***spoilers***
ilyah wrote:i have a rather old computer, to be honest i have no idea what its specs are since its not my computer (its my flatmates) and im a bit of a cave man when it comes to computers.
anyhoo, the point is that the screen shows up rather dark so i cant spot any manholes to get into the sewers and the other issue im having is getting into air vents. i was able to open it (in the security room/medical centre) but from there i cant figure out how to get inside it. apart from spinning round in circles i also cant move now. i cant jump, get off the desk, pace back and forth while i figure out what im supposed to do. the game hasnt frozen because i managed to shoot the wall and i can spin the camera angle around with the mouse.
OK, first up, the darkness. I used to have this problem myself, and came up with a number of possible fixes. The first, and most obvious, is to adjust the brightness setting of your monitor (just like a TV). If that doesn't work, it gets trickier.
Right-click on the desktop, select properties from the pop-up menu, and then click on the
settings tab. Click the button labelled
Advanced. Then click on the tab labelled
Adapter. This should give you either the control panel for your graphics adapter, or a button that will launch it (it varies from adapter to adapter).
Now, this is pretty much trial-and-error. First, try increasing brightness to see if you can get enough vision in the game. If you get that to maximum, and it still is too dark, look for a
Contrast setting. If you have one,
decrease the contrast gradually. Yes, I know that sounds backwards but trust me.
If you can fix the problem with contrast, fine. If not, the next thing to do is to look for an adjustment for
Gamma. If you have such a thing, increase it gradually. Some cards have a color graph with a diagonal line running through it. If that's what you have, drag the center of the line towards the upper-left corner bit by bit.
Between all of them, you should be able to get the visibility level up to something playable.
If you have an older computer, then while you're mucking about with the video settings, try changing anything you can find from
Quality to either
Performance or
Speed, whichever it uses. If you find a setting named
Glow turn it off. These adjustments will degrade the appearance of the display in the game, but take some of the load off the computer, allowing the game to run faster. This should make your controls more responsive.
Next up, your
stickyness. Try jumping in various directions, or saving and reloading. It's probably just a glitch. Jumping madly may seem idiotic, but sometimes it works, so just like picking up a girl, try anything that works.
In the worst case, start a new game. If your in the medical center, then you're not far in, so you won't lose much.
Finally, the vent. The one in the medical clinic has always been (for me, anyway) tricky. In any case, it's unnecessary. The following spoiler is blacked out, which means that if you want to read it, you have to drag the cursor over the text to highlight it before you can read it.
You're in the upper floor, yes? Sneak around, and the guard will tell you to leave. Do this a couple more times, and eventually the guard will get fed up and start shooting at you. On the left-hand side, you'll see the Masquerade icon change into the Gun icon. That means it's open season on the guard. Kill him and take his keys.
