I was going to play this through again this afternoon, but when I went to go at it, I found absolutely unplayable. I can handle some choppiness, but this was just bad. I hadn't changed any settings since I last played it, haven't installed any new mods, nothing. Also, the SoA part is fine at least it was the last time I was playing it (about a week ago). Any ideas?

None, other than check your config file incase ToB has somehow changed your video settings.

Free space left on your hard drive?

Some Tactics scripts can be pretty meaty, but presumably this is happening outside of battles?

[ 03-29-2005, 07:08 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

Well, it is in battles mostly, but I don't think that Tactics touched that first Pocket Plane challenge at all. I've got about 3Gigs left.

[ 03-29-2005, 07:10 PM: Message edited by: Sir Goulum ]

No, don't think it does off the top of my head. Although isn't that the one with monsters coming out of the wordwork everywhere?

Free space is fine - I was straw-clutching for something that might have changed outside of BG2. If you had 2MB of Free Space and low RAM it wouldn't help.

Yep. But it's never ever given me problems before. In fact, I used to be able to have Imoen, Edwin and Nalia each cast time stops at the same time, each cast a couple of dragons breath/comets and maybe some fireballs with it only choppying up a little when it is all realeased. It's just kind of odd that it all of the sudden changed.

Ok, I tried a re-install of everything to see if it was because something was corrupted or something like that, with no luck. Any other ideas? :(

Try to clean the cd. If everything else fails buy a new copy.

The CD doesn't have any scratches at all. And wouldn't that make it go choppy all the time, instead of just when there's animations going? It runs like a charm in the menus, and when I have it paused. If it where the CD, wouldn't it make them choppy as well?

Hmm. What I would try to do is:

+ Make sure that the game is installed to the hard drive
+ Defrag the hard drive
+ Update your graphics drivers
+ The Tactics scripts are heavily processor dependent. Did you just update your Tactics version before you had problems?

Those are the free things to try... after that costly hardware upgrades are calling.

Well, I just reinstalled it for the 2nd time yesterday, defragged last week, and I just tried to play it again before installing any mods and it was still really choppy. But not at all in SoA! (Had a save game before the final battle. The way it acts in ToB, even clicking to put the tears in would have made it slow up, never mind casting all those spells).

Hrm... Maybe it has something to do with the ToB mods you have installed? I recall that there was a problem with that in IWD2, where it kept on checking for a wardstone and therefore slowed down the whole game. Could it be that?

It's still choppy though, with no mods installed.

Blimey Sir Goulum, really sorry you're still stuck with this. I'm just completely at a loss.

Are you always importing your final savegame into ToB? What happens if you start a fresh ToB game?

Other than that, the only other thing I can think of is to uncheck all options you can think of in the setup programme and see how performance is then. If it's improved, then add them back one at a time until you get the one that's causing the problem.

As for why it would have changed between SoA and ToB I simply haven't a clue :(

A similar thing happened to me, though it covered both games. When you reinstalled it, did you do ANYTHING with the config window? For me, if I so much as raised the frame rate then lowered it, my game would be unplayably choppy until I reinstall it. If you did anything to the config, reinstall and dont touch it. Good luck!

OK, grab a copy of Sandra 2004 and analyse your computer. I need to know whether its your hard drive playing up (below standard spec) or your graphics card.

Could be a few things, but my best guesses are:

+ Greedy processes from other programs running
+ Graphics card overheating, remove fan, clean off compound, apply thin layer of AS5, reseat
+ Hard drive no longer working efficiently

If I were you, I'd hope for the greedy processes option. Try playing when you arent connected to the Internet and view process manager to see whats using up your resources.

I wouldn't go taking off your graphics card fan just yet - if SoA is still working fine then that's very unlikely to be that: I wouldn't take the risk of re-seating the fan incorrectly as it sounds like a ToB problem. Plus the usual symptom of graphics card overheating would probably be artefacts on the screen but you haven't reported any of those?

Play a 3d graphics intensive game and see what happens - any problems with it? If you go back to SoA after you've experienced choppiness is it still fine?

I experienced something similar with an older computer. It worked fine once I unchecked the 3d acceleration box in the settings bit. Just a wild guess, you proabably already checked this.

I've tried a fresh ToB & an import. I'm assuming that turning down the 'performance' meter is the same as unchecking everything, and i've tried that. It's ok if you can't help, noone on Sorcerers Place or Gamebanshee seem to know either. :(

Marty: Hmm... I might have to try that. So, just leave all the settings where they are after I install it?

Dace: Is this thing expensive? I'm kinda broke right now. I can tell you, though, that I never play with the internet connected (in fact if it were, it would be just short of a miracle... I have no internet upstairs. ;) ). I don't know what should be in the process list. What should I look for?

Shamrock again- Do you mean turn up all the settings to full this time? ;) I'll try that.

drew- Tried it both on and off, didn't make a difference. :(

What me? Give inconsistent advice! Never [img]tongue.gif[/img] :D

I meant play a different game that will give your graphics card a thrashing. That will be an easy way to test if its something wrong with your card.

What happens when you go back to an SoA game? Is it still working fine? Your posts only seem to refer to a game a week or so ago.

Well, I just tried a SoA game on Sunday to test that, and yes it is still fine. I have to play NWN with watered-down settings, but that is also due to my lack of RAM, and I know for sure pretty much everything of mine is under the recommened stats. I'm not sure how you'd classify Age of Mythology as, but I'll try that after.

Shamrock- Sim City works dandily, NWN is fine with the settings toned down, CivIII works wonders and Age of Mythology is fine. Any other ideas? :(

I'm completely stuck :( Not a clue. Have you tried posting on the official Bioware forums? With a larger userbase someone else may have had these problems...

I posted one about a week ago, with no response yet. Oh well, I guess I'll always have memories. :( ;)

Try turning off the AI and reducing the path finding nodes.

Wouldn't that affect SoA as well? I'll try it, just to be sure though.