I took a look at the Geneforge series page and decided it looked interesting. I like to do my homework before buying anything, so I grabbed the demo of the first game off the Spiderweb Software site. Unfortunately, when I play it, it runs like a slideshow. That puzzles me because I'm sitting on a Core-i7 920, with 6GB of RAM, and a GTX285 2GB GPU, which is vast overkill for software like this. Also, it forces me to play in 800x600 resolution, despite the fact that I'm sitting on a 1080 monitor. I've tried the usual compatibility mode tricks, too. They get me a few minutes of play smooth playtime, but it always devolves into an unplayable slideshow.

I'm a big fan of old school RPGs, but I'd like to have two questions answered:
1.) Does the GoG version fix the stuttering issues?
2.) Does the GoG version have high resolution support?

Thanks!

Geneforge 1-3 will not work for any of my windows 7 and up pcs. 4 and 5 work fine on any windows 7 or vista. All 5 work fine on my mac.

This is the kind of thing that i believe should work 100% on gog if you are talking about a pc. No macs. Geneforge 1-3 are old games and they are the main reason why good old games hosted them, to correct this. If you've got a pc you should be good.

edit-im testing it on my laptop windows 7

gene forge 1 works fast as anything on my windows 7 laptop using the good old games version.

I hate to tell you this, but there's just no reason the GOG version would be fundamentally different from any other version being distributed. You're extremely likely to have the same problem.

Unfortunately, all I can tell you is that I don't have any problem running the games in XP, and I don't have access to any 64-bit computers, any computers running Vista or 7, or any computers with widescreen monitors at the moment. I haven't bothered to try it, but I've heard wildly varying reports for Wine users.

The first two are fixed at 800x600, and the second two are fixed at 1024x768 (5 is capable of multiple resolutions). I can almost guarantee that the GOG versions are no different.

As to your stuttering issue, I have no idea. Maybe ask on the Spiderweb forums.

First three run fine Gog style in Win7 for me.

The resolution is hardcoded, you'll get used to it.

Geneforge 1 is working fine on Windows 7 64 for me. It's got the type of 'jerky' cursor that is common in older games like this, I suppose due to the low resolution, but other than that it runs smoothly.

I don't have these from GoG but they all work fine for me win 7 64bit.

Here are some tips:

If the game is displaying in a small window or stretched out of shape.
Nvidia control panel -> Adjust dekstop size and position -> Perform scaling on GPU + Apect ratio

If you have the "jerky cursor" (I don't get this with geneforge but I do with one of Spiderwebs other games).
Get Microsoft compatability administrator -> flag you need to set is ForceDirectDrawEmulation

When I last tried the Geneforge demo on my laptop a couple of years ago I had the mouse pointer moving so jerkily I couldn't bear to play past the first couple of locations. I read around for a solution but all I found was a posting by Jeff Vogel (I had a quick search, but can't find it just now) saying that this was a bug in modern display drivers, not a problem with the game. When I impulse bought the games last night I had forgotten about this issue.

I've had a quick go at Geneforge 1, and either the issue isn't as bad as I remember or they've done something to attempt a fix. Just going on the first location the mouse movement seems pretty smooth, although it's still quite jerky on the character screen and in menus. I haven't played as far as the village, which was where I had to give up last time.

So, I think something might have been done to improve the mouse responsiveness, but the issue isn't gone completely.

Thanks, this seems to have got rid of the remaining jerkiness. I just want to check if I'm doing this the right way, because it's not perfect. It only seems to work when I run the app from within the compatibility administrator. I created a custom database called Geneforge, included the geneforge exe, and the only setting I changed from the defaults was ForceDirectDrawEmulation. Is this the best way to do this?

This is the first time I've head of compatibility administrator, but I noticed that I already have a database installed for Journeyman 3. Do you know if this would be installed automatically by Windows, or would GOG have installed this when I installed Journerman Project 3? If GOG did it, I wonder if they could do the same for Geneforge.

Thanks,
Richard

Step by step (I hope):

Open compatibility administrator 32bit

click "Fix" icon
program file location is geneforge obviously
pick the compatibility fixes you want

click "Save" icon
put wherever (easiest to just have in the same location as the app)

then right click on the database you've created and select Install. Should be self explanatory.

After this you won't need to keep compatibility adminstrator open anymore.

Geneforge 1 is much smoother for me with these fixes in the compatibility toolkit (probably some aren't needed, but I didn't try them individually):

DisableAnimation
DisableFadeAnimations
DisableScreenSaver
DisableStickyKeys
DisableThemeMenus
DisableThemes
EmulateSlowCPU
ForceDirectDrawEmulation
ForceDirectDrawWait
ForceDisplayMode (800, 600, 16)
ForceKeepFocus
ForceSimpleWindow
NoShadow
SingleProcAffinity

I'm also using BES 1.5.2 to limit the CPU usage of the process (by 50%, otherwise it uses the whole CPU power). I'm running it on Vista.

Thanks, that works great. I suppose I should have realised when I saw Journeyman 3 installed.

I also tried mg1979's settings and something in there does seem to help make things even better.

Wow, I didn't expect this kind of response. I'll try some of these this weekend. Hopefully, I'll have some results in a couple of days.

Have anyone tried to use D3DWindower on GF 1-3 to fix the jerky problem?