Gothic II performance

[yes plz]

All this talk about Arcania's shitiness made me want to play a good Gothic and I remembered I never completed G2. However, upon installing it (and NotR) and playing it I noticed some really bad dips in FPS. It mostly happens during exploration specifically when I'm in really open spaces wherein you can see pretty far off into the distance.

I figured it had to do with the range of view but even lowering it I still had the same problem. So does anyone here have any suggestions? My graphics card is a Radeon HD 4670 - since this is an older game, is there a specific driver version I should downgrade to?

Also, does anyone know if the last community patch (2.10) includes the widescreen, camera, and AI fixes as the earlier ones do?

 

[Nim]

I'm assuming you're using XP ? That frame drop is something with the 4xxx series and XP and Gothic 2, I have the same problem. Downgrading drivers won't work, at least it didn't for me. You could try Vista or Win7. Or get a Nvidia card ? Doesn't have to be that new for G2 which was pretty much CPU limited anyway.

 

[Murk]

4xxx series indeed... I'm using XP and have a HD3850 and it ran great...

 

[yes plz]

fucking sdfiopsdjfsdiopfjssd9pf8sdufsd890

 

[ghostdog]

Same here, I have a 4870 and I had performance problems. Lowering the view distance helped though.

 

[1eyedking]

Beware of setting a high visibility range. It can rape even the best PCs since it doesn't scale polygons.

 

[bhlaab]

How's your cpu?

 

[yes plz]

It's a Pentium D 2.80GHz - which by current standards isn't great, but (iirc) it exceeds the recommended specs for G2. Lowering Range of View only helps if I lower it completely in which case I can't see a foot in front of my character's face, otherwise I only get a small bump in FPS (i.e. 1 - 3). Even with it lowered completely the FPS dips down to nearly 10 when I swing the camera around.

I'm pretty certain it is my graphics card, though. Last time I played it I had a nVidia 7900 GS (it burnt out, which is why I have my current one) and don't remember having problems with it.

 

[Antagonist]

Gothic 2 is a strange beast. When I played it for the first time shortly after its release in Germany it ran perfectly fine everywhere, with 20 FPS being the lowest point even in Khorinis. Fast forward a couple of years to Night of the Raven and the damn thing wouldn't run with more than 5 FPS in some areas in Khorinis and its surrounding areas on the very same machine, even without the expansion installed. Tried to downgrade drivers and such to no avail. It even butchers my new notebook which is certainly more powerful in every aspect than my old desktop ever was.

 

[TsongaKralj]

Have the exact same problem on 8800 GT and XP,Athlon Dual Core 2.29 GHZ and 2 GB of memory.Indoor it's runs perfectly fine but once you get outside it can rapidly drop at times.I tried a few things but haven't found a way around it except lowering the view distance.

Funny thing is Risen runs perfectly on everything maxed but Gothic 2 Gold has performance issues.

 

[m_s0]

Also, does anyone know if the last community patch (2.10) includes the widescreen, camera, and AI fixes as the earlier ones do?

Are you sure you didn't confuse Gothic 2 with 3 here?

So are there any unofficial patches for G2? I tried looking but didn't seem to find any

edit: nvm, I've found it

 

[MicoSelva]

Same here, I have a 4870 and I had performance problems. Lowering the view distance helped though.

Same here, with 4850. Will have to reinstall it on Win7, I suppose.

 

[Murk]

Ok dude you HAVE to change that avatar, you can't be getting my hopes up that Moose is posting again to then read your name and be disappointed.

 

[jazzotron]

I get the frame stutter also.

Core 2 Q6600
2GB RAM
ATI 5770.

I managed to alleviate it somewhat by editing gothic.ini:

zTexCacheSizeMaxBytes=1024000000

 

[Stabwound]

Does it work correctly with Windows 7? I have a 4850 and plan on playing G2 after I finish G1, so this kinda sucks.

 

[Gragt]

I played G2 from start to end on Win7 x64 with a 5750. No problems at all.

 

[MicoSelva]

Does it work correctly with Windows 7? I have a 4850 and plan on playing G2 after I finish G1, so this kinda sucks.

It actually does work. I got ~14 fps in Khorinis docs on Win XP, and a steady 60 on Win 7 with the same settings. Nice.

Edit: Win7 has problems with cutscenes (black screen) - I had to disable video scaling in the ini file to see them (scaleVideos=0).

 

[Stabwound]

Does it work correctly with Windows 7? I have a 4850 and plan on playing G2 after I finish G1, so this kinda sucks.

With the above setup I'm getting the occasional slight FPS dip, but also sometimes a complete random crash where it feels like it's about 5fps. The problem goes away if I save and immediately reload, so this is some kind of weird bug. I'm stumped.

I have the view range set to max (300%) but it doesn't seem to be a problem. The total fps crash happened in a cave, of all places.

 

[Yeesh]

Damnit, quit trying to make me upgrade! I loves my XP and I'm too old to change now anyway.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Not related to performance, but i'll just leave this here.
Has anyone of you encountered a bug where any of your % skills suddenly go down for now apparent reason? I had my mage trained/stonetableted to 42 two handed + 4 when wielding wand that adds +4% and at some point it suddenly went to 37%. I was a bit annoyed, but didn't bother as i intend to use almost exclusively magic, but today i checked the char screen and it's fucking 31% now.
What the hell is happening?
I couldn't find anything related in the wog forums or google.

 

[Murk]

Gnidrologist, did you use any animal-transformation magic/scrolls? If so, that's what did it. If you have any skill/stat-increasing items (even the bonus armor from belts and rings/amulets) when you transform, the bonus to skills/defense/stats is permanently applied as a negative to your character.

The easiest way around, from what I could gather, was just to use the console to give yourself tablets to raise whatever skill it decreased. If it lowered your armor however, there is no tablet for that... maybe eat a few +15hp tablets I guess?

 

[Gnidrologist]

Yes, i do use transformation from time to time. Thanks for the tip. Will heave to cheat for justice.

 

[Murk]

Check out the code for 'marvin' mode and use the database of file names to insert a few stone tablets (assuming you're using NotR) from http://www.worldofgothic.com/gothic2/?g ... steintafel

The descriptions are in german but the actual file names are in english so it should be pretty easy to figure out.

It was something that caught me off guard until I examined a bit closer. Skill/STR/DEX/mana/HP can be restored easily but armor/defense cannot as there are no permanent armor boosting items in the game.

I just sucked it up as a greater difficulty but by the time I had to deal with ti I was raping ass anyway.

The other thing to keep in mind when using transformation scrolls is that when you transform back you will auto-equip the most powerful weapons (both melee and range), this isn't a problem usually unless you have one of the magical bows in your inventory.

So lets say you have a magic crossbow (strongest crossbow in game) but don't use it cuz you're saving it for some uber boss and you generally use a war-crossbow or something. Well if you have a war-crossbow equipped when you transform to an animal and go back to human you will have both equipped causing a glitch that lets you have neither equipped.

No clue how to get around that... other than loading a previous save.

 

[fragonard]

IIRC, there is also an exploit of this glitch. I think it's based on equipping one of the two negative bonus weapons before transforming so that you get a permanent boost.

edit: not that anyone here would use an exploit, of course.

 

[Murk]

That is correct, as the transformation only hits you with an inverted permanent application of whatever the stats on it.

But those weapons suck ass so no one bothers with them, thus making the possibility of that happening null. My assumption is PB put those weapons in for a non-console fix to the problem at hand as they are otherwise completely pointless (unless they have some special secondary effect i never discovered0.