Computer screen artifacting mid-game

[absoluthysterics]

Hello all,

First off, I just bought the game 2 days ago and have been having a LOT of fun playing it. However, most runs have stopped due to either overheating/screen artifacting/freaking out. I have been using a cooling pad and I mainly just run the game by itself (as in I'm not listening to music and doing 50 other things on my computer at the same time).

I've tried toggling both vertical sync on AND off in-game and on my laptop settings (both times the game still freezes) and adjusted the 3d settings on my laptop. I've even tried updating my drivers... Either way, I've been looking around for help and found an older post on the same problem - but I have different computer specs and those solutions people suggested have not worked with me...

Anyway, I was wondering if there was anything else I can do... or maybe if I should just upgrade my graphics/vid card... I really enjoy the game but I'm just getting really frustrated with screen crashes during the middle of a really good run....

Thank you!

Laptop specs:
Asus u56e
8 gigs RAM
Intel HD Graphics 3000 (I updated this driver + I don't have the openGL interface like in older versions)
Intel i7 processor
I also play with framerate limits and disabled some fancy graphic options in game

[Cactuschef]

just a thought, but check the vents in the bottom of the laptop. i've seen a few laptops that ran into overheating just because the ports are very small and became incredibly clogged with dust.

[absoluthysterics]

I did check my vents and they were quite dusty and tried to clean it with compressed air - however, on my next reboot my computer went to 'recovery' mode and I'm now stuck with the recovery mode for my laptop.... I can either reformat my laptop or be stuck in that mode... -____-

I've checked BIOS, did all the safe modes (still at the recovery screen), last safe boot-up option, and whatever options were left for spamming f8 at startup lol either way, I'm still stuck at the recovery screen and have no other options but to force unplug my laptop and restart..

finally I found windows boot manager and my "memtest.exe" is either missing/corrupted/socially inept...

I've done quite a google search for the solution and most (if not all) say to use the recovery cd's for my laptop - which means reformatting my computer -____________-

anyway my computer is less than a year old (11 months old actually) so off to geek squad in the best buy I bought it at tomorrow (if its open after this hurricane aftermath...)

But thank you cactuschef for the input!

[absoluthysterics]

As an update I had to do a clean reinstallation of windows.....
frustrating... but necessary

[boa13]

Thanks for the update.

[absoluthysterics]

I guess as a second update... with a newly cleaned out laptop, I reinstalled FTL

... although the screen/game/computer still had artifacting/freezing mid-game AGAIN and had to do a force shutdown (as in unplug my computer)

I guess I won't be playing the game anytime soon, unless there is a software update or something available.

[absoluthysterics]

Hello again, I hope someone can help me again...

But I tried playing again after a brief hiatus after my last post... and for some reason my computer still crashes mid-game

I was in the middle of a good run and I just got the stealth cruiser (my first unlocked ship! yay!) but then the game crashed as I entered the third sector...

My laptop still overheats and its usually too late for me to check the CPU usage because by then my screen freezes and bugs out (thus needing a forced power shut down like I've posted before). I checked the game again and the stealth cruiser is still saved, but I can only get to the last sector if I 'rush' and don't explore anything and try to get there as fast as I can (which I feel isn't what the game is about)

All specs are the same, and all my drivers are automatically updated
Is there anything else I can do? Is there an update/bug fix for the game anytime soon?

As much as I love playing the game, this has been getting extremely frustrating...

[absoluthysterics]

Here's some pictures of what I mean: (this also happens even in windowed mode)

I hope there's something to help! Thanks

[Matthew]

You can't always trust the "automatic update" of video drivers. You should definitely go looking for possibly more recent drivers. Intel Integrated cards have a number of issues with poor driver support with OpenGL, which is one of the reasons we list them as not "officially" supported in our tech requirements.

That said, your problem appears to be unique. That looks to be a far more serious crash that could be, as previously suggested, caused by overheating. When you got your computer fixed for the boot issues, did you also do a thorough cleaning?

[absoluthysterics]

When my computer crashed before (with the crazy recovery screen) I pretty much re-installed windows to factory settings. I lost all my data (cleared and divided my partitions again) and had to go through re-installing all my previous software (steam, microsoft office, etc.) and taking out the Asus bloatware.

I've gone through the Intel website and re-installed driver updates and installed those. Not sure if it matters, but I also had the current version of directx and did render tests with the OpenGL extensions viewer (http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/ and it said my computer passed with the opengl 3.1 I already have on my comp.

Hopefully this helps?
Thanks