A couple questions.

super3dcow

New member
Joined
Nov 24, 2010
Messages
6
I searched for a while trying to find the answers to my questions, but nowhere, even on this forum, could I find them. So, here I go.

First, is there a list of the names that the game whispers to you if you enter it as your player name? And is there any special requirement in order to get the game to whisper your name?

Second, does the game still have framerate issues with anyone? When I first installed B&W, it lagged horribly on the intro. Luckily I found a guide to fixing this(which basicly was to go into custom video settings and max everything out). Although the game runs great for the most part now, it still goes down into 20-30 FPS quite often when lots of people or a distant shot comes into view. My keyboard has an screen on it displaying my processing speed, and the game only takes about 10-15% power to run it. Anyone know what might be wrong and how I can improve the fps?

Thanks in advance!
 
Hmm....

On the first point, I would assume there has to be a file somewhere in the game directories with the list of names the game will call out.  I do know that the game operates on a "Best Effort" policy with this.  By that, I mean if the name you enter for your profile isn't an exact match, the game will try to find the closest match and call that out instead.  This is what happened to me.  Do not ask me what criteria it uses to decide what the closest match is though as I have no idea  :no :upside . 

Can anyone confirm if there is a file and if so, where is it?

As the for the frame rate, I can make a guess as to why this is happening.  You mention now that the frame rate only drops when there is alot going on in the screen, e.g. alot of villagers.  Now someone may correct me on this but what I think is happening is that the game engine is maxing out on what it can manage to display at once.

This is not to be confused with your processor being maxed out.  Remember that the game is quite old.  Most programs are engineered to use the max resources they are expected to have and no more (for performance tuning purposes).  This means that even though the game is now running on a machine that is far more powerful that it ever expected to get, it's not using all of that power.  It's like driving an old mini on the motorway/highway.  It'll try it's hardest to keep up with the newer cars on the road, but it's still limited by it's top speed.

Another theory may be that the new types of graphics card are trying to render the game in a different way to the game was originally designed to display.  In doing so, the old game and the new graphics card are "butting heads" so to speak and only getting mixed results.

Maybe there are a few tricks tough to sort this all out though.  Anyone got any ideas?
 
Thanks for the info fenton, but now, a bad glitch has just happened to me out of nowhere.

I'm on the final land, and I decided to switch my tiger creature with the polar bear temporarily. I was just working on stuff and suddenly when I looked at my creature, he was tiny! In only a couple minutes he went from huge to its original size. I then looked over at the boat where I had switched him with my Tiger, and my tiger had been turned into a polar bear! I tried reloading old auto saves, but no matter what, my tiger was still a polar bear (even when loading previous lands), and sometimes he was big, and sometimes tiny. How the heck do I fix this?
 
Ah, methinks Nemesis's curse has a role to play here.

As I read your post, you answered my first question on how you changed your creature, e.g. a creature changer or in-game.  As you used an in-game facility, that scratches my first theory that you used something like Kong to change your creature which can lead to issues.

Anyway, back to the curse.  In Land 5 your creature is cursed and SHOULD slowly shrink and change alignment.  Why your creature has shrunk so quickly is a mystery to me ??? .  Has his alignment changed also?

Another little bit of information.  If you have not patched the game to at least V1.10, then you're in trouble as even if the game was not acting oddly, your creature will never truly be cured.

When you take over the second-last village on the land, your creature is cured of the curse.  But if your game is not patched, then the curse sticks around and resumes shrinking your creature again.  Once you're in Land 5, I believe you're creature is stuck with this (even if you patch the game later).  Once patched, any new creatures you take to Land 5 will turn out OK.

In order to fix the creature you have though, I believe you're gonna have to cheat a bit.  Should you use the "cheated" creature online afterward, the people you are playing may not appreciate you using a cheated creature though , so bare that in mind if you want to play online.  You may want to start with a new creature in that case.

In any case, I would suggest playing out land 5 until your creature is cured of the curse.  If he continues to shrink again, you can use one of the tools in our downloads section to modify your creature back to original size/type/alignment.  If you have to do it, I would suggest Caches' Cheats (e.g. CachePackX or CreatureStats) as they work the most reliably of these kind of tools.

Sorry I couldn't be more help.
 
Thanks for the quick reply. I will try downloading those now and see what I can do. But the main thing I want back is my Tiger. :( Will these cheats allow me to change him back into a Tiger? Also, my creatures alignment is still very good, and not evil, and I am using V1.2

UPDATE: After successfully changing my creature back to a tiger with the cheat you suggested, I soon found out how he got so small. It seems if my creature is in his pen at the temple right when it turns nighttime and the curse effects him again, he stays small after leaving the temple. Now I just need to somehow make him not look like a pink mouse.

Thanks for your help on such an old game!
 
Good god, I swear every time you help me fix a problem, a new one comes out of nowhere. But trust me, I have greatly appreciated your help so far.

So, anyway, I was playing for a few hours after I got my creature changed back into a tiger, and the game happened to freeze at a random point, so I reseted the game. As usual, it resumed my older save, so I went in the temple to load a newer auto save. Right when I clicked Yes for the "Do you want to load this save?" it froze. Reset the game and tried again, and then again with different saves, and it still happened. I don't think my saves are corrupt, the game just won't load them for some reason. Maybe has something to do with me using the cheat to change my polar bear into a tiger?
 
I doubt the cheat is responsible.  The only way it might be is if the cheat program isn't interacting well with the newer OS.

I'm not sure how to resolve the load game issue either though, but I do have a suggestion to help possible narrow down the problem if you've got some free time.  If I'm right, you may have to start back on Land 1 again, but you'll still have your Tiger.  That's the best I can do.

First we need to identify your creature's mind file for later (as we may want to move it to a non-corrupted profile).  In the main Black & White directory, go to the CreatureMind folder.  Look for a file like "C4abc1234.erc" (the numbers may be different, but it'll be of the format C#####.erc).  There should also be another file with with the same funny name in it, but starting with "Physique".  From carrying on the example above, this would be "PhysiqueC4abc1234.erc".  These represent your creature's mind and body respectively.  Copy these files out to somewhere else as a backup.  If you have multiple profiles, there may be a few different sets of these files.  Pick the ones with the most recent dateModified on them as that would be the creature from the most recently used profile, i.e. your Tiger.

Try starting a new profile.  If you have patch 1.20 installed, you may get the option to bring your Tiger into this profile (which saves you a lot of work later on).  If you don't get this option, just select a new creature.  It doesn't really matter which.  Save the game at two points, exit the game and then go back in and try to load the earlier save in the new profile.  If this works, then it does indeed imply that your old profile is somewhat corrupt :( .

Now if you managed to bring in your Tiger already, then at least you have him, but the downside is you have to play through all the lands again (some people actually enjoy this).  If you didn't get the option to bring on your Tiger, then carry on reading the next paragraph.

The next step would be to try and transfer over your Tiger into the new profile.  Go back to the CreatureMind folder again and identify the creature from your new profile the same was as before (using dateModified).  Take careful note of the name of those files.  Move out those files and bring your backed up Tiger from earlier.  Rename your Tiger files to the creature you just removed and when you load your new profile again, your Tiger has now replaced the new creature you selected.

Maybe I'm missing a trick here and there's a way to fix your old profile, but unfortunately, I don't know of it.  This is the best I can do I'm afraid.  Sorry.
 
Do you have a dedicated graphics card?
Or an onboard one? Such as Intel or something?

It sounds like your graphics processor can't keep up with the rest of the pc at times.

Freeze-ups, and low fps, during intensive scenes, or elongated play, all point at issues with your graphics card.

Added to that, it also sounds like you are having save issues. Is the program installed correctly? - If you're on Windows 7 - is it in C:\Users\Public\Games ?
If you're not on Windows 7 - try running black.exe as administrator. That might help?
 
^^ it's why I'm at school to learn for Application-Developer :p

I was thinking some more, and I believe, how sad it might be, that you may need to re-install your game anyway - as continuing with an account, when you updated it after having played with it.. messes up quite alot! :p

Black and White 2 gives a warning about it, but at BW1, this wasn't very known yet. - but the issue is the same! ^^
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top