Random Movement Speed/Bullet-time Probs [SOLVED - Explained]

K

Kasyx

Dalayan Beginner
Just started playing tonight on my laptop. AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 512 Memory, Mobility Radeon 9000.

Something that is confusing me, and my flatmate says shouldn't happen (he is the one that introduced me to it) is that my walking/running speed changes randomly. I can't find any pattern to it, even though I've tried. I'll be walking in a straight line, and I'll be at what seems to be a 'normal' running speed, then suddenly it'll slow right up. It's very odd. Even the animations are slowed down (but I'm guessing the animations are linked to the movement speed).

Does anyone have any advice? The ping was averaging about 100 (even got as low as 8 sometimes) with no lost packets that I could see.

I don't want to give up on it, this is the first time I've ever played EQ (wasn't willing to pay for it before, this is perfect) and it looks really nice from what I've seen (and with some of the movement speeds I had through the Centaur Hills, I saw alot of scenery!)

Thanks in advance,

-K
 
Try updating your Graphics driver?

I had this problem on my laptop, updated my driver and all was well.
 
Thanks alot! That seemed to help.

However, now instead of running slowly, my mouselook turns about 1 degree for every full movement of my trackpad or mouse. Normal keys aren't affected, just the mouse.

Grrrr.
 
In fact, I've poked around a bit, and it's not the throttle or anything like that: it's EQPN. Whether the throttle is on or off, as long as EQPN isn't loaded, it'll work fine. When it is loaded, that's when the slowing appears. Odd :-( I just want it to work.
 
Ok, with the help of the lovely Xardon, I've got it sorted.

The reason everything is slower with EQPlayNice on a laptop is because laptops naturally have a limiting function, so that the CPU doesn't eat all the battery juice just to do something trivial like browse a webpage. EQPN does that too, but specific doesn't let EQ have more resources than it absolutely needs. When you put the two together, it just causes nasty problems.

There are a number of solutions to this. If it is an Intel chipset, then Xardon was telling me there is something called SpeedSmart or something, which is this limiting function. He managed to disable it in his BIOS.
Before this, however, I would recommend changing your Display Settings -> Screen Saver -> Power settings to 'Desktop/Office'. This seems to get rid of any limiters on the CPU. If your laptop is anything like mine, then expect some really loud noisiness.
That's how I got it to work on my AMD chipset, as I couldn't find anything similar to SpeedSmart in the BIOS (in fact my laptop has a pathetic BIOS, I can change time and boot devices and that's about it!). The BIOS' of other people might have something though, so if the Display Settings bit doesn't work, try that.

There is another thing which might work, which is described here: http://www.shardsofdalaya.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5718&sid=819f1d4bdb899ce1fedd5da9e79814d2. It's about half way down, the bit about editting the registry. Didn't seem to do jack for me, but might work for others.

One thing though, which I will add: the Display Settings method only seems to work as long as the power supply is plugged into the wall - I accidentaly kicked mine out and I went straight back into bullettime mode. So be warned :)

Hope this helps people...

-K
 
Kasyx is correct and along the right lines ... as I posted on the other thread there are a number of ways to correct the problem. Some people have had that registry fix work, but I have not, and neither have a few others.

The other two ways to correct it are as follows:

1. Set your laptop to Home/Office in the power management options of your display settings. But also note here like Kasyx said if you unplug your laptop you'll automatically switch back to a laptop mode when running on battery.

2. The other option I found is any laptop that has an Intel Speedstep or the AMD equivelant, if you turn this off in the bios it will correct it as well.

The reason why Intel Speedstep causes an issue is it throttles your CPU speed ... when I was playing EQ-SoD my CPU speed was only registering about 800mhz with it turned on, that combined with the EQPlayNice and it was almost halving my CPU speed and was only getting 20 FPS (Frames Per Second). Once I turned off Speedstep in the bios, everything cleared up fine. When you turn it off, the system will just run based off of your max installed CPU speed.

Hope that explains it at little better.

Xardon
 
My problem sounds kind of similar to this issue but a little different. I just wanted to know if it is indeed the same thing... hopefully I can get it resolved too!
When I play SOD on my lappy (1.7ghz, HP5400, winXPsp2, 1gig ram, 1gigHD, 900graphics) The reason I think it is sort of different is the fact that half
the time I can tell it will be laggy right from the character select screen where the toon is turning incredibly slow... it will be slow the whole time (I am also running EQ play nice, may this play a roll in it?) Sometimes it is in super speed. It will be superspeed the whole time. THe previous posters problem sounded like it kept switching back and forth during play. Help please ;(
 
Easiest way, like Xardon said, is to set your 'Power Management' options in Control Panel -> Display -> Screen Saver -> Power. Set it to 'Home/Office Desktop'.

Just shout if that doesn't work.
 
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