hi everyone

I've recently decided to play the good old "UFO: Enemy Unknown" again. So I installed the X-Com Collectors Edition but the graphics were messed up. Ok, I installed the handy graphics patch ( ldr_xcom1.exe ) and now everything works fine ... except that the screen is flickering. Or more accurate it turns blank every 2 secs or so for just a millisecond. It isn't constantly flickering. It's the "hey, I'm winking with my eyes like a maniac" effect ... UFO is playable but I don't want to end up as an epileptic

- I've tried to turn off or slow down gfx hardware acceleration and the problem disappears but UFO becomes unplayable because the windows pop up very slow
- I've also tried to deactivate direct draw with dxdiag. Well, at least I get blank lines instead of whole blank screens then but it's still very annoying

my system specs:

athlon xp 2200+
ati radeon 9800 pro
1024 mb ram

win2k sp4
directx 9.0c
ati catalyst driver 5.7

Any suggestions ? And does anyone else have this problem ?

If you don't use the graphics loader fix, does the screen still flicker?

well, I'm not sure because when I start the CE version without the graphics loader fix I get somehow striped and scrambled graphics. It looks like they are "compressed" to 1/3 - 1/4 of the screen. Graphics are totally messed up

But I think that it doesn't flicker then. Perhaps the problem has something to do with the patch *sigh*

I ask because if it IS the patch, then perhaps a different version will fix the problem?

I have two, you see... They both work just fine for me, but maybe one of them is more suited to you?

Well I just installed my Collector's Edition version of XCOM (that ran find on my old Windows 98) computer on my newer Windows XP computer, loaded the "xcom1fix.exe" patch and presto the games works!

The problem however is I am getting a lot of flickering on all screens with the exception of the Geoscape. I wonder if anyone else has found a cure for this problem?

I have a ATI Radeon X850 graphics card with Catalyst 6.11 loaded.

I still have no idea... Maybe if you change your refresh rate? Alt Tabbing back into Windows then back again might also do the job.

You could further try Mok's hack, if those don't work.