MTW: post patch, battles unplayable

[bk1]

HI, I've never had problems with MTW before the patch. Battles were not silk fluid, but were enjoyable and responsive.
I've patched the game, I've started a new campaign and now battles are unplayable, speed is near to 1 fps or even worse.

The problem seems not to be related with the graphical detail level, if I pause the battle everything goes back to old good speed. When the battle is in pause I can scroll the entire battlefield with good speed. When I unpause the game, everything becomes slow slow slow, I can see the units jump instead of move, scrolling the map is nearly impossible.

Before patch eveything was ok, big battles too.

I'd go back to the pre-patch game, but I don't want to loose my current campaign, reinstalling did not solve the problem.

Any advice? Thanks

[shakespeare_101]

I have the same problem....Went back to unpatched version of game....Have a GEFORCE4 4600 with latest driver 4.0.72 i think.
CPU - Intel P4 2Gig

[Kraellin]

one thing to check is your game options. i believe i read somewhere in one of these forums that the patch resets all of your game options, like turning smoke and fauna and other things back on. this can lag a game down pretty badly. check those and post again.

K.

[Roibeard Mac Mathúna]

Good point Kraelin but shakespeare_101's spec is more than up to scratch. I run smooth with smoke and fauna, huge unit size at 1280 x1024 on a GeForce 3 (30.82 WHQL Drivers).

What soundcard are you both using?
What OS are you using?

This looks like a job for Erado-San's Apothecary. A few leeches on your graphics card should suck the bad transistors out. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

To solve this problem we need to get the full system specs of everyone who is experiencing this issue.

[ulyanov]

I had this post-patch, too.

But I'd done a clean install before the patch, and lost my settings. I'd upped the sound quality and turned on Hardware Accelleration ingame.

Jumped back to the menu, turned quality back to medium, accel off, and it's good as gold.

Running a 1.2 Duron with a ti4200 128mb card and an old sbLive value. I blame creative...

All gfx settings are full, screen size 1024*768

[bk1]

My config is:

Duron 900 Mhz
1024Mb ram
GeForce4 440 mx
Soundblaster Live
Win XP pro

Before the patch everything was ok with this system. I'll try to check the game config again, if I find what's causing the slowness I'll let you know.

[Turbo]

Quote[/b] (bk1 @ Nov. 13 2002,11:06)]HI, I've never had problems with MTW before the patch. Battles were not silk fluid, but were enjoyable and responsive.
I've patched the game, I've started a new campaign and now battles are unplayable, speed is near to 1 fps or even worse.

The problem seems not to be related with the graphical detail level, if I pause the battle everything goes back to old good speed. When the battle is in pause I can scroll the entire battlefield with good speed. When I unpause the game, everything becomes slow slow slow, I can see the units jump instead of move, scrolling the map is nearly impossible.

Before patch eveything was ok, big battles too.

I'd go back to the pre-patch game, but I don't want to loose my current campaign, reinstalling did not solve the problem.

Any advice? Thanks
3 ways to solve this problem:

1) Update your VIA motherboard drivers
2) Reduce your AGP aperature to 64 (in bios)
3) Reduce your PC latency to 0 (hopefully your MB bios supports this). This solves the sound buzzing problem.

CA still can't program a game to work properly with GEForce cards and VIA motherboards.

[shakespeare_101]

My full system specs...let's see...
Motherboad - Asus P4S533 - SIS645DX - North Bridge
SIS961B - South Bridge
CPU - Intel P4 - 2Gig - not overclocked
OS - Windows XP Professional
Sound - CMI8738/C3DX PCI Audio device(part of Asus motherboard)
CD- Sony CDU5211 - SCSI
Video - Nvidia Ti Geforce4 4600 - PNY - latest 4.0.7.2 drivers(tried updating to correct...no change in SP lag)
Bios Graphics Aperature Size was already at 64MB...which is interesting since the ti 4600 card is a 128 MB card...but I left it at 64 even though motherboard is Sis and not Via chipset
Maxtor hard drive Ultra DMA 133 - plenty of space

I have windows desktop set to 800x600...same as strategy map and battlemap...All the game settings are set to the default values..since I've re-installed...This does include the bells and whistles...but based on system specs...I think I should be able to have the bells and whistles on...I played SP and MP pre-patch without much lag...Tried clean install before adding patch...didn't do the trick...Tried new campaign...same result...

Problem: In SP campaign....(with patch) - battle sequences are jerky and often freeze for extended periods of time...also had a CTD from battle...almost seemed like game was trying to catch up with the action and couldn't...music and action sound sequences sounded like a drum roll with the screen completely locked up...if you can picture that....the CTD caused XP kernel data error..Had to do a cold boot to find my hard drive again...(removed heart from throat after the initial...unable to locate boot device... the warm boot gave me)

I am open to any ideas...I LOVE this game, but have had a bunch of SP campaign games CTD after a sea battle and now post patch tactical battle lag that wasn't there before...I think the sea battle CTD is still occuring post patch also....

HELP
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Edited: Added BIOS info

[Roibeard Mac Mathúna]

Hmmmm....

bk1:
Hopefully playing with the audio/video bells and whistles will fix your problem.
If not try the audio and Anti-Aliasing tip I give to shakespeare_101 below.

shakespeare_101:
There are a few thoughts that came to mind. Try disabling your onboard audio. I'm not sure if the game will let you start without any sound hardware but it's worth a try.
Also check in your video cards advanced settings to see if you have Anti-Aliasing or Anisotropic filtering turned on. Certain games have problems with these settings although a GF4 Ti4600 should be well able to handle it.

General:
To fix certain CTD bugs in the release version wouldn't CA have had to monkey with how sound and video are handled?

Also if the patch resulted in the game requiring a little more system memory for audio/video then it may be more sensitive to crashes if you have custom virtual memory settings. Something which both TW games' manuals are fanatically against.

This would bring memory management of your OS, BIOS settings, and the various settings on your graphics card to the front of the queue of suspects.

Slán

[shakespeare_101]

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif Well...part of my problem might be hard drive related...just discovered my hard drive failed a diagnostics test....talked to maxtor and they said to do two low level formats and call them in the morning.. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Roibeard Mac Mathúna]

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif Nasty

I suppose if your disk isn't feeling better it may have to have a transplant operation performed by Dr.Max Tor http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Slán

[bk1]

SOLVED:

Lowering the sound detail by 1 notch solved my problem. Now battles are back to pre-patch speed.

[Gregoshi]

And he lived happily ever after. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Knight_Yellow]

Ok ur all using geforce cards i had the exact same problem i think the patch or sumthin is real sensitive to
anti ailising so go to control pannel, display, settings, advanced, geforce(whatever card u got), additional properties, let it do whatever it whants to anti ailising, in direct3d settings tell it to only use 15 mb and in open gl settings tell it to use 5 mb.
now u may get choppy screens with sum games Battlefield 1942 but its just a case of turning the values back up http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif