Dark Messiah

[sparhawk]

Yesterday I started to play Dark Messiah. I only went into the first mission, where you have to take down that cyclop, and so far I liked it. The story introduction reminded me a bit about Half 2 though.

There are some nasty bugs though. When I tried to use that telekinetic spell on a fixed box, it crashed, and when I shut it down, it always locks my resolution to 640x480x256 for some reason. Only solution is to reboot to get back to my normal desktop.

 

Anybody else played it?

[SplaTtzZ]

Yes i've played it and i thought it was quite enjoyable. I didn't have very many bugs when i used XP but i installed it again on Vista at some point and found it had quite alot more bugs; though i think thats because it doesn't support Vista. I take it you've tried patching it, and updated your device drivers like Video cards etc?

 

The only problem i had with the game play was the whole 'being on ice-skates feel' it had, as though the player character was constantly sliding everywhere instead of walking. If i recall this problem was already mentioned in other posts. The body awareness was good though, i wish they put that in more games.

[sparhawk]

I run it under Windows 2000 and yes, I looked and I should have the most recent updates for my card.

 

Another issue I noticed is, that I get "snow" when I play longer. I had the same problem with Doom 3, that's why I had to update the driver, but I heard that this is due to overheating the gfx card when it's heavily in use. The rebooting is annoying, but it's ok, if the game is good enough, so I can live with that, if don't find a fix.

 

As for ice skating, the only thing that I noticed is, that it takes quite long when i.e. I walk forward into a wall or in some corner and then backpedal. It almost felt as if the characte got stuck, but afte realizing that there is an animated body, I think it's because the animation takes so long to reverse the body or something like that. It's not a big deal, but it is a bit strange. When I try to take a step backwards, it doesn't take me more then a second to do that in real life. Apart from that the movement feels quite ok.

 

I tried to play it with my gamepad. Configured the second joystick to control the view, and the other one for movement, but that's really awakward. I always forgot to move the second joystick and was constantly walking in different directions, then I was looking. Mouse control is much better. Maybe I keep trying and see if I get better at this kind of control.

[SplaTtzZ]

Yeah I've heard that getting artifacts like snow is a sympton of overheating cards, you should try maybe getting one of those monitor programs. Nvidia has NVMonitor which has a temperature and event logger for its cards; I'm not sure how effective or accurate such programs are though. ATi would have a similar app I'm sure.

My 8800 Gtx runs at around 70 degrees; which is kind of worrying but after googling it thats apparently normal. Heh, fingers crossed I guess.

 

Also, take a look at http://www.tweakguides.com/DMOMM_1.html this guide might help fix the game crashing or optimise performance.

[Serpentine]

Yup, graphics artifacts like that will be caused by thermal issues or timing issues with the vmem.

 

The actual core of the 9800 can take 95-100 degrees for a good few years, but the area around it tends to get nailed if you have poor airflow in your case. I'd make sure you have a nice working front fan blowing back under the card and up towards the cpu area, at the cpu, make sure the psu and back system fans are also in happy working condition - the psu fan is the important one with venting the hottest air from inside, while the back system fan makes sure the airflow from the front is working nicely.

 

You may want to think of taking the stock cooler off of the graphics card and giving it a good clean, replace the thermal paste on the core (silver etc are good) and the paste on the memory around it (silicone/zinc compounds) - Yes, memory cools better with the cheap white paste than with expensive stuff. Also unscrew the heatsink cover and clean it out, those thin copper fins get really messy after a few years.

 

I seem to remember the 9800XT's had good diodes on them, so you can most likely get some temps off them with ATi Tray Tool, http://radeon.ru/downloads/att/attsetup.exe , under hardware monitor.

 

But yeah, think just a good cleaning and stuff will make it all happy again

[SplaTtzZ]

Yeah I'm using an nvidia 8800gtx, so Ati doesnt apply and so far even though the temp is fairly hot compared to older cards it's still runnning fine. My mobo temp is around 30-35 degrees celsius, and cpu temp is between 35-40 degrees c. So i think i have pretty good cooling.

 

I've always wondered though whether the back fan on my case, of which there is 1x120mm fan, should be an exhaust one,which it is at the moment (ie. blowing air out of the case). My case has a duct which actually channels air from the cpu fan directly to the back fan; so i thought it would be better if that fan pushed the hot air out. My front fans are configured as intake fans, sucking air inside, so i figure that i've got a draught going where air is refreshed inside the case constantly, rather than recycled.

 

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Maybe both front and back should be blowing air inside, I'm not sure; and the stupid maual is in Chinese and Engrish and doesnt even mention fans.

Edited October 16, 2007 by SplaTtzZ

[Nyarlathotep]

As for ice skating, the only thing that I noticed is, that it takes quite long when i.e. I walk forward into a wall or in some corner and then backpedal. It almost felt as if the characte got stuck, but afte realizing that there is an animated body, I think it's because the animation takes so long to reverse the body or something like that. It's not a big deal, but it is a bit strange. When I try to take a step backwards, it doesn't take me more then a second to do that in real life. Apart from that the movement feels quite ok.

It took me a while to get used to the ice-skating effect, too. While it's not very realistic, it does feel fairly natural after you get used to it. It seems to be mostly designed around the time it takes to go from a full sprint/jog to walking/running backwards, rather than the quick changes you can do when you haven't fully accelerated yet. Again, not realistic, but natural enough for it to be believable 90% of the time.