Gothic 3 - Version 1.6 Patch Available

already got that one. I thought they might do something similar for the 1.6 patch. I guess I will wait a few days for some feedback. Thanks for you help, I am almost certain it includes 1.5.2.

bjon045 said:

already got that one. I thought they might do something similar for the 1.6 patch. I guess I will wait a few days for some feedback. Thanks for you help, I am almost certain it includes 1.5.2.

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What exactly are you looking for?


*Edit* They did do the exact same thing with th 1.6 patch. In the changelog it list all of the fixes for 1.6, then underneath that it lists 1.5.2, 1.5.0, 1.4, etc.

wonder if it's been polished enough to warrant a re-install and a second go-through? I completed the game with the first community patch and still ran into some broken quests even then. A fresh install and a brand new game might yield better results...but enough to play it again when Keep on the Borderlands is still waiting to be played?

hmmmm.

This is the one I have, doesn't mention 1.5.2.

a) Fixes made by the community:
-------------------------------
- The hero's death will not cause a "Quest failed"-message anymore.
- Frozen NPCs and creatures will unfreeze after a while in any case.
- Rune and Zapotek do not attack anymore when the player picks up ham or wood for a quest.
+ To decrease the amount of unusable quest items in the inventory, quest items like barrels of fish, firewood, etc. disappear from the game when you delivered them.
- NPCs in charge of relevant quest items do not flee anymore after a city's liberation but keep fighting.
- The hero does not "stab" NPCs anymore when they already lost their last health points.
- NPCs who the player is asked to follow will walk to their designated destination instead of standing around after they get knocked down.
- Chests are now being closed after NPCs used them.
- When a ranger is being attacked by the player, the rangers nearby will approach to help him out.
- Krush Tarachs, spears and halberds dropped by NPCs are now "worn".
+ After the message "Not enough reputation" the amount of missing reputation will be displayed as well.
- Tutorials may now be deactivated permanently.
+ Fleeing NPCs after a revolution will now die instantly when you remove their last health points.

---- snip

- Several Balancing values have been adjusted.
- Summoned party members now defend the player.


c) Other fixes
--------------
- The files of the official patch 1.12 will be installed with CP 1.6.

That is not the changelog, the changelog is much larger than that. Too large to post here in fact, I know because I tried.



*Edit* Ok, here you can see the full changelog for yourself.

http://forum.jowood.com/showthread.php?p=2216080#post2216080


Also, I have installed it over my current game which is quite far along, and have experienced no ill effects.

Thanks so much, that's perfect.

Apparently, from what I've read on the JoWood forums, there are still crashes and performance hasn't really been improved much. That's a shame. I'm sure the quest and skill fixes are still good, though.

Thaurin said:

Apparently, from what I've read on the JoWood forums, there are still crashes and performance hasn't really been improved much. That's a shame. I'm sure the quest and skill fixes are still good, though.

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That´s not "a shame". It´s "the plan". They didn´t work specifically on performance increases at all. I don´t even recall anybody from the CP Team promise better performance.
The new patch is about trading a bit of performance for a lot of stability. This means for most gamers CP 1.6 is actually slower than CP 1.5.2. The way I read all the whining on the forums is that they succeeded. The game is now much more stable for the vast majority of the players.

Yeah, but it's in the patch notes! I would have hoped that the new memory manager and improved caching would make a difference. They also improved memory usage significantly, which implies that more of it could be used to keep parts of the game in memory (less disk swapping).

It's just that the patch notes got my hopes up. Will do be doing another patch to further address performance? I think I read somewhere that this would be the last official patch.

Thaurin said:

Yeah, but it's in the patch notes! I would have hoped that the new memory manager and improved caching would make a difference. They also improved memory usage significantly, which implies that more of it could be used to keep parts of the game in memory (less disk swapping).

It's just that the patch notes got my hopes up. Will do be doing another patch to further address performance? I think I read somewhere that this would be the last official patch.

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From what I noticed the game consistently uses 90%+ of ram despite what are settings used. It did not do that before as I had always played with the cache settings in the .ini file.

Therefore, it must be sticking more in the cache.

At least for me the performance seems better then the last time I played, however had to do a new install to get it that way. It is definitely stable now w/1.6. It has not crashed once. That's with using old saves too.

All this is on Vista32.

I just tried 1.6 real quick and I had forgotten that my combination of tweaks and patches made the game's performance already pretty acceptable... after it's all loaded, that is. Load times are still quite long and once the nameless hero is on the screen, it takes a few turns around to get the world fully loaded. After that, I only get periodic loading pauses when I enter a new area. Nothing awful, really.

I do hate that the game still doesn't support my 1280x768 wide-screen resolution. It does 1280x720, but my screen doesn't support that. More games have this problem, what is it, some European-American standards thing?

So the aspect ratio is way off in the non-widescreen resolution I'm in and I'm stuck with a stocky nameless hero.

Thaurin said:

I do hate that the game still doesn't support my 1280x768 wide-screen resolution. It does 1280x720, but my screen doesn't support that. More games have this problem, what is it, some European-American standards thing?

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Putting 1280x768 in the useroptions.ini doesn't do anything? My 1440x900 lcd supports both and the game as well. So don't know what it is either. Are you using the official monitor drivers from the web site or the microsoft supplied ones? Maybe there are new ones that allow it. I've seen weird things with ati drivers as well w/refresh rates and sizes.

Correction. The game doesn't show x768 unless put into the useroptions.ini then it shows x768. Whether or not it is truly that idk. It looked like it could have been.

Thaurin said:

Yeah, but it's in the patch notes! I would have hoped that the new memory manager and improved caching would make a difference. They also improved memory usage significantly, which implies that more of it could be used to keep parts of the game in memory (less disk swapping).

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Some people indeed reported that the game played more fluidly, once the caches are filled. But that´s more a side effect, I guess.
I don´t know much about coding, but I can imagine that carefully catching and channeling "wrong" behaviour by the program can use more in-game resources than just a rough standard solution. Maybe on certain PCs the performance gain through optimized memory usage overweighs, but in most cases the security overhead is too big.

It's just that the patch notes got my hopes up. Will do be doing another patch to further address performance?

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Who? The CPT can´t do this. PB won´t do it. Spellbound probably would do it if JoWooD convinces them with money. I wouldn´t be surprised though if they could think of things they would rather do than working on someone else´s old game.
So I wouldn´t count on it.

I think I read somewhere that this would be the last official patch.

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I don´t remember. The CPT will certainly continue. Spellbound probably only if they are contracted. (Which is nothing bad. They are pros and can expect to be paid.) At least don´t expect a new official patch anytime soon. Even a new CP, apart from minor bug-fix releases, can take months.

Update on the next Community Patch:
It will come ... but not anytime soon.

northreign said:

Correction. The game doesn't show x768 unless put into the useroptions.ini then it shows x768. Whether or not it is truly that idk. It looked like it could have been.

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Thanks for the suggestion. I put 1280x768 in my UserOptions.ini and it did run in another resolution. I'm running this on an LCD HDTV, though, so it's not a computer monitor. My TV reported a resolution of 1360x768, strangely enough. However, I didn't see any difference in aspect ratio and it might just as weel have been 800x600 to me. It's workable, but I'd be much happier if everything had its normal shape.

Gorath said:

Update on the next Community Patch:
It will come ... but not anytime soon.

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I wouldn't expect charity out of Spellbound, of course. But it does highlight the amazing things Bioware has done for NWN and NWN2... they keep releasing those patches and they're one of the only ones in the industry extending support this long!

Didn't the CPT get the source code at one time, though? Or didn't that get through? I thought they'd be working together on fixing things in the game scripts as well as the code.

Oh well, I'm happy with the game as it turned out. If it doesn't crash (which it didn't before), the quests all work and there are no missing perks, that's the best I'm going to get out of this, I'm sure. Which is just fine; I'm still amazed at how cool the Gothic world is.

I would have rather they fixed the combat to make it not so exploitable. You know something is wrong when you can slaughter entire villages without even getting close to dying just by rapidly hitting the attack button.

The combat in G1 and G2 was amazing. Loved to fight and loved how it felt.

G3? Felt like a 3D Diablo.

If they ever fix *that*, I'll reinstall it and complete a 2nd playthrough. Otherwise, it isn't worth my time. Maybe the staff of the "Gamers with jobs" website have the spare time to play it after their Burger King fry cook shift is over, but not me.

Okay, then move on. Designing and implementing a combat system and then integrating it in an A-quality game is impossible for an amateur team. Gothic will get a new combat system - in Gothic 4.

Rebalancing only makes sense when everything else is working correctly. Maybe the CPT will work on it after patch 1.7. Maybe even later.

Yeah, the Gothic 1/2 combat system/controls will not make a come-back I'm afraid. I'm on the team that's of the opion that those controls ROCKED, though. But I'll admit that it's not for the mainstream. Those guys would complain about repetitive-strain injury because they needed more than one finger.

I don't know, is this another case of the majority wins? It worked well in G1/G2, but I'm not sure if it would carry over in G3.

I definitely notice an improvement in both performance and stability on my 2GB system with the 1.6 patch. For instance, I used to get a split second pause whenever my character lit a torch or pulled out a fire arrow, that pause is shortened to the point of barely being noticeable now. The stuttering after I first load a game is also noticeably less now as well.

Also, the game no longer seems to slow down the longer I play it.