Eengstro’s Blog » TF2 glitch

More TF2 glitches

Eengstro — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:46:28 +0000

Fortunately, switching out of TF2 long enough to save the screenshot seemed to resolve the problem, at least temporarily — the break gave the video card a chance to cool down.

TF2 glitches gallery

Eengstro — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:51:37 +0000

My TF2 glitches, now available as a gallery!

Video card cooling

Eengstro — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:52:58 +0000

In pursuit of my Team Fortress glitching, I’ve added a PCI slot cooler to my computer — the Antec VCool. In general, a PCI slot cooler mounts into one or two PCI slots (the VCool occupies two), and either draws air into the case or exhausts hot air out of the case. The VCool, positioned directly below the video card, draws cool air into the computer and blows it directly onto the video card. So far, I’ve measured about a 10°C drop in video card temperatures under both idle and load.

With the extra cooling, will the X800XT behave? We shall see.

TF2 rendering glitches gallery

Eengstro — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:23:38 +0000

A test of Wordpress 2.5’s new Gallery functionality, using my favorite subject as of late: Team Fortress 2 rendering glitches!

Sigh.

More fun with Team Fortress rendering glitches

Eengstro — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:09:03 +0000

Maybe I should start a new Gallery dedicated to Team Fortress 2 rendering glitches. I saw these glitches tonight:

This engineer’s dispenser is showing the same type of glitching that I’ve seen before.

This is a new one: There should be water in the bottom of this sewer. Instead, all we see is wireframe polygons where the water is supposed to be; obviously, those polygons are missing their “water” texture map.

The Windows desktop itself continued to glitch after I closed Team Fortress, so I had to reboot my machine. After that, TF2 ran fine.

Previous TF2 rendering glitches.

More Team Fortress 2 rendering glitches

Eengstro — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:16:45 +0000

As a followup on my previous post, I managed to capture more Team Fortress rendering glitches last night.

The polygons in this sniper are all facing in odd directions. Notice the two long, thin polygons going down and to the left.

This sniper’s head and rifle butt seem fine, but the rest of him is being stretched to infinity. What’s with the hook floating over his head?

I was running ATITool while playing last night, and saw the following temperatures in the log:

2008-03-07 22:50:34 I Temperature: GPU: 83.3°C GPU environment: 63.0°C
2008-03-07 22:50:44 I Temperature: GPU: 83.4°C GPU environment: 63.0°C
2008-03-07 22:50:54 I Temperature: GPU: 83.4°C GPU environment: 63.0°C

This seems pretty hot. Is it too hot for the graphics card?

Another factor is making me think that temperature is the culprit: when I switched out of the game to save my screen capture, the card temperature would drop. This is expected, since the game’s graphics aren’t rendered when the game is minimized:

2008-03-07 22:52:39 I Temperature: GPU: 82.8°C GPU environment: 62.0°C
2008-03-07 22:52:49 I Temperature: GPU: 69.3°C GPU environment: 62.0°C
2008-03-07 22:52:59 I Temperature: GPU: 67.0°C GPU environment: 62.0°C

When I switched back to the game, with the card now much cooler, the graphics returned to normal. It looks like I need to start shopping for a cooling solution.

I also saw this, which is probably a bug in the game. Unlike the glitches above, this is the only time I’ve seen this:
This soldier moved around the map and fired his weapons, but there was no animation: his arms and legs didn’t move. It was like fighting alongside a floating mannequin. Only his eyes were still animated, adding to the creepiness factor.

Team Fortress 2 rendering glitches

Eengstro — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 07:31:15 +0000

I’ve been seeing more and more rendering glitches in Team Fortress 2 on my ATI X800 XT recently. The glitches always happen to characters or buildings only; the environment always renders correctly. Polygons will either stretch to infinity (sometimes as few as one, or every polygon in a character model), or they’ll “fan”, facing the wrong direction. The sentryguns in the screen capture here are doing both simultaneously.

I’m not sure if this is a bug or a hardware issue, but I’m suspecting the latter, as I’m the only one I know of (so far) that is seeing this. My first step is to monitor the temperature of the video card with ATITool while playing. (I’m not overclocking the card, just monitoring the temperature.) The next time it glitches, I want to know if the card is overheating.

Also funny is what happens to Steam after quitting a session of TF2 that’s been glitching. As you can see, Steam’s glitching too!

Hopefully I’ll turn something up on this. In the meantime, I’ll post more screen captures as I manage to get them.

Update: Followup post here.