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Greetings.

I'll try to make it short..

What I want:

-> To play the game on 1280x1024 resolution & Fullscreen with no performance drops.

What I've seen:

-> Game animations slow down. Espacially in combat. The best example for this is, Crossbowman's bolt travels very slowly after being shot. Also, all units' movements are kind of jerky. Angel flies stuttered, and so on.
->Edit: The slowdown seems to occur after the number of stacks on the battlefield increases. I have no slowness with 3 friendly stacks, but after I have more, everything in battle starts slowing down..

What I've tried:

-> The other two resolution options work without problems and no performance drops. But I don't want them.
-> I tried the "50% Throttle in Power Plan Options". This made it even worse (this fixes Eador: Genesis)
-> Tried all the combinations under Right Click - Properties - Compatibility options.
-> Used the RunFirst utility, which forces the game to run on only one processor core. Made it even worse (this one fixes Divine Divinity).
-> Changed desktop resolution from 1920x1080 to 1280x1024. No difference, same problems.
-> Also tried 16 bit option under Right click - Properties - Compatibility . Very small improvement, but still jerky animations.
-> Edit: I have already installed the Equilibris mod.

Computer specs: Windows 8.1 . Very high end MSI laptop so no hardware insufficiency.

What should I do? I've been visiting all the relevant websites for the last two days with no solution. I'm tired but this game defines a certain part of my childhood and I'll do everything to play it again, the way I want.

Even though I know that "you can't always get what you want".. But hope never dies.

Is it possible to have the "What I want: " part I wrote above? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Post edited November 10, 2013 by Excolion
This question / problem has been solved by Darucasimage
Can I ask was is the native resolution of the laptop?
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revanbh: Can I ask was is the native resolution of the laptop?
1920x1080 my friend.
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revanbh: Can I ask was is the native resolution of the laptop?
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Excolion: 1920x1080 my friend.
Have you tried setting up cpu affinity in the task manager? I find that with these older games that usually solves the issue of poor performance as most of them don't like multi-core processors.
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Excolion: 1920x1080 my friend.
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revanbh: Have you tried setting up cpu affinity in the task manager? I find that with these older games that usually solves the issue of poor performance as most of them don't like multi-core processors.
I already tried the fourth step in my "What I've tried" list. By using this:

http://www.activeplus.com/us/freeware/runfirst/


Do you suggest that I should use these steps instead? :

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/24086-processor-affinity-set-applications-windows-8-a.html
Post edited November 08, 2013 by Excolion
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revanbh: Have you tried setting up cpu affinity in the task manager? I find that with these older games that usually solves the issue of poor performance as most of them don't like multi-core processors.
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Excolion: I already tried the fourth step in my "What I've tried" list. By using this:

http://www.activeplus.com/us/freeware/runfirst/

Do you suggest that I should use these steps instead? :

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/24086-processor-affinity-set-applications-windows-8-a.html
Yes. That's the one I'm suggesting. Although I'm running Windows 7 so you should follow the instructions on that page too see how it's done. My knowledge of Windows 8 is non-existent.

If all else fails, contact support. There could be a range of issues causing this. They will help for sure.
I tried it once. At first they were helpful but after a while (my problem continued, with Disciples 2) they started copy-pasting "solutions".which I already tried and which were not relevant to my exact problem.

(I found the solution myself elsewhere after a while)

They'll probably tell me to use lower resolutions, and that there is no way to play it properly on 1280x1024, but I'll try anyway.

As soon as I try your suggestion when I get home, I'll post the result.. Thanks revanbh. In the meantime I hope there will be others to share their thoughts on the matter.
After further testing I've found that the performance drop and slow animations start occuring after having more than 3 stacks of soldiers in battle.

When I had only three stacks, everything was fine. But after I started adding troops, the animations started slowing down. The most apparent thing is that projectiles started travelling slower again.

And I tried the single processor core solution, but it did not make any difference.

I think this narrows down the problem. Any ideas people?
Post edited November 10, 2013 by Excolion
You could try the Equilibris mod, as it fixes RAM leaks issues among others. I've always tried to play HoMM IV with this one installed, partly because my game had odd slowdowns and performance issues whatever the configuration. It should at least improve things for you, but maybe not the bug you describe, and of course it fixes quite a lot of gameplay issues, which you may or may not like changed. Anyway, worth a try as you can still launch the original game. Just keep a copy of "heroes.exe" just ine case, as the mod may only work with the one provided on the website:

http://equilibris.celestialheavens.com/eng/downloads.html

Just download the mod and "heroes4_sfx.exe", extract the second and replace the file, install the mod, and see if it's better! The replacement file should still be fine to play the vanilla game though.
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Darucas: You could try the Equilibris mod, as it fixes RAM leaks issues among others. I've always tried to play HoMM IV with this one installed, partly because my game had odd slowdowns and performance issues whatever the configuration. It should at least improve things for you, but maybe not the bug you describe, and of course it fixes quite a lot of gameplay issues, which you may or may not like changed. Anyway, worth a try as you can still launch the original game. Just keep a copy of "heroes.exe" just ine case, as the mod may only work with the one provided on the website:

http://equilibris.celestialheavens.com/eng/downloads.html

Just download the mod and "heroes4_sfx.exe", extract the second and replace the file, install the mod, and see if it's better! The replacement file should still be fine to play the vanilla game though.
I already installed it from the beginning my friend. It really makes the game better.

But this issue is still there even with the Equilibris mod.. :(
This happens only on 1280x1024 resolution? Nevermind. Looked up your first post and that seems to be the case. Is the game stretched all the way across the screen or do you scale it to the center of the screen? This is relatively easy to do and it often fixed up performance issues for me. If you're on Nvidia card, go to the card's control panel, Adjust desktop size and position, select no scaling and perform scaling on GPU.

To be fair, HOMM IV is a buggy affair, so there could be a lot of things causing this. I also see that another user has/had similar problem. Here is a link to his topic - no responses.

http://www.gog.com/forum/heroes_of_might_and_magic_series/homm_iv_framerate_issue
Hey revanbh, I tested your advice.

The thing is, as many others on the forums state, that my Nvidia Control Panel does not show the necessary options for me to try Scaling. It doesn't even have the Resolution options :D First attachment shows it, named Nvidia_Control_Panel.jpg (Sorry it is Turkish, I could not find a way to switch it to English).

Seeing this, I have followed the things mentioned in this thread:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/612166/nvidia-control-panel-not-displaying-all-options/

Here it says that if I don't see those options, I have to use the Intel Control Panel. That, I have. But the thing is, as you can see from the second attachment (Intel_1920_1080.jpg), there was no option to choose any scaling options under 1920x1080. "Ekran ölçeklendirmesini koru" means "Keep Screen Scaling" or something like this.. This is the only option.

To change this, I've found the advice in this link (see the Helpful Answer). It says the other options appear only after switching to lower resolutions.

https://communities.intel.com/thread/26843

So, I did that. You can see what options came up with 1280x1024 in the attachment named "Intel_1280_1024.jpg"

To translate:

Resmi Ortala: Center the Image
Tam Ekran Ölçeklendir: Full Screen Scaling
En Boy Oranını Koru: Keep Aspect Ratio

I tried these three options one by one, but unfortunately the battle animations are still slow (projectiles especially). I've put some screenshots with these options in-battle. Normally the projectiles go so fast that it is hard to capture it in the screenshot. But I can easily do it since they are slow..

That other thread you mentioned is the same with my problem it seems, yes. Unfortunately, the issue is stiil not solved.. :(
Attachments:
Post edited November 11, 2013 by Excolion
Note: everything below is about running the game with the nVidia GPU instead of Intel, if you've already done this, well, I don't have a clue how to help!

You have an Optimus system it seems, this explains why your nVidia options are limited. The Intel HD card is used for scaling, resolution and other things indeed.

However this also means that your laptop relies by default on the Intel card, to save batteries. It's fine most of the time, and can also help with old games, but... not all! Quite a lot of softwares don't behave well with such cards, which are mainly meant for desktop/usual multimedia use. So what you can try is actually running the game with your nVidia GPU instead of Intel, which should provide optimal performance.

So, if you don't know how to do this, here's how: if HoMM IV runs without asking for Administrator rights, you can just right click on its shortcut and search for something like "run with [...] nVidia/Intel integrated card" (French laptop here so, I can't really guess the exact names). Choose nVidia and see if things run better. You can also disable "run as Admin" in the compatibility tab to allow for this menu to work.

If nVidia works better, or if you want the game to run as Admin, do the following, it's better on the long run: go to your nVidia control panel, then in "manage 3D settings", then "program settings". In the drop-down list search for heroes4.exe or rather the .exe file used by Equilibris (h4mod.exe). Use "add" if need be. Then under 2. "select the graphic card for this application" (something like that), choose "nVidia high performance". Then Apply, and OK. Now the game should have registered the option.

Note that if you're not often moving your laptop or if you want to run most applications with nVidia, you can change the default setting for all under "global settings". Apart from softwares nVidia has determined to run on one card or the other, it should launch everything with nVidia as default.
Post edited November 11, 2013 by Darucas
I didn't even know there was an option under Right Click, which allowed me to choose the Nvidia card.

I started the game with that option selected. It is now even worse. The projectiles travel slower than ever :(

I guess I should not bother setting it default for everything, as I've tried this and saw the result?

I wish your advices could solve the issue, since you guys give really useful workaround solutions. But it seems they can not..

I guess the game itself is really bugged about this matter.. :(
Post edited November 11, 2013 by Excolion
:(

Well, using nVidia gets you any kind of bug from a "normal" nVidia card, so I'm only half-surprised. As to setting it by default, I'd say no for now, although a global nVidia choice should improve performance for other applications. Just keep in mind that if you happen to find another solution, it will likely be aimed at non-Optimus hardware, so setting nVidia for HoMM IV at this point for testing purposes would be a better basis - it may have worse performance here, but a lot of advice revolves around changing parameters on nVidia or ATi cards, not so much on Intel because it's not meant for gaming. You could very well find a 100% fine solutions only when using nVidia even if it's laggy as hell right now.

You may have some tricks left though, I'm thinking getting the game windowed with something like D3D Windower or DxWnd then turning this into window-fullscreen with Fullscreenizer, which would virtually look like normal fullscreen, without any bug linked to fullscreen if it's coming from there, for example. You can easily find them on Google. However, according to the programmers of DxWnd, HoMM IV definitely is an odd game, technically speaking, and they seem to have some hard time making it work fine. For now, you could keep an eye on the discussion going on about the game here and see if they release a workaroud: http://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/general/thread/48eb2954/

You've said you want to run it fullscreen so a mix of these softwares may help - forced window mode first (don't bother with the game option, these apps will take care of this, although you will have to do some testing to find good parameters), then window-fullscreen. Maybe... because the game looks like it's not really at ease in 1280x1024 anyway. Just remember that by changing the scaling options for 1024x768, you can end up with a smaller but crisper image, so for now it's your best bet...

Edit: I've just tried DxWnd along with Fullscreenizer just to have first impressions... well... no. If they manage to fix it with DxWnd it may get rid of your bug if it's in any way related to ddraw or fullscreen I think, and fullscreenizer does the trick... but for now it's a complete mess on my PC. You can try though, just don't hope too much :s On a side note, I've got an Optimus system too (MSI laptop, windows 8.1, Intel HD 4000 along with nVidia 660M), and I don't get any slowdown with Equilibris mod in 1280x1024 fullscreen, with like 4-5 stacks of units - crossbow bolts fly quickly enough!
Post edited November 11, 2013 by Darucas