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Bilbo
High Emperor
Joined: 12 Mar 2002
Posts: 1620
Location: New York |
quote:
Originally posted by shai_aus
Well, you guys have pretty much lost me on all of this technical stuff 
Sorry, didn't mean to lose you. In plainspeak, what Otter and I discussed was:
Otter: Lift problems could be a bug related to not enough memory, CPU speed, video card, and graphics accelerator.
Me: No it shouldn't be. If they programmed it intelligently, none of those things should affect falling off the lift.
Otter: Here's why I think related. (Specific technical details given and omitted here.)
Me: Given those technical details, it could be caused by 3 things based upon my reverse engineering of the game. Eliminating the first two for various reasons, it must be #3. And if it's #3, then adding memory (which would increase speed) or increasing speed in CPU/Video will solve the problem. But that's poor programming which I would not have expected from Sir-Tech.
Got it? Good. Now go forth and sin no more by trying to play games with system requirements that your hardware doesn't meet. (I'm one to talk, as NWN tells me my video card isn't good enough, and yet I'm trying to play it anyway.)
_________________
The world itself shifts and changes and fades to mist like the strings of a minstrel's harp, and mayhap the dreams we forge are more enduring than the works of kings and gods.-Robert E. Howard
=Member of the RPGDot Shadows, The Nonflamers' Guild, and The Alliance of Middle Earth= |
Sat Sep 14, 2002 4:07 pm |
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Bilbo
High Emperor
Joined: 12 Mar 2002
Posts: 1620
Location: New York |
More tech talk if anyone is interested:
From empirical observation, I have confirmed Otter's observations and my third theory about threads causing havoc. If you start experiencing problems, save the game, and restart your computer. What's really happening is this:
1) Wiz8 starts some threads (ex: sky movement and monster movement, moving lifts collision detection to test for falling). I don't have an exhaustive list.
2) Wiz8 does housekeeping to load area detail & monsters as needed.
3) Wiz8 does housekeeping to purge stuff it doesn't currently need.
4) Wiz8 does housekeeping to write temporary data to the HDD (not saving the game, but just so it can keep track of it in low memory situations).
5) Game tests for falling. Repeat steps 1-5 until it's done.
6) When it's done with all this, then it starts really scanning for activity from the user and processes movement. (It will take some keystrokes prematurely, but everything slows down to the point of being unplayable.)
To observe this in action, play the game for a while and then enter Arnika. You will find you can't immediately move, although your radar screen will show movements of people and monsters around you. Or when you exit Arnika, a lot of cleanup is necessary, and I can almost always see the clouds in the sky moving well before my party is capable of taking any steps. (The HDD is active during this phase.)
The problem is: it's moving the lift and doing collision detection before it processes movement by you.
Restarting the computer works (and defragging your HDD will also help) to fix the problem because it's lack of memory tying up steps 1-5, before you can act to do anything about it.
_________________
The world itself shifts and changes and fades to mist like the strings of a minstrel's harp, and mayhap the dreams we forge are more enduring than the works of kings and gods.-Robert E. Howard
=Member of the RPGDot Shadows, The Nonflamers' Guild, and The Alliance of Middle Earth= |
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Sat Oct 05, 2002 8:33 am |
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otter
One of Us
Joined: 28 Jun 2002
Posts: 1337
Location: Portland, OR |
I just got crushed going up the Hook and Line! 
Good thing i don't play in Ironmode! 
_________________
If thousand-year-old family traditions are so important to you, why do you have indoor plumbing and electricity in your family's house? |
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Sat Nov 09, 2002 1:56 am |
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