Very jerky gameplay

Nothingman · Oct 26, 2005

I just got everything installed and I have yet to get any error messages but there are definitely some problems. The Take Two intro is fine but the Firaxis intro at the beginning is jerky and the sound cuts in and out. I didn't think much of it then. I started up the game and things seemed to be a little slow loading considering my computer specs but I wasn't worried. Though once the game began everything moved very slow. Tooltips were laggy, movement was laggy, the little Hit Enter to Return in the city view was laggy, etc. Sound seemed to be ok when in the game. I updated directx, did a quick windows check on my sound card which said it was fine, and uninstalled Zone Alarm.

I have a P4 2.66 ghz processor with 1 gig ram and 128 mb GeForce FX 5200 video card. My soundcard is listed as SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio. I've never had any problems running anything on this computer. I think it's probably tied to my sound card because when I run dxdiag I get the message "could not get basic sound info." I get no errors and can play but it runs so bad I might as well not be able to play it. Has anyone else had this issue yet or does anyone know what I could do to solve it?

Lormax · Oct 26, 2005

I'm getting the same thing, it's just unplayable in it's current state because of how slow everything is going. According to srtest.com, I fill up the whole thing for "Recommended", so I'm good to go there. I'm updated my Nvidia drivers right now from 6.14.10 to 81.85, we'll see how that goes.

Lormax · Oct 26, 2005

Quick follow-up. After installing the new drivers and restarting, the game is running 100x better. Try that if you're experiencing our problems!

Nothingman · Oct 26, 2005

I upgraded to 81.85 and it did nothing for me.

Ruffin · Oct 26, 2005

Thanks Lormax. After two hours and the destruction of a perfectly innocent lamp, I can actually play the silly thing now. It's not great, but I can move a unit in under five minutes. (using nvidia 5500, btw)

Monado · Oct 26, 2005

How do you update to 81.85? i don't even know what this means...i just want to try it because i want to start playing the game!

Nothingman · Oct 26, 2005

Quick update. I downloaded new drivers, reinstalled directx, downloaded new sound card drivers and nothing worked. Then I remembered I had freshly installed XP about a week ago and never upgraded to SP2. I didn't think it would make a difference but I had tried everything else and turns out upgrading to SP2 did it for me. Got rid of the dxdiag error messages and the game runs great.

Ruffin · Oct 26, 2005

okay, I've thoroughly checked (and updated) my video card. I meet the recommended requirements in every way - 2.8G processor, 512 ram, 128 video - everything. But it's still slower than mud, particularly when it's changing perspective (i.e. going from city to overview to combat zoom). Pirates doesn't have these problems. Any clues?

Tyrole · Oct 26, 2005

I am having the exact problem Nothingman had, in that the intro movie played, but with sound cutting out every few seconds. When in game, the movements are extremely sluggish and jerky - practically unplayable. When I did a frames per second test, I max out at 7 fps while in game.

I meet every minimum system requirement, and surpass several recommended requirements. I have upgraded both my graphics card (Radeon 8500DV) and sound card (Audigy 2) drivers to the newest versions. Unfortunately, I am already running Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2, so installing that is not an option to fix this issue.

Anyone have anymore ideas? Thanks.

Melendwyr · Oct 26, 2005

I have that problem precisely. What can I do to try to fix it?

Tyrole · Oct 26, 2005

Upon further testing, I have found that the game jumps from the low framerate of 5-9 to a much more reasonable rate of 40-45 when I zoom just outside of the unit visibility range. It seems whatever problems I am having are caused by unit displaying.

Note: I have tried all animation freezing options and have decreased the graphics levels to the lowest possible settings. I have also tried disabling all sound options. None of these have had any effect.

Pulse · Oct 26, 2005

Tyrole said:
Upon further testing, I have found that the game jumps from the low framerate of 5-9 to a much more reasonable rate of 40-45 when I zoom just outside of the unit visibility range. It seems whatever problems I am having are caused by unit displaying.

Note: I have tried all animation freezing options and have decreased the graphics levels to the lowest possible settings. I have also tried disabling all sound options. None of these have had any effect.

I am getting this to. I have more than the recommended requirements. Sometimes for a few turns the game plays jerk free other times it slows to a crawl. The machine I have it on has Athlon XP 2400, 768mb and GeForce 5900FX XT with 128mb. While the game is running it is only using about 40% of the cpu and I have about 256mb ram free so I'm not sure where the slow down is coming from. I have all the latest drivers and such. Hopefully there will be some code optimizations to fix these problems

Tyrole · Oct 26, 2005

A very minor victory:

By closing my motherboard temperature monitoring software (MSI PC Alert 4), I was able to eliminate the audio difficulties in the intro movie.

The gameplay framerate problems still remain.

Nothingman · Oct 26, 2005

Try running dxdiag. Under the sound tab slide Hardware Sound Acceleration Level: to No Acceleration.

Tyrole · Oct 26, 2005

No effect.

bugmenot17 · Oct 27, 2005

Nothingman said:
I just got everything installed and I have yet to get any error messages but there are definitely some problems. The Take Two intro is fine but the Firaxis intro at the beginning is jerky and the sound cuts in and out.

Close all programs in the background, most notably Firefox, which can cause most problems when running any game.

Lormax · Oct 27, 2005

The person who suggested installing Service Pack 2 is a godsend! I've also ran dxdiag and turned off the sounds hardware acceleration. And I thought the game was better after reinstalling the driver...thanks for the tip!

bugmenot17 · Oct 27, 2005

Nothingman said:
Try running dxdiag. Under the sound tab slide Hardware Sound Acceleration Level: to No Acceleration.

That's a bad idea.

brbdc · Oct 27, 2005

I am in this boat also. Sound cuts in and out during the wonder movies. Gets laggy when it zooms in for City building a wonder. Lag between keyboard input and game response. Two examples: 1) When I want to move a guy. I could press... left. left. up and he would move in previous civs. In this one I have to press left. then wait. then left. then wait some more. then up. Or 2) when I even press enter at the end of the turn. Takes like a second or 2 of lag delay before processing end of the turn.

Not unplayabale but definitely takes away from the game.

Tyrole · Oct 27, 2005

brbdc said:
I am in this boat also. Sound cuts in and out during the wonder movies. Gets laggy when it zooms in for City building a wonder. Lag between keyboard input and game response. Two examples: 1) When I want to move a guy. I could press... left. left. up and he would move in previous civs. In this one I have to press left. then wait. then left. then wait some more. then up. Or 2) when I even press enter at the end of the turn. Takes like a second or 2 of lag delay before processing end of the turn.

Not unplayabale but definitely takes away from the game.

My symptoms also include all of these.

What graphics and sound cards are all of you running? I have an All-in-Wonder Radeon 8500DV and an Creative Audigy 2. All drivers are current.

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