General game choppiness after fighting to fix crashing.
RE: The Walking Dead.
Copy and pasted from the Steam forums: (Skip quote for current issue)
Currently the game is functioning now that I'm running both with compatibility mode for Windows 98/Me as well as running it as an admin every time, but the in game visuals are all sorts of messed up. The game locks up, causing the audio to stutter fairly frequently (Even worse when there's a lot of action going on. Escaping with Shawn and Chet from the zombies in Episode 1 was tantamount to watching a fancy Powerpoint with bad audio). All of the animations during conversation seem to be skipping frames as well, at certain times. It's bizarre because certain characters will appear to be playing at 15 frames per second while a character idling in the background performs normally.
I'm very close to requesting a refund from Steam. I think I've spent more time trying to get the game to work than actually playing the game.
EDIT: A rough video I just threw together. Ironically, it's the smoothest the game has run since I fixed the crashing. Choppity chop. The choppiness in the beginning is usually the norm.
Copy and pasted from the Steam forums: (Skip quote for current issue)
I purchased the game yesterday, and after some hiccups I thought I had it fixed.
Originally the game launched in a window at a very low resolution, not a huge deal. Changed it to 1920 x 1080/Fullscreen and relaunched, the game proceeded to crash. Subsequent restarts merely got a "Preparing to launch...", the game supposedly launching (My status on Steam changed to being in game), but nothing happening. About 10 seconds later my status went back to online. Do this about 5 times and the game will finally launch, once again in a window at low resolution. Switching settings and not relaunching, I decided I would just deal with it in the future and played through Episode 1 and part of Episode 2.
Fast forward to this morning, and the same issue is back with the resolution (Ugh.), but even worse, my save game is now gone. I'm extremely frustrated right now after spending $25 on this, without it even remotely functioning properly. Tried the save fix of moving the pref.prop to the Steam folder, but since that relies on you doing that every time you launch, and it breaks every launch, it would equal spending about 10 minutes just to launch the game once. And I'm not even sure if it would work. It didn't work, trying it just now.
EDIT: Running it as an admin seems to fix the crashing, now just trying to figure out how to recover my save...
EDIT2: I lied. Still crashing.
EDIT3: Running it in compatibility mode for Windows 98/ME seems to have fixed the crashing. Hopefully it stays fixed.
Save is still MIA though...
EDIT4: After even more digging (More ughs.), it seems I might be screwed entirely in terms of the save. Apparently if you crash your preferences can get corrupted, and since the saves and preferences are linked, your saves are, for all intents and purposes, lost, even if the actual saves are still there.
Seems like very, very poor design to me. Anyone who has a similar combination of issues, beware of playing through until your crashes are resolved, I suppose.
Currently the game is functioning now that I'm running both with compatibility mode for Windows 98/Me as well as running it as an admin every time, but the in game visuals are all sorts of messed up. The game locks up, causing the audio to stutter fairly frequently (Even worse when there's a lot of action going on. Escaping with Shawn and Chet from the zombies in Episode 1 was tantamount to watching a fancy Powerpoint with bad audio). All of the animations during conversation seem to be skipping frames as well, at certain times. It's bizarre because certain characters will appear to be playing at 15 frames per second while a character idling in the background performs normally.
I'm very close to requesting a refund from Steam. I think I've spent more time trying to get the game to work than actually playing the game.
EDIT: A rough video I just threw together. Ironically, it's the smoothest the game has run since I fixed the crashing. Choppity chop. The choppiness in the beginning is usually the norm.
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Comments
Can you also post a DxDiag?
Windows XP: Go to your start menu and click on run. Type in "dxdiag" and hit enter.
Windows Vista / 7: Press the windows key on your keyboard or click on the start menu. Type in "dxdiag" and hit enter.
Now click on the button that says "save all information".
It will prompt you to save a file. Save it where you can find it.
Open the file and press Ctrl+A followed by Ctrl+C to copy the contents, and paste them in a reply by pressing Ctrl-V.
Yep, played with all the settings and various resolutions. No dice. The choppiness only began once I fixed the crashing via switching to compatibility mode.
And I even sat there and went "I need to remember to post my specs"... then forgot. Not that I should have any issues running this game...
AMD Phenom II x4 @ 3.1 GHz
8 GB RAM
AMD Radeon 6870 1GB
Running Windows 7 64 bit.
All the same to me. Was trying to avoid making this page super lengthy.
I would also try updating your sound driver.
It is also possible, that you don't need the compatibility mode anymore with either of these measures, and can resolve the choppiness that way.
I'm hesitantly optimistic at this point. Thanks! Bizarrely, it skipped ahead an entire section of the game in Macon, which I'm okay with since I was replaying it anyway.
I am glad it seems to help.
By switching compatibility mode you also switch the savegame location.
TWD usually saves to
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Telltale Games\The Walking Dead
but if I run it in compatibility mode for win95 or win98/me it saves to
%PUBLIC%\Documents\Telltale Games\GameData
This game is a joke. Quickly turning into the biggest waste of $25 I've ever done.
EDIT: Apparently my preferences got screwed up, AGAIN, resulting in the save I had not even showing up.
My disgust with Telltale is palpable right now.
If you do, this file could be cause of your problems. Your prefs file should only be in your Documents\Telltale Games\The Walking Dead directory. Please remove the prefs file from your Steam subdirectory (copy it to your desktop, just in case) and run the game again. If you see the proper choices, you can delete the prefs file now on your desktop. If you do not see the correct choices, close your game and delete the prefs from your Documents\...\The Walking Dead folder and move the prefs file from your desktop into this folder.
Also, reinstalling Steam has helped a lot of people play the game and avoid crashes since Steam started converting game files recently.
None of which worked. Every preference file fails to show any save files, only giving the option of either picking from 3 empty slots, or going to the "Pick your UI" option. (Which equates to the same thing.)
This is even using a preferences file that I coped over the second I saw that it wasn't having Episode 3 show up, in addition to trying the preference file already in my documents. Something is completely borked, and cost me all the time I spent on this game.
EDIT: I've since received a refund for the game.
I might wait until Episode 5 is released and hope by then they've fixed the numerous issues with this game, then give it a shot again. Until then, I'm avoiding it like the plague.