XP now showing SE4 combat too quickly to see

[PvK]

I've got a slow computer running XP SP1 at work. It used to be kinda good for SE4 because the combat replays would show nice and slowly so each hit and miss could be easily seen and heard. I made a point of NOT installing Service Pack 2 on this one.

However, a week or two ago, without me installing or patching anything, it suddenly started flashing through SE4 combat replays. Each shot now gets at most one flicker of an effect somewhere along the line of fire, and a very brief chirp of sound for each shot. Makes it hard to tell what happened. None of the settings in SE4 do anything but make it worse, and overloading XP even more by running say Windohs Media Player in the background, seems to have little or no good effect.

Just thought I'd mention it, in case anyone has a miraculous cure for this, or just as a general warning/info/lament.

Best explanation I can think of is that MS remotely updated something without consent anyway over my Internet connection, as they are wont to do and have been quietly doing for years.

(At least my fast Win98SE machine at home still shows the replays well.)

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

Did you set the "fast combat" checkbox in the combat options window by any chance?

[PvK]

No, thanks for the suggestion - that was my first thought too, but that wasn't it. I tried all of the settings for options at the game level and at the replay level, as well as trying editing the movement delay in milliseconds in the settings.txt file. Apparently something has changed in the way XP handles either the type of drawing routine SE4 uses, or maybe its timing routine. I also tried various video card acceleration settings in XP, none of which would make the video work again.

PvK

[JAFisher44]

I don't know, SE4 has always and still continues to work fine for me.

[PvK]

Hmm. The problem seems to have gone away after a reboot. I guess maybe XP "got low on resources" (snicker) in some way that made SE4 not want to draw its animations properly.

Ah well, I'm glad it's working better now.

PvK