The Great Slow Down Debate (commentary, not solution)

sl....ow.....do.....wns.....
dri.....ving......me......in.......
sane......must.......fi......nd......cure.

Seriously though, the advice in these posts (like "rev/..."somthing, and others) is great. I implemented the suggestions and they had a significant impact on my pc's preformance (from 76% available system resources to 92%). Unfortunately they have had no impact on the slow downs in the game. None.

I have seen a lot of discussion here about vid-cards being responsible, but COME ON! the graphics are not at all that complex, I've had more complex graphics from larger games work much better on my computer than Arcanum does. Actually, these graphics could be described as "eldery", not that I am complaining about Arcanum's graphical detail, I'll take story and game dynamics over graphics ANY DAY.

But really the blame for these slow downs lies with one (or both) of two parties: Troika or Sierra.

TROIKA: if this is an example of lazy programming standards (i.e. a funky bug or bad prog. implementation).

SIERRA: if, as the publisher, they incorrectly printed (intentionally or otherwise) the minimum system requirements (MSR, he he).

I am biased, so I would jump to the conclusion that it is Sierra's fault, intentionly misrepresenting the MSR to appeal to a broader audience for the sake of initial sales.

It has been my opinion for a long time that the publishing industry is MURDERING the creative (gaming) industry through intentional misrepresentation of the product, and the all to common practice of pre-mature releases of unfinished products (ACTIVISION seems to be the worst offender in this example over the last few years, thus the reason I will NEVER buy another product they publish). But again, I am biased.

Either way, the box states the MSR as such:
64MB RAM, PII 300, DirectX compatible 8MB vid-card, 4X-CDROM, WIN95/98/00/ME, 1.2GB free disk.

From the posts I have read, those who are complaining about slow downs have systems that meet or exceed the MSR, so what gives? Who is to blame?

Of course, I know I don't know everything, and I am more than willing to admit I am wrong, so if anyone can refute my claims and give me a different, workable, fixable reason, I am all ears. In fact, I would love to be proven wrong, I think this game is great and I want nothing more than to play it again and again without these agonizing slow downs.

_________________
At times, even the best of us suffer from rectal-cranial inversion.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RightTurnClyde on 2001-09-25 08:17 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RightTurnClyde on 2001-09-25 08:49 ]</font>

 

I guess silence speaks louder than words. Troika?? Sierra?? [how do you typographically represent the sound of an unresponsive dial-tone?]

 

*tuuut.......tuuut.......* (and so on)
(imagine Xanamonarac sitting in front of his workstation, describing a german telephone sound)

 

Xan, your levity is appreciated.

 

I have a brand new P4 system & get slowdowns all the time. I have also had a problem with the game completely locking up on me now & then during combat. In particular, in Gilbert Bates' factory the game infallibly locked up during combat if my character left the warehouse storeroom. This happened about 8 times in a row. Grrrrrrr!!!

 

That could be because the P4 is a piece of crap. It benchmarks slower than a P3 at half the clock rate under certain operations tests. In fact, it's really weak in integer performance, which is something 2D graphics rely on heavily.

Also, I'm pretty sure there's memory leakage going on in Arcanum as well. The longer it runs the more times it pauses to swap. That suggests leakage.

 

If by pausing you mean what happens with the little stopwatch thingy, I rarely ever see that, its the super slow motion movement that I get in certain areas that drives me nuts. It takes 10 min. time (some times longer) for my party to run from the university area to the inn in Tarant.

 

My pc exceeds the min. requirements, 'nuff said!

We turn to entertainment, in it's various forms, to escape from the tedium of life, not add to that tedium.

One fact that has not yet been mentioned, and when examined should shed light on the real guilty parties:

Neither Sierra nor Troika has even so much as acknowledged, nor paid any form of lip-service to, the slow down issue.

Troika, Sierra; you better hope I never see your punk asses on the street, 'cuz if I do, you'll be sorry! I'm takin' my $50 bucks outta your ass!

 

Furthermore...

...I am sick and goddamn tired of the pc gaming industries complete lack of respect for it's consumers. It is disgusting how your greed overshadows your commitment to your customers.

And by the way, if you think my previous post was just a joke, you better think again. If you work for either of these companies, you better think twice about saying so in public until they address this issue, because if I hear you, I WILL BEAT YOU F**CKING RETARDED!!! And that's no lie.

 

You'll have to stand in line and wait for your turn I think.

 

Line? I don't think taking turns would be required, we could all share in the beatings at the same time, but would it be as satisfying?

 

Do you really think there are so few people upset at Sierra/Troika that all of them could beat the victim(s) simultaneously?

 

we could take turns at beating them, like a gang rape. or maybe show them how guns should really work? And if they will try to load their save will get corrupted and they will have to quit.

 

There are also problems loading saved games? Fortunately I didn't encounter them. Still bloody slowdowns are killing me. I really hate it when I have to visit Tarant.

Worst of all slowdowns destroy the replay value of th egame. I'd like to go thru it with different chars after I finish it with my techie but whenever I see those slowdowns I just want to finish it.

I have an idea. Let's allow Troika to design gameworld/graphics/characters but then let's give the ideas to people programming Infinity Engine games to code it. Can't say I encountered bugs in those.

 

so far my bugs count
1 elite frontier
2 Arcanum
3 Fallout
4 Sin

 

I still suspect that Sierra is to blame for intentionally misrepresentation of the min. sys. requirements, but since neither company has even acknowledged the issue what so ever...

The only thing I hate more than being ripped off and cheated is seeing a bunch of other decent people getting ripped off and cheated.

This does destroy the replay value, and in my opinion the credibility of both companies.

Come on fellas, the very least either of your companies could do is say that you're aware of the problem.

This appears to be an all to common U.S. business practice: go for the quick buck than lie, deny, ignore any problems your customers might have.

I also find it interesting that these slow downs don't really occur, or get that bad until late in the game. S.H. had no slow downs until I came back from Vendi. now its slow everywhere, and I couldn't find my recipt for this game to save my life, that's why I say I gonna take $50 outta somebody's ass. Trust me on this, if I catch you slipping, your gonna get a beatdown.

On a lighter note, about the corrupted save files, and trying to load one:

If it wasn't so tragic, it would be hilarious, your 50th level dwarf that you thought was in tarant suddenly finds himself transported to a featureless grassy field somewhere in the black area of the edge of the world map, but he's no longer a 50th level dwarf, now he's a 1st level human with the name "NONE", completely naked, standing next to a shopkeeper (also naked) and chest full of goodies, which will do you no good as you have apparently fallen off the edge of the world and can't get back.

Like I said, if it wasn't so tragic, I'd be laughing my ass off, that's got to be the funniest example of a corrupted save game.

 

Would this this true I could understand it if only I were getting slowdowns on my Celeron 400. however people get slowdowns even on most powerful machinces available and even with amounts of RAM so huge that they could load more than half, if not whole, of the game into it. Bad programming it is. Besides even my system had no problems with Fallout:Tactics, BG2 or even Q3Arena demo with all the bots in one place and 800*600 resolution. Unreal:T also runs smoothly.

You're right. If it wasn't so tragic I'd consider it an Easter Egg should it happen to me.

_________________
Nihil aliud scit necessitas quam vincere.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Dragoon on 2001-09-27 08:22 ]</font>

 

Slowdowns???

Slowdowns??
I have a p3 500 w/ 256meg ram and a Nvida
Geoforce 2 64meg.
I have played the game through 4 times now and have only came accross two spots where there were slowdowns.
1 in the BMC dungeon
2 In the void castle after I Reincarnated all of the dead dwarves there.

But in both cases once I left that area I was back to normal speed.

 

the troika people probably implemented the naked guy save game corruption to piss us off i mean i played thru the bmc and wheel clan qintarra and several other places without saving and when i thought it was time to save i saved the game the next day i played i wasnt my level 40 half-ogre anymore i where a fucking level 1 wuss it just pisses me off so much that i would like to destroy the damn game

 

Egads

This is turning into a CounterStrike forum! Jeez.

Yes, the slowdowns are very annoying, and yes, I believe it is due to memory leaks and bad memory management by the game. I am sure of this as the longer I play it, the slower and more pauses it has. At one point, after having it running continuously for about 14 hours (yeah, not much to do that saturday), win2k popped a message up saying that I had run out of virtual memory and that it was increasing the page file. My page(swap) file is already set to TWO GIGS. The engine isn't clearing out the previously used data. I can only imagine what it is doing to the fragmentation of the HD...which reminds me...gotta defrag when I get home.

Back to the point, saying that you are going to 'beat the makers retarded' is just ludicrous and asenine. Get ahold of yourself.