weird movement performance problem

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I just installed a copy of Icewind Dale last night. The game ran fine, and I made it as far as the Ogre in that cave with all the orcs. Then I powered down my system and went to bed. Today, just under 24 hours later since installing it, I sat down to try the game again, and whenever I try to move a character, there is a long pause and the animation gets jerky. When I try to move the whole party at once, it either has a REALLY long pause and moves REALLY slow, or the whole thing locks up.

I tried restarting and reinstalling the game, yet the same thing persists, both patched and unpatched. I Also suspected the search node thingie got messed up, but I even tried setting that to 4000 and it still did the same thing. Changing to 16 bit or 24 bit, and full screen/windowed had no effect. The OpenGL merely crashed the program when I tried to start it with it turned on.

I'm using an older 1ghz computer running Win98SE, which should (and was last night) be plenty of power for a game like this. I don't have anything better that can run Windows.

Any ideas what could have gotten screwed up on the system to cause this? Baldur's Gate 1 works fine, and Icewind dale II works fine. If I understand things correctly, these are suppost to be based on the same engine, so logically whatever would affect one engine so aversely would affect them all. I haven't really played Icewind Dale II yet (I wanted to play them in order, except I don't have BG2) but I did run it enough to clear the goblins from the docks without problems.

These games are all second hand, and I traded some of my own games for them. It's not piracy, simply swapping the disks and boxes. No different than swapping books, something I also do. The person I got them from is a relative and said he never heard of this problem, and that it was working when he last checked.

 

Could also just be a bad install, or soemthing messed up your savegame (defrag, antivirus, or anything else that touches the files.). I had a install fo PST that worked through entire game, until the end, when you go BACK to the very first area, the entire game crashed and refused whatsoever to enter, reinstal.

 

To Taulntain:

I don't see anything in the config program or the options menu pertaining to framerate or pre-cache. At least not for Icewind Dale I. Are you sure you're not thinking of Icewind Dale II?

I doubled the cache to 200, and 3D was not turned on. It seems to crash the game when I tried it. At least, the game is "not responding".

To Reptor, I tried reinstalling it once, but I'll trash it again and install it a third time. What bugs me is that it worked fine on the initial install, but the next day after work I have this problem. Most of the night and following day the computer was not only turned off, but the power bar was switched off as well due to some irregularities in the power grid due to a bad storm. I only did a little web surfing in between playing the game. At least as far as the limited scope of the activity on the computer it's installed on is concerned.

The odd thing is, it's only when PCs or NPCS move that there's a problem. I was able to cast spells and fight in the bar. Nothing was slow or jerky as long as everybody was staying in one place. However, when the NPCs responded to my casting Magic Missile and Color Spray on them, it also slowed up when Hilderth and Grisella charged me. Naturally this ended the game quickly since I couldn't manuver very well, not to mention that for the test I didn't bother to roll good stats.

 

First of all, there is no "Game" tab in the config program. If somebody could tell me a Windows equivilent of the Macintosh Command-Shift-3 screenshot trick, I'd post a screenshot to a webpage.

As it stands, there are four tabls "Options", "General", "Wizard Spells" and "Priest Spells".

IMHO, "General" would be better labeled "Keyboard Mapping" since that's all it deals with. Or perhaps that is what they mean, "Genearl keyboard mapping", since the Wizard/Priest tabs also deal with the same.

As for "Options", going left to right, top to bottom, there's a box for the cache size,
a box for "game seed" which has "AI updates" (currently set to 24)"
Next is "path search nodes", which I first suspected was the cruplit, yet changing it seems to have no effect.

Under "path search nodes" are some radio buttons labeled "bits per pixel". This computer only supports 8, 16, or 24-bits, and I've experimented with both 16 and 24-bits in 640x480, 800x600, and my preferred 1024x768. I can go up to 1280x1024, but the monitor starts making this (really) high pitched whine that while barely audible to my ears, gives me a headache, so I don't use that setting.

To the right of "Path search nodes" and "bits per pixel" (what I keep thinking of as bit depth, sorry, long-time mac user) are "Performance Options", that I know were all checked when I played before. What worked before should work again, but it's not. Thier five check boxes that say
Ambient sound effects
Footstep sounds
Translucent Sound Effects
Transparent Shadows
Wheather

moving down and back to the left column we have a box labled "Screen Saver" which has a checkbox labeled "Diable during play" which is checked and sounds right.

and to the right are "3d options" which has an unchecked checkbox labeled "OpenGL Mode (unsupported) and an unchecked and dimmed box labeled "3dfx Voodoo(tm) Card installed".

None of the other stuff mentioned is in the config program. This program is labeled version 1.3.032313 on the options screen. I have tried appilying the 1.6 patch downloaded from Sorcerers.net. No effect.

What really bugs me is that it ran once, then it's doing this movement crash. The long delays when somebody tries to move, eventually locking up the system making me hit the reset button on the front of the computer and making the game unplayable.

The only thing inconsistant was the nagging me about registering, but I get an error when I choose the browser method, and I don't have a printer or modem (I have broadband) hooked up to this computer. My mac does all of that. Considering that Interplay/Black Isle is gone, I doubt I can register.
A paranoid part of me thinks this is some kind of anti-piracy thing, even though I have the origional CDs.

As for defragmentinging the drive, I will try that when I go to bed. Last time I defraged the drive it took over 7 hours. I prefer to have the computer do that kind of job while I'm sleeping in my bed.

Oh, the bg programs. That was the very first thing I checked. But even terminating everything I think I can, it still had the problem.

 

I increased the cache to 500, defragmented the drive, and increased the AI updates and search nodes. Though I honestly don't see how the defragging and chache can possibly affect this. The glitch seems to be related to movement. I'm not talking about unexplored areas, but right at the start in the bar when I try to move closer to Hildreth. I also don't understand why spells animate fine, and the menus work fine. If it had done this right off the bat, I'd figure a compadibility problem. If it was also affecting Baldur's Gate 1 and Icewind Dale II, I'd understand. What I don't get is what could have caused this. I've even tried running ad-aware and Norton Antivirus to try to see if there was some malicious program (I consider spyware and adware that gets installed without your knowledge or conscent no different from viruses, ESPECIALLY if it's installed by a web page without asking you) that infected my system, but it was clean except for the usual cookie stuff adaware reports.

I'm almost ready to give up and see if one of my friends wants to trade it for something else, like maybe somebody has Baldur's Gate II, or Planescape. I mean, for something to relax with, it's turning into a big hassle. It should run fine on a 1ghz win98 system. It's not like this old machine is running something that was unavailable when the game was released.

 

My advice: Try to turn the 3d option on, that worked for me. Actually the game froze if i had the 3d option unchecked.
If this doesn't work, try to uninstall the game comlpletely and make (a full) reinstall.

 

I've found that reducing the number of path nodes can actually help performance sometimes. You don't need 10,000 search nodes to walk across the bar!

FYI... to get a screenshot in Windows you should use the "prt sc" (print screen) key in the top right area of your keyboard. That copies a .bmp graphic of the whole screen to your clipboard. Using the ALT key in conjunction with "prt sc" will cause only the current window to be copied, instead of your whole desktop.

Have you tried in both windowed mode and full screen? Also, you may want to try disabliing the EAX sound effects... it's a long shot but might work.

[ January 30, 2007, 04:46: Message edited by: Otis ]