Graphics problem, I think

[Tansi]

I have tried searching the board, honest!

I have an HP Pavilion ZV6100 with AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+, a gig of memory laptop, and an ATI Mobility Radeon Xpress 200 Series graphics card. My drivers are all up to date.

First off, I had to trick the Sims into installing by using safe mode. The game does run, however during gameplay the screen will go blue for 10 to 15 seconds and then back to the game. It's more annoying than anything else. I do play WoW and there are no problems with that, and no problems with Oblivion.

And I plead guilty to being a custom content/hack addict. I removed 694 megs of custom stuff last night, and managed with only one blue screen in an hour, in a family of three with two dogs.

My question is, should I upgrade my graphics card, memory, something else?

Thanks!

[KatEnigma]

You have a laptop, the only thing you can update is your memory- and even that depends on what you have.

However, I can play on my laptop without it messing up, and I have only an AMD Sempron processor, with 1 GB RAM and that card. And 3 tons of CC. I suspect that you are overheating. You need to always play with the laptop on a flat surface. I have a cooling pad for it, but if you want to see if that's the problem before going to buy one, you could set it on a cooling rack for baking or something similar- anything that lifts it up and lets air circulate underneath, plus the metal helps disperse the heat, as well.

It's odd, though, that you had to install via safe mode. Mine installed perfectly fine.

[Tansi]

I do have a chill pad, actually I was worried about the heat thing I'd read about. I just thought you could replace graphic cards in the things *frowns* I did think it was level, but I'll double-check that

I know the safe mode thing was weird. It started with Glamour Life, I couldn't install it, and someone suggested that I try Safe Mode, and that worked.

[Zii]

I get this every so often too, typcially on large lots.. it's like the game has too much crap crammed into memory and orders a time out. I've had them last for up to a minute. Doubt it's overheating.

[Roux]

I recently posed a question to EA customer support, because I have an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 card on my laptop and was getting problems with the game crashing to the Windows BSOD. Since the game specs don't mention the ATI Mobility cards, I thought perhaps my card wasn't supported.

The answer from EA was pretty standard: shut down background tasks, run in windowed mode (2 things which I hadn't been doing lately, mostly because shutting down those tasks is a PITA... but I began running it in windowed mode, shutting down tasks and unhooking the internet connection again and haven't had a crash in a few days). However, it did contain this little tidbit of info:

Please also take note that this game was not tested to run on a laptop computer, as the video, sound and support chipsets are often 'trimmed down' to save on power, weight and cost. This can often cause problems with games software, which makes significantly higher demands on your hardware than traditional Windows applications.  Although we would always try to assist users in getting our games to run on laptops, we cannot guarantee success.

Am I the only one that this is news to? Or is this a standard gaming thing that I'm just not aware of?

[J. M. Pescado]

That's pretty much standard. Laptops cut corners on hardware to make them fit within power and space requirements and therefore cannot reliably run games, especially demanding ones, as this can cause massive overheating, resulting in lockups, crashes, and even damage, or simply not work correctly.

[Roux]

Well, that makes sense. As a non-awesome customer and a non-gamer except for this one, though, it makes me a little peeved that there's no mention of it in the game specs. "Game not tested in laptops," or something like that. Oh well... if I didn't already love my lappy, I'd have buyer's remorse.

Dammit, have to go to work now.

[J. M. Pescado]

It shouldn't HAVE to be stated. That's common knowledge. Laptops are not intended for serious gaming. Given that there is absolutely zero standardization on laptops, it is impossible to test things on them. The fact that they cost outlandish sums of money further makes this utterly impractical. No game can therefore be expected to function perfectly on a laptop.

[eevilcat]

"Laptops are not intended for serious gaming."

Well, I'm going to stick my head above the parapet and disagree with you there... that was certainly the case up until about 2 years ago, but I bought my laptop intending to play games on it, so chose one with a decent graphics card (128Mb ATI Radeon), 1Gb RAM, decent hard disk and Centrino processor. If I was buying a laptop now it would have a 256mb graphics card (ATI or nVidia) and 2Gb RAM which is exactly the same logic as I'd apply to buying a desktop system. The problem with most laptops and a lot of cheaper desktops is that they use some horrible Intel based shared memory graphics chip rather than a decent graphics card with dedicated memory that supports the majority of DX9 features. If you stick with higher end nVidia/ATI chipsets then you shouldn't have problems. To me, the great advantage of having a laptop is that it goes everywhere with me so I don't have to go through Sims2 cold turkey when away from home. Yes, they do cost more but not that much more than a decent desktop system, it's worth it for the portability and the price differential is still decreasing. EA are simpy using the typical get out clause of 'laptops not supported' which is beginning to sound rather lame as more people are playing games on laptops (and buying laptops to play games on). Games companies have to bow down to market forces at some point.

[KatEnigma]

Actually game companies don't have to bow down to the market and make their games run on a laptop, which because of space and heat issues, can never work as well as a desktop. They design their games to take advantage of the latest technology, and laptops are always 2-3 years behind, and there comes a point where they simply can't catch up anymore. The Radeon x1800 mobility does not have the same capabilities as a regular x1800, despite having the same name. Gamers drive the computer industry, and always have, not the other way around.

The majority of the laptop buying public are still buying them for business applications. I have a laptop, and it's possible for me to play TS2 on it and get a passable performance. It's not going to win any speed contests, but it looks pretty and the lag is acceptable. But I didn't buy it to play games on, that's what I have the expensive desktop for. I wanted the possibility in case I'm ever laid up in bed or something like that, so I got one with a decent graphics chip and increased my RAM to 1 GB, but I wasn't fooling myself into thinking the performance would be better than it is, and I did real research, rather than take the salesperson or company's word on what kind of performance I could expect.

[eevilcat]

Sorry, but games companies do have to bow down to the market and Sims2 is a prime example of this. Take a look at the minimum specs for the game, Win98, 1GHz processor, 256Mb RAM, 32Mb TnL graphics card... that's prehistoric! The reason for this is that Sims2 has a very different demographic to most video games with lots of older and/or female players often using the 'other' PC in the house. While that is the very bottom end of the technological spectrum, most people don't play on shiny, new, go faster PCs they simply install the game on whatever computer they have available. Games are designed to look as good as possible on the latest graphic chipsets as gorgeous graphics still go a long way towards selling a game. The reality of most users' gameplay is somewhat less pretty. A lot of time and effort is expended on designing and building 'fallback' into games software so that you can reduce mesh detail, texture detail, lighting effects, special effects etc etc while maintaining the core gaming experience. Part of this is ensuring the game runs properly on a wide a variety of systems as possible - different graphics/sound cards, memory, CPUs etc and that includes laptops and has done for some years now. I agree that if you're a hardcore gamer then you should buy a desktop system, but your average member of the game buying/playing public isn't hardcore and it's not unreasonable to expect their game to run and be supported on a 'decent' laptop.

[ZiggyDoodle]

The reason for this is that Sims2 has a very different demographic to most video games with lots of older and/or female players often using the 'other' PC in the house.

Out of curiosity, on what basis are you making the above statement?  Can you list a source?

[jrd]

What about the NYT?

[Process Denied]

The reason for this is that Sims2 has a very different demographic to most video games with lots of older and/or female players often using the 'other' PC in the house.

Out of curiosity, on what basis are you making the above statement?  Can you list a source?

I'm a female going on 40 and I got the best computer in the house--It out preforms my husband's by 150 points.  It took a lot of bitchiness but I got him to build it for me--the sim hater that he is.  That being said--I still have slow downs and an occational blue screen on big lots that have a lot of sims on it due to my massive downloads folder(6.24 gigs).  Honey--I need more ram!  Purty please?

[miros]

And more hard drive... I need that too!

[J. M. Pescado]

EA are simpy using the typical get out clause of 'laptops not supported' which is beginning to sound rather lame as more people are playing games on laptops (and buying laptops to play games on). Games companies have to bow down to market forces at some point.

Laptops have the unfortunate problem of being nonstandardized. They're composed of largely proprietary components and you can't buy and assemble one out of parts. Therefore, every testbed laptop would have to be purchased individually, and gaming laptops are hideously expensive. You simply cannot reasonably expect anyone to purchae every single laptop on the market just to test with. When it comes to gaming on laptops, you're in spray-and-pray land.

[ZiggyDoodle]

Interesting article, Jordi.  About time the game developers recognized that we of the "fair sex" have $$$ and interests deeper than constantly killing things.

I do contest eevilcat's assumption that women are likely to get the dregs of the home systems. 

I have the fastest, newest, shiniest computer in my house (the others are hand-me-downs for the kids).  All of them run TS2 just fine.

[idtaminger]

I do contest eevilcat's assumption that women are likely to get the dregs of the home systems. 

I do too. As long as girl knows what to ask for, she's not getting the dregs of the pcs. It's the knowing what to ask for that's the stickler, and when it comes down to that, you'd be surprised at the number of men who're computer illiterate.

[siggylove]

I enjoyed that article too Jordi.  I only found out about Spore a day or so ago (where have I been?).  I'll be getting that for sure next year.  Other than that, I only play the TS2.  My other half plays Age of Empires almost exclusively and because of that I have the most powerful computer in the house, who said us girls never get what we want

[J. M. Pescado]

There is no Spore. Spore is nothing more than lies and propaganda from the Liberal-controlled media. Further babble about this nonsense will result in this going to Retardo Land.

[eevilcat]

Sorry fellow girlies, I didn't mean to stir up a hornets nest by suggesting that we women 'only' get the computer 'dregs'. In fact my laptop is rather newer and shinier than my husbands and in recent discussions about a replacement for his he even suggested that I get a new one and he'll take over mine. Now that's love for you!!!

As far as articles/info about Sims 2 demographics, there are loads out there and Google or your fave search engine will find them, but here are a few to start.
http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/602/602108p3.html
http://www.theesa.com/archives/files/Essential%20Facts%202006.pdf
http://www.igda.org/sf/

The last one is not about Sims 2 but provides an interesting post-mortem of a title that hits on a lot of the same demographic (it does refer to TS2 with respect to game specs).

[Tansi]

I also got that "the game wasn't meant for a laptop" when I emailed with customer service. My response was that it worked great till I got GL, and other games I have on it run perfectly!

I think I'll just go with the making sure it's level and that the cooling is working properly I was looking at the manual for my laptop and it looks as if I *can* replace things in it, but that's going to have to wait for a while

Thank you, everyone!