Frictional Games Forum (read-only)

I'm having a weird lightening problem which makes the game unplayable. If the shader is set between low - high, the game looks realistic & dark but the framerate drops unbelievably, 1 - 2 fps! if the shader is set to 'very low', it results in huge framerate increase but also turns the game so bright that it becomes unplayable. Main problem is, the lightening seems to be connected with shader. Have a look:

Low shader: Too dark


Medium shader: Little less dark


High shader: OK


Very low shader: Too bright & FPS increase.


My video card is ATI Radeon Xpress 200 (equivalent to X300, only integrated in motherboard)
3D Graphics:
Integrated Radeonâ„¢ X300 based
Full DirectX 9.0 Support (Vertex Shader v2.0 and Pixel Shader v2.0)
Supports resolutions up to 2048x1536@32bpp
SmartShaderâ„¢ 2.0 allows complex, movie-like 3D effects
SmoothVisionâ„¢ 2.1 improves image quality through anti-aliasing using multi-sampling algorithm with support for 2,4, and 6 samples
Graphics Memory: 256 MB

Catalyst Control Center Version: 7.2 (A.I disabled as said in game manual)
Others: Processor: Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz, OS: Windows XP MCE 2005, RAM: 1.5 GB

So, what's the deal?

try updating the drivers to 7.4 and if that makes no improvement run the game at lower settings (reoslution, anti-aliasing etc). It's "too bright" in very low as there is no lightning at all in that mode.

Check your drivers as Jens suggested - I know the X200 isn't a terribly powerful GPU, but it should at least be able to put out more than 1fps.

i have the same problem and the same gfx-card.
i've just updated to latest ati-drdivers, catalyst 7.4 and turned of ai.
tried turning everything to off and low in the game and i still get very low fps when shader is anything above very low.
really wanted to play this game, are there any patches or something i can try?

Are you running Vista?

no vista,
winxp sp2,
amd64 2ghz
1gb ram
ati radeon xpress 200

Check and see if Omega Drivers work:

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

Ok, tried omega drivers, still no luck.
When my shaders are set to anything but very low the game performs extremely sluggish except in places where there seems to be no light anywhere near.

so no play play for me then huh?

askingq Wrote:so no play play for me then huh?

Well you could play on very low. I know it's not very pretty and kills the atmosphere if the game is in full bright. But you can't expect much from low end/integrated cards... I don't think you could play many new games on anything except very low settings. The x300/Xpress 200 isn't a "gaming" card to begin with.

I feel your pain. I had a integrated card before... I couldn't even play a game from 97-98 with good fps ><. But if you don't prove me wrong i think you will have to get a better card to get to play any of todays graphic accelerated games with good fps.

If you are interested I could try to recommend a better card for about 100€.