Sims 2 - Shadows appearing as black squares, Catalyst 13.12

[HoneycombAG]

I had Catalyst 13.4 (which by then was being used by my onboard HD-7480D, on-die with the APU itself), and in the Sims 2, installing 13.9 or 13.12 drivers causes this glitch to happen:


Well, just recently I put in an ASUS Radeon R7-250 graphics card and I find that the Catalyst 13.4 drivers didn't support that card, so I had to install it from a CD.

My game's Shadows setting is stuck on "Medium" as a result.

And there's the problem, because it only glitches when Sims are indoors. Medium setting makes it where only stationary objects have shadows, but now it makes the game "less" realistic anyway.

And, on Steam, buying The Sims 3 and all of its DLC costs around $460. There's no way anyone can get that kind of money, so getting Sims 3 is basically out of the question!

I already tried filing a complaint about it using the AMD Catalyst issues reporting form but I ain't heard nothing back about it. They're a bit too focused on the "new" games.

(For some reason, it still goes back to 800x600 even with the memory override taken out of Graphics Rules.sgr.)

How do I fix the black squares problem?

 

[Mellon Head]

I usually don't recommend beta drivers, but in this case you might want to try them out.

AMD Radeon? Video Card Drivers

 

[HoneycombAG]

Beware of Raptr drive-by download

Catalyst 13.12

...was out of beta ages ago! It's the latest release. The newer release candidate that is available is Catalyst 14.4 RC Version 1.0

I do want to point out a little drive-by download behavior when using the AMD Driver Auto-Detect Program. If you see a screen that looks like this:

Close it out using the system tray or task manager, then uninstall it using either CCleaner, Revo, or by running the uninstaller directly as administrator. The uninstaller can be found in C:\Program Files (86)\Raptr.

 

[HoneycombAG]

No sir, I don't like it.

It still makes black squares in place of shadows. Look at the Sim on the right, his shadows work because he's outside.

And I thought I had stuck the game to use "Medium" shadow and lighting quality when I last left it, I think these are settings that "Graphics Rules.sgr" overrides, so I'll have to hack those parameters too.

 

[Mellon Head]

Catalyst 13.12

...was out of beta ages ago! It's the latest release. The newer release candidate that is available is Catalyst 14.4 RC Version 1.0

I meant to try the new beta drivers to see if they work. Version 14.4. It seems that they don't work for you.

 

[HoneycombAG]

Well, I went as far as to tune the shadows in with the Catalyst Control Center, by making a profile and adjusting the settings from there, but that didn't work. I guess all my Sims are now stuck casting no shadows for the time being.

But wait, if they aren't going to cast shadows, then they would have to be ... ghosts?!

Last Settings I Tried

 

[elly87]

Sorry for my English, it is not my native language.
I have the same problem as you have, same graphic card and I am running Sims 2 on Windows 7. I installed the game today and I immediately noticed that, when Sims are inside the house, the shadow is a black square. Could you find any solution?