Smoothness

Knox2 · Post by **Knox2** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 1:21 am

When I play vampire, the game doesn't run smooth some times.
I have got a better system then the minimum system requirments, but still
at some points (walking through the city) he doesn't run smooth. I have
downloaded new drivers for my videocard. It's getting better, but still not
good enough. Has anyone an answer or a solution to this problem? Thanks.

Lestat · Post by **Lestat** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 3:40 am

Try upping your virtual memory.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 4:23 am

[QUOTE=Knox2]When I play vampire, the game doesn't run smooth some times.
I have got a better system then the minimum system requirments, but still
at some points (walking through the city) he doesn't run smooth. I have
downloaded new drivers for my videocard. It's getting better, but still not
good enough. Has anyone an answer or a solution to this problem? Thanks.[/QUOTE]
First things first. Go into your video card settings and set all selections for 'optimum performance' and turn off every bit of fluff and eye-candy it offers. Then do the same in the game options, and reduce your resolution to at least 800x600. That should get you going. If that's good, then start turning stuff back on until you find the best balance between performance and detail.

Lucita · Post by **Lucita** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 7:56 am

A bit better then minimum is no real definition...What is your exact system ?

I have a P 4 2.66 Ghz, 1 GByte RAM, ATI Radeon X850 Pro 256 MB with latest Omega Drivers and still I had some problems once in a while the last time I played the game.

Acleacius · Post by **Acleacius** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 3:04 pm

Try turning off your Enviromental Sound and if you have less than 1 gig of RAM you are going to have problems.

Knox2 · Post by **Knox2** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:56 am

[QUOTE=Lucita]A bit better then minimum is no real definition...What is your exact system ?

I have a P 4 2.66 Ghz, 1 GByte RAM, ATI Radeon X850 Pro 256 MB with latest Omega Drivers and still I had some problems once in a while the last time I played the game.[/QUOTE]

I have a AMD2600+ 1,6 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Nvidia Geforce FX5200 128 MB with the lastest drivers. And where in the game had you some problems?

Lucita · Post by **Lucita** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 10:08 am

In graphic intense environments. LA Downtown for example, though that might have been a problem cause of the memory leaks the game has.

Try to give your system an additional 512 MB RAM stick. The Nvidia card may be a bit to slow, but I would try the cheaper thing ( buying a RAM stick ) beforehand. Besides, you can never have enough RAM !!!

Knox2 · Post by **Knox2** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:08 am

I have the same problem in LA Downtown. But after walking around it's getting better. I think I'll do that, buying some extra RAM sticks. I spend
€50,- for that grapichs card

Thanks for the advice.

mr_sir · Post by **mr_sir** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:22 am

The same thing happens in Downtown with me, usually after playing the game for a while. Often if it starts lagging a lot, a system restart usually solves it. This may work until you manage to get extra RAM (I only have 512mb too).

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:34 pm

[QUOTE=Lucita]In graphic intense environments. LA Downtown for example, though that might have been a problem cause of the memory leaks the game has.

Try to give your system an additional 512 MB RAM stick. The Nvidia card may be a bit to slow, but I would try the cheaper thing ( buying a RAM stick ) beforehand. Besides, you can never have enough RAM !!!

[/QUOTE]

Actually, you can. In A 32-bit OS, your system can only address 4Gb maximum, so going beyond that is pointless unless you plan to go to a 64-bit CPU and OS.

However, that is a good tip. When I got MW, it was a bit dodgy, and kicking up my ram to 1.25 GB made a great deal of difference. Now that I'm running a solid 2GB, I forget that. Nice catch, Lucita.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 9:40 pm

[QUOTE=mr_sir]The same thing happens in Downtown with me, usually after playing the game for a while. Often if it starts lagging a lot, a system restart usually solves it. This may work until you manage to get extra RAM (I only have 512mb too).[/QUOTE]
I have a standing rule with VTMB. Don't expect the game to run more than an hour continuously in any specific environment for any reason without crashing to the desktop or a reboot. As noted, there are leaks, and after about an hour, something usually goes in the tank. I save/quicksave a *lot*.
The problem is that a memory allocation error is usually considered unrecoverable (ergo a crash), however, one of the cute little layovers from the early 16-bit days of windows is that error is a multi-purpose resource allocation error, so you get it for no memory, no disk space for the paging file, too many timers active, no font resources left, no more GDIs, Handles exhausted, Free memory table full, and a whole swack of things that have little or nothing to do with memory.
That's the major problem with a crash to the desktop or to a reboot. The exact cause is extremely non-specific and difficult to track down, especially if it's a resource leak of some kind. Even having said that, this problem probably would have been fixed a long time ago, if the company, regrettably, had not gone out of business. So now we're in the Vampire Hell of the Eternal Work-Around.
Short version. Save your game. Lots. Your quick-saves cycle on a ten-game rotating basis. A quick-save made ten saves ago likely has no interest for you, but if you're the really meticulous sort, then make sure and make a real save every 9th quicksave. That will give you an essentially unlimited backup of saved games that can take you back to somewhere near anywhere you might need to be. Just make sure you have enough disk space.
Also specifically save and label at every major junction in the game. That means the beginning of a new quest, the ending of any quest, the availability of any new target/resource/destination, and the completion of activity at any target/resource/destination.
That won't necessarily solve any of your problems - it will just establish the highest recoverery granularity you can expect to get. That is, if it does crash, you lose the least amount of time/effort.

Amendment: I trust this is unnecessary, but about every hour, stop. Save your game, shut the game down, and then start it again, thus avoiding the crashes altogether.

Knox2 · Post by **Knox2** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 8:15 am

Now something else, when i played vampire and quitting the game, it takes several seconds, almost a minute when i return to my desktop. What can i do about it

mr_sir · Post by **mr_sir** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 8:18 am

Thats normal, at least it is for me. I think its because it uses so much of your computer's resources as quite a few other games do it aswell. In fact, I find that if I want my pc to get back to how quick it was again before playing Bloodlines, its easier to just do a system restart after exiting the game.

Knox2 · Post by **Knox2** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 8:35 am

[QUOTE=mr_sir]Thats normal, at least it is for me. I think its because it uses so much of your computer's resources as quite a few other games do it aswell. In fact, I find that if I want my pc to get back to how quick it was again before playing Bloodlines, its easier to just do a system restart after exiting the game.[/QUOTE]

A system restart? How are you doing that? Are you pressing the windows button on your keyboard and then restart your computer??

mr_sir · Post by **mr_sir** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 9:05 am

No, I have my pc set up so pressing the off switch restarts my pc, and holding it for a few seconds turns it off, so I just exit Bloodlines the normal way then when it goes to my desktop I just restart my pc. Before I set it up like that, I just simply exited then as soon as the start menu appeared, I went to turn off computer and selected restart. I only do this because I have found that even after my desktop has appeared again etc., my pc still runs slower than it should.

Shizz · Post by **Shizz** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 10:58 am

this, though, might again be the result of touch-and-go-programming: I have observerd that sometimes vampire.exe remains in the process list even after I've exited the game (the normal way, not via a crash) and must be halted manually. Can anybody confirm that?

Knox2 · Post by **Knox2** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 12:38 pm

He Shizz, a little question. Can you explain a little bit about that touch-and-go-programming?
I just logged in a couple of days ago, so I'm a newbie here.

But I don't know how to confirm that.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 5:41 pm

[QUOTE=Knox2]Now something else, when i played vampire and quitting the game, it takes several seconds, almost a minute when i return to my desktop. What can i do about it

[/QUOTE]

It takes awhile to shut down anyway, but if it's taking a long time (and a minute is a long time), then you've dug quite a ways into your paging file. That's considered allocated memory, and must be freed during clean-up, but freeing memory from the page file is much slower than from real memory. Probably your best move is to increase your RAM.