Mouse/Cursor Delay

[RedMike]

There seems to be an excessive amount of time between mouse input and cursor movement. I'd guess about a second by the old "1000 and one" method. Is there any way to fix this problem ?

[offbase]

I have this prob, too. I did eliminate the primary video problem by uninstallng and downloading the updated full digi-installer. However, the mouse prob remains, and the diagdx came out perfect ... no probls.

[Erik Rutins]

I've only seen this happen generally on systems that are below the minimum spec, which I assume is not the case for either of you. Have you tried running it in a lower resolution and lower color depth to see if performance improves?

Regards,

- Erik

[z1812]

Hi All,

I have the same problem. But only in game. It works fine in the menu and other sections.
A fix would be appreciated. Great game.

Regards John

[Deride]

If you are experiencing performance issues with the mouse, please let me know what your system specs are (especially video card.) As always, make sure you have the latest video card drivers.

As Erik suggested, you might also want to run the game in 1024x768x16 mode to get a baseline of performance. When you can see the entire battlefield, we are really pushing a lot of information onto the video card, so this can impact performance.

Deride

[mbelew]

ORIGINAL: RedMike

There seems to be an excessive amount of time between mouse input and cursor movement. I'd guess about a second by the old "1000 and one" method. Is there any way to fix this problem ?

I also suggest turning off shadows from the options menu.

[z1812]

Hi All,

I have a 2.8 intel p4 with a Radeon 64 mb video card and 512 ram. So my specs are well up to running the game.

I am running the game in 1024 x 768 x 32. I will change it to 1024 x 768 x 16.

As I have said I only encounter this in game play not in any menu screen. And only in this game.

Regards John

[RedMike]

I'm running a P4 at 2.26 Ghz, Nvidia GeForce FX 5600XT 126 mb card, 512 mb RAM, XP Home edition SP2. I have the current Nvidia driver installed.

I tried setting the game resolution at 1024 x 768 16 bit 60 hz but there's no difference I can see between that and 32 bit. I'll try turning off shadows and see if that helps. It's not like it's unplayable, just annoying. The cursor is very syrupy.

Regards,
RedMike

[offbase]

I'm running an hp pavilion lapper (zv5405) with the new 64 bit AMD chip at 2Ghz, 512 mb ram, and GeForce 440 with a month-old N-Vidia driver. Same beefs as above. Plenty of performance with the machine, no probs with any other games, including Al, GG'sWaW, Gates of Troy, Wow, etc. It's only this game, and, as above, only in game mode, not in menus. It seems to me this game might require a 128mg GPU and a very recent chipset to run properly.

[Adam Parker]

I've 512 MB RAM too and though not yet running this game, I did find map scrolling in W@W sluggish. (My 128MB Video RAM isn't an issue).

I feel that the system RAM sweetspot now is 1G and any system sold with 512 (the standard 18 months ago) should be mandatorily upgraded by the vendor or be on offer at a discount.

[RedMike]

I wish! It would cost me $600.00 bucks to go from my 4 128 mb sticks to 2 512 mb sticks.

[HobbesACW]

I was just about to post a topic about this - glad to see it's not just me.

A very floaty, slow feel to mouse movement. I was just wondering if there is any way to speed it up. It's a very annoying problem in an otherwise excellent game.

P IV 2.5, 512 RAM, 128 FX 5200

Also fine in menu's - don't notice much difference with lower graphics, no shadows.

Many games come with mouse speed selectors - I don't see any options to change it
in this game though?

[Deride]

DirectX uses a library called DirectInput to determine mouse movement speed. We are using this standard library to sample the location of the mouse.

Again, if you are seeing a sluggish mouse, I would assume that you have a lower frame rate -- especially if this just happens during the battle. Other than going to 1024x768x16 and removing shadows, I don't know what else to recommend for better frame performance.

Make sure you have the latest video card drivers for your system. In some cases this may help. You can also increase your mouse sensitivity within the Mouse control panel.

If you go to www.fraps.com, you can download a utility that allows you to view framerates while running games/applications. When running TS:JC, if your framerate drops below 15 or so, you will get sluggish performance.

Deride

[offbase]

ORIGINAL: Deride

DirectX uses a library called DirectInput to determine mouse movement speed. We are using this standard library to sample the location of the mouse.

Again, if you are seeing a sluggish mouse, I would assume that you have a lower frame rate -- especially if this just happens during the battle. Other than going to 1024x768x16 and removing shadows, I don't know what else to recommend for better frame performance.

Make sure you have the latest video card drivers for your system. In some cases this may help. You can also increase your mouse sensitivity within the Mouse control panel.

If you go to www.fraps.com, you can download a utility that allows you to view framerates while running games/applications. When running TS:JC, if your framerate drops below 15 or so, you will get sluggish performance.

Deride

************************
Not to sound like a griper, but many of us have that problem, and with 64 mg 3d cards, which the game is advertised as working with. If we meet the requirements set by Matrix, I think we're entitled to assume that the game will run properly when we buy it. I have never encountered so many problems with a game in my life having met or exceeded all of the technical requirements for play. This is rivaling "Darklands" (remember that one?) on the aggravation scale. Not that it's a "bad" game (I think it's great, when you can play it), but I think it was rushed into release and needed more extensive beta testing on a variety of machines. I also think that unless changes are made to lower the amount of video resources used, you need to change your advertized requirements both to require a NVidia5+ chipset or equivalent and/or 128 mg of video memory. This is the only game I have such problems with, I have a hard drive full of newly-released games, including WoW, GGWaW, etc., all of which are pretty graphics-intensive.

PS: I have an AMD 64 chip running under XP, 512 mg ram, and NVidia GeForce 440 64 mg GPU with a 30-day old driver, so there is absolutely NO stating that my machine doesn't meet the advertised system requirements.

[Erik Rutins]

Offbase,

Please give it a chance to work through the normal tests. I've run it here on worse hardware than yours without any mouse lag, so there may be something else at work. Is anything else running that might interfere? Have you tried turning off anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering in your driver to see if that makes any difference?

I understand you've had a difficult time with Julius Caesar but it's nothing like Darklands. I owned that game, loved it in many ways, suffered through the bugs in others. Julius Caesar to date has had one installer glitch and some apparently slow mouse performance for some customers. That's not even in the same ballpark, let alone the same country as Darklands, in my personal opinion.

Alexander, the previous release, had exactly one patch which was when the first significant bug of any kind was discovered a few months after release. I think if you give this title a chance, you'll find it's one of the most stable you've played.

Regards,

- Erik

[RedMike]

OK, I tried setting my Nvidia card to High Performance instead of Highest Quality, and set both Antialiasing and Antisotropic filtering to application controlled from 4X. This did indeed speed up the mouse even at 1024 x 768, & 32 bit color with Shadows enabled. However, the screen becomes wavy during movement so in the end I prefer the syrupy mouse. I just trey to use the keyboard whenever possible instead of the floating mouse.

[RedMike]

I reset everything the way I like it:

Nvidia GeForce FX 5600XT 128 mb 4X GPU
Forceware driver 71.84

1024 x 768
32 bit
Highest Quality
4X Antialiasing
4X Antisotropic filtering
Shadows enabled

And ran Fraps (cool utility!) and got 30ish+ fps in the menu and 10-12 fps during play.
I shall now adjust the settings and see what I get. I'll keep you posted.

[Deride]

ORIGINAL: offbase
Not to sound like a griper, but many of us have that problem, and with 64 mg 3d cards, which the game is advertised as working with. If we meet the requirements set by Matrix, I think we're entitled to assume that the game will run properly when we buy it. I have never encountered so many problems with a game in my life having met or exceeded all of the technical requirements for play.

Offbase,

I can understand your frustrations. Again, minimum technical requirements mean that the game will run on your machine, but it does not gaurantee that you will experience crisp results. (For example, Windows XP requires 64 MB of RAM, but we all know that you really need 256 MB or more to run it smoothly -- many machines come today with 512 MB or 1 GB standard so that you can actually do something other than run the standard operating system.) Equally, when you pick up a copy of PCGamer, they will display the minimum requirements along with recommendations when reviewing games.

When creating the minimum requirements for the game, we once discussed making it 128 MB video RAM, but we eventually decided against it after having a number of beta testers try it our on their 64 MB machines. They all found performance to be acceptable, so we put that as minimum technical spec. (I certainly recommend a 128MB card for best performance.)

Just to further explain the video memory issue. We decided to create beautifully detailed individual units. For example, when you see a legion of 6 stands, you will often see at least 2 or more different figures as part of that legion. Most games, on the other hand, would have each and every infantry unit looking the same. Unfortunately, having individual units causes the video memory to be used up -- as each unit needs to be loaded onto the card to draw it. That makes our game a bit more video memory dependent than some other games you may be playing.

Deride

[Budge4]

Dont think its memory guys, im running Julius Caesar with 512mb of system ram and its smooth as anything, does'nt drop below 75fps (usually stays around the 90's) with roughly 20 units on screen and thats in 1152x864x32. Processor is 3.2 but think its the graphics card thats the big difference-Nvidea 6800gt. Have had a few graphics cards and processors in this system over past few years inc mx440, geforce2 pro, ti4600, ati9700 pro and having a good graphics card definately has the edge on having a super fast processor. Noticed in game specs it just recommends 64 meg graphics card, rather than name one or two ideal minimum spec ones that can run the game at an acceptable framerate, think there is such a gap between bottom of the range and top of the range graphics cards even with 64mb on them that the game specs could be a bit more precise maybe.

Budge

[Deride]

ORIGINAL: Budge4
Dont think its memory guys, im running Julius Caesar with 512mb of system ram and its smooth as anything,

Budge,

Sorry if my post was confusing. I did not mean system RAM (e.g., 512MB or 1GB). I mean purely video RAM, which is 32 or 64 MB in older cards (about 2 years old now), 128 MB in most of today's cards and 256MB in today's upper end cards. You can purchase a 128MB video card today for as little as $50 for most systems (normally around $100 to $150 for some really nice cards.) Of course, there is a much bigger issue for folks who have laptops -- where you really have no choice in upgrading video card memory.

It has always been our intent to support as wide a variety of systems as possible. Again, we did test to make sure that the game ran well on 64MB video cards. We will certainly be looking into anything that we can do to help achieve better performance. I will personally be spending some time in the next week or two at the mouse cursor code to ensure that it is working as intended. However, anyone that can confirm their framerates with a sluggish mouse would be the most helpful. If you drop below 15 frames or so, the sluggishness is likely a matter of having a 32/64MB video card. (Again, you can check your frame rate for any program/game by getting FRAPS at www.fraps.com.)

Deride