Weird. This seems to be a hardware-specific issue. Do you have the latest drivers for your 3D card? Which 3D card are you using?

Also, does this happen on any other games?

I have some pretty bad flickering issues when it's running in a window, but in fullscreen mode it's fine.

I'm running it on an ATI Radeon 9800Pro All-in-Wonder.

Yikes. Hardware compatibility hell: The same software causing different result on different hardware configurations. This is the bane of every PC graphics programmer... when the parameters of operation do not completely fall within their jurisdiction.

This would never have happened if Teapot Wars was on the Dreamcast! Why did they kill it!

I'm seeing the same flickering mad behavior on a GeForce 6600GT. When in windowed mode, the frame rate is displayed as 1000's per second. If I partially obsure the game with another window, the flickering stops and the frame rate is displayed as a believable 47fps. This is with the latest (version 77.77) nVidia drivers.

There must be a difference with how DirectX interacts with a game when the window is partially obscured. Anyone have any ideas?

WM_PAINT getting called?

Further update. Compiling a debug version of TW shows failures on calls to Novodex's createActor from the VAddSphere and VAddBox routines. The number of successful calls before a failure seems to vary. Hmm, maybe I missed something when I ported the code to Novodex 2.2... Wonder if Mr. Mike can procure version 2.1 for download from this site, so that newbies like myself aren't immediately hit with a porting exercise?

Progress... createActor calls are no longer failing. Debug build is sort of playable (runs at ~400fps). When quitting a Debug build run, I see pTexture is invalid messages in the output window. Release build unplayable due to flickering (runs at ~2000fps). Partially obscuring the game window lowers the frame rate to a reasonable ~50fps.

Below are the updates that I made to physics.cpp for Novo 2.2. Did I miss something?

-------------------------
Changed line 46 from:

#pragma comment(lib, "NxFoundation" )

to:

#pragma comment(lib, "NxCooking")

-------------------------

Added after line 53:

#include "UserAllocator.h"
#include "Stream.h"
#include "NxCooking.h"

UserAllocator* gAllocator = NULL;

--------------------------

Added after line 600:

// Create a memory allocator
gAllocator = new UserAllocator;

NxInitCooking();

---------------------------

Changed line 602 from:

m_pPhysicsSDK = NxCreatePhysicsSDK(NX_PHYSICS_SDK_VERSION, 0, &m_PhysicsErrorStream);

to:

m_pPhysicsSDK = NxCreatePhysicsSDK(NX_PHYSICS_SDK_VERSION, gAllocator, &m_PhysicsErrorStream);

----------------------------

Changed lines starting at 620 from :

PhsyicsMaterial *pMaterial = g_Materials;
for (int i=0; i<PhysMat_MaxMaterials; ++i, ++pMaterial)
{
NxMaterial mat;
mat.setToDefault();
mat.restitution = pMaterial->m_Restitution;
mat.staticFriction = pMaterial->m_StaticFrition;
mat.dynamicFriction = pMaterial->m_DynamicFriction;
m_pPhysicsSDK->setMaterialAtIndex(i, &mat);
}

// Create a scene
NxSceneDesc sceneDesc;
sceneDesc.gravity = m_DefaultGravity;
sceneDesc.broadPhase = NX_BROADPHASE_COHERENT;
sceneDesc.collisionDetection = true;
sceneDesc.userContactReport = &m_ContactReport;

m_pScene = m_pPhysicsSDK->createScene(sceneDesc);
if (!m_pScene)
return false;

to:

// Create a scene
NxSceneDesc sceneDesc;
sceneDesc.gravity = m_DefaultGravity;
sceneDesc.broadPhase = NX_BROADPHASE_COHERENT;
sceneDesc.collisionDetection = true;
sceneDesc.userContactReport = &m_ContactReport;

m_pScene = m_pPhysicsSDK->createScene(sceneDesc);
if (!m_pScene)
return false;

PhsyicsMaterial *pMaterial = g_Materials;
for (int i=0; i<PhysMat_MaxMaterials; ++i, ++pMaterial)
{
NxMaterial *pMat = m_pScene->getMaterialFromIndex(i);
pMat->setRestitution(pMaterial->m_Restitution);
pMat->setStaticFriction(pMaterial->m_StaticFrition);
pMat->setDynamicFriction(pMaterial->m_DynamicFriction);
}

--------------------------------

Changed lines starting at 711 from:

actor->getGlobalPoseReference().getColumnMajor44((NxF32 *)trans);

to:

actor->getGlobalPose().getColumnMajor44((NxF32 *) &trans);

--------------------------------

Changed lines starting at 745 from:

m_pScene->startRun(timeSlice);
m_pScene->flushStream();
m_pScene->finishRun();

to:

m_pScene->flushStream();
m_pScene->simulate(timeSlice);
m_pScene->fetchResults(NX_RIGID_BODY_FINISHED, true);

-----------------------------------

Changed line 882 from:

convexDesc.flags = NX_MF_CONVEX|NX_MF_COMPUTE_CONVEX;

to:

convexDesc.flags = 0;

-----------------------------------

Changed line 885 from:

convexShapeDesc.meshData = m_pPhysicsSDK->createTriangleMesh(convexDesc);

to:

MemoryWriteBuffer buf;

bool status = NxCookTriangleMesh(convexDesc, buf);
convexShapeDesc.meshData = m_pPhysicsSDK->createTriangleMesh(MemoryReadBuffer(buf.data));

-------------------------------

Maybe you should just lock the frame rate with a wait loop at the end of the main loop. Basically, just firgure out how long you want to wait, and then wait 3/4 of that, then keep doing that till you've waited long enough.

Something tells me that physics ain't the problem - and that what were dealing with is a DirectX wackiness.

Funny - I used the suggested DirectX 9 framework to avoid such a problem!

I was hoping it was the physics since that's what I had to change to get it to compile.

Any suggestions on DirectX things to tweak to shed some light on the problem?