Victoria on low end machines?

[MarkShot]

I had to give up my laptop for a while. So, I put Victoria on an old desk top. (P3/600)

It plays, but not very snappily. Is there anything which I can do to improve the game performance (I am not interested in buying new hardware)?

Thanks.

 

[Nightcap]

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=147392

The main points in that extensive and well written post are:

1) Do not run anything else in the background when running Vicky. That includes MSN and virus checkers.

2) Find the file called tiles.bmp rename it to tiles.bmp.bak You will lose the pretty terrain map but save a huge amount of memory. If you spend most your time in the political map mode you won't even miss the lack of a terrain map.

3) Make sure your graphics drivers are up to date.

4) Use the settings program to switch off the music.

There is also a bit about going back to using directx 8.1 instead of 9 but only do that if you know what you are doing.

 

[Donnie D]

Still you may have some bad err, well the game may not run as smooth as you remind it.
On the Other hand it may just run as smooth as ever....

 

[jdrou]

And the most obvious hint: run at the lowest supported resolution (1024x768). It runs fine on my Thinkpad 600X @500MHz w/576MB RAM on normal or above normal speed. Large amount of RAM is an important factor. How much RAM on your system?

 

[Quarto]

One other tip - rename or remove the AVI and SFX folders - this will prevent the game from playing the intro movies and sound effects during the game. This won't necessarily speed things up, but it will reduce the memory usage slightly. And God knows, playing Vic on a machine like that, every little bit helps .

(actually, your machine's speed is probably quite adequate for Vic - the problem is likely to be the amount of available RAM)

 

[Dark Knight]

This would be better off in tech support

--> Tech support

 

[cwhomer]

I had to give up my laptop for a while. So, I put Victoria on an old desk top. (P3/600)

It plays, but not very snappily. Is there anything which I can do to improve the game performance (I am not interested in buying new hardware)?

Thanks.

Try to avoid using mods that have a lot of events as they tend to slow things down.

 

[Castellon]

You pretty much have recieved the best tips.
Make sure you are in 16Bit color depth as well.

If you did purchase anything ram would be best.

 

[MarkShot]

I haven't really tried anything yet to tune it, because I have been busy with other things.

The machine has 394 Mb of RAM and is running Win98 SE. I just put a new video card in it (Radeon 9200SE, 128Mb RAM), since the card fried the other day.

Is there really any empirical evidence that rolling back to DirectX 8.1 will function better than DirectX 9.0C? Since it is not all that easy to do.

Thanks.

 

[jpd]

Only on my own system, but measuring the difference was only possible because I have TWO Win98SE installations, one with DX8.1 and the other with DX9.0. The third boot has Win2K on it.

It's one of the advantages of having a large HDD and BootMagic

Jan Peter

 

[Castellon]

Could the speed difference have anything to do with the relative locations of the partions on the HD?

EDIT: Thinking about it I guess not, a little sleepy tonight.

 

[jpd]

Nope. My system is optimized in such a way that the swap file isn't needed to run Vicky. And Vicky is on my H: drive

But it's not that strange that DX 8.1 is slightly faster. DX 8.1 does not have the extra code to run the more advanced vertex and pixel sharers, meaning that my video driver is forced into a different (and, as it apperars, slightly faster) mode of operations.

Jan Peter

 

[Castellon]

Pretty much the realization I came to.

 

[jdrou]

I found DX 7.0 (included in Win2k) to be even faster than DX 8.1 for HoI. As Castellon has pointed out before though, even though you don't need the new Direct3D features, if you play multiplayer you will probably want/need the updated DirectPlay in the newer DirectX.

 

[Castellon]

Yes I IIRC you need win98 SE or better to play MP as well, WIn98 will not do.

 

[MarkShot]

How would I go from DirectX 9.0c to 8.1? I checked out DXBUSTER the other day, but it said that it did not support downgrading from DirectX 9.

Any ideas?

On my old desktop, I get 8-15 FPS. On my new laptop, I am usually in the 20-30 FPS range. The desktop actually has a better video subsystem, but clearly CPU is the most important resource. However, I am still just learning the game, and for learning I suppose 8 FPS is still sufficient.

Thanks.

 

[Castellon]

Personally I don't recommend it.