Osmos Demo Support

[Arphahat]

I have Windows 7, 64 bit installed and am having the previously described issue where the demo is incredibly slow at the loading screen. I have been using task manager to kill it.

I have a new PC, i7 with a 4870 ATI card.

edit: And, as it is a brand, spanking new PC, I neglected to install the video drivers for it. After I did so, it ran perfectly. Oops.

[Meal Worms]

Glad to hear things are working out, gang. FYI, Almo followed up with me offline and we sorted things out.

@ Visoflex: Can you describe exactly what you mean by banding? Can you take a screenshot of your issue? Have you tried enabling/disabling Vsync? If flickering is a problem, does this occur only when running in fullscreen, or does it also happen in windowed mode? If it only happens in fullscreen, does the problem go away if you adjust your monitor's refresh rate in the Windows display settings?

Thanks,
Dave

[Meal Worms]

Ok, gang, for those of you who have been having trouble with sound in the Steam version:

We bundle OpenAL as part of our installer, but we suspect the Steam install script may be failing for some users.

There are two things to check for:

1. Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs... does OpenAL appear in the list? If not, check #2.
2. Look in your registry (with e.g. regedit) for the entry: My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Valve\Steam\Apps\29200. If it doesn't exist, then the demo installer didn't run. If this is true, we should get support from Steam. Maybe their installer stuff fails on some machines.

Thanks for your continuing feedback, everyone!
Dave

[DawnTreader]

Oh, and if you'd like to continue enjoying the game, may I suggest that you <ahem> purchase the full version?
Thanks,
Dave

well i was going to, but this glitch has made me very leary of buying it. although i think i might have a bigger problem, i think my audio on my motherboard is screwed. i have to look in to that, but it really doesnt explain the fact that the game glitches.

no. the demo does not work correctly after removing it from steam and reinstalling. however...

i just decided to try it in a window. i am playing as i type this. it works fine now. but if i full screen it has the same trouble again.

[Meal Worms]

Hi all,

I haven't been able to reproduce the menu flickering that some of you have reported, but I tightened up the code to the point where I'm pretty confident that it's fixed. We're going to roll out an update to Steam very soon, probably in a day or so.

Thanks for your help in tracking down these issues!

Dave

[Meal Worms]

Hey gang,

jeffplum reported on the 'Osmos Support' forum that disabling Steam Friends in game prevents the flickering popups and overlays -- can you please check and see if this works for you? Thanks!!

Dave

[deserve_]

Hi, I have downloaded and installed the Osmos demo both via steam and from your website..

In both cases when I launch the demo it freezes on the initial screen showing ' Loading Sounds' both fullscreen and windowed.

Havn't been able to play it at all yet any help would be much appreciated

This is from the Osmos log in my Documents folder..

Log opened on Wed Sep 16 00:35:44 2009
Commandline: C:\Program Files\OsmosDemo\OsmosDemo.exe
Preinitializing game
Localization: using language "en"
Localization: loaded Osmos-en.loc
using sound
showing splash
Creating window...
PC running with 2 monitors
Current res of primary display: 1440 x 900
Attempting fullscreen mode
Using fullscreen mode: 1440 x 900, 32 bpp
Initializing GLRenderDevice...
OpenGL version: 2.1.2
Initializing game
Initializing renderer
Loading textures
Loading fonts
Backed up stats to Stats\Backup\Osmos_Sep_16_2009_0005.sta
machine bigEndian-ness = 0, stats file bigEndian-ness = 0, flipping = 0
not using vsync
Initializing SoundSystem...
Initializing OpenAL
Getting OpenAL device list

[Meal Worms]

Hi deserve_,

Thanks for your post. Judging by the last line in the log, it looks like the game is crashing as it tries to enumerate your sound hardware. Two things for you to check:

1) Please make sure you have the latest drivers for your sound card and motherboard.
2) Please make sure you have the latest version of OpenAL installed. First go to your control panel and uninstall any existing OpenAL version via 'Add/Remove Programs', then visit Creative Labs' download page and run oalinst (the OpenAL installer).

Hope this helps!
Dave

[Swift]

Windows 7 says every program was not installed correctly, just click "It installed correctly" and be on your way. I run Windows 7 and everything works fine for me.

[pplpwr]

Reading Jazz Ad's issues, I felt better because I was having the same problem, i.e. massive slowdown both on menu screen and during gameplay, rendering the latter impossible. However, I am not as fortunate as he, it seems, for his Windows 7 somehow re-parametrized his version, while the one I have (downloaded from the Hemisphere website) still runs as slow as the one from Steam ever did on my XP.
This game seems great, and the ambient music is a relief from the corny orchestrations I've seen in some of the "high-end" games out there. I'd love to own a copy, but it seems that if the demo runs this slowly, any purchase of the full game would be a risky wager.

(btw, running XP as I said, SoundMAX, 2.8 GHz Intel (of course), 1.23 GB RAM...)