Very odd bugs (turbo walking speed, problems opening containers etc)

Tainted on 13/4/2008 at 00:56

Long time no post.

I've recently reinstalled this awesome game. I've managed to fix all the graphical bugs (Downloaded a texture pack to fix missing textures, installed patch, disabled vsync which was giving me weird lines) but now I've got gameplay bugs.

For some reason if I play the game, save then reload at a later time, my characters speed goes turbo. I'm walking and suddenly his speed will pick up as if a speed enchantment has been cast and will occur constantly, so my character is zooming around the level instead of the usual slow walk.

Also, when I double-click on a container, occasionally the inventory of the container in the top left corner of the screen which shows the contents will not appear. I have to try several times before it does.

Although these aren't exactly game-breakers, it is annoying zooming round the level like I have rocket shoes or something. I dread to think what would happen if I actually cast a speed enchantment later in the game, I's probably travel through time or something :p

I've tried starting a new game and this problem persists. The only way I've got it fixed was with reinstalling, but the problems come back as soon as I reload a game. I can't complete the entire game in one sitting!

Any suggestions?

eddy on 13/4/2008 at 17:07

Well, the game doesn't limit the FPS.
So if you have a very high fps, the game will run a lot faster. Anything above 75 fps in Arx is too fast.

The solution is to turn vsync on in your graphics drivers.

Tainted on 13/4/2008 at 18:42

turning vsync on gives me the weird flickering. I looked through some other solutions and i've tried setting "forcegdi=1", but that just gives me the speed issue again.

Okay, I've just tried setting my vsync on and changing my monitor refresh to 7o hertz instead of 60. That greatly reduced the flickering, but it's still visible. I'm going to tinker with the settings a bit.

steo on 21/5/2009 at 15:06

I've got the dreaded turbo movement bug. Looks like it was something introduced in the Steam (1.18) and GOG (1.19) versions of the game. Whatever I do, I can't seem to get rid of it. I've done some googling of it, and most people report it disappearing spontaneously.

I've tried:

Re-installing

Forcing VSync in the nvidia control panel

Changing forcegdi to either setting

Cranking all the anti-aliasing/anisotropic filtering etc. options in the nvidia panel up to max/down to min.

Setting the affinity to only use a single core

Underclocking the CPU

Running a stress test on that core in the background

Starting a new game

Fraps is showing the frame rate capped at 60fps, so it's not that that's going haywire and the rest of the game is running at normal speed, it's just the player movement. It also seems to change at different locations. Around the rug in the goblin fort, movement is more or less normal over the space of a few steps. The problem only started after I loaded a game saved in Arx, where the super movement was useful and not really a cheat.

Has anyone had any success in fixing this?

MustardCat on 23/5/2009 at 08:28

I had real problems with patch 1.18, including inconsistent movement speed. Try reinstalling and using 1.17, see how that works. Runs perfectly with 1.17 for me.

steo on 23/5/2009 at 13:03

Only problem is, I have the GOG version which is 1.19 from the get go.

MustardCat on 1/6/2009 at 18:09

I got bored and decided to play with this a bit today. I installed the game and patched to 1.18. Then I put the 1.17 Arx.exe in place of the 1.18.

I played through the beginning areas like this problem free and I'm wondering if this would work for 1.19 too.

Here is the downgrade "patch":
(http://rapidshare.com/files/239686871/Arx117.zip.html) http://rapidshare.com/files/239686871/Arx117.zip.html

This is for the english version of the game. Back up your current arx.exe and then put this one in it's place.

Not sure how this will work with steam or gog, so someone using those services try it out and see if it works.

steo on 1/6/2009 at 18:57

Well, the turbo walking seemed to spontaneously disappear for me after a restart, but movement would jolt when the cursor hovered over a new usable object. Using your 1.17 .exe, I can't get widescreen resolutions (at least natively) and I still get the jumpy movement I had before, along with some nasty flickering (which could probably be fixed by forcing vsync), and I don't know if it would fix my turbo movement. If I start getting it again, I'll try using this and see if it helps, but for now the 1.19 .exe seems the better option.

MustardCat on 1/6/2009 at 20:57

In the arx directory there is a file called cfg.ini if you open it with notepad there is a line at the top for the resolution, maybe you could manually specify the widescreen resolution?

steo on 2/6/2009 at 12:30

That's the fix listed on the Widescreen gamers forum, and would probably work, but as long as 1.19 doesn't have turbo walking, I'm probably better off using that, for whatever other bugfixes there are. As it happens I haven't really played arx in a while, and I've started playing Deus Ex again, so it could be a while before I go back to it.