Neverwinter Nights graphic issue

[genuine_fake 0]

Me and a friend of mine recently bought Neverwinter Nights Diamond at Wal-Mart. We only bought it so we could have a game to possibly play online together without having to pay a subscription fee each month. I installed it, everything went alright. I got to the master menu thingie and hit play. After it loaded up I saw the little hand that your mouse turns into, and it was flashing. It would remain a hand for about a split second, then go away, then come back. Its so rapid that its not really a problem, I can see where the mouse is, but its annoying. Then I clicked New to start a new game. I clicked Neverwinter Nights Campaign (the original neverwinter nights, not the other three) and then clicked Prelude, since its the beginning and the only option I have. I clicked Create New Character to make my own, and the loading screen came up and started flashing. The loading screen loads very fast, and I get to the character creation menu. Yet my screen constantly flashes. Its very rapid, and does it on the whole screen, and its so very annoying. I would be able to play, but it would hurt my eyes and I know I would get tired of it. When I hit cancel to go back, the screen continued to flash, even on the main menu. I clicked exit to quit the game and as soon as it went away the desktop came up and it wasn't flashing anymore.

 

This must be some type of monitor issue... I'm computer stupid and I need some help. My monitor has acted weird on games before, such as Flyff, where the screen flashes a bit and the mouse really looks screwed up, but other games I play like Maple Story or Ultima Online have no visual problems at all.

 

My computer was bought in september of last year and is an Averatec notebook. I bought Neverwinter Nights thinking it came out quite a while ago and that my computer would be able to handle it. I would post specifics about my computer but im not sure what I need to write, and how to find it. So if you need to know something about my computer please tell me what it is and how to find it. Thanks in advance for any help given! Sorry for such a long post, but I tried to give as much information as possible.

 

Update: Well, I made the character and went to the gameplay, just to see if the problem would cure up. It didnt... As I'm playing the game I see that all the menu boxes, the text boxes, my characters picture, the character models, and the mouse all disappear for about a half of a second, leaving only the environment for me to see, then they come back. It repeats this very rapidly. I have no idea whats causing this. Is it a refresh rate problem? I even Alt+Tabbed out of the game to see if my screen would still flash while I had the game running but not active. It did! My mouse kept flickering and if I held my mouse over an icon the white boxes that come up would flash. I don't know what my video card and driver are, and I dont know how to check.

[Sampson 0]

First, how to check for your video adapter: Right click on your desktop (in any blank area). A tab window will appear. Click on the Settings tab. Then, click on the Advanced button. At the popup window, click on the Adapter tab - that will tell you what your onboard graphics card is. Then, click on the Properties button, and at the next popup window click on the Driver tab. That will tell you the graphic drivers you have installed.

 

Before you go through and change anything to your drivers, go here: http://nwn.bioware.com/ This is the homepage for your game. There is also an update that you may want to install first to see if it will fix your problem.

[genuine_fake 0]

Thank you!!! I couldn't get any help at the other forums.

 

I found out that my graphics card is a VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP. I've never heard of that, and I'm assuming its a pretty crappy one. I don't think I could afford to buy another card. The driver has the same name... its just a driver from the company of the same name (VIA/S3 graphics). Should I update the driver?

 

I went to the page of the game, but I couldn't find any new updates. When I start the game and click patch it says I already have everything updated. I wanted to ask if I should try finding updates to my driver before I went ahead and did it.

 

Edit: Forgot, I also wanted to ask how I go about finding driver updates. Should I just look for the companys website? Thanks for all your help.

[genuine_fake 0]

I tried turning down the hardware accelerator. It sounded like it would work because it said for problems with programs run by directx, but i turned it down a notch and nothing changed. Turned it down another notch, still no change. Turned it down a third time and the game wouldn't work. So its not that... and I turned off the Write combining option, but that didnt help either. So I turned it back on. I've been trying things in that graphics menu, I guess I'll keep at it... hope I don't screw something up though.

[Sampson 0]

According to the specs of the game minimally you need 128 MB of video memory. Your VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP has 64 MB. Now some of this it can steal from your regular memory, but not enough before it begins to crash. I'll be honest with you, it simply doesn't have enough horsepower to work the display of the game. That is why it blinks and many of the features can't maintain being displayed. Upgrading the drivers will not help.

 

Yours is a notebook and while your onboard video is more than adequate for Excel's graphs, and probably most business oriented graphics, and solitaire or small non-intensive graphic games, it is not a game machine. And because it is a notebook, you can't install a better graphics card.

 

Your best bet - don't mess up your notebook by trying to fool with the graphics tweaks to play this game. It would be better to go back to Wal-Mart and get a low end desktop - making sure that it has either an nVidia or ATI card AGP 4X or 8X that works with DirectX 9 (or 8.1) with at least 128 MB (and perhaps a Gig of system memory). I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but fooling with your notebook won't help to run the game; only it mess up so that it will begin crashing in programs that it is supposed to run.

[genuine_fake 0]

Thanks... its okay, I figured this notebook wasn't meant for gaming. Thanks for your help anyways though, I plan on getting a desktop just for gaming someday. I will continue to play Ultima Online on it though, because its been working just fine and I'm addicted. Thanks for the help Sampson!

 

I'll remember these forums... maybe if I learn enough I can help other people. (long time from now) =)