Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) General items not stacking

I can't help wonder why the same name items won't stack. I have several stacks of the same name arrows that I can not make into one stack. There are potions of the same name that also won't stack together. All this adds up to a messy inventory. Is this just one more "feature" of the game yet to be fixed one day?

Quests need to be branched out more so that if a player completes the quests in a different manner than programmed that quest is erased from your quest log.

Optimizing is still needed to be done also. I can't see any reason the game should be taking 99% of the CPU capacity just to play. This has to be the reason for the lag and slow downs in the game. Those choppy frame rates I see while playing. I don't have any programs running while playing the game. The startup up file is very small limited to only those programs need to get the computer to boot up. With a 1900 Athlon and a 1/2 GB of ram, new defrag the game should run better than it does.
I hope some if not all of this is addressed in the next patch.

dude, EVERY game takes up +/- 100% CPU time, it just is like that, and it does NOT cause the slowdowns. watch your taskmanager after every game and you'll see it dropping when you shut it down, it's surprise me a lot if you could point me out a recent game that does NOT go over 90% CPU time

the items not stacking thing bothers me as well, I'v got 2 or 3 stacks of x'-type' arrows

if you created them via alchemy, and if your level was higher than 1 => these are stronger, so they don't stack.

About arrows => some are a bit different, e.g.: Poison arrows and "Poison arrows of the incredible hermit" (made this up). Please, check if your arrows really have the exact same name.

About lag => sorry, no info. I play with a 2800 Athlon XP, and over 1 Gig RAM, no lags, though I have 2 graphics programs, WORD, the internet and countless files open in my task bar.

no skill made potions, all either found as loot or bought. Same as the arrows, all acquired as loot. I did check the wording and they are all the same. It is confusing.

I hadn't noticed that much usage of the cpu on other programs. After reading your answer I ran a few games and checked them out. It seemed to vary from the 99 to 89%. But those that do run that high have better frame rates. I run an ATI 9700 pro with the last drivers. This is the only game that slows down for periods then picks back up again. Even games with great 3D graphics run smoother. Could it be the programming?

This is very strange indeed, specially the potions <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> - sorry, I have no explanation now. As I only keep red, blue, white in 3x3 rows and sell the other ones at once, I would have noticed, as the seperated inventory now allows me to see discrepancies at once - even arrows, I only have the same amount variety.
Kiya

My card is far lower than yours => Geforce 4 TI 4200 => no lags. I have BD running right now, my task manager says 91-100% and I have 42 processes in the background - still no lags <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

I have been thinking about your arrows => in former versions some arrows had special abilities (fire arrows of the xxx), this caused problems, so in one patch (1.43? 1.44?) this was fixed. Could it be, you have patched somewhere along the line and then started a save with an error message => BD has detected an error, might change some items, click on "yes" to fix it? If so, could those non-stacking arrows (a small amount) be the ones causing extra piles?

I have no info about strangely behaving potions though - if they were not created by you.

I did see an error message when I started a save game sometime way back. I think it was one of the earlier patches. I would have thought by now my hero would have used all those arrows though. I normally have one npc using a sword and one using a bow. I have found this combo works well for those hit and run mages.
I suppose it is possible a few of those older arrows were still in the present saved game. But I think it is doubtful.
I only keep red and white potions. Both of my npcs are warriors. I haven't used any magic. As yet I haven't even used any gems. While I have seen the specs on them I just haven't found a need to apply them to a weapon.
I am in Act 3 and sometimes I don't even get any exp for the monsters there. Mostly this is in the Battlefield area. I do get exp on the regular map. My hero suffers very little damage. The DK takes most of the punishment. I think he has over 130 Healing potions.
I also haven't used any of the summoning dolls yet either. With over 300K in gold why bother taking all the loot? I leave more items on the ground than I take now. I only take the unidentified items out of curiousity.
In fact I haven't used any of the points I earned 2 levels back yet. I only apply them if I start to take on damage or find a weapon or armor that demands higher stats.
I do think DD was more challenging. Maybe just because it was the first in the series?

My arrow piles also dont stack into 1 pile and I havent used the convert arrow skill at all.

I have now like 10 piles of 100 arrows and stuff like that, and I cant put the arrows on 1 pile like I could with 10 armors or so is there a trick to do it or?


//Inel.

I've run into the problem with arrows not stacking. I think I fixed it by equiping the arrows and then dragging the other stack onto them. Never had potions not stack tho, except for the ones I made.


Games run at 99% cpu power because they are set to highest priority, so your cpu is focusing everything on the game, even if it's not needed.

I don't think games are set to highest priority, and even if so, that's not the reason why the CPU runs at 100%. the CPU runs at 100% because it loops continiously and processes data (gfx, input, sounds, ...) if the 'game-loop' would wait for input from the OS, then you'd get some very bad results imho.

The roles are actually inverted, it's now the game that is taking a role of 'OS' and sometimes gives some time to the 'real OS' so that it can also process it's messages that are in the queue. Other programs just wait for inout before doing stuff, a games does stuff and does not wait for messages

Thanks for finally clearing this up for me.

I'll ask you this since you seem to know your way around a computer.

Could you explain why it takes so long after you quit the game to regain complete control of your PC again? Other games relinquish control almost immediately, this games takes so long I usually just reboot to regain my speed again.

I have been playing the Sacred demo the last few days. That game saves so fast I couldn't believe it. With 3D GFX it runs very high frame rates with no choppiness. When you quit it returns your computer full speed to you unlike BD. I know this can't just be happening to my computer.

yeah I know, Sacred has a very good engine. Well, What a game does when you close it is release all it's resources (textures, models,... open your taskmanager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESCAPE) when you get back to your desktop (also open it before starting the game to have a history) you'll see with <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> that long after you see your desktop again the memory keeps being used. it's only after some time that all memory has been freed again) so the only thing that can slow down the closing of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/beyond.gif" alt="" /> is that the procedure for releasing it's resources is far from optimized. which is a pity because it IS very annoying.

I hope that their next full 3D engine will be a lot faster in starting up and shutting down.

I'm not an expert, but personal experience makes me want to say this is a memory thing. I had this happen forever, but I installed an extra gig of memory yesterday, for a total of 1.25 GB, and now my BD quit-to-desktop is almost instantaneous, and even the gamma adjustment (I have it cranked moderately high in most of the games I'm playing right now) goes away before I've been back on the desktop for five seconds.

Yes that's what I mean by highest priority. The CPU is always running at 100%, just while doing normal windows stuff most of the power is going to the system idle process. But when you start up a game that left over processor power is all being focused into the game because it gains priority.

The problem with it taking so long to clear the memory the game is taking up is probably because you don't have enough RAM, I'm guessing the game is using all your standard RAM and then going into virtual memory, when this happens not only does a game slow down significantly but when you exit the game it takes a very long time to clear virtual memory (which is located on your HDD). I have 1gb RAM and the games closes instantly and runs very smoothly.

my mistake about the shutdown process then, but I only have 256Mb so...
By the end of the year I hope to have a nice brand new PC with PCI express video card and 1-1.5 Gb of ram

xaishi, in my unofficial tests ( <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/stupid.gif" alt="" />) there was a dramatic difference in going from 512 to a gig and then back again. sadly (sorta <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />), i have 512 sticks so couldn't test 768.
512 (i have matching corsair memory) results in extreme delay in release of memory upon exiting the game. sometimes resulting in a BSOD.
1 gig mostly handled the situation, and resulted in no BSOD.
minimal differences in gameplay however, mostly because there is not wave after wave of enemies appearing on screen at once, say like in diablo II (my guess).
vipe, i can't imagine playing this with 256! woohoo! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
one can only imagine the fun people must have if they're also running winME! ouch.

I own a Amd athlon xp2100+ 768 mb ram, radeon 9000

Alt tabbing to Win is like a seconds work.
Although in game it runs rather slow (It said I should have an overall fps of 88) but even then in city's (act 3) or the imp village (act 2), I think the snails in game can walk faster that I do there! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> Also the spider forrest etc I lag loads, it might be my drivers, but the newest drivers dont work with a 2d mmporg game I play called Tibia so

//Inel.

I have 512 MB of Ram. Running Windows didn't make any sense having more. It nevers uses more than that. This is the only game that takes so long to release the memory so far. I guess at today's prices I could get another 512 MB of Ram it sure wouldn't hurt.

@Duncan: could you send your problem to support@larian.com and please let us know your systems specs.
And are you playing with the latest patch? Please mention that to.
The support team will look into your problem.