Author Topic: Movies don't play, sound skips, game has random crashes  (Read 701 times)

Legacy_BelgarathMTH

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Movies don't play, sound skips, game has random crashes
« on: November 13, 2010, 11:23:29 pm »


               Hello, I've searched and can't find any answers for this.

I am playing Neverwinter Nights 1.69 with HotU, on Windows 7, ATI 4850 graphics, RealTek integrated sound.

I've tried compatibility modes for Windows xp service packs 2 and 3, running as administrator, updated sound and video drivers, nothing is helping. 

The audio works fine during gameplay, but it skips during movie soundtracks. Movie videos do not work - audio plays (badly) over a black screen.

That, I can live with, but the problem that's driving me crazy is random crashes. I've tried every setting in video controls I can think of - shadows on and off, vsync on and off, shiny water on and off, etc. etc. Nothing seems to make any difference.

The crashes occur completely randomly and at least every 15 minutes. Sometimes it happens during an area transition. Sometimes I see parts of the interface begin to turn solid white just before a crash. Sometimes it crashes during intense battles with lots of spell effects and/or AI actions. Sometimes it crashes when it tries to activate a script or conversation with a storyline npc. It often crashes during a save attempt - in those cases, it erases whatever save file it was trying to overwrite.

The screenshot in all save files has a grey stripe at the bottom covering about a third of the screenshot.

Can anybody shed any light on this? I've been working around by juggling save files every minute or so, but the problem is getting very annoying.

I had this same problem on my previous XP computer, so I don't think it's Windows 7. Could it be a problem with ATI cards and drivers, or with integrated sound, or with widescreen resolutions?

Thanks.

EDIT: Sunday, Nov. 14: I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I may have solved my problem through sheer experimentation and tinkering. I've played about 5 hours today without a crash so far, and now the movies seem to be working.

Step one was to update my ATI driver. (Should be a no-brainer, I know.) Once I did that, I started having all kinds of trouble running 1920x1080 resolution on my TV, not just in NWN, but on the whole Windows display - it was now placing the edges of the desktop off my TV screen - weird!

So, I dropped the desktop resolution to 1776x1000. Windows desktop was fine, but now all my games were totally screwed up! Weird, again.

So, I checked my graphics card setting, and made sure it was set to 1776x1000. Then, I made sure Windows desktop was set to 1776x1000. Then, I set NWN's resolution to 1776x1000 in the game options. Then, I restarted the computer. Voila, the game seems to be working almost perfectly now, along with all my other games.

Bottom line, to anyone else who's had these weird crashing problems, and I know from my searches that there are at least of few of you out there who never got an answer to this problem despite multiple attempts from the community to help:

It seems the problems are caused by a disagreement between the graphics card interface software and NWN's resolution settings. Games normally automatically override the Windows settings AND the graphics card settings, whatever they may be, in favor of their own resolution setting. For some reason, the NWN1 program has trouble doing this consistently - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, causing massive instability problems in its program.

So, if you're having the same problem as I've outlined in this post, check Windows Control Panel, AND your graphics card interface software, AND Neverwinter Nights, and make sure ALL the resolution settings match up.

I will let everyone know if the crashes come back, because I have thought I had this solved before, and then after a restart or two, the problems would return.
               
               

               


                     Modifié par BelgarathMTH, 14 novembre 2010 - 09:07 .