yer not the same "deathkitten" from the play magazine forums are you?

I'm having similar issues with the fire. Hopefully this gets worked out or something.

Yes, I did just now. It seems noone else did, since there hasn't been a reported fix in this thread yet. Has anybody sent this issue to tech support, and gotten a reply back from them?

For what it's worth, here's what I got from support on this issue:
Please update your graphics card drivers and, if that doesn't help,
try going into the game's Options, Video Settings and try switching
the Device from "Direct3D T&L HAL" to "Direct3D HAL". Please let me
know if that helped.
That was on March 25th. It didn't make any difference to the game, which I told them the same day. I haven't heard from them since, even though I sent a followup on the 31st asking about it. I guess they don't have any other ideas, but I really don't know, since they haven't answered me.

Same here, on my primary system the game is unplayable, but on my netbook it runs ok. The tech support suggested me the same solution, which didnt help a lot, since my reply there is no voice from them. Shame, because the game isn't bad at all, but we are the "lucky" ones with problems and GoG simply can't help us, we should blame Shinny. The only solution is trying to play the game on some other system.

1. I don't have another system.
2. If they can't/won't help us any further, then they can goddamn well tell us so, rather than just ignore any further inquiries! I understand (sort of) if there's nothing more they can do, but they should at least show us the courtesy of not simply ignoring us.
GOG, you know I love you (in a completely platonic sort of way), and you've always lived up to my faith in you. You know I only start bitching when you stray from the path that you yourselves set out to follow. Please don't start sliding down that slippery slope that is shitty customer service. That way lies EA. In reputation, mind you, not in earnings ;-)

I agree, their support is getting slower and slower, maybe they should focus on games they allready realased and try to raise a happy community and then slowly grow. Maybe there are to little people running this thing up. It's becoming Steam2. A simple reply that they are out of ideas would be nice.

Just bought this and am having the same issues myself. Look forward to getting some kind of fix for this. I hear it's a great game.

I do wish that I had read this thread before I bought the game. Though I assumed that the game would work on Vista 64bits when the ads for it on the page said it was vista/xp compatible.

It works on my laptop, which has Vista 64 on it.
It works better than my desktop, which is unplayable on WinXP 32 bit.

I hope Messiah gets fixed somehow, perhaps that patch 1.2 that's somewhere online.
Or some better help with settings.
I just bought it and am having frame rate drops randomly and making the game unplayable.
Thanks

Hey guys , let's see if i can help you :)
Just try this as it works for some people
you need the Run command on your Start menu. If you don't have it just right click on the start menu, click on properties, click on customize start menu, then click on Run command.
Now select the Run command and type in: msconfig. Click on services, then uncheck Windows Management Instrumentation and Windows Search. Make sure you hit Apply at the bottom then restart your computer. That should fix the problem.
two background services that were causing the problem: Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), and Windows search.
keep me posted so i may do some more research