Bioshock Problem

[Kurokawa41]

Soooo my gfx card doesn't support shaders 3. I tried to run the game, had no mouse cursor at all, lagged a ton in the starting menu. So, I went and got a fix to switch out the shaders for shaders 2. Ran the game again, mouse was there, everything was fine even on High settings. So then I go to start the game, and every time the loading screen finishes... game freezes before the game even loads. Help?

[Mog]

Sounds like a problem with your shader fix. Might want to run the forums for it to see if you can get some help. That or maybe you don't have enough memory. Some computer specs may help.

[Kurokawa41]

My mem is just a tiny bit short, but I assume the game would still run, albeit extremely laggy, when it loads? Or would it just not load at all?

Regardless, I'm getting more RAM anyway.

[Mog]

Bioshock needs memory, especially under Vista. 1gig is not enough. 1gig may be enough with XP, but 2gig is what you want.

How old is your video card? Like, if your card only has SM1 when the SM3 fix uses SM2, that may cause problems.

[Kurokawa41]

My card has shaders 2, and 1 gig of mem. ReadyBoost to the rescue~

One thing, though; wouldn't it at least load with a gig of mem?

[Mynd Hed]

Yeah, memory clearly isn't your only problem, although you should definitely consider upgrading anyway-- it's a cheap easy upgrade that will prove pretty much necessary if you're wanting to run recent games.

Dumb question, but have you made sure your video card drivers are up to date? That's always a good first step.

[Kurokawa41]

Nah, nah, everything's up-to-date, already checked all that. I'm usually pretty good about updating things ASAP.

[Mog]

Yeah, memory sounds like the biggest problem. You can get to the loading screen, have it load, but then not play.

Try knocking down every setting you can. That may help.

[SirLemming]

I don't know if it'll help in this case, but you should definitely check http://www.tweakguides.com/Bioshock_1.html -- and check TweakGuides for pretty much any game you have there, for that matter. It's all you need to know about optimizing these games, and quite a bit more than you need to know as well. It gets a little dry when they start explaining what every setting in the game does, but it's all potentially useful information, and the less detailed sections are essential reading.

One thing I don't think you clarified -- are you running XP or Vista? Something I read on Tweakguides implied that on Vista it might use advanced shaders even after you tell it not to. I think that's more of a Shader Model 3.0 vs. 4.0 issue, though.

By the way, I have 1 GB of RAM and I can run the demo. Haven't tried the full game yet, naturally. Battles are pretty choppy, but it certainly loads without any problems. However, my video card DOES indeed support Shader Model 3.0 and has 512MB of its own RAM, and I can't say for sure how much it's helping with memory issues.

In general, though, RAM primarily helps with load times, although in certain games like Lord of the Rings Online where the game world is so large that it's always "loading" to some extent, it will have a noticeable impact on performance. Bioshock looks to me like most (though of course not all) of the loading is done on the loading screen, so I don't know how big a general performance impact RAM has. Naturally, though, more is always better -- just don't expect to see drastic changes anywhere except the loading screens. Half-Life 2, on the other hand, does a particularly large amount of loading in areas other than the loading screen, especially when it comes to long sound files, so RAM has a bigger impact. It all depends on how they made the game.



I'm long past the part where I actually addressed your problem, so I'll stop here.

[Kurokawa41]

I'm running Vista. And I completely replaced the shaders file with a more compatible one so I mean I don't see where it would be getting the higher-level shaders from, since the file is totally gone.

[Mog]

Oh wow. Vista is a memory hog, I really, really doubt you can run it and Bioshock with only 1gig. I thought you had XP. Yeah, you need memory much more now. Especially since your current video card probably only has 256mb, you are choking your system.

[Mynd Hed]

If you happen to have an old copy of XP lying around and the hard drive space to spare, you might want to consider configuring your system to dual-boot. It's a hassle, but most of the few folks I know who've gone the Vista route swear by it.

[Kurokawa41]

First, I think my GFX card is 512, actually, but don't quote me on that; I'd have to check. Second, I don't know how to set it up to dual-boot. I'm sort of a novice at this. >< But I do have a copy of XP.

[SirLemming]

It certainly would be a good idea to set up double-boot if you can figure out how. Right now, with not many games requiring Vista, they'll almost always run better on XP. Unless they're so old that it doesn't matter.

Of course, getting more RAM, if your computer supports it, is the easier, more generally beneficial solution -- if it does help enough. I'm thinking that it might, because I'm pretty sure Vista won't be using up most of your computer's other "sources of power" while you're playing -- just the RAM.
From the system requirements I read, Bioshock requires 1 GB of RAM as the minimum for Windows XP. Therefore, you would need more for Windows Vista.

Also, you're turning off the Vista Sidebar before playing, right? If not, you'd better. That thing is designed to do lots of stuff in the background. I like it, but for gaming I assume it more or less must be turned off.

[Mynd Hed]

For that matter-- and this may well be more "well, duh" advice-- if you haven't already, you should try shutting down absolutely any and all background programs you may be running before starting up the game. It's possible there might be some obscure software conflict causing you problems, and freeing up more system resources for the game is never a bad idea in any case.

What kind of proc are you using? Next to the video card, that tends to be the most important consideration when it comes to game performance. If you're still running a single-core, that certainly won't help matters (especially when you're already running a resource-hog of an OS on relatively little RAM).

[Kurokawa41]

I'm running a dual-core, so that certainly isn't the problem. And I'm not using any other programs at all when I run it.

[Kurokawa41]

Well, I just discovered ReadyBoost also works with SD cards, and I happen to have a 1gig SD card that's completely empty...

Let's try this again, shall we?