Slitherine

Got this for Christmas, but in game (other than tactical battles) the mouse and keyboard act normally to start but then responsiveness has slowed a great deal/stopped for periods of time. Function key screen changes might help, but the workaround is to alt-tab in and out as frequently as necessary - as often as several times per minute - or exit and reload the game. It comes right back.

I'm running it on a 2006 high-end PC (high end at the time, with a newer graphics card) with updated XP, and the above occurs whether or not other applications are running. I elevated the troy priority a notch to above normal but it does not seem to matter - still eats up to 50 or so of CPU usage and responsiveness crawls as above.

I found this thread viewtopic.php?t=8122 which is related though only mentions scrolling problems. I went into Nvidia control panel and fiddled with the vsync under 3D. The default is to Use the 3d application setting (this is also the Global Setting). I also tried Force On for Troy.exe, then Force Off for Troy.exe. I had already chosen the 2d in preference to 3d option, but none of these solved the problem. I also tried FULLSCREEN 0 as suggested, but that does not do it either.

Is Force On vsync the right concept? Is there a file other than troy.exe that needs to have its specific 3d setting adjusted? Or do we have to change the setting across all applications to make the game work?

Any suggestions?

Thank you

Mike

If you are running with fullscreen off (i.e. in a window) then the vsync wouldn't affect it anyway. This kind of behaviour is usually caused by video drivers incorrectly buffering too many frames. There might be a maximum frames to buffer or something like that, and you could try changing that to 0 or 1. The game runs under DX7 IIRC, and an issue is that newer drivers tend to focus on the latest DX.

Cheers

Pip

I tried changing the things you indicated.

Maximum pre-rendered frames: was 3 default, tried 1 and tried 0

Vertical sync: tried force on, force off, use 3d application setting (which is also the default)
Triple buffering: on and off

Varied colors from 32 to 16 bit, and resolution down to 1024 (is that best for it?).

Tried full screen and not, with and without the taskbar on the same monitor.

I'm not positive I tried every permutation of the above, but I did try quite a few. There may be some improvement, but the slowdown still occurs.

Please let me know if something looks awry with these or the following settings:

Other settings
Anistropic filtering: application controlled
Antialiasing -Gamma correction: Use global setting (off)
Antialiasing - mode: Use global setting (application controlled)
Antialiasing - Setting:Use global setting (application controlled)
Antialiasing - Transparency: Use global setting (off)
CUDA - GPUs: Use global setting (off)
Multi-display/mixed GPU acceleration: Use global setting (Multiple display performance mode)
Texture filtering - Anistropic sample optimization: Use global setting (off)
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Use global setting (Allow)
Texture filtering - Quality: Use global setting (Quality)
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: Use global setting (On)
Threaded optimization: Use global setting (Auto)

If there is a Direct X issue, does Nvidia allow a game to use earlier drivers? Your help is appreciated.

Mike

You can roll back the drivers, but that's somewhat of a pain, and I'm not sure how far back you would need to go to get it working (assuming that is the issue). I can run it fine here, but it could well be a specific card/system permutation.

You could try changing the processor affinity to 1 for the process, use the Task Manager and right click Spartan when it is running, then uncheck all bar one CPU (if applicable).

Cheers

Pip

Tried

Affiinity 0
Affinity 1
Affinity both (default)
raising process priority

along with 1024x768x16, low pre-rendered maximum, etc. as above.

It's still getting sticky, requiring alt tab or at least a screen change to freshen the mouse/scroll for a short while. Can also lose turns due to the effect on clicks and hitting one ore than intended because the screen does not update.

Is there a way to use earlier DX for one game but not for other apps which require a new one?

Thanks,

Mike

Unfortunately not. Drivers tend to worry much more about all the newer cards and features, and less about DX7 from many years ago .

One other thing - do you have any kind of automatic CPU speed adjustment on your machine? If so, try switching to a constant speed setting while playing.

Cheers

Pip