Occasional Flashes/Flickers

[unmerged(57903)]

Basically, I'm getting flashes/flickers on the screen at intervals of anything between 1 and 20 seconds. This is not new with Paradox games, for me. Every so often, a patch will come along with the problem, but it will depart once another patch comes along. Whether that means its been recognised as a problem and sorted or just resolved by luck, I don't know.

Its not a terrible problem, the game can be played. Its just irritating. So, I'm just flagging it up, on the off-chance you'd have a clue as to what to do with it.

 

[Yank]

Ok it's not just me then...

 

[OHgamer]

Part of the issue usually is that you have too much stuff running on your system in the background, and your RAM is straining under the load of those other processes and doing all the calculations needed for Victoria.

Best thing to do is not run things like email, web browser and the like while playing. Usually reduces the flickering screen problem quite a bit.

Also running the game at lower speeds can help, since it gives the RAM more time to do the computations needed each day the game is played.

 

[unmerged(57903)]

Part of the issue usually is that you have too much stuff running on your system in the background, and your RAM is straining under the load of those other processes and doing all the calculations needed for Victoria.

Best thing to do is not run things like email, web browser and the like while playing. Usually reduces the flickering screen problem quite a bit.

Also running the game at lower speeds can help, since it gives the RAM more time to do the computations needed each day the game is played.

I'm not sure its related to my RAM. I'll give what you say a go, though, as I have had some small stuff running, but as I say originally, its a problem I've had at various points in time with various Paradox games (Vicky, CK, HOI2 etc.). The issue will immediately crop up with a new patch, for example, and then immediately disappear with the said patch.

 

[Yank]

I'm not sure its related to my RAM. I'll give what you say a go, though, as I have had some small stuff running, but as I say originally, its a problem I've had at various points in time with various Paradox games (Vicky, CK, HOI2 etc.). The issue will immediately crop up with a new patch, for example, and then immediately disappear with the said patch.

I've shut everything else down that I can and it is still happening.

 

[sirsri]

Try alt tabbing back and forth a couple of times as well. The problem is related to the priority of the process tree for running victoria. Closing down all other programs is the simple solution to the problem since the obvious candidates for taking priority (and available memory) are gone, but background tasks can also go wonky and suck up a lot of CPU cycles for completely useless things. Didn't think your printer software could somehow find a way to use 20% of your aggregate CPU cycles? Let students write it, then sell it!

Depending on what background tasks you have running (intentionally or unintentionally) you may see this with varying degrees of severity. You might try the standard virus/spyware checks and start trying closing down programs related to checking USB devices you don't need until you can find one that might be causing the problem (it may hang when you try and close it). Disable your virus checker etc...

Also try rebooting (and log out log back in), some startup programs could be failing to behave and causing problems.

 

[unmerged(40)]

#1 culprit for me has always been MusicMatch Jukebox. I always try to kill the process mim.exe before I play a paradox game. Eliminates >90% of the flickering for me.

Look in task manager for non-core processes that are doing a lot of I/O reads or writes. mim.exe is pretty bad, maybe you have another.

Scott

 

[KingOfTheIsles]

I had this, turned out it was my anti-virus software. Just look out for programs running in the background.

 

[Friedericus Rex]

Potentially it is a problem with your refresh rate. I used to have the same problem with the flickering. So on a whim I checked on my ATI Control Panel to force all programs to use the same refresh rate as my desktop settings. Solved it for me.