Game becomes very slow and sluggish by end of turn

[seydlitz_slith]

Erik,
in the full campaign, I noticed that my computer comes very sluggish and unresponsive at the end of the computer replay. I am able to watch the historical turn play out, and everything is fine. Then, when it gets to the training ship crews, it seems to take forever (like 5 minutes). then the turn goes back to running at a semi-normal pace. Then, the last few phases at the end of the turn will take a few minutes to complete. The problem is, after it completes and I am able to issue orders, the game is very sluggish. For example, opening and closing the create a sub TF box at PH is agonising. It takes a few seconds to open the box, and then I have significant lags when clicking buttons to make selections. Even asisgning a destination hex for a sub TF takes forever as the map slowly scrolls.

I am running the following:
Win ME OEM
AMD 1.0 gig Athalon with 512 meg of memory
30 gig hard drive (18 gig free)
GeForce 3 TI-4200 video with latest driver (v56.64)
Fortissimo II soundcard with latest driver
Direct X 9.0B
Hard drive fully defragged four days ago.
Everything (ctl-alt del checked) turned off except for Explorer and Systray.

Any idea what is causing the slowdown?

[Captain Cruft]

Just to confirm the long delay coming out of the Form TF box. However many ships you have selected it takes a long time (4-5 secs) to get back to the "calling" base/tf screen after clicking on Done. Very consistent.

I also get a very similar problem when selecting a destination for a TF on the map (after clicking on Set Destination for TF). Again this is very consistent.

Other places where this occurs consistently are after Naval Bombardment & Ground Combat combat summaries.

A place where this occurs occasionally is when selecting the "second" airgroup at a base. The first airgroup selected always comes up straight away but sometimes the second doesn't. Third and subsequent don't have a problem. First and second mean the order that they are selected in not that they are displayed in.

Strange since overall the game is very snappy even though I have a relatively slow PC.

N.B. I am in NOSOUND mode and this in Scen 15. No disk activity is observed at the delay points.

[jhdeerslayer]

I also get a delay doing TF form and then when I select destination base and return base I got a few second delay. Annoying is all but not sure normal or not.

[Captain Cruft]

Sounds like the same thing to me Deerslayer ...

It's kind of like the program decides to go off and trawl through the in-memory database a few times. I'm convinced this is a genuine issue not an environment problem. Possibly not picked up in testing due to testers having uber-monster-bast PCs?

Would be interesting to hear an "official" opinion.

[jhdeerslayer]

I have a 1.7Ghz processor, XP, 512 Ram, Creative SB live Value, Nvidia TI-200 and 20GB free HD space

[gunnergoz]

I'd be curious to know what other applications or applets you have running in the background while playing WITP. My sense is that they could be interfering somehow with one another, if you happen to have several running at once.

[benpark]

Similar specs to Deerslayer, I'm getting same delay in the big scenarios.

[seydlitz_slith]

I was suspicious that something might be running in the background (Mcafee products are notorious for still running after you turn them off) so I used task manager to turn everything off except for systray and explorer. There were no other programs running when I tried ot run a historical turn one, and I still had the same issues with slowdowns at the end of the turn.

[2Stepper]

Quite a bit of it early on seems to have to do with the delays... I have a workhorse of a system with several proggies running in the background and I actually had to slow WiTP down a tick or two...

My suggestion would be to adjust the delays in preferences and see if you come up with something effective.

[jhdeerslayer]

Small scenarios are fast and fine for me but larger have a few sec delays when selecting units, destinations and all. Related to size then it seems. I can live with it but not ideal.

[Captain Cruft]

Yes like Deerslayer says it's not ideal. It won't make me stop playing this awesome creation mind you [:)]

I wonder if setting Message Delay to 0.1 makes any difference? Will try this later but I can't see why since no messages are displayed when performing the slow actions.

P.S. Nothing running in the background in my case.

P.P.S. Easiest way to reproduce this (or not): Just go into Form TF then click Done. Observe delay (if any) ...

[seydlitz_slith]

I tried setting the message delay to 0.1 but it didn't make any difference. As you say, not an ideal situation. It sticks out like a sore thumb since UV doesn't have the same problem.

[Captain Cruft]

Thanks Seydlitz, confirms my theory I suppose.

The weird thing is, doing most things is a lot quicker than in UV

[freeboy]

Update:

I managed to free up more space, so I have 8 gigs free on the hard drive. Complete defrag of the drive has been done. Swap file increased to 4000 MB maximum.

This did not solve the problem -- by the second or third airstrike, the game is once again running like molasses.

I tried Eric's other suggestion and renamed the SOUND folder to NOSOUND.

This fixed the problem -- everything runs smoothly, but, of course, there's no sound

above from a postn gyou should read on page two... Becket had a sound issue interesting and may help ... good luck

[Rocco]

ORIGINAL: Deerslayer

I have a 1.7Ghz processor, XP, 512 Ram, Creative SB live Value, Nvidia TI-200 and 20GB free HD space

I have a nearly identical system as you, and yes I have the same problems.

1.7 GHZ AMD Athlon, XP, 1 gig RAM, Creative SB LIVE, Nvidia GeForce 3 TI 200 (or is it 500?), tons of free space. Spooky, isn't it?

Here's to hoping this coincedence helps find the problem

Rocco