Why So Slow?

[Iodine]

I just started playing a while ago and so far everything looks pretty good but there's one thing I just can't figure out: Why is this game so agonizingly slow? You're only allowed to walk (using the mouse) yet the areas are huge and mostly empty. I kept looking for a setting to adjust the animation speed, but there doesn't seem to be any.

I realize you're going for an old-school feel of slower-paced classic RPGs, but then why not just make the game completely turn based (ie. PC moves quickly from one tile to the next, and everything else moves at the same pace) using the keyboard so you don't have to watch your character slowly walk up and down the screen? As it stands it just feels like a dated real-time RPG with turn-based combat.

[CrazyBernie]

Check the game performance rating by going to the options menu... if you're getting anything higher than 6-10 then the game might be a bit sluggish. Try switching between DirectX and OpenGL... that made a huge difference for me when I had it on an older system.

I do agree that the game pace could be sped up a bit, but I don't find it horribly slow, nor do I find it overly large. Plus, the quick travel between towns/points of interest helps quite a bit. If it was made too fast I think it would take a bit away from the atmosphere of the game. The game is completely turn-based, by the way. The PC takes a turn, then the rest of the world takes a turn.

[Unclever title]

I may have gotten the wrong impression by your words but you can hold down the mouse button to walk and just move it in front of your character to walk in that direction an effect quite similar to walking via keyboard so there is no need to endless click on static locations.

This doesn't improve walking speed though.

And like I said I may have gained the wrong impression.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

I just started playing a while ago and so far everything looks pretty good but there's one thing I just can't figure out: Why is this game so agonizingly slow? You're only allowed to walk (using the mouse) yet the areas are huge and mostly empty. I kept looking for a setting to adjust the animation speed, but there doesn't seem to be any.

I realize you're going for an old-school feel of slower-paced classic RPGs, but then why not just make the game completely turn based (ie. PC moves quickly from one tile to the next, and everything else moves at the same pace) using the keyboard so you don't have to watch your character slowly walk up and down the screen? As it stands it just feels like a dated real-time RPG with turn-based combat.

Iodine, the game IS completely turn based. Try pressing W to turn on the auto-walk so you don't have to click so much or hold the mouse button down. Be careful about this when close to enemies, as you may not be as fast as the machine when it's time to turn auto-walk off, and it might walk you right into a bad situation.

[Hoser]

Ooh I'm going to try turning on the W thing. I just bought the game and quite like it but I also find my main character to be ungodly slow. I mean for god sakes, it's an RPG so it's probably already a good 50-60 hours long. I don't want to spend 3/4 of that time trudging along in the wilderness. Please include a run! I don't mind if you need to speed up the creatures as well to preserve game balance. Also I hope hitting "w" will allow me to click on an object and have the character walk over and interact with it. I hate having to hold down the mouse key.

[Hoser]

Hmm I think it's my PC. I'm playing on an Eee 1000H. Indoors are at around 10 or 12 and outdoors are at about 20 or so. I switched to Open GL but then the performance nosedived. That's disappointing. I guess there's not much I can do about it though.

[CrazyBernie]

Yeah, netbooks aren't exactly known for stellar video performance. Nvidia is going to try changing that this year though.

[Iodine]

I have noticed the game runs extra slow if I try to play it with Directx. I've seen this before in other smaller games like Darwinia and Democracy 2, and I'm pretty sure it's an Nvidia problem.

Anyways, I just don't see why the game has to be as slow as it is. If the devs were serious about recreating the experience of RPGs from the 80's and 90's, instead of some Diablo-esque ripoff, why bother with animation for simple movement at all? It's not like the game is going to win over anyone based on looks.

Yes! I'm well aware that the game IS turn-based in so far as game mechanics are concerned, but my point was it smoothes everything out to look like it wasn't, which just ends up slowing down the game. In almost every other turn based RPG, the pace is set entirely by the player, and any commands issued is executed instantly. Maybe slight pauses for spell effects and such, but that's it.

I'm also aware that there's a walk toggle button, but I don't see why there even needs to be one in a turn-based RPG (I can't think of any other that has one, except maybe roguelikes, which are entirely different beasts), nor is there any reason to make the mouse the primary method for moving around, except maybe to make it more palatable to generic hack-and-slash gamers.

Again, I don't really have any problems with these design decisions per se, other than that we don't have any choice in the matter. Is it really that hard to have a setting for speed? Or configurable control keys for movement? It's funny that I just finished playing Red Alert 3 which had almost the exact same issues...

[CrazyBernie]

It's not an nvidia problem. The engine is cross-platform coded, so the directx side obviously hasn't recieved the same level of optimization as the OpenGL side. Therefore OpenGL is going to be faster on pretty much anything but intel/via embedded graphics. Since the engine is licensed from Blitz (if I remember correctly), I'm sure there's only so much that Basilisk can do on their end, short of writing their own engine. And I'm thinking that if they did that, the game probably would still be in beta or unreleased status.

In regards to the controls, that has certainly been brought up enough to be incorporated into the changes for Book II. The walking speed has also been increase by 20% according to a previous post. I realize that this does nothing for Book I, but if every game developer rewrote every game based on a few complaints then there wouldn't be any game developers left in business, no?
I won't say that I completely disagree with you in regards to speeding up the game, but I guess it just doesn't bother me as much since my computer is plenty fast enough to run it with no slowdown. Having an option to adjust the animation speed could be handy though, especially the ability to turn off some animations for performance.

I will say that I completely disagree with you on the looks department though. It's one of the reasons I chose this game over other crpgs such as Spiderweb's Avernum or Geneforge... the graphics for Eschalon just meshed together a lot better than the others.

In the end, everyone has their own preferences, I suppose.

[IJBall]

I will say that I completely disagree with you on the looks department though. It's one of the reasons I chose this game over other crpgs such as Spiderweb's Avernum or Geneforge... the graphics for Eschalon just meshed together a lot better than the others.

What Bernie said.

The graphics on Eschalon are so much head-and-shoulders above any other CRPG that I've ever seen that it's not even funny.

Believe me - I wouldn't have played this game for 3 months straight is it wasn't such a great looking game.

(And I'm even more psyched about Book II, which looks to have even better graphics than Book I!)

[Iodine]

Having now finished the game, the speed probably didn't bothered me as much as I thought it would, in part because the game was so short and also because a lot other things made it so it wasn't spending too much of my time just walking anyways. Still, walking around in areas like Tanglewood, for instance, is still kind of a pain, as are some of the dungeons (e.g. whistling cave).

I still think the game in general tends to be too uneven and slow in its pacing. A lot of time is spent doing not much of consequence, like walking between shops, or finding a place to camp.

As for the controls, I still think using the mouse for both movement and targeting is pretty clunky (though not nearly as bad as some other game...), though given how a lot of places required you to manuever around small obstacles and the mouse movement provides you with some degree of course correction, it does make sense. I still would have liked to see keyboard controls as an option though, if only so I don't have to keep track of where my cursor is all the time.

In regards to the controls, that has certainly been brought up enough to be incorporated into the changes for Book II. The walking speed has also been increase by 20% according to a previous post. I realize that this does nothing for Book I, but if every game developer rewrote every game based on a few complaints then there wouldn't be any game developers left in business, no?
I won't say that I completely disagree with you in regards to speeding up the game, but I guess it just doesn't bother me as much since my computer is plenty fast enough to run it with no slowdown. Having an option to adjust the animation speed could be handy though, especially the ability to turn off some animations for performance.

Who said anything rewriting the game? Really, if they intend to increase the speed for the next installment, then all power to them. I don't have any problem running it on OpenGL, btw, only Directx.

I will say that I completely disagree with you on the looks department though. It's one of the reasons I chose this game over other crpgs such as Spiderweb's Avernum or Geneforge... the graphics for Eschalon just meshed together a lot better than the others.

In the end, everyone has their own preferences, I suppose.

Obviously, but the point is that Eschalon, in the words of its webpage, is supposed to play and feel like classic CRPGs that doesn't rely on cutting edge graphics for appeal. Not saying having good graphics is bad, but I tend to view it as unnecessary and counterproductive when it detracts from the gameplay.

Maybe I'm wrong though, and there really is a large audience that wants to play a turn-based top-down RPG, but isn't willing to pick one up unless it looks good too.

Btw, It's interesting that you mention Avernum, since I thought that was a pretty bad makeover of a pretty good game (Exile) - one I was immediately reminded of when I started Eschalon.