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Sam and Max slow/choppy video

luigi6699luigi6699
edited September 2010 in Game Support
I bought Sam and Max 30x on Steam and have been playing the games on my Macbook pro. They've worked very well, until I started with episode 304. The introduction (before the theme song) runs OK; not really smooth unless I turn down the resolution to 800x600, but I've had that before with the earlier games. Once the cutscene starts inside Stinky's though, it's VERY choppy. Like 1 frame every 2 seconds kind of choppy. Audio is mostly unaffected. This persists into the gameplay; even the mouse movement is so slow and delayed as to be unusable!

I turned all the video settings down to their minimums, and didn't see any improvement. I restarted my computer, and now I can't even launch the game! The game menu never appears, I just get nasty corrupted graphics. If I hit shift-tab to see the steam community options, that screen displays fine. But I cannot get to the main menu at all. If I quit with Apple+Q, I get a very brief flash of the menu as it's quitting.

I have tried running 302 since then, and it runs fine. Only 304 has this problem. It was unplayable at first, and now it's TRULY unplayable!

Any advice? This seems like a pretty major glitch that someone else would have noticed by now!

Comments

  • BoneFreakBoneFreak
    edited July 2010
    Try:
    1. Reinstalling
    2. Changing Graphics Quality Level (same page as resolution change)
    3. Try Looking into your Graphics Card control panel (i.e catalyst for ati, etc.)
  • luigi6699luigi6699
    edited August 2010
    Thanks for the reply!

    I tried reinstalling, and verifying the game cache through steam. I have tried playing with the graphics set all the way to 1, no luck there either. And Mac drivers don't get much of a control panel, unfortunately.

    Any other suggestions?
  • qingofchinaqingofchina
    edited August 2010
    I'm having the same problem with episode 301.

    I just bought the whole third season pack on steam and it would be a shame if I couldn't play it. I just ran my mac updater, so I should have current drivers. My system is good enough to handle eve online with pretty high settings, so why can't it handle this even on the lowest.
  • OzzieMonkeyOzzieMonkey
    edited August 2010
    Try running the game in windowed mode. That works for me.
  • qingofchinaqingofchina
    edited August 2010
    I can't because I'm using Steam. So, I'm pretty sure I have to open the game before I can change that option and since it crashes when it boots up...
  • xbskidxbskid
    edited August 2010
    Try this prefs.prop file (Goes in My Documents\Telltale Games\The Penal Zone).

    Fullscreen off, 848x640 resolution, quality 1. That should get you up and running, and you can modify the settings from there.
  • qingofchinaqingofchina
    edited August 2010
    I run a Mac and don't have that location on my computer. Thanks though.
  • demonfoodemonfoo
    edited August 2010
    What graphics chipset does your Mac have? Run Apple System Profiler (you can get there from Apple Menu -> About This Mac by clicking the "More Info..." button) and look under Hardware -> Graphics/Displays.
  • qingofchinaqingofchina
    edited August 2010
    Chipset Model: GeForce 8600M GT
  • WillWill Telltale Alumni
    edited August 2010
    Hey Qing, could you try deleting the game from steam and reinstalling it? If that doesn't work, go to your user folder, then Library, then Preferences and delete the com.telltalegames.SamMax204.plist

    Let me know if that solves it for you.
  • qingofchinaqingofchina
    edited August 2010
    Well technically its sam and max 301 not 204, but either way, I reinstalled it and now it says my mac doesn't support that game. So now I definitely can't play it.
  • WillWill Telltale Alumni
    edited August 2010
    ... where did I get 204 from?

    Anyway, what is throwing the "unsupported" error message, Steam?

    Also are all of your mac updates up to date?
  • qingofchinaqingofchina
    edited August 2010
    It might be steam, and yeah they should be.
  • qingofchinaqingofchina
    edited August 2010
    Ok I just got the new mac graphics update and its back to screwing up like it was before. I've done everything that everyone's suggested.
  • luigi6699luigi6699
    edited August 2010
    Hi qing - nice to know someone else is having this problem!

    I got all excited because of the Mac graphics update. I installed it, uninstalled SM304 and reinstalled it... stil the same corruption issue. I wonder if it might be something in the settings, like the game is trying to use a resolution that my laptop's monitor doesn't support, something like that.

    I tried deleting the com.telltalegames.SamMax304.plist file, but no luck. Judging from the file modification times, Steam deletes and recreates that when you uninstall and reinstall anyway.

    What REALLY gets my goat is that this DID work at one point. I could get into the game, though it was terribly choppy. So I know this isn't a hardware issue... the only thing that changed was I set the graphics to their lowest possible levels and restarted the game. Can I use command line switches or anything to manually set windowed mode, or set specific graphics modes?
  • luigi6699luigi6699
    edited August 2010
    Quick update: I just installed it on my Windows 7 partition (bootcamp), and in Windows the game plays fine. So this is definitely not a hardware issue.
  • qingofchinaqingofchina
    edited August 2010
    Yeah I did the same thing. I lowered the settings all the way. It worked until I quit the game and tried to open it again. So I think we are having the same problem.
  • WillWill Telltale Alumni
    edited August 2010
    Well, I've never tried this before so let's see what happens. I've attached my plist with everything set to the lowest possible safe values. Try replacing yours with this one.

    Note: due to the wonky forum rules, I had to rename it to .txt. Just change the .txt back to .plist
  • qingofchinaqingofchina
    edited August 2010
    No that didn't work either.
  • luigi6699luigi6699
    edited September 2010
    So, I finally bucked and bought the full series from TellTale directly. (I was having this issue with the Steam version). Lo and behold, every SnM game works flawlessly from TellTale.

    So at least we know this is Steam's fault. Unfortunately, I never did find a way to make the game work through steam. On the plus side, I got all the SnM games! yeahhhh!
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