Newbie Questions
 

Played the Demo for a few days and received the full Version on Saturday. I have two questions:

1) Performance: SE-SF runs very well on my Win 2000 IBM X30 laptop with 1.0GHz PIII and Intel 830M Graphics, however when I use my HP a320n with Athelon 2800 and GeForce4 MX440 graphics and Windows XP the frame rate during combat slows to a crawl. Does anyone know what is going on here? The HP should have significantly better graphics performance. I have tried the 'Safe" option with no difference.

2) Is there a way to play SE-SF without the game CD in the drive? I normally use my IBM X30 for gaming and it only supports a CD drive when attached to it's docking station. Unfortunately, due to family and work, most of my gaming time is either on airplanes or in hotel rooms on business trips. This is a major pain that I did not expect from my SE-III and SE-IV history.

Re: Newbie Questions
 

I have a PIII 1000 with 512 SD133 RAM and an old GeForce 2 MX. I don't really have any problems. Only when flying through nebulas the framrate drops and the game slows down somewhat, its not too annoying though. No idea where your problem is, sorry. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Newbie Questions
 

If you want to avoid using the CD, you need some spare HD space. Get Alchohol 120% (or 52%), CloneCD, or the like and make an image of the SF CD. Then you can use those programs or Daemon Tools (free) to act as a virtual CD. SF will accept that.

Re: Newbie Questions
 

Thankd for the tip. Used CloneCD and Daemon Tools and everything worked fine. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Re: Newbie Questions
 

Make sure to update the drivers and the Direct X on your PC.

Re: Newbie Questions
 

Actually, the system that works less well is the one that was recently upgraded to Direct X 9.0.

Re: Newbie Questions
 

You're not running the debug DirectX libraries are you? Go to control panel, then DirectX, then the Direct3D tab; if Debug is selected, switch it to Release; you only need the Debug library if you're writing your own games and need to test them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif