Tech question and lament. Mostly lament.

So, my computer, just rejuvenated a little over a week ago with brand spanking new... well, pretty much everything except the harddisk, decided to celebrate the advent of Tales of Monkey Island by BREAKING DOWN. Flaw's in the motherboard, which has been sent back to the seller. Best case scenario, they look at it, decide to forgo any attempts to repair it and just ship a new one out, taking about a week's time. The way the situation looks, I'd give that outcome a 70% chance. Worst case, they attempt to repair it, potentially bringing the time frame into the monthly realm.

Meanwhile. I'm. MISSING. MONKEY! FU--...RIGGIN'! ISLAND!

So I'm in here, on my laptop - which, at least, I can run through the docking station to the nice, big flatscreen I spent a considerable amount on,as well as keyboard and mouse - covering my eyes to avoid any possible spoilers to put the following question to our dear development team:

Is it even worth it trying to install TMI on a 2 year old laptop? Quick specs: 2 GHz Intel Core 2 T7200, 1 GB RAM, ATi Mobility Radeon X1400 graphics card. I'm obviously scraping the minimum reqs, but I'm especially worried about the graphics card. I know support for portable GPU's isn't a sure thing under the best of circumstances, let alone a fairly old one.

Well, if nothing else, I needed to let of a little steam.

GRAAARRGH!

Comments

  • edited July 2009
    Lots of people with good systems seem to be having trouble, but I just played Tales using a 3 year old laptop T2300 @ 1.66 GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600. The only trouble I had was occasionally the screen would have a kind of black flash but that didn't happen very often and it didn't stop me playing at all. Since you can download the game more than once, I'd give it a try. You can turn the quality of the game down if it's not running smoothly.
  • edited July 2009
    Yeah... I'm also just wondering if running the game at the absolute lowest resolution and detail level, with potential graphical errors and instability, is really the way I want to get back into these games...

    It'll probably come down to how the MB situation shakes out. The company I bought from have been pretty good about communication until now, so with a little luck I'll know one way or the other before the weekend. If there's a quick resolution on the horizon, I'll probably grit my teeth and wait it out, so I can really crank up everything and enjoy the game fully. If not... this old beast will have to do.
  • edited July 2009
    Played through it on my old NVidea GF 7950 GS Mobile.

    Admittedly, I had to chose between perfect framerate (at 1280x720, Quality 5) or perfect visuals (1440x900, Quality 9), but it's definitely playable.

    I settled for the letter, because once you're done with the sea-tutorial, the framerate increases dramatically.
  • edited July 2009
    Winther wrote: »
    Yeah... I'm also just wondering if running the game at the absolute lowest resolution and detail level, with potential graphical errors and instability, is really the way I want to get back into these games...

    If it was me, I'd wait until I could play it on my shiny desktop. If you're a long time Monkey Island fan like me and have been waiting years and years for a new one, isn't it worth waiting just another month to ensure you get the most out of the experience?

    That said, the game isn't exactly a resource hog. If you have some computer savvy, which it sounds like you do, you can probably get it running well enough on the laptop to play through it.
  • edited July 2009
    The sea tutorial was definitely what hurt the most. All of those engine effects at once, animation, and that rain. Just hurt the computer.
  • edited July 2009
    Well, got impatient and tried to install and play the game.

    At the menu, at 1024x768, there was about 3/4 of a second's delay between moving the mouse and the cursor responding. At. The. Menu.

    Stopped playing again. I'm not doing this until I can do it properly, damnit!

    Now installing Full Throttle to soothe the pain. Maybe not the obvious choice, but I already played through all the Monkey Island games in anticipation of this about a month ago. Besides, it's short, and it is good. And beating up bikers will make me feel better.
  • edited July 2009
    I put my wife's laptop, similarly spec'd but with a cruddy intel graphics chip, on 800x600, quality level 7 and it is still quite enjoyable.
  • DjNDBDjNDB Moderator
    edited July 2009
    Winther wrote: »
    At the menu, at 1024x768, there was about 3/4 of a second's delay between moving the mouse and the cursor responding. At. The. Menu.
    Even with a low Graphic level?
  • edited July 2009
    Winther wrote: »
    At the menu, at 1024x768, there was about 3/4 of a second's delay between moving the mouse and the cursor responding. At. The. Menu.

    Interestingly the game doesn't seem to require as much power as the menu... So if the menu lags slightly the game should work great, at least in my case it's like that.
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