Sam & Max Season 2, Episode 1 stuttering...

CaptNKILL

I installed Season 2 Episode 1 last night and most of the game works fine but the interactive sequences like the rat shooting and driving mini games have this horrible stutter\freeze every time I either hit something (with the car) or press a key or mouse button.

My system is way over minimum spec...

Core 2 Duo E6750 overclocked to 3.6Ghz
4Gb DDR2-1066
Geforce GTX260 896Mb (tried two driver versions... currently using 190.15)
Creative X-Fi Xtrememusic sound card
Seagate 7200.12 500Gb (for OS and games... two other drives for data)
Vista Ultimate x64

The game stutters regardless of high or low graphics quality or display resolution (from 640x480 to 2048x1536 with 16x anti-aliasing it runs exactly the same).

I've tried setting the game to XP compatibility mode, changing CPU affinity to one core, disabling and forcing vsync and triple buffering, changing frames-rendered-ahead to 3 and 1, using X-Fi ALchemy to switch the game from DirectSound to OpenAL...

Nothing seems to have any effect on the stuttering. Its really distracting and makes the driving and shooting sequences much more difficult since my game pauses every time I hit a button or run into an object.

Also, is there any way to adjust the refresh rates that the game uses at different resolutions? I have a 22" CRT that can run at 2048x1536 @ 85hz, but the game seems to always use 60Hz or 74Hz at that res, which really wears out my eyes. I normally use Rivatuner to force refresh rates but it doesn't seem to work in this game. I see there are some entries in the registry for graphics settings but the values are in some kind of code, so they can't be easily edited.

I think in future Telltale games the prefs.prop file and registry settings should be plain text so that they can be edited manually to make adjustments. There really isn't any reason to make them encrypted.

Will

Actually, I think your best bet might be to update your graphics and soundcard drivers, and to update your directX. Also, I'm 99% positive that there is nothing in the prefs.prop about screen drawspeed. If such a setting exists in the games at all it's deep inside the engine, but I'm guessing we don't set that value.

CaptNKILL

Will wrote: »

Actually, I think your best bet might be to update your graphics and soundcard drivers, and to update your directX. Also, I'm 99% positive that there is nothing in the prefs.prop about screen drawspeed. If such a setting exists in the games at all it's deep inside the engine, but I'm guessing we don't set that value.

DirectX and sound drivers are up to date and the I've tried two graphics drivers. My directX, graphics and sound drivers are more than a year newer than Sam & Max, so it should be supported.

I'm kind of surprised that there isn't anything about this issue anywhere else online. I can't be the only one who has experienced it.

Will

Oh you'd be shocked at the type of unique problems that can creep up on a person's system. Also, updating drivers and directX is more about things that might have broken.

As for what might be causing the issue, there are a few things it *might* be. I know Vista handles audio channels differently, and it could be that every time you play a sound from hitting an object that it purges that sound from memory and then has to re-load it.

Another possibility is that something is interfering with the input mapper. That would fit with the key presses, and theoretically when you hit something the game may be re-querying for input.

Unfortunately, we don't technically support any of the 64bit systems, so it isn't something I know a whole ton about. I know this sounds overly simplistic, but try going into msconfig and temporarily turning off everything that isn't a microsoft process, then reboot and try the game. It's possible that something else is inhibiting the game's normal processes.

CaptNKILL

Well, I finished the episode so I guess I'll just cross my fingers and hope that the others don't have the same problem.

If they do, I'll keep messing with it.

Thanks for your time.