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Holy crap NWN2 crashes a lot.

Ion Flux

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Disconnected said:
Running the game on 1 core (if you have a multi core processor)
This solved all area transition issues for us, but that was way back before MoTB was released. Patches since then made it unnecessary.

I am running it on a quad core system, but just out of curiosity, how would I disable the other three cores? In the BIOS? If so, this seems like a giant, system-nerfing pain in the butt.
 

Lesifoere

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I haven't seen many crashes yet, but I suffer from slow loading times and have a quadcore processor. God, what kind of piece-of-shit engine these days doesn't optimize multi-core CPUs? Idiocy.
 

Jaesun

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Lesifoere said:
God, what kind of piece-of-shit engine these days doesn't optimize multi-core CPUs? Idiocy.

One would have thought Atari would have had this as the #1 priority when making nwn2. That or perhaps there is some limitation in the code that would have required too much work (my best guess).

One can only hope NWN3 will be a NEW engine.
 

Nedrah

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Ion Flux said:
Disconnected said:
Running the game on 1 core (if you have a multi core processor)
This solved all area transition issues for us, but that was way back before MoTB was released. Patches since then made it unnecessary.

I am running it on a quad core system, but just out of curiosity, how would I disable the other three cores? In the BIOS? If so, this seems like a giant, system-nerfing pain in the butt.

Personally, I use a tool called "easytoolz" to do that. You can assign cores to applications permanently so your settings will be used whenever you use a specific .exe. You could also launch the application, then fire up your task manager and assign it a single core via "Set affinity" - however, as far as I know you'd have to do that every time you launch your app.

Topic: Never had any problems with the game crashing or freezing. That's on an C2D E6750@3,2ghz and a 512MB 8800GT, 4GB Ram.
 
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I like to point out the fact that I occasionally dip to 9 frames per second on a Core 2 Duo E8600 as often as possible.

I get nine frames per second, on one of the best dual cores currently available, on a two-year-old game
 

fastpunk

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Ion Flux said:
Disconnected said:
Running the game on 1 core (if you have a multi core processor)
This solved all area transition issues for us, but that was way back before MoTB was released. Patches since then made it unnecessary.

I am running it on a quad core system, but just out of curiosity, how would I disable the other three cores? In the BIOS? If so, this seems like a giant, system-nerfing pain in the butt.

Use WinLauncherXP. It allows you to configure core affinity for any type of application. I keep it around for older games mainly but it works with newer stuff as well, NWN2 included. It's also very easy to use, you'll see once you start it up.
 

Nedrah

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Admiral jimbob said:
I like to point out the fact that I occasionally dip to 9 frames per second on a Core 2 Duo E8600 as often as possible.

I get nine frames per second, on one of the best dual cores currently available, on a two-year-old game

Same as GTA4, I guess. Sometimes faster hardware can only speed up unoptimized code so far. That, or you might have some bottleneck in your system? I wouldn't think so with that kind of cpu (=spending power).
 

Lesifoere

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Jaesun said:
Lesifoere said:
God, what kind of piece-of-shit engine these days doesn't optimize multi-core CPUs? Idiocy.

One would have thought Atari would have had this as the #1 priority when making nwn2. That or perhaps there is some limitation in the code that would have required too much work (my best guess).

One can only hope NWN3 will be a NEW engine.

Yeah, as far as I know, NWN2's engine is in large part Aurora copy-pasted. Aurora was unoptimized and clunky, and I'm amazed it's been adapted into so many different incarnations. So far, it seems CDP is the only one who can make it halfway decent.
 

Raapys

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The slow loading has little to do with the game's CPU optimization though. Get a faster HDD, or a Raid0 setup. It greatly improves loading times in NWN2 and all other games.
 

Nightjed

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i dunno if it will help but ill give tell you what helped me when i played motb, first installing motb over a fresh nwn2 install does NOT install the patches correctly (i dunno if they fixed this in soz but i would guess they didnt) so you have to fully patch it yourself before installing the expansions, go here , use the nwn2 patcher (link in the site) not the official one (doesnt work), install all the patches until the xp patches appear, then install the xp1, patch again until the xp2 patches appear and then install soz followed by the xp2 patches (if you dont have motb just install the nonxp patches until the xp2 version), do not use the auto patcher, it screws things up most of the time, btw the mod fixes are the files to repair the game if you install the xp directly over a fresh nwn2 iirc, might be faster than the other way but i rather the long, tried method instead (oh if you didnt notice it already, yeah patching nwn2 is a bitch, i wish they spent time fixing this shit instead of making new drm malware to pack with the game)

also make sure you have at least 10 gb (im probably exaggerating) free in you hd when you are upgrading and playing, the upgrade unpacks the files before installing and they are huge also nwn2 likes to juggle files around while you are playing and when it runs out of space it just crashes
 

Disconnected

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Ion Flux said:
I am running it on a quad core system, but just out of curiosity, how would I disable the other three cores? In the BIOS? If so, this seems like a giant, system-nerfing pain in the butt.
We use THG Task Assignment Manager (GUI, Tom's Hardware) and ImageCFG (command prompt, Microsoft). But the solutions others suggested may well be nicer.

Generally, you can define process affinity per session, per application through the task manager. Simply run the app, tab out of it, open the task manager, locate the process, right-click it & pick "set affinity". That should give you a list of CPUs. You can't do this with NWN2 though, since it will either produce massive in-game glitches, crash or crash your system. You also need unrestricted access to the app to do it. Anyway, point is it works for most things & it's just about the simplest & quickest way to determine if it makes a difference.
 

Thrasher

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Lesifoere said:
Jaesun said:
Lesifoere said:
God, what kind of piece-of-shit engine these days doesn't optimize multi-core CPUs? Idiocy.

One would have thought Atari would have had this as the #1 priority when making nwn2. That or perhaps there is some limitation in the code that would have required too much work (my best guess).

One can only hope NWN3 will be a NEW engine.

Yeah, as far as I know, NWN2's engine is in large part Aurora copy-pasted. Aurora was unoptimized and clunky, and I'm amazed it's been adapted into so many different incarnations. So far, it seems CDP is the only one who can make it halfway decent.

CDP made it halfway decent by trashing and rewriting most of it.
 

poocolator

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Ion Flux said:
I just don't get it. I mean, it looks nice and everything, but I'll take stable over pretty any day.

Me too...
Preferably stable and interesting; and we all know interesting does not always equal pretty. A text-based game with paragraphs of descriptive writing and compelling story/interaction would win me over, say, Oblivion any day.
 

cutterjohn

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ViolentOpposition said:
I never had any problems, personally.
Ditto for both games(AMD x2 & core 2 duo 2 bot nVidia GPUs unfortunately). Time to drag out your anti-spyware, vrus checking, de-frag, and update your drivers while you're at it...

OMFG you just found out about this now? (presumably you have an AMD processor which for some assinine reason the fuckwits decided: ah fuck, the clocks on these various cores don't need to be synched. Apps will run just great when they're moved around cores with GREATLY varying time values! Way to go you wonderfully inept AMD designers! Apparently Intel Core processors don't suffer from this problem, and I've noted that the linux kernel specifically checks for this non-time synching between cores bug now.)
 

Ion Flux

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cutterjohn said:
ViolentOpposition said:
I never had any problems, personally.
Ditto for both games(AMD x2 & core 2 duo 2 bot nVidia GPUs unfortunately). Time to drag out your anti-spyware, vrus checking, de-frag, and update your drivers while you're at it...

OMFG you just found out about this now? (presumably you have an AMD processor which for some assinine reason the fuckwits decided: ah fuck, the clocks on these various cores don't need to be synched. Apps will run just great when they're moved around cores with GREATLY varying time values! Way to go you wonderfully inept AMD designers! Apparently Intel Core processors don't suffer from this problem, and I've noted that the linux kernel specifically checks for this non-time synching between cores bug now.)

Nope, it's an Intel Q6600 that I built as a data analysis computer for work. I just game on it in the evenings, because I can't afford to build a system like that for my home rig. As you know, NWN2 has inexplicably high system requirements, so I prefer to run it on the better system.

It's not spyware or viruses. I always keep my systems squeaky clean. I suspected that it may have to do with the fact that it's running 64-bit WinXP, because there are certain things that continually crash in the 64-bit environment (such as the fricking 32-bit Windows print spooler, which is always immensely entertaining).

I did notice a slight increase in stability when I switched from EAX2 to standard EAX in the sound configuration, but I didn't have enough time playing it to say for sure. Too busy with work and holiday stuff.

Btw, Happy New Year you friggin' nerds!
 
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Admiral jimbob said:
I like to point out the fact that I occasionally dip to 9 frames per second on a Core 2 Duo E8600 as often as possible.

I get nine frames per second, on one of the best dual cores currently available, on a two-year-old game

I have HD 4850, 4GT ram and an Intel quadcore (was it Q8400, I can't remember for sure and I'm sadly parted from my own PC). 0-30 fps, running around 5fps in heavier areas like SoZ's end fight. The camera is also often impossible to turn less than 90 degrees. The same goes for my last system which had X2 4200+ and X1950XT (and XP whereas now I use Vista 64). Crysis and Supreme Commander, of course, run fine with maxed settings.

My settings :
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l199/ ... 1230816939
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l199/ ... 1230816972
EDIT : Fixed links.

Ah, the wonders of shit engines.
 

Risine

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NWN2 is a big bug with some rare parts of good but unoptimised code inside.
Never saw a RPG so painful to play.
Anyway I had this kind of pb and if I remember well, trying to pause the game just before the loadin worked from time to time. ( multiple tries are needed ).
 

Starwars

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I have HD 4850, 4GT ram and an Intel quadcore (was it Q8400, I can't remember for sure and I'm sadly parted from my own PC). 0-30 fps, running around 5fps in heavier areas like SoZ's end fight. The camera is also often impossible to turn less than 90 degrees. The same goes for my last system which had X2 4200+ and X1950XT (and XP whereas now I use Vista 64). Crysis and Supreme Commander, of course, run fine with maxed settings.

My settings :
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l199/ ... 1230816939
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l199/ ... 1230816972
EDIT : Fixed links.

Ah, the wonders of shit engines.

I have a similar setup as you. Same card, same RAM, though a E8400 Dual Core. Though I'm running XP instead.

From your settings, I'd try lowering the shadows quality to Low. If that works, try bumping up Shadows (not quality) to High and maybe try ticking Render Far Shadows. That's the settings I've got on my game and it runs quite well in every area (including the OC and MotB ones) *except* Samargol.
So yeah, the Shadows quality is the real killer for me.

As a funny sidenote, I fired up NWN1 not long ago to play a mod, and the performance there is still quite shitty for me as well despite it being so old now. Not so much framerate, but a *lot* of chugging and hacking when the engine has to handle many NPCs.
 
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Maybe I should, however as you can see I have turned enviromental shadows already off (with those on the game doesn't run faster than 10fps almost anywhere), and I have already finished all of them.
 

cutterjohn

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Heh, that weird, my Core 2 Duo 2 P8600 does NOT exhibit that problem, and linux boot specifically states that the time register synch bug is NOT present while my AMD x2 desktop it is present, and I need the fix for Windows. (Linux kernel automagically handles it.)

Also found that v1.22 beta
Neverwinter Nights 2 Campaign Fixes
* Fixed an issue that was causing a crash when exiting the Sunken Flagon.

So they fixed a crash bug there, but no others rae listed in the release notes.

SysReqs: Aurora's a shit engine, and CD projekt couldn't even completely fix it even though they re-wrote VAST chunks of it, to the point that I wonder why they bothered to license it.

EAX: Yeah, I forgot about that. It probably doesn't have a creative sound DSP, so IIRC there are some bugs that have popped up with EAX support for non-creative sound subsystems. Either low performance, or outright crashes or freezes. (Had to disable EAX support for the Witcher EE or it crashes on my desktop hmmm... but now that I think of it my nb with an RLC 888B (IIRC desktop is RLC 865 IIRC RealTek) it didn't crash! curiouser and curiouser...

64 bit Windows XP from what I understand isn't the most stable environment, plus driver support is supposed to be awful, so I suspect that it's that particular combo. 64b Vista + SP1 is supposed to be significantly better, but I'll wait for 7 myself...
 

Ion Flux

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cutterjohn said:
64 bit Windows XP from what I understand isn't the most stable environment, plus driver support is supposed to be awful, so I suspect that it's that particular combo. 64b Vista + SP1 is supposed to be significantly better, but I'll wait for 7 myself...

Exactly. I can't bring myself to suffer through the turd of a minor release that is Vista. I'd much rather suffer through the turd of a major release that will be 7. Fun times ahoy!
 

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