Hello everyone, LordFraggington here. I have repeatedly downloaded and attempted to run Arcanum, but I did have a tad of a gripe. Whenever I try to load screens or perform ceratin actions (looting bodies, pulling up the stat/inventory screens, etc.), the game slows down/lags for a second or two, when I pull up the game I have to wait for my arrow to magically appear in order to play, etc. Why is this happening? The game is patched all the way (yes, Troika games are glitchy, but come on, when i tried the His Res pack, it made it even worse!), I'm running Windows 7 64-bit.... I don't know what I have done wrong, any help would be greatly appreciated. I've loved the game so far, but locking up just running around the crash area? Kinda, no REALLY not fun :(.

Thanks!

Few things: Try disabling hardware acceleration. That's always worked for me to stop slowdown in these games. Compatability mode may help, too.

What are your computer stats?

Did you try adding -no3d -doublebuffer to the shortcut? I haven't got the GoG version of the game (got a boxed copy) but this helped me with various slowdown issues that the game has on modern systems.

As far as I know, the GOG version is modified to run just fine on modern systems, so its unlikely changing the compatibility mode will help. Sounds to me like hardware limitations. Did you check the game's minimum requirements and whether or not your machine could fulfill them?

I highly doubt it's hardware issue, especially if he's running Windows 7. This game is, what, 10 years old? My phone could run this game.

The no3d fix might help, but I've found it only corrects a cursor bug.

Yeah, even though the Radeon 5650 (I think thats the right number) HD card overheats on higher games, I'm using a HP Envy M14 Beats Edition laptop at then-recommended settings (I'm in game design/development as a major in college, so it does have a good deal of horsepower graphically/processor/RAM-wise...I think I have an i7 Quad? Even though laptops don't do multi-core, trust me, I got to find out the hard way from the other IT guys lol). Compatibility mode, well, yeah, I could do it, but it really stinks since it doesn't do much of anything (and really, its only a virtual machine inside windows, so it eats even more RAM and processing power to do the same thing). I'll try the doublebuffer thing and the hardware acceleration fixes and see what happens.

Also, adokat, is that a cursor lag/render bug? I have issues getting my cursor to show on startup and it hates working on inventories and such, and I'm curious to see if that might stop this weird game behavior.

P.S.: I'll post the specs in a few minutes, gotta look it over again (never had to run 'em off really til now).

Yes, but sometimes new cards have trouble running old games because the games handled graphics differently back then. I've seen a few cases on these forums where strange slowdowns, etc. were actually fixed by updating graphics card drivers, even though the graphics card is way newer than the game. So, LordFraggington, if you haven't tried this yet, try updating your graphics drivers also. My guess is that the "-no3d -doublebuffer" stuff is more likely to fix your problem though.

Well, I've actually offered a solution to the slowdown already. A significant reason many cards have trouble running games back then is due to hardware acceleration. Turning it off has eliminated slowdown for me. It's more of a software issue, since I have to download a program that actually lets me do that on Vista.

The -no3d -doublebuffer worked. I need to fix update my card drivers, but the ATI catalyst updater program is already on my computer, and doesn't anything. Now I'm runnnig super fast, I guess it was the mouse thing?

Thanks everybody for all your help!


P.S.: I didn't need to run as admin or in compatibility mode, which rocks. Now to fix Neverwinter Nights...Stupid "silver" showing up when I try to modify hair/skin color! That and compatability being necessary...Good times with Windows!

Somehow, when I posted, I did not realize that you were also the person who suggested the -no3d fix. Sorry about that! I had only intended to offer a driver update as another possible solution, if LordFraggington was still having trouble.

Anyway, glad to hear that -no3d worked! Unfortunately I can't really help with the Neverwinter Nights problem, but I can say that you don't have to use the Catalyst Updater to update your drivers, you can just go to ATI's website and download drivers directly.

It's all good. I'm glad he got things working. Part of the problem with these old games is that different video cards and operating systems seem to have their own problems and solutions.

Sadly, every time I got to try and download drivers, Im either referred to the catalyst link or can't find my card on the list...and it's a new card, it should be supported, especially since eveyrone knows the drivers crash a lot and the card has a tendency of overheating....


On the Neveriwnter side, I am posting in a seperate thread with people with similar issues; apparently I'm a lot farhter a head than them since I can get the game at least running. It seems a driver update, if it exists, won't help...

And I know I said thanks to everybosy, but I really want ot stress how grateful I am for all the help. You guys (and gals, if applicable) rule!

On updating drivers: a lot of times, higher-end laptops will only accept custom video drivers / those drivers will avoid issues that can crop up with the standard drivers on your specific system - HP will have the latest for your card (and there may not be an update). I have an HP elitebook, and my card is also not listed in the ATI downloads section, although a couple other areas of the site mention it.