GameBanshee Forums

Has anyone had problems with the Game slowing WAY down around 5th level of the characters with the new Co8 (and thereby Atari 1+2) patches on?
My game suddenly droped a tremendous amount of speed and now is like slogging through mud to move the curser or arrow anywhere or do anything!! I just started playing this a couple days ago and am really into it! I have shut my computer down and reloaded (not totally reloaded-trying to avoid THAT) the game 3 times now, with no improvement Anyone know the problem, or a fix?? Please Help.

I am back to edit-- it seems that I may have found the problem, but still need some advice. For some reason the game is now taking my CPU usage from 3% up to a whopping 100%, and causing it to crash periodically (more than usual for this already buggy, yet wonderful game) This reminds me of that black worm virus a couple years back that clogged up your CPU usage, but it only happens when playing this game. Anyone else having this problem? Please Advise.

There are a few places where the game slows down, but most of them are toward the end. The only really bad place for me early on is by Jaroo's house in Hommlet.

Anyway, this is a nagging problem for which there aren't many solutions. Try turning down the graphic option from the options menu. Things like anti-aliasing and complex clothing/shadow effects can slow you down. You might also fiddle with different scroll speeds and such.

I don't know where you are so this may not be your problem, but I've found that often the game slows or crashes when there's an enemy nearby who's on the verge of detecting me. I think the game bogs down because it's constantly checking to see if I'm noticed. If I chuck a fireball ahead and force combat, the problem goes away. Doesn't always work, but for the worst spots it solves the problem. For me.

Thanks for that input LP, and I definitely understand a game slowing down every once in a while, but not this, please read my new thread

I think there is something else causing it...

I just bought this game, and started playing it (without any patches).

Early game, decided to kill the traders. Took my rogue and switched from his crossbow to shortsword.

MAJOR SLUGGISHNESS.

Thought maybe it was random, retried with a saved game...same result. Only way to stop it was to switch the shortsword with another weapon. Once I removed his shortsword, the game returned to normal.

No it wasn't the traders I just killed them recently ( VERY hard- unlike the walkthrough said- but the exp and treasure and satisfaction of killing bad guy spies was well worht it) and I am not having any sluggishness. It was my full screen mode, and I wasn't using the new ToEEFE patch correctly that caused all my problems, as long as I don't use full screen mode and don't try to disable the intro movies, everything works fine now.

[QUOTE=maalri]No it wasn't the traders I just killed them recently ( VERY hard- unlike the walkthrough said-[/QUOTE]You're playing with Liv's mod in effect, right? That's the reason, if so. Remember that one of those guys is level 10 (hence the exp reward), so he shouldn't be too easy. He was, because of poor AI, in the pre-Liv days. She's ramped up the AI, so they'll be harder than the walkthrough - based on the unmodded game - suggests.

New update-- BAD NEWS- at the end of level 5 the CPU usage bug came back- slowing the game and my computer WAAAAY down, even in windows mode Major bummer. Anyone figure out what I am doing wrong yet? or what I can fix?

Bummer. Well, can you give me a better sense of when it's happening and what happened just prior to when it came back?

Well, LP, and any others with help, the first time it was reght after hitting 5th level with my characters when I was just finishing quests in Homlett b4 going to nulb ( I had nulb marked on the map) and then I rebooted everything and ran again in windows mode and eveything was good until I entered the temple- now that first battle with the brigands did a number on my speed that night.. but tonight (I went on the game after my last post) my CPU is only running 90-91% in windows mode, but still 99-100 in full screen mode, and it is actually quite playable at the 90-91% speed. Can you do ma favor and check how much CPU usage you are getting when playing in windows mode please? maybe this thing always chews up CPU and that 6-8% difference on the top-end matters.... to do that (like you wont already know this) just hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and your processes window should pop up and then see what your CPU is at and what ToEEFe is using (for me 93 and 90-91, respectively) Thanks for helping me chase this thing down.

edit- the only thing currently running real slow is saving...

Well, for me, CPU usage is pretty much maxed out most of the time. High 90s. But apart from one or two problem areas (where enemies keep trying to detect you, and where you can fix the problem by forcing combat) I'm not experiencing much slow-down. There are times when saving takes a bit, but that's about it.

As ever, I should mention that I'm running patch 2 and temple.zip only. I don't have any co8 or Liv or even ToEEFE installed. Since it seems to be so sporadic for you, I wonder if there is something in the game that's happening to cause the problem, perhaps related to one of the many patches/mods your using. Very hard to say. It you just levelled up, maybe you took a class or skill or feat or spell the game doesn't deal with well. So many changes have been made, it's hard to say. Mine runs fine, though, despite huge CPU drain.

Sorry I can't be more help. All I can suggest is trying to backwards-engineer the problem by analyzing your levelling up process and cross-referencing that with the changes made by any mods your running. Other than that, I'm pretty stumped.

Well I guess my main concern was the high CPU usage- I thought there was a bug causing me to use such a high amount, thereby slowing things down, but I guess that's a normal amount of usage. I will endeavor not to run other programs while playing, so as to save that extra few percent to run the game at a decent speed! Thanks again.