V. KNOWN ISSUES
================
The following items are known issues with the current beta version of the
game.
GLOBAL:
- Users playing on Windows(R) XP Pro X64 Edition may encounter a
"Windows Media Technologies" error during install.
- If you notice intermediate framerate hitching when running in High detail
setting, try turning texture resolution down to Medium.
- The Soft Shadows option will not work if Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA)
in enabled through the Windows Control panel. If you want to play with
both Soft Shadows and FSAA enabled, please use the in-game FSAA Controls.
- It has been reported that the game may not uninstall from partitioned
hard drives if installed to anything other than the "C" drive
partition.
- Please download the latest service pack before playing.
- If you attempt to run the game on a system with a missing or out-of-date
version of DirectX(R) installed, then an error message will appear on
launch that mentions "The dynamic library d3d9.dll could not be found
in the specified path". To fix the problem, re-install the application
and elect to install DirectX(R) 9.0c.
- Make sure that all applications that are running in the background such as
virus scanners, desktop Utilities (menus/toolbars), media players, and
chat programs are disabled before running F.E.A.R.
- Selecting a display resolution that is supported by your video card but
not your monitor will result in a black screen. If this occurs, use
ALT-F4 to quit the application, and then use the display option in the
configuration utility (CONFIG.EXE) to select a resolution supported by
your monitor.
- Task-switching with ALT-TAB or the Windows(R) Key back to the desktop while
running the game is not recommended.
- Striking the Shift key five times may cause the ´Sticky Key´ feature to
become enabled in Windows(R). If this happens, the feature will task
switch to a desktop dialogue box with options related to this feature,
including one to disable it entirely.
GRAPHICS:
General:
- Launching the game in Windows(R) XP 64-Bit Edition with ATI Radeon Windows(R)
64-Bit edition Beta Drivers 3 may result in a black screen on launch. To work
around this issue, toggle your color quality settings in Windows(R) from 32
to 16-bit (or vice-versa) and then back again. This should allow the game to
launch normally.
ATI Radeon:
- Enabling FSAA and Pixel Doubling at the same time will result in a black screen.
This appears to be a driver issue.
SOUND:
General:
- Ambient sounds may stop playing after a certain amount of time. We are
still looking into this.
If the in-game sounds and dialogue (voices) do not play, or there are
problems with the quality of these sounds, then please try each of the
following steps (in order) before playing again. Note that you should only
try one solution at a time, since trying them all can greatly reduce the
overall sound quality of the game.
1. Make sure that you have the latest drivers available for your sound
hardware installed. These can usually be found on the manufacturer´s
website. Before installing the driver, uninstall the audio device
using the Device Manager. If possible, run a "driver cleaner"
application to fully clean out any extra pieces of the driver and/or
leftover files of another sound card´s drivers. Do NOT allow Windows
to install its default driver when asked. Instead, only install the
driver you downloaded from the manufacturer´s website.
2. From your main installation folder (the default is
C:\Program Files\Sierra\FEAR SP Demo), double-click on the
file named WMFADist.exe, and then follow the on-screen instructions.
This will manually install the audio codec that is required by the
game.
3. From the in-game sound options menu, disable EAX and Hardware Sounds.
Please note that since this game uses an MP3 codec for sound, 3rd party
codec packs may cause speech and sound to drop out completely. If you have
a codec pack installed and still have sound issues after trying all of
the steps listed above, then you´ll need to uninstall both the codec
pack(s) and the game and then re-install F.E.A.R.
If 3d sounds seem to be change volume wildly (i.e. looking directly at an
object will make it sound quieter than when it is to the side), then
you may have your speaker configuration set up incorrectly. For instance,
if you´re listening in headphones but have the speaker configuration set
to Surround 5.1, then a lot of sounds will be sent to speakers that don´t
exist. You can change the speaker configuration in your sound card´s
applications (such as Creative´s AudioHQ or Surround Mixer) or in the
Control Panel.
If sounds that are originating in front of you sound as if they are coming
from behind, and if these sounds seem distorted, and you are playing in
5.1, 7.1 or any other Surround Configuration, then you may need to turn off
CMSS in your EAX console. CMSS is used to create a multi-channel version of
a stereo source. Unfortunately, it can cause issues like this when using it
on sounds that are already designed to be in Surround. Note that sometimes
you can choose not to install the EAX Console when installing your sound
card, so you may have to reinstall the driver in order to get this application.
If you are using a Creative brand sound card and get poor framerates when
sound hardware acceleration is enabled, then check for a process called
"CtHelper"in the Windows(R) task manager. If it´s there, terminate it and
try the game again. If this works, please contact Creative to learn
how to permanently disable CTHelper. If CTHelper is not present in the list
and the problem occurs anyway, then you will need to disable sound hardware
acceleration in the Sound section of the game´s options menu, or in the
Windows control panel, or in DxDiag.
