Mouse Jumpiness

[AndrewKurtz]

I have WWI Gold (beta batch) installed on my desktop and laptop. The laptop is a better machine, but both are good.

On the desktop, I have significant mouse jumpiness (lag?). I'm guessing this occurs when the game is "thinking". I don't experience this on my laptop. I have turned mouse sensitivity way up, but this doesn't help the jumping. When the mouse is moving, it helps. But when the mouse is "stuck", it doesn't change anything. It's stuck.

BTW, it was this specific issue that cause my brother to drop the original. The mouse stopping was so frequent with the pre-gold that he could not play. I'm hoping to get it figure out on my desktop and then get him to buy gold so we can play MP.

Any specific instructions to address this in the Gold version?

[calvinus]

Which OS? Win7 on both PCs?

Do you have mouse jumpiness only during AI think time? If so, it's normal.

[AndrewKurtz]

W7 on both. Laptop is 64-bit, desktop is 32-bit.

If the only time the AI is thinking there is a dialog, then it occurs at other times as well.

I have not tried to load entire map as I saw someone else state. I'll give that a try and report the result.

[calvinus]

So it seems you have a sluggy mouse also outside of AI think time...

On another thread I wrote:

The "Load entire map" option makes all bitmaps of game map are loaded in the very first start of the game.
Otherwise, if the option is disabled, map bitmaps are loaded when scrolling the map. Of course, once you load a portion of map bitmaps, there's no need to reload them if scrolling the map again to that area.
That means the mouse pointer can be sluggy during the map load time. For this reason, we added the advice for setting on the "Load entire map" option.

Provided this is the purpose of that option and the way Map load cache works, now I have another question: do you have a sluggy mouse also when all map is loaded into RAM (either if fully loaded at start or loaded because you scrolled all along the map)?

[calvinus]

Of course, if some Win7 user already encountered such problems and successfully managed to configure his OS to run the game properly, he's strongly welcome here!

[AndrewKurtz]

now I have another question: do you have a sluggy mouse also when all map is loaded into RAM (either if fully loaded at start or loaded because you scrolled all along the map)?

The sluggy mouse occurs when there is no map scrolling. I'm guessing it is related to AI processing taking place (I assume this sometimes happens in another thread so I can be working on one thing while the AI thinks?).

In the settings, I have checked all boxes to give the AI more time etc. Could these cause it?

I also hav AI Memory checked. Not sure what this does. Any chance it might have an impact?

[AndrewKurtz]

Let's see if this help...

Loaded up 2 player campaign as CP.

Dialog appears asking about donating gold. I can move the mouse around the screen/map with not lag. But the mouse will stop moving and then jump when it enters the event dialog. Perhaps something related to the processing of event messages?

[calvinus]

You have AI processing time only when you see the dark rectangle dialog.
When AI finishes her job, the dialog disappears, and sometimes you can have some lags, mostly due to the execution of many AI actions and map updates. But this happens only sometimes, and after some seconds the game returns working at 100%: AI has totally finished all her pending jobs.

Instead, you write you have regularly a sluggish mouse, not simply sometimes.

So, now I'm surfing here and here to understand what's the problem exactly in Win7 XP compatibility mode, and I discovered there's a way to create a virtual XP PC:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/173759/get_started_with_windows_7_xp_mode.html?tk=rel_news

[calvinus]

Let's see if this help...

Loaded up 2 player campaign as CP.

Dialog appears asking about donating gold. I can move the mouse around the screen/map with not lag. But the mouse will stop moving and then jump when it enters the event dialog. Perhaps something related to the processing of event messages?

No, it's something external to the game. It looks linked to graphic stuff and/or memory allocation.

[AndrewKurtz]

You have AI processing time only when you see the dark rectangle dialog.
When AI finishes her job, the dialog disappears, and sometimes you can have some lags, mostly due to the execution of many AI actions and map updates. But this happens only sometimes, and after some seconds the game returns working at 100%: AI has totally finished all her pending jobs.

Instead, you write you have regularly a sluggish mouse, not simply sometimes.

So, now I'm surfing here and here to understand what's the problem exactly in Win7 XP compatibility mode, and I discovered there's a way to create a virtual XP PC:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/173759/get_started_with_windows_7_xp_mode.html?tk=rel_news

The only reason I'm in XP compatability mode is because is was jumpy in native mode. Glad to try it another way. Glad to turn off anything.

But if the mouse can move around fine outside the event dialog, and then has a problem when it moves inside the event dialog, and this is consistent, doesn't that point to something "internal to the game"? In other words, while to root cause might be an external program slowing something down, whatever the game does when the mouse enters that dialog seems to cause it to occur.

[calvinus]

Alwais concerning the XP Virtual mode, it's particularily interesting this portion of the article:

Virtualizing Apps with Seamless Mode

Windows XP Mode ApplicationsWhere XP Mode really shines is with Seamless Mode, which lets you launch XP apps straight from your Windows 7 menus. To use Seamless Mode, you first install an app under Desktop Mode, then log out of and close the virtual machine. The app you just installed can then be found on the host PC's Start menu under All Programs, Windows Virtual PC, Windows XP Mode Applications.

When the app is launched from the host OS, XP launches in the background and the app appears as if it were running natively in Windows 7. Apps run this way are called virtual applications. If you don't find the default start menu location to be convenient, you can move the shortcut to any location a traditional shortcut can be placed. If the app you want to virtualize doesn't automatically create a Start menu shortcut, or the app is already included with Windows (Internet Explorer 6.0 for example), you simply need to create a shortcut for it in Desktop Mode under c:\documents and settings\all users\start menu and the app will appear on the host start menu under Windows XP Mode Applications...

If you succeed to configure the Virtual XP as described above, you could make the Virtual XP runs in background the WW1 executable every time you launch the game! In such a way, you are sure the game is ran fine in 32-bit mode, like under a XP operating system!

I hope this can help you...

[calvinus]

The only reason I'm in XP compatability mode is because is was jumpy in native mode. Glad to try it another way. Glad to turn off anything.

But if the mouse can move around fine outside the event dialog, and then has a problem when it moves inside the event dialog, and this is consistent, doesn't that point to something "internal to the game"? In other words, while to root cause might be an external program slowing something down, whatever the game does when the mouse enters that dialog seems to cause it to occur.

When you move the mouse cursor over the newspaper dialog, the tooltip is displayed over the option choice box. This graphical activity calls for an allocation of RAM. Under a 64-bit environment, this allocation of RAM could be slowed down by something external, let's say a wrapper that makes the 32-bit allocation transformed into a 64-bit job... told in stupid words...
This could be the Win7 cause of such game slow downs.

This is why I suggested you to "build" a Virtual XP 32-bit environment.

Edit: what's strange indeed is that such slow downs have not been so deeply experimented before. So it can be true also you have some some resident program that slows down the game. UAC?

[AndrewKurtz]

The lag on the 32 bit system, not the 64 bit system. I'll play around. Can I turn off tooltips to see if that is the cause?

[calvinus]

The lag on the 32 bit system, not the 64 bit system. I'll play around.

Weird!
Logged in as PC Admin and UAC off?

Can I turn off tooltips to see if that is the cause?

I'm not sure if it works, but you can try to set:

DrawToolTip=0

in WW1.ini file, even if playing without tooltips is a nonsense...

[AndrewKurtz]

Unfortunately, off to work. I'll run a bunch of tests tonight to see if I can help narrow down a solution.

[NefariousKoel]

I'm using Win7 64bit on a desktop.

The only time I've got a sluggish mouse is once when the newspaper popped up describing some event. Fortunately my mouse cursor was close to the button.

I'm not running XP compat mode but I have 'Run as Admin' and 'Disable Desktop Composition' checked. I do those both, as a rule, on every game. Now that I think of it, I tried turning XP sp2 compat mode on for it once just for the hell of it and it popped up some error shortly after starting.

The intro movies on the last couple games I've bought from Matrix have been very flaky on Win Vista & 7 both. I have to set WW2:Time of Wrath to XP compatibility mode if I don't want the intro movies to lock up and sometimes make me have to restart the game. I'm not sure if that's the issue or that they even put their logo movie on their version, just warning ya.