sluggish performance (even with tips from sticky enabled)

[jspec]

hi all -

I'm having very bad performance with the game - sluggish side-to-side/up-down map movements, at least 1, sometimes 2 seconds going by after each mouse click before the 'click' is registered; zooming in and out of the map has a long delay as well.

I read the sticky regarding slow performance, I have tried setting the game priority to high and setting affinity to just one of my two cores, but things are still way to slow. I haven't even 'officially' started a mission to know what setting 'show night' to off does, but I've set it to off too.

I've been watching the games progress for a while and was really looking forward to learning it, the way it's playing now there's no way I could see continuing with it without going crazy.

Hoping I could get some assistance, or maybe this can be taken care of in the near future with a patch or something? Seems like the problem was known about (to some extent at least) from reading the sticky.

My system is winXP sp2 with a core2duo e8600, 4 gigs of ram, geforce gtx 285. Mostly play flight sims so things on my computer are pretty up to date (of course there could be something I didn't think of that's out of date or what have you.)

Thanks very much -

[harley]

Show night has been in the game since the original, all it does is dim the screen during the night phase, which causes a big drain on the processor. I thought I had this defaulted to OFF... Changing this under "options" will help your scrolling speeds.

The other one Ron kinda mentiones was "Highlight Target Damage", which is the crosshairs icon on the right of the screen. Turn this off to make it speed up a bit.

I had our other programmer working on the highlight issues, I'm not sure where he's up to at present.

[jspec]

hi harley, thanks for writing back -

I did have 'show night' set to off, what I meant by not knowing what good it would do was that I had barely started a game so I wasn't sure it was 'in effect' yet.

I mean, all I have done so far literary is install the game, start the recommended one day campaign, and try to get a feel for the buttons, moving around, zooming in/out - basically just "checking the game out". While doing so I noticed the very slow performance on my system. There's no way I could actually play for a stretch with the way it is preforming right now - the delay when pressing any button, the way the map inches along, the delay when zooming in/out.

Thanks again for writing -

[Erik Rutins]

Out of curiosity, can you please give this a try:

Start -> Run -> Type in "dxdiag" and hit enter.
On the Display tab, once it starts, next to "DirectDraw Acceleration" click "Disable"

Exit and start up the game, does that make any difference for you?

[mr.plastic]

I was having exactly the same problem as jspec01 (got win xp 32 sp3, E6600, GTX 260, 3 GB RAM). I tried that dxdiag thingy and it works! The game was crawling like a dying mule and now it runs like stalion! You have my deepest thanks, Sir.

[Erik Rutins]

No problem, we know what causes this and we'll work to implement the fix in the game itself rather than using this work around.

[Hard Sarge]

hmmm, that is odd, they speeded mine up also, but I got graphic glitches now, but it is running game fine, with everything turned on

(don't work too well in the forum)

[alfredtc]

I having the same slow performance problem. Also the hour glass on the mouse pointer never go away.
I am running Vista with 4GB ram, 3Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU.

[jspec]

thanks guys, I'll try the disabling DirectDraw trick when I get home from work tonight and post back with the results.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: alfredtc
I having the same slow performance problem. Also the hour glass on the mouse pointer never go away.
I am running Vista with 4GB ram, 3Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU.

Have you tried the affinity and DirectDraw work-arounds?

[mikkey]

thanks Erik, disabling DirectDraw Acceleration helped me!

[jspec]

Disabling directdraw worked as advertised, game is very responsive now (almost too responsive, moving the map around with mouse cursor if you're zoomed in can get pretty exciting!)

Thanks for the help, looking forward to an update to the game that takes care of it internally.

[alfredtc]

Disable the DDraw work fine on by XP machine, but I can't find a way to disable it on my Vista laptop.
The hour glass still there. Tks for help.

[anthonykevinluke]

Evening all and greetings Erik,

I have left WITP-AE for a while to download this old/new favourite. I am also having the slow reaction time and the hour glass symbol remaining beside the mouse pointer. Are both these issues being addressed in the patch?

Regards,

Tony

[LeeChard]

I have similar problems.
I have a fast computer using Intel Quad-core running vista
Saving the game got rid of the load circle(hourglass on xp) and mouseclicks became nicely responsive.
Sidescrolling is still extremely sensative.
I have no sound after the start screen.
This is based on playing the tutorial.
Neither of these problems are gamestoppers for me.
Hopefully the sidscroll can be tamed down in the first patch but as I understand it making games whose engines were designed for old OS's run smoothly is not as simple as it sounds.

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: alfredtc

Disable the DDraw work fine on by XP machine, but I can't find a way to disable it on my Vista laptop.
The hour glass still there. Tks for help.

the hour glass does not mean anything, you can go to the save screen, save the game and the hour glass will go away, that is on the list for the first patch

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Ranger5355

I have similar problems.
I have a fast computer using Intel Quad-core running vista
yea, those are the ones that seem to have some trouble, working on a fix for that now
Saving the game got rid of the load circle(hourglass on xp) and mouseclicks became nicely responsive.
Sidescrolling is still extremely sensative.
I have no sound after the start screen.
do you have sound/music turned on ? on the side panal, bottom two buttons ?
This is based on playing the tutorial.
Neither of these problems are gamestoppers for me.
Hopefully the sidscroll can be tamed down in the first patch but as I understand it making games whose engines were designed for old OS's run smoothly is not as simple as it sounds.

[LeeChard]

Turn the sound effects on.
Now I have sound effects.
Maybe I should have thought of that myself[8|]

[Hard Sarge]

more then a few people have missed that, with those buttons, everything is OFF to begin with, and pushing and making them Highlight, means they are on

[cap87]

I was wondering if this happened to somebody else: everytime Im playing the game my mouse pointer appears with a vista blue circle on its right, just like if its trying to load something; the issue is that it goes on without stopping and it`s really annoying me. any ideas?