Hi!

I've got an issue with the game : the loading times seem a bit too long (either for loading a savegame or, more annoying, loadings between menus, and between menus and main screen). I've watched some gameplay videos on Youtube and there loading times appear to be twice shorter (barely one second to go from inventory to main game there, and a bit more than 2 sec for me); and I doubt the game was meant to "pause" like that, or maybe it's just due to current systems. Not that it's particularly hindering for my experience of the game, but it's still odd and quite annoying in some cases where I have to go back and forth between menus, or reload several times.

I'm using the latest GoG version in DirectX 6 mode (which for the moment is completely crash free, thanks a lot for this!).

Is anyone having the same issue and/or has a solution for that?

I don't have any solution there mate, though I'd like to share some experience for what it's worth. The variety in OS and graphics card will make for completely individual conditions for each person. I had the same issue with another (non-GOG) game, and heard about others running it without any of the same problems. Have you tried fiddling with compability modes? You didn't mention anything about that at least.

- Sam

Thanks for your reply!
Yeah, I know sometimes games' behaviours are just weird whatever the reasons behind them. I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that someone ran into the same issue though... but never heard of any fix so far.

I've tested quite a lot of things actually: compatibility settings, Admin mode, running on one core, VSync, anti-alias./aniso./triple buff. forced for D3D, changing GPU's ID to an older NVidia one (I've got an ATi but well, you never know), forcing or disabling DDraw emulation (bad idea), deactivating sounds and music, closing antivirus and common background programs, "HeapValidateFrees" in ACToolkit (read this somewhere else on the forum)... Hmm, uh, I think that's it for the moment. I've also played the game though, hopefully ^^

I'm running under Windows 7 32bits, ATi 4850 512Mb, Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz, 4Gb RAM.

Anyone else having an idea?

Have you already tried defragmenting you hard disc drive? Sometimes a near full HDD will make games go very slow. The reason of the problem could be also the RAM. Maybe a faulty one? Also check the CPU usage.

I know these advices are pretty obvious but because I can't play the game in its full glory I want to help. : )

Yes, I've defragmented (and "optimized") all partitions. As far as I can tell, my RAM hasn't any issue (much more recent games work as intended eg.), and CPU usage seems normal. I also tried by shutting down most services at startup and I took advantage of an update with my antivirus to check if having it uninstalled changed something. And nothing changed, unsurprisingly.

Ah, I also changed language for the game... Same result...

I'm running out of ideas. The game still "hangs" for one (full) second or two, or three (the break between menus and "playable"/main screen is the most noticeable). Sometimes the loading background (the guy and the strange machine) still appears with the interface, and the main screen itself after that. Again, maybe it's normal, but I doubt it.

(for the moment then, I'm taking my revenge on some bandits and stone golems for forcing me to reload and search my inventory several times ^^)