Shadows of Amn is running sluggish and slow

Foxtrot · Post by **Foxtrot** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 10:33 pm

I got the game for Christmas and have been playing it quite alot. I really like it but it is sooooo sluggish and slow. Monsters are killing my whole crew while my curser is still trying to push buttons to activate spells ect. I have a Mac G3 beige. Plenty of memory, so any suggestions on how to speed up the game play ? It is grueling trying to play as it is.
Thanks,
Foxtrot

Obsidian · Post by **Obsidian** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 10:36 pm

First off welcome to the board!
Secondly, I had this problem too for a while.
Easy solution, is get rid of some of your saved games, they take up a lot of room.
Thirdly, play the game fresh. Dont go on your computer, play one game and then play SoA,
if you restart before you play you'll have more RAM available.
And you can also try checking the visual settings
(dither, weather, shadows etc) as they can all take away computing power.

Hope that helps!

Tamerlane · Post by **Tamerlane** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 10:43 pm

Here's a simple solution, well I hope it will work.

Defrag often. With a game that size, defragmenting your drive will definetly help.

Foxtrot · Post by **Foxtrot** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 10:45 pm

Thank you for your speedy reply : ) I have done a bit of turning off/down some of the bells and whisles in the options settings already. I will get back in there and crank them down some more. I am spoiled and like to have the top notch graphics ect, but I will settle for a little less fluff in trade for some speed at this point : )

Foxtrot

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 10:57 pm

@Foxtrot, it might help if you could tell us a little bit about your system.

You know, its speed, amount of RAM, video card, free hard disk space, etc.

UserUnfriendly · Post by **UserUnfriendly** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 11:28 pm

I regularly defrag, delete the files in the cache directory and set color depth to 16 bit. this helped a lot, but still get some lag in darker maps. what else can i do? specific settings for graphics or route computations suggestions appreciated.

Foxtrot · Post by **Foxtrot** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 11:44 pm

A quick post before I retire for the evening.

Computer-Mac G3 beige
266 MHz
4.3 Gig HD
83% space used (that is after the recommended install of SoA)

I will dig into the computer profile in depth tomorrow morning and find all the rest of the information, free space real numbers ect. Thank you for all your help, very appreciated.

Foxtrot

Stilgar · Post by **Stilgar** » Fri Jan 25, 2002 8:55 am

I think you're problem is the 266Mhz, try putting all the setting at slow computer, and see if that works!

fugitive · Post by **fugitive** » Fri Jan 25, 2002 9:08 am

try putting al the settings at the 2nd 2 lowest. on my old pc (233) it ran well with those configurations...

fable · Post by **fable** » Fri Jan 25, 2002 10:13 am

Thought it might be something like that. Your CPU speed is pretty low. I'd suggest disabling some of the graphical options, moving to 16-bit color, and possibly settling for a lower resolution. Let us know if all that works.

Alienbob · Post by **Alienbob** » Fri Jan 25, 2002 1:58 pm

i used to run bg2 on a 200mhz. i would suggest turning *everything* down to the minimum. you dont get to see hardly any spell effects but at least it runs. you can do all this through the config program, or if you want a greater amount of customizability<sp?> than open up the 'power user text' in your bg2 directory and use it as a guide to edit your baldur.ini file(also in the main directory.) through this i maneged to get the game to run at a fairly good speed and was still able to see a lot of fx.

note: make sure you backup your baldur.ini file somehow before editing just in case you do something wrong.

Raistlin · Post by **Raistlin** » Fri Jan 25, 2002 8:09 pm

A quick solution , quicksave and then quickload . It helps in some situations .May seem pretty stupid but maybe it has something to do with clearing game data .

Even with 1.5ghz P4 512 Ram ,64 mb display card i have experienced slow downs . I play with max settings though ..Lowering these and sacrificing a little of your gameplay may solve the problem .

Foxtrot · Post by **Foxtrot** » Sat Jan 26, 2002 3:03 pm

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions. I have found the right combination of settings and the game is running like a champ now : ) I am not playing multiplayer as yet, still getting the hang of how it all works. I hope to see some of you online soon.

Foxtrot

UserUnfriendly · Post by **UserUnfriendly** » Sat Jan 26, 2002 7:30 pm

turn down the slider notch, and the biggest effect is disabling auto pathing comupations. makes no diff in party inteeelligence I can see, and greatly improves speed!!!kept 800 by 600 mode, thinking of lowering the pathing furhter and the game should run even better!!!

PorcelainPluto · Post by **PorcelainPluto** » Sat Jan 26, 2002 8:25 pm

I've had the same problem. My comp meets over all the "required" features I turned the settings all the way to the bottom of game performance and played from a fresh comp every time. Things went a 'little' faster and the only real trade off is you have to do with out all the pretty magic graphics but if you aren't an avid spellcaster it's not that bad. Of course that made things better for me it didn't compleatly fix the problem. I also found that DLing the patch helped some too and if you pause continuosly when in battle it's easier to issue commands (love that space bar). One of the most effective solutions though is sucking it up that you are part of the "My compuer is a better paper weight club" (I'm not knocking you, I have a blame packard bell for Torm's sake), and getting a soda while you watch you computer perform on the special olympic level.

PorcelainPluto · Post by **PorcelainPluto** » Sat Jan 26, 2002 8:27 pm

Oh yeah, one more thing. Kill all those needless programs that running the background. I know windows is really bad about that so I have to Crtl+alt+del and close everything except Explorer and Systray.

Morlock · Post by **Morlock** » Sun Jan 27, 2002 1:01 am

Originally posted by Raistlin
A quick solution , quicksave and then quickload . It helps in some situations .May seem pretty stupid but maybe it has something to do with clearing game data .

I used to have the problem of it running slow on my 450Mhz. windows 98, but that was only after it was on for a couple of hours. quick save or load made (at least temporarily) go to naormal speed.