The World of Avlis

G'day. I've just signed up to Avlis after being badgered by a friend to give it a go. It's been a while since I've played NWN and it no longer runs well on my PC. The weird thing is that I've only upgraded my PC since then. I've been through the Bioware self-help forums with a fine-toothed comb and tried pretty much everything there to no avail. I was wondering whether this community might be able to help.

The Problem
Severe lag (think 1000 ping - I get about 0.5 to 1 fps) in single player and multiplayer games. Lag starts after about 20 seconds or when NPCs or monsters are spawned or scripts run. To get the game to run I need to run it in 800x600 with sound disabled, all graphics options minimized, and NAV disabled. Even then I get huge lag whenever more than a single NPC/monster appears or when a largely visible spell effect goes off.

My System
P4 1.7Ghz
Radeon 9800 Pro
768Mb memory
Craptacularly bad sound card (Vortex 1 based ) - but sound is disabled
DSL connection with ping to Mikona server of 70-100
I've installed both SoU and HotU and patched to 1.62 and I'm running all the hakpaks for Avlis.

I don't want to put up all my troubleshooting because it would take forever to type up (2 sides of A4 paper ) but also because I want to see if you guys can think of anything I haven't tried

Any suggestions greatly appreciated (and because 800x600 with no sound is so 1980s ). Thanks

so you're saying that even when you're not even playing online it is really slow?

If that is the case:

1. Do you have other application running at the same time? if so, shut them down and see..

2. There are a bunch of video options (grass, water, shadows, etc.) you may want to shut some of them down.

3. Something is wrong with your video card.

First thing I'd check is your RAM.
Since Windows XP can potentially use a ton of RAM all by itself, its worth mentioning what operating system you have. Hell, ME has always had known memory leaks as well.

Anyway, make sure your RAM is still good. Theres a number of things that could have gone wrong between the day you put it in, and now. So don't discount it, even if its new.

If your RAM is good... check the current running processes. Again, it'd be nice to know your OS here. If its Win2k or WinXP, right click on your task bar, and click Task Manager. Then click CPU, and see if anything other than System Idle is taking more than 50% of your processing power. If NWN is open during this check, it should be using near 100%, if not exactly so.

Finally... I know you said sound is disabled...
Ditch that sound card and get a Creative product. Since the Audigy 2 has been out for a while, you can probably get a regular Audigy for pretty cheap. A bad sound card can affect game performance, as it can force what would normally be processed on the card, to the CPU instead.
But, like you said, your sound is off... so I'm not 100% sure this will fix anything.

And finally, make sure everything is up to date. Check drivers for your video card especially. ATI is notorious for its cards not running NWN perfectly for everyone. NWN performance can vary quite a bit between the different drivers for the Radeon series of cards.
(DON'T START "MY ATI WORKS FINE" here. Go somewhere else and be a fanboy.)

I'm sure others will have more suggestions if I've missed anything here.

-Themicles

Yeah, my Radeon 9700pro used to run NWN like a dog. That is until I updated the drivers. Now it just crashes every 5-30 minutes.

The solution: I move my chair one and half meters in front of my girlfriend's computer when playing NWN. That Geforce 4 ti 4200 sure don't have any problems.

Yes, I have a smart and beautiful girlfriend who likes to play computer and console games. Muhhahhahahaha.

Tangleroot wrote:Yes, I have a smart and beautiful girlfriend who likes to play computer and console games. Muhhahhahahaha.

[hijack]
Well, then, why isn't she playing on Avlis??
[/hijack]

Anyway, if you've done all that, try turning off the following video options first, before trying any of the others:
Anti-Aliasing
Environment Shadows
Shiny Water

After trying those off, in any combination, continue testing from there.

-Themicles

Themicles wrote: [hijack]
Well, then, why isn't she playing on Avlis??
[/hijack]

[even more hijack]
Because I fear some elitist rp'er would bully her for her newbish roleplaying ways. After which she'd open a can of whoop-ass on me for making her try it.

And because then I wouldn't have a computer to play Avlis with anymore.

[/won't this hijack ever end]

I have had plenty of problems with neverwinter. the above suggestions are good. I would reinstall the game after you have reinstalled any video/sound drivers.

Make sure your antivirus or other programs are not updating/running in the background. antivirus will kill a game quickly.

There is definately lag connecting to a multiplayer game over the internet... its just a fact of life. If you are getting lag playing a single player game on your machine then its either a system ram, system CPU speed, bus speed, video card, etc -problem in my oppinion.

Does the opening movie for the game run smoothly? This alone is an indication of your video card performance and system ram.

Does it take excessively long to change from one area to another? this is a system ram thing.

Hope that helps you narrow down your problem.

Worgain

Make sure your antivirus or other programs are not updating/running in the background. antivirus will kill a game quickly.

Make sure you check this one out. I spent $165 for a new video card and 512 Meg of Ram to fix a believed system problem. When I still had it after the upgrades I found out that my antivirus was the culprit. Not that having 768 Meg and a 128 Meg GFX card hurts but as it turns out it wasnt necessary.

Good thing I didnt buy a new computer over this

Good luck and welcome

Thanks for the tips You've raised so many things that I'm just going to spam back my replies. Hopefully it makes sense.

I'm running Windows XP Home SP1.

I have abosolutely no problems with any other games currently running on my system (DAoC, CoH, KoToR, Morrowind) so I'm thinking this is a NWN issue not a gfx card issue.

I'm not sure how to check my memory. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Is this a F2 at startup thing? It comes up with 768Mb under My Computer-->Properties.

I've run the game in safe mode with all non-windows background tasks unloaded. That's what pointed me to the problem with NAV (and probably InCD as well) so I disable that before running NWN. I regularly run Ad Aware and antivirus scans so I don't think it's anything quirky. There is only nwmain.exe taking resources while the game in running.

The movies run perfectly even with sound with no slow down, stuttering or glitches. Load times are lightning fast.

I've turned off *all* graphics effects. If I even turn on even one of them it becomes unplayable.

I updated my ATi drivers and there was no improvement.

I disabled my sound card and game port in device manager and that offered no improvement.

My Homework
I might try uninstalling NWN, defragging my drive again and making a fresh install. I'll look into other sound cards too - that's starting to look like the culprit.

Thanks heaps.

This site may help you with the Processes running in the background.

http://www.blackviper.com/index.html


I have a very old machine and after following some simple Instuction's all seems to run will.

WARNING!!!
NEVER Disable your antivirus entirely!

Merely make sure its not running some scheduled scan!
A windows XP machine with the specs you mentioned, and Norton Anti-virus with Real Time Filesystem Protection WILL NOT cause the game to run slowly.

I give this warning for a reason:
My fiance's little bro disabled his anti-virus because "it makes Diablo II run slow."
Ya know what makes Diablo II run slow for him? That shitty Celeron, with built in Intel graphics.

You know how many viruses I've found on that computer? I'm still counting. I can't even install an anti-virus anymore, because a virus on there closes the installer, and when I did manage to install, closes the program itself.

I can't stress enough, how important it is to have an anti-virus solution with Realtime protection. I have Norton Antivirus Corporate with the Realtime Filesystem Protection turned on, on a 500mhz machine with a GeForce 3, that runs NWN just fine. Not to mention that same machine is running about 20 different services for my network.

-Themicles

Also:
Hit Windows Update and make sure you have the security patch that fixes the system flaw that the Sasser worm uses.
And run a virus scan while doing all the defragging and reinstalling stuff.
Local CompUSA is flooded with virus clean services due to the damn Sasser worm... and to think that the fix has been around for a bit.
People need to learn to keep their systems up to date.

Hell, if you read the news, Sasser has even hit a few banks around the world. I'd think that of anything, a bank would keep updated.

-Themicles

Bet you're glad that friend made you shell out that $30 for HoTU now, huh?



Jhevon

What about the resolution NWN is running at? I usually run mine at 800x600, even though it looks better higher. NWN is noticably slower at higher resolutions, even without visual effects. I find that running it at 800x600 lets me have on most of the visual effects. Also, reducing the texture quality might help.

I had a problem with my old Radeon Drivers. What you may need to do in addition to disabling extra services and such is:

- Uninstall your video drivers
- Manually clean up your box removing all traces of your video drivers
- Make damn sure not one single remnant is left
- Note that I said to do the same thing 3 times, it is that important.
- THEN install the newest drivers from ATI (don't get any 3rd party drivers through windows update.
- Disable things such as anastropic filtering (I doubt thats how its spelled) and anti-aliasing.

I can almost guarantee its some problem with the video card, since ATI cards BLOW.

But, you might want to try some of the more "less expensive" solutions listed above first, like updating drivers and reinstalling, etc.

4x4_Ender wrote:I can almost guarantee its some problem with the video card, since ATI cards BLOW.

But, you might want to try some of the more "less expensive" solutions listed above first, like updating drivers and reinstalling, etc.

When I had this problem it was because I updated my drivers, instead of having them replaced.

And an added note in response to an above post, ANTI VIRUS IS FOR WUSSES!

4x4_Ender wrote:I can almost guarantee its some problem with the video card, since ATI cards BLOW.

But, you might want to try some of the more "less expensive" solutions listed above first, like updating drivers and reinstalling, etc.

Correction: Bioware blows, because they optimized their game for one graphics card company, and consequently screwed everyone else over. But don't laugh at the ATI cards when I'm getting more FPS on Halo, UT2004, etc, from companies that test and optimize for all configurations.

And he's already said games like KoToR, Call of Duty, and whatnot work fine-- if they work, its not a graphics card problem.

Ialos wrote: And he's already said games like KoToR, Call of Duty, and whatnot work fine-- if they work, its not a graphics card problem.

I actualy did have problems with NWN and not anything else installed, which is why I've been insisting so much on this topic. It tooke me a long time to figure out what the hell was going on.

use linux *dances and looks at 20% higher frame rate and gives viruses & co the finger*

seriously... I had good experiences with nwn running on my machine with win and lin. I was quite suprised how much more performant the game is running under linux when you trick a little (max i got was just below 30% higher frame rate than under win).

edit: ah the best thing about the linux installation is you dont need the cd officially anymore to run the game no safedisk (or whatever it was called) issues

It might not be a problem with the video card in itself but a compatibility video card problem with NWN. I have a laptop Dell D600 (P M 1.4Ghz w/512Mb DDR) and the video card in it is an ATI Mobile Radeon 9000. I got some issues and now I will have it replaced...hmm...wonder if it's just a coincidence or if the game asked too much of it using ATI drivers and busting my card. Now I have to run my WinXP Pro in 16bits color depths or I get garbage around my desktop icons (and can't run NWN anymore without these pixels' glitches unless I reduce my material acceleration...but then the game become damn slow...unplayable!)

So, I'll let you know when I change my motherboard (because it is built-in for laptops...well...some of them) and if it bust my card again...well...I'll know I can't play NWN on it anymore!!

Linux might be a good idea to try though

Accidently stumbled across a fix in another forum. I'm using the 3.10 Catalyst drivers for my Radeon 9800 and everything works fine. I still have the sounds on safe mode since it seems to hang (even with a new Audigy) but at least the game is playable now.

Might even actually start playing now

Ya not the kind of news Radeon users want to hear but NWN and Radeon dont mix well. NWN is an OpenGL game and anything using opengl flies on a GeForce. I bought a mid range (FX 5600) geforce and it runs it without problems. MY Radeon 9600 is gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere and I'm currently researching which GeForce 6800 (the latest chipset) to buy

and if all else fails, try opening your computer.

When your computer gets too warm, things really slow down.

all I can say is try different drivers, some work, some dont. some run good, some dont.

I guarantee you this is your problem.