Sacred 2?

Even after the hotfixes, my copy of Sacred2 on my machine still suffers from memory leaks and constant crashes after an hour or two. There are some suggested solutions on the forums, but I still hope Ascaron continues releasing new patches.

My rig is also pretty old by modern standards, but with all settings on low and some custom configs, the game is modestly playable.

As a game, it's good old Sacred with some additional improvements like resistance relics/orbs and spell modifications. Escorting NPCs is still a hassle, because they can't be controlled any way. While the performace of the program may be a bit shoddy, I haven't really encountered any ingame related bugs with quests or gear so far.

I have a good story to share on the game...

My wife and I played multiplayer on a local connection last night, both of our machines are decent to good and the game ran well. It was alot of fun so much that we didn't even notice an hour and half past by.

So far so good.

Demo ran really well on my machine, ordered it from gogamer and I guess I'll find out how the full version fairs. Demo was crash free..

Surlent said:

My rig is also pretty old by modern standards, but with all settings on low and some custom configs, the game is modestly playable.

Click to expand...

What are the "custom configs" you are using, if you don't mind me asking? I put this on Kayla's laptop, hoping it would work. It's an older machine (ATI X600 video) and I know I'm pushing it but with everything turned low, the framerate is fine...when it works. It crashes or hard locks within a couple of minutes, so it's completely unplayable.

I realise the spec is too low but that it works fine (if only for a minute or two) has me convinced the machine *could* play the game, if we could the cause of the issue. Super long shot, I know. I haven't seen any custom .ini's or other suggestions on the official forum at all.

I was the one complaining on the Dreamcatcher boards and here is a new twist to the story. Two nights ago my computer picked up a really nasty virus that was shutting my computer off every 2 minutes. I could not uninstall sacred 2 in the conventional way. After formatting and trying to reinstall game I am given the message that I have too many activations. Since it is not on the newly formatted computer I cannot deactivate and the if you don't deactivate from the computer you can't activate. The revocation tool they give you only works if sacred 2 is detected on your machine.
As expected I am extremely peeved. Posting in the technical forum yields nothing and I read in the Faq to e-mail Securom which I did and this yielded nothing. I had installed this game on my wife's machine which was completely in my rights according to the game manual. All they have to do is reset my license for 1 more install. If I had bought this over Steam I think i could reinstall it as many times as I like whithout the hassle.
I think if game makers just used a system where you have to click on a link where you had to enter a password and be recognized before instalation it would be better for consumers. Because, computers crash all the time that is a fact. Added to the fact that my dvd didn't even recognize the disk and I had to jury rig another drive just to load the thing to start. Three patches later just to get the thing to barely play on a high end system.
Wait til the reviews come in it will be brutal.

Ok it looks like if you have real problems just refer to the sacred 2 forum moderater.
She pm'd me within 10 minutes of my message to her and said my activation should be ready for me when I get home tonight.
Now, if I can just protect my machine from my teenage daughter and her adventures with Aol I would be all set. She infects every computer she touches.
What is it with Aol?

What has Dreamcatcher to do with Sacred 2?

Gorath said:

What has Dreamcatcher to do with Sacred 2?

Click to expand...

Nothing - it is a leftover group of us from the Dungeon Lords forums ...

Dhruin said:

What are the "custom configs" you are using, if you don't mind me asking? I put this on Kayla's laptop, hoping it would work. It's an older machine (ATI X600 video) and I know I'm pushing it but with everything turned low, the framerate is fine...when it works. It crashes or hard locks within a couple of minutes, so it's completely unplayable.

Click to expand...

The latest hotfix 1.12 makes the game a bit more bearable. But here are some configs I made.

- First obviously, I turned graphical details all to minimum.

- Back in 1.11 I still had sound problems which were causing slow downs ingame. After I switched sound focus to camera and speakers to stereo, it got bit better.

- Then I created optionsCustom.txt file in the same folder where options.txt file is. The location is something like
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\Ascaron Entertainment\Sacred 2\
That is for WinXP. I don't know exactly how directories are in Vista.

Inside optionsCustom.txt I wrote the following:

render = {

d_gpuSync = 1,

d_minis = 0, -- removes grass and some small objects on terrain

waitForGpuMode = 1,
}

Click to expand...

-- This comments rest of the line in the code
Setting d_minis to zero removes grass, but not ground texture.
As for gpuSync and waitForGpu, I don't exactly know what they do with the graphics card, but I would wager it is some kind of synchronization.

That made the game run a bit smoother for me. And if you want to look for more rendered objects to turn off, they can be found in the options.txt file in the same folder. It's worth noting that optionsCustom.txt is recommended to be edited instead of options.txt, the latter is sort of hard config file.

txa1265 said:

Nothing - it is a leftover group of us from the Dungeon Lords forums ...

Click to expand...

Thanks, didn't know that.

I'm giving it a try, as I was fond of the first game, but it's pretty buggy. Actually, very buggy, rife with performance issues. The English is semi-broken in places, again like in the first game (sigh, localization). Actually, it's basically the first game in 3D--not, I think, an improvement. The graphics hover somewhere between cartoony and realistic, which lands the game right in the Uncanny Valley. Animations look quite bizarre.

Still no crashes, graphics look great, high end system w/ vista, 4 gigs memory, etc. Only some spells lag my system out due to their update frequency. The only bugs I've found have been with Blacksmithing items not applying their bonuses. Maybe I'm still not far enough into the game, but on the official forums it appears that most crashes seem to be related to the expensive "Elite Textures" that ship with the collectors edition.

I can see this game stressing older systems out and crashing them though, page file issues/cache issues. Annoying comment inc.....have you updated your drivers?

Er, no. My system is not old. It's a quad-core with a recent video card; it can run... well, anything at max (or near max) settings without spluttering. Mass Effect, Crysis, Bioshock, whatever. Throw it at my rig, it'll munch on it and giggle. The art direction in S2 is just terrible. It fit the first game's 2D presentation, but add one more dimension and it becomes hideous. The animations are jerky--the characters move like no human beings, or anything bipedal, would ever move.

The random kick to the main menu is also great fun.

good to see you enjoy the game so much

Here's to Diablo 3 then? cheers

WoW, actually, if I'm in the mood for that kind of thing. But yes, I look forward to Diablo 3. Clones just aren't the same.