Blinking and flashing Cafu.exe

[realgaming135]

Hi everyone.
I am new to Cafu and also relatively new to game development, even though I have tried it sometimes before, using an engine called Reality Factory.

Well, I'm not posting this topic for nothing, so here's my problem.
As the subject line says, everytime I open Cafu.exe, it blinks and flashes all the time. The menu starts, and the blinking starts, and then I try to change the video settings to see if the graphics was too detailed and high, but the blinking is still there. (And yes, I have noticed that you need to restart Cafu.exe for the settings to change ) . But as I said, it still blinks. Then I started to think, if it is only the menu which is bugging, so I decide to start up a new game, and choose one of the demo levels, but while playing a level, it is still blinking.
It's like it blinks more than 4 times in one second or so. Then I see the FPS, and realizes that the FPS is going to 0 frames per second more than 4 times in one second, and that's why it also lags at the same time.
And I simply don't know what to do, or how to fix this. Hope someone is able to help

Thanks
-realgaming135

[Carsten]

Hi realgaming135,
welcome to the Cafu forums!

Can you please tell us what system (OS, graphics card, etc.) you use, and which version of Cafu?
Is this the same problem both in full-screen and window mode? (you can set window mode via the Options menu as well)

And can you please describe more precisely what you mean by "blinking"?
Is it something that affects the whole screen/window uniformely, or limited to certain portions or surfaces?
Is it uniform or in a pattern, etc.? (If possible at all, can you post a screenshot?)
Are there warnings or errors in the console? Note that you can log the console messages as described here.

Generally, do you have the latest drivers installed / do other graphics programs or games work properly, and could maybe other software like screen recorders, personal firewalls or something like that interfere?

[realgaming135]

My OS is windows 7, graphics card is Club Radeon 5700, and the folder I downloaded is called Cafu-bin-r525-win32. Downloaded from a link called Mirror 1:Cafu.de.
It's only a problem in fullscreen, not in windowed mode. And yes, it affects the whole screen. There is no warning signs.
If I take a screenshot and actually gets a picture of the wierd thing going on, it will just be a black screen. Sorry, but a screenshot will not work. And I have checked, and the latest drivers are installed. My other programs work properly. I turned my firewall off, but no diffrence.
I'll try to describe what I mean by ''blinking'': It's like someone is standing with a flashlight and this person is turning it on and off really quick, and keeps doing it with no break, and manage to turn it on and off more than 4 times in a second. That's how my screen reacts when I am fullscreen. And it's all the time, in-game and when I'm using the menu.

I'm glad you're trying to help, thanks for replying.

As I said before, in windowed mode it works, so at that time I had a chance to try one of the demos, and it looks really good, sadly my fps is a bit low when I play a demo. I hope to start learning using this program soon.

Anyway, thanks for replying, and I hope all I told here, was what you needed to know, even though it seems like no one else have had this problem.

[Carsten]

Hi,

thanks for providing all the details!
Unfortunately, I have no idea what in Cafu might cause this issue, but it very much looks like a graphics driver problem to me: maybe some setting related to video refresh or something like that. So indeed, I'm sorry to say that I cannot provide much more help than that, except maybe to suggest to try, if possible, a different graphics card or a different computer system altogether.

(But then, in over 20 years I've never seen an ATI / AMD graphics system that does not suffer from flicker. For me, it's usually the type where checkerboard patterns are visible in textures or sprites. Even on my new Windows 8.1 system with Radeon HD 7790, Cafu seems to work very well, but all normal application programs show flicker several times per day...)

Something else you may try is pressing F11 in window mode: It will toggle to fullscreen as well, but at the desktop's resolution, i.e. it just maximizes the window, without trying a mode switch. Maybe that can serve as an acceptable work-around.

[realgaming135]

Hi, and thanks for replying

Sorry to hear that nothing really can be done right now. I'm not able to use another graphics card right now, but I will ask someone else to download the same folder, and make the person tell me how it did act on his/her pc. Ofcourse it has to be someone with a different graphics card.

I tried to do that thing with F11, and atleast I can say that the wierd stuff going on did act different when I did that. It was more or less still the same, but the difference was, that it blinked slower. So pretty much the same, just slower.

So it looks like that the game I'm about to make is gonna be in windowed mode. But that's ok with me, because it's pretty much the same as fullscreen, but in windowed mode, you can actually do other stuff easier on the pc, than if it was fullscreen.

Maybe if I decide to make the game dowloadable (if I ever finish the game) I'll have to make the gamer know, that it runs better in windowed mode.

Thanks for the help