The World of Avlis

Okay, I really really want to play in Avlis but I seem to be having some major difficulties getting NwN to work on my system.

Here's the specs on my beast:
AMD-K7 Athlon MMX 600MHz
256K RAM, Harddrive 15gigs with 11.2gigs free
Windows 98
DirectX 9.0a
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440, 64MB (set at 32bit colors and 800x600, optimal refresh rate) with the most recent drivers (directdraw and direct3d tests come out fine)
Creative Soundblaster PCI soundcard (directX certified)

I've checked all IRQ settings and nothing is in conflict. I recently did a full system restore and overall update to Windows 98 (bringing everything from IE to my device drivers up to their most recent versions). That all said here is what I'm experiencing ...

When I load NwN it lets me connect to Avlis and takes me through the character generation then just dies to a black screen with only the cursor and music. I can't Alt-Tab out. I can't Alt-Ctrl-Del out. My keyboard appears locked up. Esc and Esc-Esc do nothing.

I have loaded the Avlis HakPak. I have NwN at the most recent update patch. All online and on computer help files and troubleshooters seem to be at a loss. I even tried running an msconfig "clean-boot" and that didn't help at all so I don't think its an application conflict. I connect at modem speeds but I was told that shouldn't be an issue.

When I run the non-online version it also freezes during game play. Usually within a few minutes or less of the game screen coming up.

Any ideas anyone? I really want to play with you people. I'm at a loss.

you left out some info:

What connection do you use?
do you have a firewall?
To which server did you try to connect?
Have you ever played on a nwn server successfully with you config?

hmm... freezing during offline game is a bad sign.... maybe you graphicscard is overheating...

AMD chipsets are sensitive to high temperatures. Maybe u can see from Bios your current CPU temp, but let it on for some time first to warm up.

I had such 'freezing' problems when cpu temp was over 65 degrees C with my athlon. Maybe you should buy a better cooler, as i recently did

but the specs say that athlons can take 96?C ... well mine does without a problem (not permanent- i only tested that once)

Mistcaller wrote:AMD chipsets are sensitive to high temperatures. Maybe u can see from Bios your current CPU temp, but let it on for some time first to warm up.

I had such 'freezing' problems when cpu temp was over 65 degrees C with my athlon. Maybe you should buy a better cooler, as i recently did

Mistcaller, what kind of "better cooler" did you buy, if I may ask? A bigger better fan perhaps? I think some of my recent system problems may be heat-related, but my ASUS Probe monitor reports everything within nominal ranges. I use Intel chipsets but I wonder whether my 'puter is heating up too much. At least I seem to notice more problems the longer my system has been running.

About the only thing I can suggest is more ram. 256MB is fairly minimal to be honest you may be running out of memory but that being said I have played online (briefly, very briefly) with a P2-120 MHz and 64 MB.

I know others have had this trouble in the past...or something that sounded like it so maybe a search of the Avlis site will get you some more information.

Garand wrote:Okay, I really really want to play in Avlis but I seem to be having some major difficulties getting NwN to work on my system.

Here's the specs on my beast:
AMD-K7 Athlon MMX 600MHz
256K RAM, Harddrive 15gigs with 11.2gigs free
Windows 98
DirectX 9.0a
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440, 64MB (set at 32bit colors and 800x600, optimal refresh rate) with the most recent drivers (directdraw and direct3d tests come out fine)
Creative Soundblaster PCI soundcard (directX certified)

Thats enough to play

I've checked all IRQ settings and nothing is in conflict. I recently did a full system restore and overall update to Windows 98 (bringing everything from IE to my device drivers up to their most recent versions). That all said here is what I'm experiencing ...

When I load NwN it lets me connect to Avlis and takes me through the character generation then just dies to a black screen with only the cursor and music. I can't Alt-Tab out. I can't Alt-Ctrl-Del out. My keyboard appears locked up. Esc and Esc-Esc do nothing.

Sounds like a connection to Avlis problom, I would request a line test from your telco to establish any possible interferance, as when NWN is trying to load, and you get too many retrains or time outs, the game is very likely to crash. Depending on the robustness of your box, the machine might crash out to windows or just hang. Win 98 is pretty robust, compared to WinXP which is what I use, so it surprises me it just hangs every time.

I have loaded the Avlis HakPak. I have NwN at the most recent update patch. All online and on computer help files and troubleshooters seem to be at a loss. I even tried running an msconfig "clean-boot" and that didn't help at all so I don't think its an application conflict. I connect at modem speeds but I was told that shouldn't be an issue.

When I run the non-online version it also freezes during game play. Usually within a few minutes or less of the game screen coming up.

So you can get into the single player game ok, and then it hangs? Is that where it seems to loop a 1 second sound over about 6 times, then it crashes to windows, or does it just freeze?

Any ideas anyone? I really want to play with you people. I'm at a loss.

1) Try installing YOUR cd on another computer - to check if your cd is corrupt

2) Run the NWN config program, override the auto settings, and choose all the lowest settings possible to see if your box can handle the settings. Even though you have a very powerful card, and it tests fine with standard graphics demo's, Id be inclined to think your machine is underated for the card.

3) Re-download the hak pak. You are patched upto date, are you sure? Also, are all of the Avlis Hak's in the HAK directory?

@ Diamond: I've bought one of the CoolerMaster series, (model xdream) and spent about 25-30$

Site: http://www.coolermaster.com/

Couple of things :

~ Is NWN supported under Win 98?? It might be worth you upgrading to XP (not just for NWN, but generally)

~ You can monitor your CPU's temp from within Windows using some software. I use CPU COOL. The link for it is : http://www.podien.onlinehome.de/CPUCOOL.HTM

~ You don't mention if you have any problems with other games freezing, or just NWN. However, I think the idea someone else had of running it with the absolute minimum settings is a good one - try that, and if that works, then there's the solution. If not, then perhaps it could be an issue with one of yout drivers, but I would have thought that would show itself in other games too.

shoot in the dark:

Wasn't there a problem with a black-screen-on-char-creation bug some time ago ?

I distinctly remember seeing something like that on the General Discussions forum. The workaround was to make the character locally and send the .bic to Orleron.

Perhaps thats the thing we're looking at here.

although he states that he has a problem with the single-player game too - crashes etc.

So I don't think this is an Avlis specific problem.

AMD Athlon 1600
512Mb DDR RAM
Win98
ATI Radeon 7500

Works just fine on my end, so Win98 and the AMD chipset in paticular aren't the problem (I'll mention that I've got a total of 5 fans in my box: 1 power supply, 1 chip, 1 vidcard, 2 case (front and back)).

I'd suspect you're experiencing a couple of problems simultaneously... It sounds very much like you are getting the fabled BSOD that is NWN MP-specific. The way to work around that is to make your character locally, e-mail the .bic to the team (I hesitate to say specifically mail it to Orleron, 'cause I can't remember if that's true or not, but a search of the forum will find where to send it), and they'll add you in manually, which seems to work for people.

Game freeze-ups in SP are something different. I'll give you the standard answers:

Lower yer graphic settings (manually through the .ini files if you have to)
Update yer video drivers
Update DirectX (9.0a just came out...)
Defrag yer drive
Run "dxdiag.exe" and check all your DirectDraw, DirectSound, and DirectPlay drivers
Hand kill all processes except Systray and Explorer before you start the game

Other than that, yer machine sounds a bit on the low side, but as has been said *ought* to play fine... You got a spare HD around? You could try loading one of the free Linux OS's and see if the game will run then. Linux is much kinder on the system resources.

Bye Now,
Jerry Cornelius - Has spent too goddamned much time tweaking systems to make games work.

Hmm 256 M memmory too little PAH
I've been running all the latest apps on my machine for ages with that mouint o memory .. ok its a p1.6ghz geforce4 machine , but thats a speed thing, on a slower machine, i'd just expect slow frame rates or jerkyness.

random freezes shound like temperature glitches, but in a few minutes? that must mean ts got too hot very fast

When I bought my athlon XP
2000+ it ran hot at 69 degrees and didnt crash or anything ...

maybe its just yer dodgy operating system , get yerself XP or win 2000

Please don't let this turn this into a "my PC's better than yours" post !!

To Garand, try a CPU Temperature checker and see what your cpu's temp is. I believe the max stated by AMD is somewhere around 90 degrees or so, but should run a lot lower normally.

Somewhere around the 55-65 mark would be ok.

lower is better !

Aradan Kir wrote:Please don't let this turn this into a "my PC's better than yours" post !!

wtf ? I was just saying 256 mem is fine , but then I was sayin' then again I was sayin' maybe i dont notice the slowness cos i have a faster machine...

I was tryin' to be constructive, I Do believe its the op system 98 is way flakey , ok faster than win 2000 but flakey

Alandric wrote:

Aradan Kir wrote:Please don't let this turn this into a "my PC's better than yours" post !!

wtf ? I was just saying 256 mem is fine , but then I was sayin' then again I was sayin' maybe i dont notice the slowness cos i have a faster machine...

I was tryin' to be constructive, I Do believe its the op system 98 is way flakey , ok faster than win 2000 but flakey

My concern was directed more at Actually, as he started by posting his PC spec - and I have seen many a thread (not here mind you) go down the "well I've got a Geforce 75 with 867 gigs of onboard ram and and and" *yawn* route.

I should have added a afterwards though - as it wasn't meant as a criticism, and sorry if it came across like that

I was just posting my specs to show that I had a similar system to the man w/ the problem, so that I could suggest that the problem WASN'T in the underlying system.

Same chipset, same OS, comparable vidcard, little more RAM. That was my intent. That's why I still don't think his issue is CPU temps and doubt it is RAM and KNOW BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT it ain't his OS. The only reason I suggested he try the Linux version is to see how his system resources were being used. If it works on Linux, I'd still suggest he go back to Win98, and just hand-kill all his process 'cause that would probably be the issue.

Bye Now,
Jerry Cornelius - k-r4d d00d

so wheres garand?

Sorry, I have been dealing with some serious personal issues IRL compared to the computer (NWN) issue.

I downloaded CPUCool as advised and installed it and spent a little whiel trying to figure out how the eff it worked. Once done it appears that my system isn't "running hot" as it were. I doubted as much anyhow since I've three fans in my beast (one for the case, one for the processor, and one for my vid card) and they are all running fine.

I tried running the Single Player mode again, with all other applications closed (except systray and explorer) and made sure that all the graphics settings were turned all the way down or off. It played okay for a few minutes ... it would seem to jog during some of the animations (ie. as I walked there would be an occasional "skip") and I even went through the first initial conversation with Pavel without a hitch then, when I went to loot a chest it was fine. When I clicked on the 2 GP in the chest to put them in my inventory the game locked and went into the "sound loop" where it played a short bit of the sound effect over and over. (No escapes worked so I had to shut down my computer and do a hard reboot).

All my drivers are up to date and I'm running DirectX 9.0a and I have tested all the stuff in dxdiag. My drive is defragged. No firewall. Connection speed averages about 36k. I would love to upgrade my OS from 98 but I don't have the 200 bucks to drop for an upgrade. (I already spent as much on the Geforce 4 card and extra RAM specifically so I can run NWN).

I've not tried loading another game yet. I've got Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast ... I can try that and see how she goes. Any other thoughts on this let me know. I'm also going to recheck the FAQs and Troubleshooters looking into the SounfFX loop freeze and see if they have anything on that.

Thanks everyone for the advice so far ... I'll keep you up to date if you'll keep giving me ideas if you have them

Okay, I loaded Star Wars Jedi Knight II Jedi Outcast and played it. I cranked all the graphics to the max and everything worked fairly well until I got into my first major firefight with a small horde of stormtroopers and it locked on me. So I rebooted ... lowered the graphics settings and it ran just fine ... I quit playing after I did a stunningly heroic leap to my death (on purpose of course ... to infuse the Imperial Remnant troops with a sense of foreboding remorse at my total suicidal disregard for logical bridge-crossing techniques.)

Anyhow ... I think my system is just ... not stable anymore ... Nothing specific ... nothing really fixable. I did a fell system restore ... reloaded everything ... and it still just ran things bad.

I'm out of ideas. Maybe I'll just save and by a new beast. *sigh*

Dx 9 eh?, that very well could be the problem,have you had dx 9 installed since before you started playing the game?


I've heard of it giving a few people problems before.





anyone bragging about a p4 1.6ghz doesnt know anything about pc's btw,unless it's a heavily overclocked northwood.

hello,

I think from your previous posts that you have recently upgraded your system with an new video card and new ram. I had some similar issues with my machine and they were resolved when I put in a power supply with more wattage. I now know that my GForce2 Ti requires a 300 watt power supply. When I frist put the new video card in all kinds of funny stuff started happening ie my system got to be very unstable especially when running graphics intensive apps, So I put in a 350 watt power supply and everything has been great since. My system came with a 200 watt power supply and I bet that mine machine is about as old as yours. Just something to check out. I hope you get your problem fixed.

Hmmm ... I will look into this .... AND I'm going to try manually sending in my character file to deal with the "black screen of death" I keep getting told about.

What address should i send the bic file to so the team will get it?

hmm the man might be on to something .. power supply ay? *rubs chin*

Gatorman! You found the problem! Praise Pete!

I'm so happy I now know why my computer isn't working the way it should. (I cracked that badboy open and shined a flashlight at my powersupply and it cowered at the flashlight cause the batteries in it can give more wattage).

So ... I just need to get an upgrade and it looks like (from initial checks) it shouldn't be too terribly expensive.

I'm thinking something in the 300-350W range ... (which will nearly double what I have in there). But I'm gonna take it to someone with fancy equipment that beeps instead of trying to do it myself and potentially knocking out a power grid in my city (best case scenario).

I suddenly feel as if the end of my RL computer ordeals will be over soon (at least, soon after my next paycheck) and then, oh yes, and then ... I will be able to begin my Virtual Fantasy computer ordeals like a good wasteful American.

*grabs up his sword of determination, throws on his armour of computer envy, mounts his horse of paranthetical statements (It has special horse shoes) and charges off to the sticking place! (That being someplace that offers computer power supply upgrading for a decent price.)*

BOOYAH!

You people, whom I've barely even communicated with, continue to Rock. I look forward to having you push around my new character sometime.

And to Compaq Presario ... I offer merely this ...

FEK YOOS!