Major issues/unplayable

[Utopianh]

I purchased/downloaded and full played this game a few weeks after release; it worked fine using my original radeon drivers, then eventually switched over to Omega to make the game play better on my laptop (and it did).  However recently I went back to replay the game for a fix and now I'm finding the game completely unplayable; it loads the initial loading bar slowly, then it halts and slowly tries to load the logo in and eventually crashes.

I've changed nothing from a hardware perspective, and my drivers have been updated but I'm still using omega and updated them tonight (and reinstalled the game as well, although I overwrote the original folder instead of installing it fresh).  I can post screenshots of what's happening if it would help with diagnosing the problem.  Any ideas on what I can do to figure out the problem and/or fix it would be highly appreciated as this is a personal favourite game of mine and I'd like to be able to replay it.

Thanks.

Some system Specs:

Platform: Windows XP SP2
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon X300
Monitor: 1440x900 60 Hz Flat Panel (Laptop)
Processor Speed: 1.86 Ghz Pentium
RAM: 2.0 GB 782 Mhz

[Utopianh]

[Danger Mouse]

Never heard or seen of this issue before. Have you considered just re-installing the game from scratch? If that doesn't solve your problem, then I would definitely say you have something going on in your operating system now that is at fault. Graphics card drivers, or changes in directx (not sure if the game even implements directx or not but if it does then it's a possibility, perhaps audio drivers even perhaps? I would just start from square one and try uninstalling, re-installing and running the aquaria configuration utility and make sure everything is set properly for your settings/machine and try running it again.

[Utopianh]

I already did a full reinstall, and I'm considering changing back to ati drivers instead of omega (but being that other people here use omega I doubt it's that).  I hadn't thought it might be audio drivers, I'll check that out (I didn't think they could cause this kind of graphical issue).

[Danger Mouse]

Yeah, audio drivers could cause an issue too. Good Luck! I hope you find the problem and get it resolved. What a bummer, no Naija?

[Utopianh]

Updated and overhauled video and sound drivers; completely reinstalled again.  Still having the same issues so I'm going to try installing it on my fiance's computer and seeing how it works over there.

Makes me kind of annoyed though that I can't play it on my laptop anymore :/

[akeean]

I have a similar problem.

The game does not crash, but runs at a speed of about 0.5 - 1 FPS. The intro screen has the same "Filming a 60hz TV" slow motion line scan effect. It takes my trusty laptop about a minute to get through the logo animation and do the fade to open the main menue. There the sluggishness persists. The Click animation to start a new game takes 20 seconds to run.

The games does load, but after 10 minutes of waiting the frame-by-frame animation i finally terminated the game (I could see the little mermaid moving her feet, though)

I already put all graphic options to as low as possible, disabled framebuffer effects and mipmaps, tried running it in Window but no prevail. It's just far far far to slow.

I am surprised to see this 2D-Styled game kill my Laptop, while I can play a lot 3D titles smoothly...

What kind of System do I need to run this game smoothly? Does it use a lot Pixel Shader 2.0 effects? (Because, then I understand that the performance is so bad on my Laptop)

My Stats:
Centrino 1 Mobile Pentium 1,86ghz
ATI Radeon X300
1GB Ram
Windows XP, SP3
DX9c
Omega 3.8.422 Drivers

[Alec]

Is this with the demo or with 1.1.1?

[akeean]

Oh, sorry. It happens with the demo.

The game looked so fluid and cute in the Video on moddb.com - I just found it yesterday and wanted to try it because it reminded me of ECCO the Dolphin on SEGA Genesis.

It's the Demo that was hosted on Mirror 1, linked from the Aquaria home page (AquariaDemo.2007.12.07.exe)

Thanks,

- akeean

[Alec]

Yeah, the changes in 1.1.1 might fix that issue... or it might be a strange driver issue.

[akeean]

In essence that means: "Buy the game to see if you can play it"?

[Alec]

In essence that means: "Buy the game to see if you can play it"?

What I mean is it might be fixed in the current code base.

You can try buying the game now if you want, or you can wait until we release a new demo version.

Either way, if something doesn't work, I'm going to do my best to fix it.

[akeean]

Thank you!

Ill keep checking back for a new demo.  (I guess I can't return the full version if it is buggy for me as well?)

[akeean]

Just checked for new Omega drivers, but it seems the Version I have (4.8.422 / Cataclyst 7.1, it was just displayed wrong in the System control) was the last driver they made at omegadrivers.net (it seems they are not updating their site/drivers anymore, it seems current version of ATI Cataclyst is 8.1)

I am going to try and install the new 8.1 Cataclyst... let's see if that works helps

[steamgamer]

utopianh, akeean, and myself look like we have the same problem.  and i found 2 things that are similar to all 3 of us, first of all we're on laptops, and second, we all have ati graphic cards.  i'm guessing it might be ati driver/hardware issues.  if that's the case, i just bought the game and may never be able to play it, i only own a laptop.