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Solved Windows 10: Low Frame Rates Despite (BECAUSE OF!) Good Hardware

Sorry if I offended anyone as I sometimes speak bluntly. :pirate07:

In the time you have had that 9600GT I have played POTC on a 6600GT, 8800GTS, and GTX275. Then switched to AMD and a 6950, 2-6950, 280X, and the current 290X. What I have seen is not so much any improvement in frame rates but a dramatic improvement graphics. There have been times when I was not seeing even 20fps with this 290X and POTC was unplayable.

In POTC the video card isn't that important outside of image quality. What is important is the cpu and there is no such thing as too much cpu for this game. Oh, and ram. The Storm engine has memory leaks and uses a lot more ram than it shows being used.

For showing frame rates I use Fraps. I also use it to take screenshots and movies, but now that Rivatuner is working I may have to rethink that.

In fullscreen mode POTC is limited to 60 fps and in windowed mode the frame rate is unlocked and the brightness sliders are disabled. Win X puts POTC in windowed mode for some reason which might have damaged my GPU as it is now showing artifacts in modern games.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
@Black Bart: in what ways do you feel we're losing functionality that we had before?
That isn't meant to be happening, but it is difficult to judge what effect our changes have on how the game plays.
So your feedback on that would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

I don't know yet for sure this might be happening. The Build project has always been in a state of flux as new features get added etc.

But one little example that really is not serious, the example of the people sitting in taverns the wrong way.....that we got a fix for, well it still happens (and this is an older issue as i see it in Beta 3.5 as well) as these people are not just recruitable officers, they are a range of NPC types, and i assume they all need fixing to not appear sitting inside the table? In the Beta 4 after the fix for the officers you still get the guys want to be hired as simple crew and that captain that wants a dual at sea, and maybe another type i forget now, but they all still sit the wrong way at that upstairs table, even if the Officers now appear to not do so.

So there is some added content that has also added bugs, a small thing but definately effects the polish of the finished product.

I'm not convinced the balance of the direct sail (3D sailing mode) is better than it was around Beta 1, and seeing bits of the direct sail code appear in different files would make me think it may be getting more broken over time? I could be wrong on that and sadly direct sailing (which is all i ever do in PotC with the Build mod) takes a longtime to test.

Currently i've been sailing for a good few hours (realtime) and i think i'm about to hit Jamaica (but i might have navigated wrong), and i seem to be be-calmed (just 6 knot breeze!) so it might take a while longer!

One thing i noticed in Beta 4, i never got the Oxbay french attack video on leaving Speightstown, was this removed. I went in and out of the 'Map' to trigger it but it never did? It also seemed to be like this in my first run at Beta 3.5, so i looked at the code from Beta 1 and there was missing code in the files (standard.c) to set that video to '1' to make it run, so i've pasted that back into the Beta 3.5 files and it did trigger when i left the island the first time to go into the 'Map' sailing mode.

So stuff like that seems to be degrading unless this is by design and maybe that whole main-quest scenario has been changed perhaps?

But yes certainly i will give as detailed feedback as i always have done, time permitting (and i have some time currently).
 
Black Bart said:
But one little example that really is not serious, the example of the people sitting in taverns the wrong way.....that we got a fix for, well it still happens (and this is an older issue as i see it in Beta 3.5 as well) as these people are not just recruitable officers, they are a range of NPC types, and i assume they all need fixing to not appear sitting inside the table? In the Beta 4 after the fix for the officers you still get the guys want to be hired as simple crew and that captain that wants a dual at sea, and maybe another type i forget now, but they all still sit the wrong way at that upstairs table.
Click to expand...
That is quite odd. I thought @pedrwyth fixed them sitting the wrong way?
But that fix might have been in the ZIP that you didn't install?

Black Bart said:
So there is some added content that has also added bugs, a small thing but definately effects the polish of the finished product.
Click to expand...
True. On the one hand, we're polishing a lot of stuff that wasn't polished before.
But on the other hand, brand new bugs sneak in as well and I DON'T LIKE IT!
Still trying to fight those so that it all goes back to working as well as it used to or better.

Black Bart said:
I'm not convinced the balance of the direct sail (3D sailing mode) is better than it was around Beta 1, and seeing bits of the direct sail code appear in different files would make me think it may be getting more broken over time? I could be wrong on that and sadly direct sailing (which is all i ever do in PotC with the Build mod) takes a longtime to test.
Click to expand...
Not sure what "balance" you mean there? Apart from the VERY annoying Confirmed Bug - DirectSail and WorldMap island transfer inconsistencies | PiratesAhoy!, I am not aware of any other issues with it.

Black Bart said:
One thing i noticed in Beta 4, i never got the Oxbay french attack video on leaving Speightstown, was this removed. I went in and out of the 'Map' to trigger it but it never did? It also seemed to be like this in my first run at Beta 3.5, so i looked at the code from Beta 1 and there was missing code in the files to set that video to '1' to make it run, so i've pasted that back into the Beta 3.5 files and it did trigger when i left the island the first time to go into the 'Map' sailing mode.
Click to expand...
That should still be there, but when it plays depends on how you start the game.
If you start the Standard Storyline on default settings, it should still play as soon as you enter the worldmap.
Pretty sure it still does for me.... But you do have to wait until midnight before it plays, I think.
 
Hylie Pistof said:
Sorry if I offended anyone as I sometimes speak bluntly. :pirate07:

In the time you have had that 9600GT I have played POTC on a 6600GT, 8800GTS, and GTX275. Then switched to AMD and a 6950, 2-6950, 280X, and the current 290X. What I have seen is not so much any improvement in frame rates but a dramatic improvement graphics. There have been times when I was not seeing even 20fps with this 290X and POTC was unplayable.

In POTC the video card isn't that important outside of image quality. What is important is the cpu and there is no such thing as too much cpu for this game. Oh, and ram. The Storm engine has memory leaks and uses a lot more ram than it shows being used.

For showing frame rates I use Fraps. I also use it to take screenshots and movies, but now that Rivatuner is working I may have to rethink that.

In fullscreen mode POTC is limited to 60 fps and in windowed mode the frame rate is unlocked and the brightness sliders are disabled. Win X puts POTC in windowed mode for some reason which might have damaged my GPU as it is now showing artifacts in modern games.
Click to expand...

;) argh me old Pirate, no offense taken - i just know this old ship i sail PotC on is still up to the task, and most of the issues seem to be with the ENGINE.exe itself. Now this thread of yours has been invaluable as it also provided a fix for me on my humble old rig, and for the exact same reasons you posted about originally! PotC needs an FPS limiter, or the performance suffers.

I suspect the only time this would not happen was if you were running it on a system like the base specs on the game CD case! or maybe a non-gaming laptop.

For example now i have the RivaTuner FPS limit set to 100fps i no longer get the old slowdown/mouse becoming unresponsive thing i always got when walking up the tavern stairs in Oxbay, even on default PotC that would happen, now it is silky smooth (about 60-70 fps) and the mouse does not feel like it is covered in tar (even for the brief time it took to get around the corner).

The artifacts you describe getting in other games probably are due to the damage caused by your decent modern GPU running too fast when playing PotC, it's like the game OC'd for you! That eventually happened to my 7600GT (getting artifacts in games), but that was my own doing as i was OC'ing it too much to play a heavily modded Morrowind! I never OC my hardware now.
 
Last edited:
Well, the only Issue im having rn is that the game is running too slow. I guess that windows 10 is unlocking the FPS, the more FPS the slower my game runs.
 
Hi guys, new user here. Hopefully people will still read this.

I used to play this game when I was a kid and absolutely loved it. Trying to get back into it now for nostalgic purposes but having some trouble.

The game runs absolutely fine -- except when indoors and browsing menus, e.g. shopkeepers. The scroll speed is absolutely atrocious.

I've trawled through all 9 pages of this thread and have tried a couple of things but still haven't managed to fix the issue. Bearing in mind, I know a little about tech but I'm no wizard, so bare with me.

I'm running a lot of new and high end equipment (i7 CPU, NVIDIA GTX 980 GPU, 16GB RAM, etc.) so I believe the theory about having so high an FPS that it actually breaks your FPS is probably my problem too.

I don't think PotC works with dosbox, right? As I got the impression dosbox was for games going back into the 80s and 90s whereas PotC was only released in 2003. I got RivaTuner but I don't really know how to work it. I'd really like to avoid having to use bandicam or Fraps or something. Is there not a simple program that you can use to lock your framerate on one particular game? Can't find anything on NVIDIA GeForce Experience, I presume the game's just too old to be picked up by it.

I've tried running a multitude of different settings, both from the CONFIG and editing the .ini file. I tried out New Horizons but really didn't like it -- although the menu scroll speed was slightly better it completely changed everything about the game, which I wasn't fond of. Nothing's worked so far.

Any better solutions, or?
 
What is this "dosbox" you mention?

As far as I'm aware, there is no simple solution that avoids Bandicam/Fraps.
Of course this is stupid; you can thank Microsoft for that.

Several things that might help a bit:
- Install ENB; this may reduce the framerate a bit
- Install the New Horizons mod; this might help reduce it too
- Switch to windowed mode
- Set ENGINE.exe to use a different Windows compatibility mode

No guarantees though.
 
Thanks for the rapid response. I can't believe there isn't a simple program that locks your framerate on older games.

I'll keep trying to fiddle around a bit. If anyone could provide a link on how to use a "hacked" Fraps (i.e. it records so limits your FPS but doesn't actually save any video footage) that'd also be a great help.
 
Im using nvidia inspector to set fps in games like skyrim and xcom 2, works really well. It should have a setting for potc, too ☺
 
thinluyten said:
I got RivaTuner but I don't really know how to work it. I'd really like to avoid having to use bandicam or Fraps or something. Is there not a simple program that you can use to lock your framerate on one particular game? Can't find anything on NVIDIA GeForce Experience, I presume the game's just too old to be picked up by it.
Click to expand...
Do you have MSI Afterburner installed? If you run Afterburner in the background before you start the game, the settings defined in RivaTuner will limit the framerate.
See this post for the settings I use: Solved - Windows 10: Low Frame Rates Despite (BECAUSE OF!) Good Hardware
 
I use MSI Afterburner and then Rivatuner to cap the frame rate at 150fps. Any more than this and it starts to mess with game speeds.

I also use my AMD Radeon command center to first find a games .exe, and then set the graphics options for it. For POTC there is no such thing as too much AA and AF. This leaves my global settings free for apps like Cinebench and Passmark.
 
After finally getting the Fall Creators Update for Windows 10 to install successfully, I decided to see if the updated "Game Mode" would cause any problems for PotC:NH. Straight off, they've taken away the toggle that let you activate Game Mode. It's supposedly accessible by using the Win+W keystroke combo, but PotC:NH intercepts the W keystroke. The workaround I use is to edit the registry. Here are the steps needed -

  • Use the Win+R key combo, and type "regedit.exe" in the Run dialogue box. Click OK.
  • Click Yes in the UAC box that appears.
  • Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\GameBar in the left-hand pane
  • In the right-hand pane, right-click and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value
  • Name the value "AllowAutoGameMode" (without quotes) and hit Enter
  • Double-click the new value, and change it from 0 to 1. Click OK.
  • Reboot your computer.
Game Mode will now activate automatically.

So far, I'm experiencing fewer crashes overall. And certain situations where character movement would bog down, such as walking around in the shipyard offices or tavern boarding rooms, are gone. Character movement is smooth and consistent.

I hope this is of help to anyone running Windows 10.
 
That's interesting!
And if you change the registry back, then it's all messed up again?
 
Yes, it reverts to the annoying slow-motion movement.

Something else I noticed: big fight scenes don't bog down nearly as much with Game Mode active.
 
Sounds like you finally figured out what is wrong with Windows 10 that messes up PotC so bad!
Are there any more details about that?
I wonder if there is a normal way to enable that so regular people don't need to edit their registry...
 
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