I have a problem with Tropico 3 that I bought about a week ago. I posted in the Tropico forum and have received no answers. I made a ticket and sent it in. Got an auto response and that's it. It's been more than three days. I don't know what else to do. The game is unplayable for me.

Does it crash on start up or what aspect doesn't work?

The camera and scrolling move so fast it makes me carsick. Might sound dumb but that literally makes the game unplayable for me. Most games have sliders or an ini file to set the speed. I can't find anything in Tropico 3 and without it I can't play the game. It's not just this game. I can't play shooters or the like for the same reason. I had no idea Tropico 3 had this kind of camera and there was no demo.

What kind of mouse do you have? A gaming mouse with a DPI setting? If yes, try turning that down.
What's the mouse speed and acceleration set to in Windows' settings? Try turning those down a bit. (Make a note of how they're currently set, so you can set them back later)

If I change the setting on my mouse, I'll have to change it back when I'm done playing. Back and forth every time. What a pain in the ass. Really, this isn't a solution.

I played this game on the console and noticed it scrolled very fast as well. Almost to the point of a turn off, but I got used to it. I imagine it's something related to porting it / developing it for both mouse and controller.

I'd suggest
1) Hunting for options in game to decrease mouse sensitivity
2) altering you mouse settings as Maighstir suggested
3) (and I had luck with this one) if you're using the mouse to scroll currently, try using your keyboard - if you're using your keyboard, try using your mouse
4) finding a way to use a controller to play the game - that might help

Other than that don't know what to say :( I admit to being a person who has been turned off by the way I'm able to move around the screen (some games DO really "twitch" too fast and lack precision, some games move far too slow and get annoying just to move about on screen) - but I'm lucky enough not to be made sick by them. I actually have a few friends that can't play certain FPS games as well - some of them use an aspect ratio that makes them - as you described - "carsick" or "motionsick."

But these are really (barring significant Options or Windows tweaking) design decisions that are hardcoded into a game :( Much like a camera angle (I LOVED a game called Operation: Darkness, but I had to learn to love it because the camera angle was TERRIBLE! It was a "learn to love it or hate the game and not play it" sort of deal). You might be out of luck.

This sounds promising. I'll give it a try. Hopefully one of the options will allow me to change camera and scrolling speed.

Ok, I looked at the lua file in notepad with that tool. There's nothing about scroll or camera speed. Is there something I can add?

From: http://forum.kalypsomedia.com/showthread.php?tid=10293&pid=100664
Scroll speed for Tropico 3 and 4 use the Windows Mouse Scroll Speed. That's the only setting that changes it.

Perhaps Logitech SetPoint could help you?
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/support/3131?section=downloads&osid=14&bit=32
It can detect when you're playing a game and auto-setup your mouse.

Alternatively, make a batch file. For Windows 7:

create a notepad document and call it RunTropico3.bat

put in the lines:

reg add "HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse" /v MouseSensitivity /t REG_SZ /d 1 /f
c:\GOG\Tropico 3\Tropico.exe
pause
reg add "HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse" /v MouseSensitivity /t REG_SZ /d 3 /f

HOWEVER: for c:\GOG\Tropico\Tropico.exe, but in whatever path you have to the file name.

I haven't tested this, but the batch file should open up a command window, then run Tropico. When you close tropico, click on the command window. It'll say Press Any Key to Continue or something like that. Push a button and the command prompt will close and reset your mouse senstivity.

The 1 and 3 in the reg add comments change the sensitivity. 1 is the lowest, 20 is the highest. I put in some decent values, but you may wish to change those.

I hope some of this helps.

Also, as said in the next post, try turning Vsync on or off. Sometimes with it on or off, games can make wavy, woozey graphics that can make me ill, too.

ninja'ed. No, not through the config file.

But switching to Vsync=1 could induce a lag that would have that effect. Worth trying

Indeed, it's not, but it might help temporarily as well as give some information as to what's wrong (if it helps at all, one solution may apply, if it doesnt, another idea will have to be tried)

Anyway, I believe the others who replied are better suited to help you, I was mostly trying to pry some information out of you in order to make it easier for us to help you.

This is getting way too complicated for me. Really, I bought the game from gog. They should be here with advice that will work. I wrote to them days ago and never heard back. I looked at the game for about 30 seconds this morning and will feel carsick in the head and stomach the rest of the day. It is unplayable. If they don't have something that will fix it, I'll ask for a refund. It looks like a good game but if I can't play it, it won't be the end of the world.

If you don't get a quick reply it usually means that it's a rather complicated issue. They may have to contact the developers first, maybe the developers themselves need to discuss some stuff internally before replying back to GOG etc..

You might be right. However, two days ago after not hearing anything for a couple of days, I wrote back and asked what was happening. Got an auto response and nothing else. If it is complicated or whatever, they should have the courtesy to let me know. I don't mind waiting but I sort of have the feeling they're not even looking at it.