Question about Destroyer Command texture issues
 

I'm trying out Destroyer Command for the first time. I didn't really bother with it when it first came out after reading the reviews.

I've gotten several of the mods, and the game doesn't seem to be too bad. I have an issue though. On some of the missions, other AI units are blacked out and missing the textures. For example, on Savo Island, the friendly cruisers are all black with no textures. Everything shows up fine in the ship viewer, including those classes of ships missing textures in the mission itself.

Was this an issue before, and is there a fix? Or is this a modern computer deal where something isn't displaying right with modern video cards/drivers?

Hi,

I believe you are right and it's an issue with new graphics cards and the older game.

I've been playing and heavily modding DC for about a year and have luckily not had any graphics issues. Plays OK full frame on 27" monitor at high res. I've used on both Nvidia Geforce GT 520 Win7 & GT 610 and WinXP.

Two possibly related issues are: Are you using the high Res ship models? In the folder dc/sims/units/highpolyunits there is a readme with instructions on how to use them. I didn't figure that one out for awhile.

Also if using Win7 play DC in XP mode which for sure should help with the overly sensitive mouse cursor.

I hope you are able to resolve the issue.

-Tim

Both SH2 and DC can be cranky with older cards, especially some NVIDIA cards. However, it sounds like a mod soup issue, to me. I would try doing a full uninstall and a clean install, then mod slowly and carefully and stop when the problem appears, which would indicate a conflict.

I wish it was just a mod issue.

I reinstalled the game, and it's unmodded at official patch version 1.1 right now. The missing textures are there on several of the missions. I don't know if there is anything I can do about it if that is the situation.

What are your system specs?

Oh,

AMD FX Processor
NVIDIA GTX 560
8 GB RAM

on Windows 7 64-bit.

It's frustrating really, because I can't even play several old classics anymore (like Fighting Steel). It's either NVIDIA has gummed things up with new driver releases (I'm told AMD drivers can still play some of these old games) or on games tied into the processor performance they play at warp speed.

Destroyer Command is pretty good with mods, but not much fun when all the vessels with you are pitch black shadows.

You are correct that newer NVIDIA drivers break compatibility with older games. However, the architecture of some NVIDIA cards can also create compatibility issues. I have a desktop with an NVIDIA Geforce 210 that goes haywire when I install Projekt Messerwetzer for both SH2 and DC, regardless of drivers, but works just fine in stock. Yet, I have a laptop with a GTS 360M that runs both games with mods like nobody's business with the latest drivers.

You can always experiment with rolling back the drivers to see if that is the issue. I would try to downgrade the driver to anything older than 285.58 to see if that helps. If it does not, you may be unfortunate enough to have one of the graphics cards that is incompatible due to hardware conflicts.

I've looked around for ideas, and about the only foolproof method I've found is putting together a small "retro" pc with a ITX (mostly) everything on motherboard system.

I wish someone with the technical knowledge could 1. patch these games 2. come up with a "driver switcher" that allows you to switch between driver releases for your video card or 3. come up with a way to switch between video card and on board video for those that have it.