Primordia - choppy walking, sounds

[gorzek]

http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/forum/index.php?topic=1584.msg9226#msg9226

The developer of Primordia has told us to post in these forums about this problem, so here goes. Maybe someone has had this problem before with another game and solved it. Keep in mind that nothing at all that could be done in the winsetup.exe has helped.

It's all right there in the thread, but I'll quote, for convenience's sake.

Hello,

I just bought Primordia on Steam, and was just now trying it for the first time. Unfortunately the animations for Horatio's walking are choppy, to a degree that it is really annoying. To see if it wasn't supposed to be like that I checked a "Let's play" on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys30I9rZAb4). They don't seem to have that problem at all, and it looks smoother overall. I'm not sure if it's just the walking animation that is choppy, or other animations as well, as I only played the first few screens of the game.

Specs:
Windows 7 64-bit
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500
Radeon HD 4850
4 GiB RAM

I have experimented a little bit with the winsetup.exe for Primordia, but without any improvements. Any idea what i can do to make it run smooth?

Regards,
Anton

I have the same issue. However the walking animation only slows down when the footstep sound plays. It makes it seem quite odd as he moves forward a step, stops, then continues.
I also thought that it was an intentional effect until I noticed that the whole game was slowing down at that time as well, rain, Crispin etc.
My Computer Specs are

Op System: Windows 7 (64-bit)
CPU: Pentium(R) Dual Core CPU E5700 (3GHz)
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 6870
Ram: 4 Gb

Yep, I have tried DirectDraw and windowed mode, as well as them both at once.
I also tried disabling the digital sound, but that causes the game to crash at start-up, as i detailed in another thread. 
thanks for the response

I am using a GOG version and I have the same problem. I've tried every setting possible but it changes nothing (and on occasion even makes things worse). All of the previous Wadjeteye games (Shivah, Blackwell series, Gemini Rue, Resonance) worked perfectly on my computer. I would be very grateful if someone could find a solution to this problem.

the tearing of sprites was both in the demo/full version of this game. there is an option in options/advanced to increase the buffer.. it helps a bit, but not much.

Yes, I tried that but I didn't get any noticeable improvement.

This is also happening to me. It's very unfortunate, but the game is unplayable as it is. I don't mean to be rude, but it's just too annoying to tolerate.
Everything just freezes for a split second when the following sounds play:
a) Horatio's footsteps
b) Main menu, hover-on and hover-off of a button
c) Probably others

I also tried everything I could try (every possible combination) in winsetup.exe. Windowed, antialias, nearest neighbor, every combination of sound/music drivers, all the checkboxes. I do mean everything. Also DD/D3D. Buffer size to all possible sizes. Nothing helps. I also tried running the game with administrator permission. I even tried disabling Steam Community for the game (so the overlay doesn't pop up).

Steam Version
Win7 64 bits
4 GB RAM
GTX 260
Core 2 Duo E7200

Hi guys. Sorry for the delay in hopping on this thread. It's hard to keep up with all the forum posts these days! In future, it's always faster to email us directly with questions instead of posting or PMing.

This seems like an AGS engine compatibility issue (AGS being the engine we used to create the game) rather than a game scripting issue, which is a bit beyond our area of expertise. By best advice would be to go to the AGS technical forum and explain the situation there. I hate to pass the buck, as it were, but it will be much quicker for you to explain your situation to them directly as opposed to me acting as a go-between. The techies on that forum are much more knowledgeable about how the engine works on different computer setups than we do, and so are in a much better position to help you.

And once they do help you, please post the solution here so we can help others with the same problem!

Thanks and sorry again for these issues,

-Dave

PS: Yes, I did find the register questions annoying and patronizing. Keep in mind the circumstances that led me here. Hopefully we can find a solution to the problem.

[Dave Gilbert]

Hi all. Sorry to have passed the buck and sent the customers to this forum, but this issue is definitely beyond our capabilities to solve! Hopefully someone here has an answer. Help is MUCH appreciated.

[gorzek]

Okay, this is weird. I just came from work, didn't change anything, and Primordia's running flawlessly now.

I don't know what the problem really was, or if I'm truly out of the woods, but it seems to be environment-related. I did try rebooting yesterday when trying out different things, but who knows, maybe the computer needed to have a good night's rest or something. The funny thing is, now Primordia runs smoothly with any winsetup configuration.

Unfortunately I have nothing to contribute to the other people having the problem, as I don't really know what happened.

[Crimson Wizard]

I am downloading Primordia now (was going to buy it anyway), I have bought ot from Wadjet's Eye directly though, not from Steam or GOG. I have Win7 64 bit, so that matches at least (if that's any way related).
I'd just see if I will have similar problems... or maybe I could make it have this problem somehow.

It would be also interesting to know what kind of audio files game developers used for footsteps, just in case.

[Khris]

One thing that caused problems for multiple games was a laptop's power management settings. Did you maybe connect the power adapter before trying again?
Another thing I can think of is trying various compatibility modes.

I didn't encounter any problems with the demo myself but tried to replicate the problem and put it on my laptop (an older model running WinXP 32bit). Even without ac power, the game ran just fine. The only issue I had was that for some reason I couldn't play it fullscreen with the DirectX9 driver (and the x4 filter) although the settings (1280x800x32) are exactly the same as my windows desktop. I got the "couldn't init graphics mode" message.

(Re the registration questions: granted, they are a bit annoying, but think of them as an idiot filter and suddenly they aren't so bad )

[gorzek]

I'm not using a laptop here.

Also, I've been playing the game for a while. It's much smoother, but it still freezes (less noticeably, though) at certain screens, but it doesn't in others. At one certain point, it was incredibly slow, but when I had the inventory open, it was smooth. After I used an item, the game was smooth again. It's really weird.

EDIT: also I finished the game already, so I'm ducking out. Great game, I really recommend it.

[Aphantas]

I think I have found a solution to this problem!
It is a environmental-related problem, which seems to be related to Anti-Virus Programs.
I was running AVG Anti-Virus 2013 while the game was running, and disabling this program has resulted in smooth game-play.
I am not sure if this extends to other Anti-Virus Programs.

@Gorzek: Thanks for finding that it may be an environment issue, however my solution implies that you should check your Anti-Virus status immediately.
Running a full scan may be a good idea as well. 

[Stee]

Anti-Virus can be a right pain with gaming. If you have a resource intensive AV (like about 99% of them) and it is doing its "scheduled scan", this can cause the slow / choppy issues you mentioned. PS: AVG falls into my resource intensive category. If you're going to run AV leave it scanning over night, check its not scanning when you want to do anything, and if you have issues, disable it when gaming.

Leaving a computer on 24/7, whilst we all do it, can cause all sorts of issues and it's worth rebooting every once in a while (especially with Windows) just to keep things smooth.

I realize this is all hindsight, but it's worth knowing if you don't already 

[Aphantas]

Thanks for the AV tip, but the AV was not doing a virus scan at the time. AVG must be performing a virus check on the sound file as it is called, or performing some similar operation. Again this may not apply to other AV's. The only way I found to stop this was to disable AVG for a time unfortunately.
Anyhow, I won't post in this thread again as my issue has been fixed.
Farewell.

[JJS]

I wonder if the situation was better if the game data was not attached to the exe. While an access to an executable file could always trigger a virus check, maybe an access to a random data file would not be checked. Usually the exe is only touched once when it is being loaded by the operating system, not constantly for loading resources. Just speculation at this point but may be worth investigating.

[donkeymilk]

To anyone coming here about an issue running Primordia ,i don't think you need to disable your anti-virus completely .
You can try going to your antivirus options screen and make an exclusion for your game folder to stop it  from been scanned  by your antivirus.