Enemies Become Bright White

[Paddy]

@plutomaniac: thanks for the tip man, I just tried the halo fix but it didn't help

There's something I didn't mention before which might help narrow down the source of the problem; the enemies aren't bright white ALL the time, just most of the time. For instance, when I was taking those screenshots the proper enemy textures would appear briefly when I moved my cross-hairs around a bit. There seemed to be a "sweet spot" where I could make the proper textures appear. When the enemy is really close to me - like, staring me in the eye - most of the time the proper textures are there, but not all the time.

Another strange aspect of this problem is that it seems to affect the Grunts a lot more than the Brutes. In the Choir the Brutes didn't seem to turn white at all, but in the sewers they did. The Grunts, on the other hand, appear white everywhere.

When the enemies are white you can see them from the other end of the room/level clearly, even when the level is extremely dark (like in the Storage). They are unaffected by lighting/shadows and despite their extreme brightness they don't emit any light onto the environment themselves.

My settings in Amnesia are as follows:

Resolution: 1280x1024 5:4 (native Desktop resolution, along with the maximum 75 Hertz refresh rate for my monitor)
Texture Quality: High
Shadow Quality: High
Shadow Resolution: High
Fullscreen: On (windowed mode has the same issue)
Texture Filter: Trilinear
SSAO: On
Edge Smooth: Yes
World Reflection: On
Anisotropy: 16x
SSAO Resolution: High
SSAO Samples: 32
Parallax: On
Vertical Sync: Off
Shadows: On
Bloom: On
ImageTrail: On
Sepia: On
RadialBlur: On
Insanity: Off (happens when On, too)
Smoothing: On
Refraction: On
World Reflection (Water): On

I've played with and without cheating (i.e. editing the save files to increase health, sanity, etc.) and the problem occurs in both instances. I've also edited my configuration file to switch off flashbacks; the problem occurs when the flashbacks are both on and off.

I haven't tweaked my GPU or the drivers at all and in fact don't even use the Catalyst Control Centre or its game profiles. Everything is "stock". That's true of all my hardware - no overclocking or the like. Windows is fully updated, as is Steam. DirectX is up to date, too. I don't use real-time antivirus software, so there's nothing interfering with the game in that respect. No malware either; I scan regularly with several different programs.

I don't have any issues with other games so I hope that rules out the possibility that my GPU is dying!

Thanks for your efforts fellas, even just reading all of this is worthy of 100+

[plutomaniac]

1) I suggest a full reinstallation after manually deleting any leftovers and if you have steam do a file integrity check afterwards. It is important to have a clean game with no mods/tweaks etc... for now.
2) Make sure you have the latest drivers installed from AMD and working.
3) Try playing the game at the lowest possible graphics and then at the highest. Maybe something too high or too low is causing this.

[Paddy]

Cheers for the ideas man, unfortunately I'm still being chased by KKK Grunts.

[plutomaniac]

It is a hardware issue then, maybe your graphics card has issues

[Paddy]

Is there a way of determining which part of a GPU would be responsible for handling the enemy/NPC visuals? That is, is there a specific test I can run to check for issues?

I don't have any issues with any other games, including very demanding games like Crysis 1 & 2. I've certainly never seen this particular issue before in any other game.

Has anyone else ever had this problem before?

[plutomaniac]

no you cannot. This is either a bad driver issue or a hardware one. The game uses OpenGL and not DirectX so Crysis has nothing to do with any issues around opengl driver support.