Sniper functions show only black

[[|*|] Nemesis D.]

I apologise if this issue has come up before, but I did a search and found nothing relevant.

Under Fritzbot, I cannot use either sniper gun effectively, both the rifles (Garand/K43) and the FG42 display only black in the sniper field of view. The game screen overlays are still there, such as health, ammo, steady meter, etc, and I can see the centre dot of my crosshair, but the rest is black.

So it technically "works" but is effectively useless. Binocs still work, mg42 mode still displays properly, just sniper guns are broken. Sniping still works under "normal" games without Fritz. I'm running ET 2.60B, Fritz Final, Windows Vista Premium, with ATi HD3200 780G on board graphics with 128MB "Sideband" discrete memory, with 256 shared system memory. I think the drivers are based on Catalyst 8.4 (they came on the mobo CD, no newer versions on mfr website).

Any ideas?

[TomTom]

I think I remember reading about somebody with a similar video driver problem (if they were running a mod it was not FritzBot ET BTW). I'll have to search the splash damage and ETQW forums to see if I can find it again.

[[|*|] Nemesis D.]

Thank you TomTom. I appreciate the extra efforts.

I'm a little paranoid about updating the video drivers without some reasonable expectation that it will fix the issue, as they are otherwise working fine.

[TomTom]

In the meanwhile check the console (`) and look for any warnings and errors. You could turn on console logging too. And what are your ET graphics related settings?

What other mods do you run successfully (e.g do you run ETpub or ETpro OK?)

[[|*|] Nemesis D.]

I will try logging the output from the console and see what happens. I have seen errors in there, but they did not seem related to me, though I don't know exactly what to look for.

I have run ETpub, ETpro, shrub, jaymod, etc, without issues. I will double-check them though.

I feel that the problem is unlikely to be related to drivers, as it does the same thing on my wife's laptop, which uses a different chipset entirely (ASUS M51-series w/ Intel Core2 Duo 5750 chip, nVidia 9500M GS 512 discrete graphics, latest drivers).

Resolution doesn't make any difference. I've run the game at 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1152x856, 1280x1024, and 19020x1080 (custom), and all exhibit the same behaviour. FSAA and AF are set to application controlled. I've used both bi-linear and tri-linear filtering, both dynamic and regular lighting, vsync on and off, different texture detail settings, etc.

Are there any settings I should be looking for in particular?

[TomTom]

Don't know. I gave up trying the internet search, and looked at the C code of vanilla ET for drawing the scope (CG_DrawWeapReticle in cg_draw.c) then drilled down till I hit what I think is what calls the Q3 graphics engine. Saw nothing like a Cvar affecting the ET game engine code. Also nothing I looked at would need anything changed for the bots so I doubt Mal touched these functions.
Once you start logging the console open the console and type /cvarlist to log your cvar values to the log file.

Since two computers running different video company chips have the same problem, I would;
1-create a new ET directory, put a fresh copy of ET in it (no custom maps), then add a fresh copy of FritzBot ET and see if ET or FritzBot has the problem
-or-
2- move all the other mods and custom maps out to temporary directories to check for conflicts (I had problems with ETpro and textures... at one point)

[[|*|] Nemesis D.]

I'll try both the console logging and a fresh install and see what happens.

[TomTom]

Look for any errors in the log file about
/gfx/misc/reticle_eq.jpg (-or- /gfx/misc/reticle_eq.tga)
and
/scripts/gfx_misc.shader (-or- gfx/misc/reticlesimple)

These are the two files in etmain/pak0.pk3 that create the black circle frame in the center of the display (the sides and crosshairs are done in the c code). If any other files in /etmain contain files inside them with these filenames then there is a conflict (or shaders containing "gfx/misc/reticlesimple"). Alternately the pak0.pk3 could be corrupt or the Fritzbot dll (cgame_mp_x86.dll or ui_mp_x86.dll ?) could be corrupt. If you are using a non-FritzBot client dll that could be the problem. The only client dlls that are known to work with a FritzBot server are plain ET, FritzBot ET and some versions of Whaleclient.

[[|*|] Nemesis D.]

I just scanned the log. I could not find reference to any of those mentioned files.

I'm thinking about reinstalling the game at this point.

I also double-checked the other mods that I'd run previously, and now they all do it too. That tells me that the problem is with the files from /etmain after all... maybe?

[[|*|] Nemesis D.]

I'm slightly closer to figuring it out. I reinstalled the game from scratch, then put in Fritz, and everything worked. I restored the /etmain folder from a backup I'd made and the problem returned, so a file in that folder is creating the problem.

I just need to figure out which one.