Help: Arcanum running very slowly at times

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I could use some help. My system, while not top of the line by any means, should be good enough to run arcanum at the least. I have a Celeron 400 with 64 megs of RAM and your run of the mill 8 meg video card. Arcanum loads extremely slowly for me and the game is experiencing alot of drag time. When moving around, it will hang up for a few seconds, same when scrolling the screen. It also take a while to switch between screens (gameplay screen to options to inventory to map, etc.). Also the sound skips alot at the start of dialog. I'm enjoying the game thus far, but this lag time is really annoying me. Does anyone know any game settings that that will improve the preformance, or did the game designers doom me by setting the minimum specs too low? Heck, it looks less visually impressive than BG2 IMO; I'm having a hard time figuring out why it's causing my system so muhc lag time.

 

Can't help you. It doesn't seem there is a setting that would improve your performance.

Try on official page or forums.

 

Well, I've seen that one of the problems was that the game was running slow on some video cards. But I think that those were the ones with 32 Mb RAM. The 1.0.7.0. patch fixes it, so give it a go...

 

it slowed down on my 16mb card too

 

Crawl, all I could find out on the net is that WAREZED copy slows down no matter specifics of your machine. 1024 Mb wouldn't help you to improve it, nor the brand new graphic card.

So Crawl, ask these two persons if their copy was legal or warezed.

As I said above, post your question on official site or contact customer support.

 

Yes, my copy is not legal, but I don't have the problem that Crawl has. My only problem is that I can't patch the game because I need a crack...

 

I say you probably need a better computer, that's all.

 

Elendil, there are patched cracks out there. search for em.
me i bought original so i can play online.

 

I've heard Arcanum runs poorly on W2k/NT/XP.
I have high end computer myself and windows mentioned before.. I have 1-2 second stops sometimes while scrolling the map and loading some areas takes awhile. But.. playable just bit annoying sometimes.

 

Unfortunately, I've found that I can't even play in the first town I come to because it scroll so slow. It takes a minute to move a quarter of a screen over. Fortunately, mine is perfectly legel. I wouldn't know how to get an illegal copy if I wanted to. I guess if Extremist can't help, I really am screwed. But thanks for looking and asking around for me, though, Extremist. I'm using Win98 as well, so it shouldn't be a problem. I guess I'll try the patch (I don't think it will help though), and I will take your advice and post a question on their official boards in a day or two. I honestly hope I can get this damned thing to run properly because I was really enjoying it. Though, if all else fails, I still haven't had a chance to play Planescape.

And to the person who said I need a better machine. Really? You think? Look, I alrealy know that. Thanks for the insight.

EDIT: Heh, I finally figured it out. Well I'm not sure if I did or not but it runs fine now. Anyway, after scanning the offical forum, I tried the option of walking through town in combat mode. Someone said it greatly sped up gameplay doing that for whatever reason. And it worked fine, so I clicked off it and tried walking around. And to my amazement, it went fine as well. I tried to figure it out, and eventually it hit on me that I ran the game in normal mode, not safe mode. Again, this is a know issue for whatever reason, as several people were saying how it slowed their game down. So for whatever reason, running it in normal more works for me now (it didn't before mind you). Maybe it was the uninstall/install I preformed three times before tonight that helped as well. Regardless, I can now play Arcanum!!! Horray!

EDIT2: Also, there seems to be an issue with Directx 8 taking up lots of memory with Directsound's debug output level. It was suggested on the officail forums that if you are expriencing the annoying clock always running in the corner of your screne problem, download an applet that will allow you to adjust the debug output to minimum. This will supposedly solve your problem. Aparently the game developers agree, acording to the post at least. If your interested, go to http://community.sierra.com/WebX?14@24.2PpqaF10txo^11@.ef27859 and check it out for yourself. It seems to work.

[This message has been edited by Crawl (edited October 18, 2001).]