Situation Comedy is almost unplayable due to jerky graphics
I need help. I downloaded SC through the link received by email. The graphics are extremely jerky and stutters like 5 frames per second. The scripted animations plays fine at full framerate though. but actual gameplay drops to stutters.
My system is a HT P4 3ghz, GF7800GS 256mb, Audigy2, 1gb ram. Tried lowest possible settings and its still the same. Culture shock plays just fine though.
Also, I would like to see support for 1280x1024 resolution. My LCD soesn't scale anything other than the resolutions it supports (setting to scale by adapter doesn't help) so a custom 1280x960 just adds graphical garbage at the bottom and it really ruins gameplay.
But my above problem is of upmost importance, pointless to have the correct resolution when I can't even play the game properly, eh? Would appreciate any remedies, thanks.
My system is a HT P4 3ghz, GF7800GS 256mb, Audigy2, 1gb ram. Tried lowest possible settings and its still the same. Culture shock plays just fine though.
Also, I would like to see support for 1280x1024 resolution. My LCD soesn't scale anything other than the resolutions it supports (setting to scale by adapter doesn't help) so a custom 1280x960 just adds graphical garbage at the bottom and it really ruins gameplay.
But my above problem is of upmost importance, pointless to have the correct resolution when I can't even play the game properly, eh? Would appreciate any remedies, thanks.
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Comments
I've tried to delete the .prop file, but nothing changed...
My system is:
Pentium 4 HT 2.8Ghz, 1.5GB Ram, ATI Radeon X1950Pro.
I have already installed the most recent drivers for all my devices.
I have the same problem. When the jerky graphics happens, my harddisk appears to be trashing as well. Doesn't happen with episode 1 though.
It happens/worsens when something other than Sam moves on screen ie Max or the little SkinBodies car. Definitely looks like a game/programming issue. I think this warrants immediate attention by tech support.
System: AMD AthlonXP 2400+ on Asus A7V600-X motherboard, nVidia 7600GS with 93.81 drivers, onboard SoundMAX digital audio via S/PDIF, 1GB RAM, tons of disk space.
Obviously, I cannot assist with anyone's problem, but at least you all know now that it isn't the game.
Sarah
In your case, it's definitely because of the integrated video, which is not supported. Sorry about that.
For the rest of you - are any of you running programs that could be carrying on in the background and interfering with the game? What type of virus protection are you using?
Hi Emily,
I can safely say that I have the normal stuff running like Norton and Zonealarm. I have never had a problem with Episode 1. Only Episode 2 gives this problem. And I seem to notice that the game is smoother (Hard disk does not trash as much) when Max is standing still.
Well just because the integrated video doesn't meet requirements doesnt mean the game won't *run*, it just won't meet "reasonable" performance standards since those cards don't have any technical oomph. They are cheap, disposable "solutions" intended mostly only for 2D use, regular windows, web surfing etc. They cost Intel like 10 bucks or less each and are the bane of PC game developers everywhere. Outside of playing casual 2D games, you really want to get a better video card for games. It doesnt have to be the greatest, as long as it means directx9 and Telltale's minimum requirements. Might be able to find one pretty cheap, although seriously I would wait for a DirectX10 card post Vista so you get something that will last awhile.
I feel for you if you're still on an integrated graphics this close to the next gen (more cards will be out in the next 6 months at lower prices). Seems like you're going to have to wait longer
compaq V2000 1.5gig of memory. and a new install with Not even AV installed?!
please help
Perhaps you just didn't notice the problem. See if your Hard disk light keeps blinking whenever Max is walking around.
The temporary solution is to EXIT Comodo firewall from the tray, and then go into task manager and kill the cmdagent.exe process. You can then play the game fine. However from what I can gather, you'll have to reboot to re-enable the firewall.
The other thing that you can try is going into services and disabling the Comodo Application Agent after quitting Comodo from the tray, and then trying the game. If the game runs ok, after quitting try starting the service up again and then running Comodo firewall. Haven't tried this yet, but now I need to reboot so I'll do so and let you know.
*EDIT* You can't stop the service, so this doesn't work.
Obviously it is going to be up to somebody from Telltale to get in touch with Comodo and work out whose problem this is to fix. The first episode works fine, should be interesting to see what the third one does.
I hope this helps you if you are having problems, and you have Comodo firewall installed.
Do you happen to know if this happens with other games of ours, or if the problem is limited to Situation: Comedy? (You can download the Culture Shock demo here if you want to try it out.)
Culture Shock works fine, and I unfortunately don't have any of your other games yet. Let me know if I can help out any other way, I'll check back tomorrow.
I did ask on the Comodo firewall forum to see if anyone there had any ideas about why this was happening but so far no dice.
I use WindowsXP 64bit edition... maybe that is of importance.
Strange bug...
When I checked my RAM, it was steadily decreasing (I have 1.5 GB RAM, X800XT video card, 2 Ghz processor), so a memory leak could be the problem but I'm not sure.
Also, the first 2 episodes played perfect before. It might be a problem with Vista as well, as I recently upgraded...although I made sure to turn off most the stuff that runs in the background, and delete that props.prefs file but still no dice. Please look into this because I really want to play episode 3, thanks!
My card has a BIOS option to add an additional 128MB of graphics memory from main memory, in addition to the on-board memory.
I was originally just using the onboard 128 MB of memory. Adding the additional 128MB of memory alleviated my playback problems...
fwiw,
Kilroy:)
My system is a P4 3ghz with 3 gigs of ram, a 7800GS AGP and an Audigy2.
And yeah, I too am using Comodo personal firewall. Watching the task manager shows that the cmdagent.exe sucks the cpu along with two processes of Sam & Max whenever the slowdown is occuring. When not, Sam & Max gives some 30-40% load on the cpu.
Didn't try the third episode yet. Tried deleting prefs.prop, didn't help. Gonna try shutting the firewall down (and plugging me off the net) next.
Computer:
Athlon XP 2600+
2 GB ram
Geforce 7600GS
We became aware yesterday that the version of Software Passport (the activation / copy protection) software we have been using has a memory leak in it. This may be the cause of these slowdowns.
We're testing a fix on episode 4 right now and if it solves the problems, we will fix it in episodes 2 and 3 as well.
I just tried shutting Comodo down and killing the cmdagent.exe process, and it worked for me, for both episodes 2 and 3. So there's something there indeed. I turned windows firewall on before doing that, so I didn't need to unplug the network cable.
I hope this is it and it finally gets fixed. I am wondering if a cracked version to bypass activation/copy protection would not have this problem... hmmm... of course that's not the permanent solution we paying customers would want.
The hint about Comodo Firewall improved the performance a lot. I also shut down the AVG Antivirus ".exes" through task manager, and it seems now the game runs almost perfectly.
Just to let you know, since I've been trying to fix it for some time now, even thought that my video card was broken or something.