Reducing Transition Crashes and Performance Tips

[Administrator]

Transition Crashes

Snorri Half-Troll has written up a pretty good guide to understanding transition crashes. You can read more about it here

LINK

This WIKI is also a great resource for online players.

LINK

Performance Tips

Driller gave us a good idea to help people with performance. As we find more ways for players to optimize their own computers we will post them here. If you have nice trick by all means please let us know.


1. Tree problems? This will fade surrounding trees out almost completely. It will give you both better performance and better view of your surroundings.

In your nwn2.ini(My Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2) under [Display Options].

Try the following settings:

ObjectFade Start=0.0
ObjectFade Length=0.5
ObjectFade Percentage=.01

2. Turning down your graphics. Believe it or not turning down your graphics a bit will help your online play performance.

3. Direct connecting to the server. When you log into the first multi-player menu you have the options of "New Game" "Load Game" "Join Internet" "Direct Connect" etc. Choose the "Direct Connect" option and enter 71.5.34.137.

4. Do not send a /tell to someone who has just logged into the game. When you see someone log into the PW you want to talk to give them at least two full minutes to load before sending them a tell. What happens is the games says you have logged into the PW when in fact you are still loading. If you receive to many tells while loading you will freeze up.

5. Never go AFK in an area inhabited by monsters. Each area has a clean up script that keep the PW running smoothly. But they only run when an area is empty.

6. Turning off shadows or at the very least, setting shadows to low quality will increase performance by a huge amount. Shadow settings are the single most important thing you can do to impact performance.

And for more information: The Neverwinter Nights 2 Tweak Guide

[Osadam]

I was searching the nwn 2 vault and I found this.
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=213

It seems like nwn sets itself to the first core auto and that isn't very effective, these shortcuts set the affinity to other cores whenever you start nwn. I'm running a quad core and I noticed the difference in performance, faster load times and frame rate.

Give it a try. (also works for toolset)

Cheers
Osa

PS: I posted this on the gen discussion forums first so more people could see it, it reduced crashes for me and I noticed a performance boost too.

[Egg Shen]

Something I've recently discovered on my computer (Athlon/ATi) that causes system lock-ups. . . pressing too many keys at once.

While I know it's illegal to use the WASD keys to steer here, if I get in a hairy situation and need to scram, sometimes clicking makes it impossible. I find that the TAB key is like a ticking time bomb for me, but only if, say, I'm holding W and S down in order to round a bend, while moving the camera by holding my mouse button down, and them I press tab to cycle through nearby enemies. It doesn't always happen, but frequently enough to where it's become a noticeable trend.

I've always noticed that NwN has issues when it comes to handling multiple actions at once, particularly when using w,a,s,d to move. This is just some extra fun icing on the cake.

[Wulfenote]

I was searching the nwn 2 vault and I found this.
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=213

It seems like nwn sets itself to the first core auto and that isn't very effective, these shortcuts set the affinity to other cores whenever you start nwn. I'm running a quad core and I noticed the difference in performance, faster load times and frame rate.

Give it a try. (also works for toolset)

Cheers
Osa

PS: I posted this on the gen discussion forums first so more people could see it, it reduced crashes for me and I noticed a performance boost too.

And because Foggy copy and pasted it, the link location didn't quite copy over to a clickable button.

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=213

And. Vista only.

[JonnyGR04]

I can't find my object fade. Is it something you can add?

[Fellian Swiftfoot]

I am experiencing a few transition crashes, not so much that it ruins my gameplay but enough to make me want to find a solution. Does changing the cache size really help? Ive read some pro's and con's about it. Anyone who are using this who can tell me what those cons are?

Comp info:

Intel Pentium Dual core 3.0Ghz
4GB Corsair Dominator (RAM)
Geforce 9600GT

[pho_]

with 4 gigs of RAM and a recent video card (512 RAM or more) there isnt anything you can do to help except make sure your cards drivers and directx drivers are not the problem.

the cache size setting in the ini file is helpful for some people, but I have not noticed any difference by increasing it. I think it may help a little if you have a video card without enough memory (like say a 32 or 64 MB card), in which case it will help keep the spell buff and blasty effects in you memory so they dont have to be loaded from the game files on the disk when they kick in.

I only have 1 gig of RAM (on windows XP) and 1 gig of RAM on the ATI 4650 card and its way more stable in MOST other games than this game.

check for overheating of the video card and do not NOT overclock anything. You might get 1 or 2 more frames per sec from overclocking and crash twice as often, woopee!

In fact if you are experiencing instability playing games you might even want to consider underclocking your video card. again, you might lose a couple frames per sec but you reduce the heat, which means more stability.

The best tips i can give are do not run a bunch of other programs while playing (IM clients, silly logitech mouse/kb software, firewalls and anti virus programs, or the other ton of things that want to run when you start windows, just get rid of them) shut these things down while playing online, and then turn them back on when you are not playing. They just eat up resources and cause problems while you play on BG. Nothing you do while playing NWN2 online is going to benefit in any way from them. They are gamer bane.

Some other things you may want to concider, but may be risky, are updating your motherboard BIOS, and making sure that you have the proper drivers for the chipsets that are on your motherboard. These can usually be researched on the manufacturers website of your hardware (or if you got a dell, dude, you might just want to smoke pot and give up).

Dollars to donuts, NWN2 crashes sometimes, nothing you can do about it.

Sorry this was another really long post i wish was shorter, but thanks for reading.

[FunkenGruuvin]

That Tweak Guide is a Must Read for all N2 owners.

Thanks soooo much for posting that link.

[Azulfae]

I was searching the nwn 2 vault and I found this.
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=213

It seems like nwn sets itself to the first core auto and that isn't very effective, these shortcuts set the affinity to other cores whenever you start nwn. I'm running a quad core and I noticed the difference in performance, faster load times and frame rate.

Give it a try. (also works for toolset)

Cheers
Osa

PS: I posted this on the gen discussion forums first so more people could see it, it reduced crashes for me and I noticed a performance boost too.

And because Foggy copy and pasted it, the link location didn't quite copy over to a clickable button.

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=213

And. Vista only.

I will give this tip a solid 10/10

Last week there was one of those major laggy periods where everyone was not responding for minutes at a time and nothing i tried to do would work for several minutes. I read this and tried this tip out. NWN2 now runs from the second core for me and tonight when the whole server was experiencing horrific lag I had none.

[Rogon222]

In regards to setting the affinity to something other than core 0. I found the 'guide' to be a bit confusing and not really all that it could be. Here is how I made a fast and easy batch file.

In notepad:

cd /d c:\Program(x86)\NWN2\
start /affinity 2 nwn2main.exe


Now not everyone keeps their game in the same place, so that first line will need to be the path that leads to "nwn2main.exe". Also it is important to use the /d switch incase you need to change drives. In my example I used "/affinity 2", this actually sets the affinity to my second core, or Core 1.
/affinity 1 = core 0
/affinity 2 = core 1
/affinity 3 = core 0 and 1
/affinity 4 = core 3
and so on....

Now, save this file with any name but you must manually add a ".bat" to the end. Mine is "NWN2.bat". Additionally, I saved mine into my NWN2 folder just to keep my desktop clean and keep it all together. Now to make it look good. Right-click the batch file and 'Send to' desktop. This makes a shortcut of this batch file on your desktop. Go to that shortcut and right-click it. Select 'Properties' and we will only need to deal with this first tab (Shortcut). First, 3/4 the way down there is a "Run" drop down box. Select minimized. Then at the bottom there is a "Change Icon", use this and use 'Browse'. Navigate to your NWN2 folder and find one of the nwn2 .exe files. They'll have the icon of the skull or eye. Select one of those, doesnt matter which one and you will see the icon, select that and then apply. Now you have a proper icon/shortcut on your desktop (or drag to quick launch) and it will start the game in the proper affinity.

It is also very important that you do not have your nwn2main.exe set in Windows XP compatability mode. To find this right click on "nwn2main.exe" file and select properties, then goto the compatability tab.

[stevebarracuda]

Would anyone know if this is applicable to dual core mac systems? Or, is there a Unix method I might apply?

Thanks.

[JimmyYO]

I was searching the nwn 2 vault and I found this.
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=213

It seems like nwn sets itself to the first core auto and that isn't very effective, these shortcuts set the affinity to other cores whenever you start nwn. I'm running a quad core and I noticed the difference in performance, faster load times and frame rate.

Give it a try. (also works for toolset)

Cheers
Osa

PS: I posted this on the gen discussion forums first so more people could see it, it reduced crashes for me and I noticed a performance boost too.

And because Foggy copy and pasted it, the link location didn't quite copy over to a clickable button.

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... ail&id=213

And. Vista only.

Is there any Windows 7 equivalents to this out there? My system is pretty decent I know my performance could be better somehow. Thanks