Some games run abysmally slowly

Does anyone know why this is so? My grandchildren like to play a
game called "Brave Dwarves", but it is impossibly slow. Runs perfectly on
windows 7 64 bit. The problem seems to be that the frame changes exceptionly
slowly like every 2 seconds or so! May be an exaggeration, but the time
apparently to read and action keys is very very slow. Nothing I've tried
seems to have any effect

"Oldster" wrote in message
...
Does anyone know why this is so? My grandchildren like to play a
game called "Brave Dwarves", but it is impossibly slow. Runs perfectly on
windows 7 64 bit. The problem seems to be that the frame changes
exceptionly slowly like every 2 seconds or so! May be an exaggeration, but
the time apparently to read and action keys is very very slow. Nothing
I've tried seems to have any effect


Without knowing exactly what you've tried, I would first suggest updating
you video drivers.
--
SC Tom

Oldster wrote:
Does anyone know why this is so? My grandchildren like to play a
game called "Brave Dwarves", but it is impossibly slow. Runs perfectly
on windows 7 64 bit. The problem seems to be that the frame changes
exceptionly slowly like every 2 seconds or so! May be an exaggeration,
but the time apparently to read and action keys is very very slow.
Nothing I've tried seems to have any effect


Is it this game from 2001 ?

There is more than one company, attempting to cash in on that
product name. This is just one of them.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010701...games/dwarves/

The game is supposed to be 5MB in size. This trial
version is a bit too small (3,447,685 bytes).

https://web.archive.org/web/20030403...m/BDwarves.exe

Virustotal doesn't particularly like that one.

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/8...0dff/analysis/

Gets a HAHAHA award here.

http://www.threatexpert.com/report.a...85bdebd7a1bfab

Maybe the Dwarves are very busy, inside your computer ?

Let's hope you have some other version...

*******

And the current version on Tucows (bravedwarves-setup.exe)
is 700KB and looks like an adware delivery system (executable
is branded as belonging to "Cash Buyer Media").

Let's hope you got that game from a
reputable delivery route. Check the version
number of the game, to see if it is from 2001
or later. There are a few versions. You'd want
to track down whether all of them have Trojans
in them or not.

It's a wonder your AV isn't flagging this.

Upload the main exe to virustotal.com, then
post a link to the scan results :-) Or at least,
tease us with a "size on disk" for the installer,
so we can play "match that malware" and try and
figure out where you got it.

The Dwarves are mining Gold inside your computer.

Paul

Oldster wrote:

My grandchildren like to play a game called "Brave Dwarves", but it is
impossibly slow. Runs perfectly on windows 7 64 bit. The problem
seems to be that the frame changes exceptionly slowly like every 2
seconds or so! May be an exaggeration, but the time apparently to
read and action keys is very very slow. Nothing I've tried seems to
have any effect

The video card may be too weak for playing that game on the problematic
computer. Most games list minimal, recommended, and best system
requirements for playing their games. In most cases, especially for
newer games, onboard (motherboard) video controllers are not sufficient
to play video games. You need to get a much better video daughtercard.
So what hardware (CPU, system RAM, and video controller) is present in
the computer?

On a different computer the game plays okay. So what have you done to
check what background processes are running on the problematic computer?
What all startup programs are getting loaded on the problematic
computer? You are asking in a Windows 8 newsgroup. You sure the game
says it supports Windows 8?

What anti-virus software is on that computer? Have you updated it and
then performed a manual scan? Updating means the license for it has to
be current so it will retrieve current updates. Expired security
software may continue to run but may refuse to retrieve current updates
to recognize later malware.

Is this an online game? If so then perhaps an add-on was installed in
the web browser that is causing interferrence. Try loading the web
browser in its safe mode (all add-ons disabled) and retest.

From an online search on the game, it appears it is/was an online game
from Alawar. When I go to Alawar's site (http://www.alawar.com/), that
game is not listed. Maybe it got discontinued so its web pages or game
server have been abandoned.

On 11/02/2015 15:44, Oldster wrote:
Does anyone know why this is so? My grandchildren like to play a
game called "Brave Dwarves", but it is impossibly slow. Runs perfectly
on windows 7 64 bit. The problem seems to be that the frame changes
exceptionly slowly like every 2 seconds or so! May be an exaggeration,
but the time apparently to read and action keys is very very slow.
Nothing I've tried seems to have any effect


Is this on the same computer?

--

Brian Gregory (in the UK).
To email me please remove all the letter vee from my email address.

On 13/02/2015 01:00, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 11/02/2015 15:44, Oldster wrote:
Does anyone know why this is so? My grandchildren like to play a
game called "Brave Dwarves", but it is impossibly slow. Runs perfectly
on windows 7 64 bit. The problem seems to be that the frame changes
exceptionly slowly like every 2 seconds or so! May be an exaggeration,
but the time apparently to read and action keys is very very slow.
Nothing I've tried seems to have any effect


Is this on the same computer?

But it is the same machine running windows 7 or windows 8, I just
swap the internal disc. The machine is a lifebook A series from Fujitsu,
with dual core pentium P6200 2133MHz with 8Gb memory. Not an on-line game.

On Fri, 13 Feb 2015 15:51:32 +0000, Oldster wrote:

On 13/02/2015 01:00, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 11/02/2015 15:44, Oldster wrote:
Does anyone know why this is so? My grandchildren like to play a
game called "Brave Dwarves", but it is impossibly slow. Runs perfectly
on windows 7 64 bit. The problem seems to be that the frame changes
exceptionly slowly like every 2 seconds or so! May be an exaggeration,
but the time apparently to read and action keys is very very slow.
Nothing I've tried seems to have any effect


Is this on the same computer?

But it is the same machine running windows 7 or windows 8, I just
swap the internal disc. The machine is a lifebook A series from Fujitsu,
with dual core pentium P6200 2133MHz with 8Gb memory. Not an on-line game.

Have you followed SC Tom's advice on that drive?

Actually, depending how you made the drive, you might have a lot more
than just video drives to worry about. Did you make it, and install any
drivers, only on the box in question?

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Fri, 13 Feb 2015 11:27:45 -0800, Gene E. Bloch wrote:

On Fri, 13 Feb 2015 15:51:32 +0000, Oldster wrote:

On 13/02/2015 01:00, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 11/02/2015 15:44, Oldster wrote:
Does anyone know why this is so? My grandchildren like to play a
game called "Brave Dwarves", but it is impossibly slow. Runs perfectly
on windows 7 64 bit. The problem seems to be that the frame changes
exceptionly slowly like every 2 seconds or so! May be an exaggeration,
but the time apparently to read and action keys is very very slow.
Nothing I've tried seems to have any effect


Is this on the same computer?

But it is the same machine running windows 7 or windows 8, I just
swap the internal disc. The machine is a lifebook A series from Fujitsu,
with dual core pentium P6200 2133MHz with 8Gb memory. Not an on-line game.

Have you followed SC Tom's advice on that drive?

Actually, depending how you made the drive, you might have a lot more
than just video drives to worry about. Did you make it, and install any
drivers, only on the box in question?

Of course I meant "video drivers" above.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

Oldster wrote:
On 13/02/2015 01:00, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 11/02/2015 15:44, Oldster wrote:
Does anyone know why this is so? My grandchildren like to play a
game called "Brave Dwarves", but it is impossibly slow. Runs perfectly
on windows 7 64 bit. The problem seems to be that the frame changes
exceptionly slowly like every 2 seconds or so! May be an exaggeration,
but the time apparently to read and action keys is very very slow.
Nothing I've tried seems to have any effect


Is this on the same computer?

But it is the same machine running windows 7 or windows 8, I just
swap the internal disc. The machine is a lifebook A series from Fujitsu,
with dual core pentium P6200 2133MHz with 8Gb memory. Not an on-line game.


Since I won't be testing with BDwarves.exe, I decided
to test with something else.

First of all, the BDwarves mentions "DirectX 7". Back in
those days, DX7/DX8/DX9 could run under DX9c. I think RX9c
had all three render paths, and a program could select
the render path it wanted. For the older games, on
gutless computers, sometimes the DX7 path was better,
because it put less of a load on the machine.

Now, if we go to this page, there are benchmarks.

http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/legacy

3DMark2000 DirectX 7
3DMark2001 DirextX 8

I selected the 20MB download of the 3DMark2000 one
for a test.

Test machines -
WinXP, Core2 Duo, Nvidia 7900
Win8.1, (6 core), ATI 6450 (gutless)

I installed the application on WinXP. It doesn't
run right, out of the box. Go to Task Manager, and
if you see a 3DMark2000.exe program running, but no
graphics, it's basically hung (right after it checks
the Registry to see what version of DirectX is installed).

OK, once you've "ended Task" in there, and 3DMark2000 is
no longer running, navigate to C:\Program Files\MadOnion,
3DMark2000. In there, you'll see 3DMark2000.exe program file.
Right-click and select Properties, then select the
Compatibility tab. (This is all in WinXP SP3...)
I set program compatibility to "Win98/ME".

OK, now when I start the program, it runs. Accept
the defaults, click the two benchmark buttons you
can find, and you should see an animated helicopter
flying around and shooting stuff.

The benchmark reports around 34,000 or so, but
that's not important. If you look at the blades
of the helicopter as it flies, the blades "always
look like they're rotating".

The second interesting part, is the fourth bench in,
which is entitled "Adventure Game". There is a frame
rate counter in the lower left corner. On WinXP, it
reports the frame rate as "700FPS". In other words,
it's able to render frames much faster than the 60Hz
refresh of the screen.

Now, if I go over to the more powerful Win8.1 machine,
and run the benchmark (use "Win98/ME" compatibility
level, in C:\Program Files (x86)\Madonion\3DMark2000,
I get a much lower overall benchmark. Whereas WinXP
with real DX9c installed gets 34,000 or so, the
Win8.1 machine reports "1,700". About 20 times slower.
The helicopter blades in the first bench, appear to
stop every once in a while (due to aliasing between
the rotation rate of the rotor, and the frame rate
being used). And in the Adventure Game, we see
exactly "32.00 FPS" as the peak value, instead of
700 to 1100 FPS on the WinXP machine.

It appears the game is doing one of two things:

1) VSYNC (locked to going no faster than screen
refresh). The value "32" doesn't make a lot of sense
if this is happening.

2) Software rendered. Maybe the DX7 path is entirely
missing in DX9e on Win8.1, and so things are as slow
as molasses.

That could explain a little bit, about your Dwarves game.
it's DX7 as far as I know, and maybe it's got the same
sort of frame rate issue.

If you select 3DMark2001 from the site, you probably
won't get that to run in Win8.1. The best I was able
to do, was get a warning dialog "at least 128MB graphics
memory needed", when my cheesy little 6450 has 1GB of video
memory. So it doesn't seem to be getting the right info
from the OS as to graphics memory. And selecting other
combinations of compatibility mode, got me no response
at all.

When running the tests, use Task Manager to keep track
of whether any copies of 3DMark are left running. If
there are no graphics on the screen, and your CPU is
quite busy, there's probably a 3DMark exe using your
CPU cycles. Select it and "End Task" to make it go away,
before doing your next test.

There is a thing called D3DOverrider, but I think there
have also been "profile" control programs that come
with video cards, that allow adjusting settings not
displayed in the game preferences panel.

(Extract D3Doverrider from Rivatuner... mentioned at bottom.
I don't recommend this for Win8.1, since this program was
likely written eons ago.)

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=2157407

OK, so I opened Catalyst Control Center (CCC) on the
Win8.1 machine, used the Games tab, and set VSync in
there to "Off", instead of "Off, unless program selects
otherwise". And that prevented the 3DMark2000 benchmark
from starting a benchmark run. The screen stuttered a bit,
and a dialog mentioning "Abort" came back. So it didn't like
that. I see no reason to think D3Doverrider would do
any better.

I'm still not getting a warm feeling one way or another,
what the root problem is. My suspicion is, if
I ran BDwarves.exe on my WinXP machine, it would run at
normal speed. If run on the Win8.1 machine, at some
lesser speed.

Maybe someone with more gaming experience has an idea ?

I think the frame rate cap of "32.00FPS" means something,
but I can't even begin to guess what. I checked and the
refresh rate to the monitor is set at 60Hz.

I selected 3DMark2000 as a DX7 test case (matching the
perceived DirectX level of the OPs program), and because
it's "clean" as applications go. It's a 20MB download
(19,950,524 bytes). Running the default set of tick box
benchmarks, Windows 8.1 gets 20X lower benchmark value
than WinXP. (WinXP 34000 to Win8.1 1700).

Paul

Oldster wrote:
On 13/02/2015 01:00, Brian Gregory wrote:
On 11/02/2015 15:44, Oldster wrote:
Does anyone know why this is so? My grandchildren like to play a
game called "Brave Dwarves", but it is impossibly slow. Runs perfectly
on windows 7 64 bit. The problem seems to be that the frame changes
exceptionly slowly like every 2 seconds or so! May be an exaggeration,
but the time apparently to read and action keys is very very slow.
Nothing I've tried seems to have any effect


Is this on the same computer?

But it is the same machine running windows 7 or windows 8, I just
swap the internal disc. The machine is a lifebook A series from Fujitsu,
with dual core pentium P6200 2133MHz with 8Gb memory. Not an on-line game.


OK, using WINE on Linux, I unpacked BDwarves.exe.

I found a "Gnomes.ini" file.

[Settings]
Fullscreen = 1

Try changing that to "Fullscreen = 0".

The theory is, that the game has different framerate
behavior, when run in Windowed Mode. I could not put
3DMark2000.exe (my DX7 test app) into Windowed Mode,
to test whether it similarly improves if run this way.

So this is your experiment now. Assuming you can find
the Gnomes.ini file, and you're actually playing the
same game I just unpacked (written by Alawar).

Paul