Lag on Tech Displays?

from GalCiv2 Forums
Everything seems to work fine overall so this is not near as important as some of the game crashes on here...however, there is a noticeable lag when clicking on techs or before bringing up the fullscreen announcement screen when a new tech is discovered.

I've tried every combination of video settings and even disabling them all does not eliminate this lag. I have to wonder if the problem is coming from the white wireframe thingys that are displayed in only those two screens. They look like they need to be rendered in real time and they're pretty pointless in the grand scheme of things. Is there any way to disable those white wireframes?

Does anyone have any suggestions on anything else that may be causing a slight lag before displaying those two screens (clicking on techs or announcing new tech discoveries)?

By the way, I started with the Gold Edition and didn't think to try Dread Lords. I just tried DL and it was much much faster on all accounts, but there was no lag as described above. I realize that Dark Avatar has many improvements over Dread Lords, but what on earth could be different between the two in the tech sections?

Here are my specs

AMD Opteron 185 Dual Core 2.61GHz
2GB PC3200 Ram
256MB GeForce 7800 GT
All the latest drivers and updates running Vista 32-bit (despite the 64-bit capability of the Opteron, I know).


1,745 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Please go to C:\Program Files\Stardock\Totalgaming\GalCiv2 (or wherever you installed the game at), open the debug.err file you find there in notepad, and copy/paste the contents into a post here. If this is a DA report, you'll find the debug in C:\Program Files\Stardock\Totalgaming\GalCiv2\DarkAvatar instead. This will give us some technical information that can help troubleshoot your problem.

Be sure to copy the debug immediately after the error occurs; if you start the game again, the debug will be erased and recreated for the new session.

Note: If running on Vista with DA 1.6b2 or later, the debug.err is now located in My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Okay, I'll get that debug file.

However, that file location may just be the problem. My user's my documents folder is a mapped drive to a server (where it is backed up) and writing the debug data to a remote file may be part of it. While I get the file, can you tell me if there's some way to change the default debug.err file location?
Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
No, the game is coded to write it in those locations specifically.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks kryo!

I solved the problem already. You tipped me off just by mentioning that file storage location tidbit. I set up a local my documents folder and only copied the "my games" directory to it. Sure enough, there is a massive increase in the overall speed of my gameplay in Dark Avatar, and the lags I mentioned in my first post are gone.

It will be a bit awkward to have to take an extra step to actually get to my real "my documents" folder in office applications, etc. I put a shortcut to the H: in the local my docs folder to speed that up.

Hopefully someone else will find this conversation and find it helpful.

Moral of the story for those people who only skim:

DARK AVATAR DOES NOT SUPPORT MAPPED MY DOCUMENTS FOLDERS BUT THERE IS AN EASY WORKAROUND.

Thanks again Kryo!