. You should be on drivers newer than 11.2 or older than 10.5. This used to affect the BIT.TRIP games, but those run fine now as well. What has not yet been fixed in updated drivers is Cities in Motion.

FINAL FIX: Turns out you just need atigktxx.dll in the game folder! No mess, not even the main atioglxx.dll. Download the 10.4 dll here, place it where polynomial.exe is, done! I also noticed after installing Catalyst 11.2, the dll might not be needed anymore.

FIX ATTEMPT: I tried a brute force method, I put every driver file of 10.4 into the game folder. You can do this while still having whatever newer Catalyst you have installed, just run the 10.4 installer, cancel it, open a cmd prompt at C:\ATI\Support\10-4_vista64_win7_64_dd_ccc_wdm_enu\Packages\Drivers\ Display\W76A_INF\B_98282 or similar, then simply ‘expand -r *.* c:\pathtoyourgamefolder‘ and voila! I have not yet tried deleting any of the files 1 by 1 to see which ones are required to stop the BSOD so the game folder would look cleaner, but so far it works!

UPDATE2: mixed reports saying 10.12 is good, it’s almost a guarantee that it’s good for 5970 users that were stuttering, but it’s the same crash for me still on 10.12.

UPDATE: this might be affecting Bit.Trip Beat as well. Something to do with crossfire, but there are some reports of 5970s working fine.

So I finally attempted to try the demo of The Polynomial, but the driver is crashing on startup of the game (it’s in OpenGL). I’m trying this on a 4870×2, Catalyst 10.11 WHQL, latest CAP, Vista 64.

It might be something to do with crossfire, or at least in my case and this user. The developer is also active in that thread, and I’ll try to get some form of exposure to ATI/AMD, so we’ll see how this goes.

Workarounds

-The whole older driver package: refer to the working fix at the top of this page.

-Current iD Tech games (with this side effect! depends on the visualizer options): doom3.exe, etqw.exe, prey.exe, quake4.exe, wolf2mp.exe

-Riddick Butcher’s Bay profile looks like a bunch of detail is lost, and the bloom is lower resolution, yet the bright flashing lights are gone: sbzengine.exe

-An older atioglxx.dll: I tried 10.2 and 10.4, the game launched without glitches, but has a BSOD soon after. This must be because crossfire changed at 10.5, as mixing dx10/11 dlls older than 10.5 would also BSOD in Shattered Horizon and Bad Company 2. If you’re ok with not having the latest drivers (if you don’t need the fixes in there), you may be able to get away with installing 10.4 and just the latest CAP.

-RadeonPro recently added some OpenGL support, but the crossfire options are not functional just yet. I can’t think of any DX9 things to test if the ‘disable crossfire’ option is different from just disabling CatalystAI, but if it is, then this would end up a working solution once this app is updated.

Dark Athena, older Quakes, Unigine, FurMark, and a couple other profiles I attempted to launch act like the original game’s driver crash.

I will update this post if there’s a workaround better than the iD one, if there’s some combination of settings to try, or if either the drivers or game manage to fix it.

Disable Auto-Eject On Empty Drives

Have you tried to double click on a hard drive in MyComputer, only to accidentally click your optical drive and have it eject? This gets annoying if you’re trying to be quiet at night, or if you have one of those cases with a door that covers up the drive bays. Luckily it’s a simple fix, but you won’t be able to use the built in Windows burning functionality. You should be able to still use third-party burning tools like ImgBurn just fine. (In fact I need my options and project files, so I’m never using built in OS stuff anyway)

In the registry, go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Add a DWORD called NoCDBurning and set it to 1.

That’s it. Log off and on again to make it work. This might be just a Vista and 7 feature, but try it on XP if it ejects as well.