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Solved Help! Slidebar freezes, can't save game

R

Roudy

Landlubber
Hi folks,

I just did a fresh install with my disks of pirates of the carribbean (vanilla, 3 times) on my windows 10 computer. During installation, the game fails to install Windows Media player 9 or Direct X 9, not sure if that is relevant. My windows 10 computer has a version of Direct X and Windows Media player already installed.

The game launches and I can start a new game, graphically everything looks fine with 1 big problem that is preventing me from actually playing the game due to frozen screens. On the start menu, when I move my mouse cursor to select, for example, "New Game", the yellow outline stays on "Options". I uploaded a screen shot below showing this. This isn't freezing the game, but I think is useful information in determining the problem

Pirates of the Carribbean yellow box issue.png

When I start a new game, and go to the trade book, attempting to scroll from one island to the next freezes the screen. Same goes for trying to equip items in the inventory tab, moving from item to item in my cargo hold, anything with the sliding motion. Oddly enough, I also cannot save the game. Pressing "save" doesn't do anything.

Here are my frozen screens caused by attempting to move from one item to the next (for example: from the sapphire ring to the pistol).
Trade book freeze.png

Frozen inventory screen.png
This is a weird bug and I haven't found any mention or solution online, so I turn to you good folks. Here are the things I've tried:

Running in Comparability mode (windows xp, windows 98) as well as all possible options in the Comparability menu
Disabling "Safe Mode" in Configure
Changing desktop screen resolution to 800x600 instead of 1920x1080
Installing game in C:/mygames instead of program files

I'm really at a loss here. I love this game, but currently cannot play it. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'm sorry if the description of the problem was confusing. I had a similar problem on a different computer running windows 7 with a Nvidia graphics card, so I don't think windows 10 is the problem. This seems like some kind of display or resolution error to me, but I'm not sure how to fix it.

OS: Windows 10 64 Bit
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
Processor: Intel i7-6700k
DirectX Version: 12

Thank you for reading!
 
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When I tried the game on Windows 10 before, I remember indeed it had some issues with the sliding as it would be very, very slow.
I have no clue why, but installing our modpack solved the problem in that case.
Worth a try?
 
Hi Pieter,

I successfully installed build mod 13, and while the sliding has been slightly improved (it doesn't freeze), it's still INCREDIBLY slow. It takes about 15-20 seconds to slide to the next icon.

I also still cannot save my game, so unfortunately it's still unplayable.

Any ideas of what else I might try?
 
Roudy said:
I successfully installed build mod 13, and while the sliding has been slightly improved (it doesn't freeze), it's still INCREDIBLY slow.
Click to expand...
When I tried it, I it was with one of the Build 14 Beta versions from last year; I didn't try Build 13.
My recommendation would be to try the latest one: Mod Release - Build 14 Beta 4.1 WIP | PiratesAhoy!
A lot has changed since then that might affect performance on Windows 10, so chances are that it will make a difference.

Roudy said:
I also still cannot save my game, so unfortunately it's still unplayable.
Click to expand...
Where do you have the game installed? I always strongly recommend to avoid "Program Files" at any and all costs.
C:\Games\Pirates of the Caribbean has always served me well.
 
I can't remember whether Build 13 has the option to run in "Windowed" or "Full Screen" mode. If it does, then whichever setting you're using at the moment, see if the other one works better. Some people have better experience with "Windowed" mode, while my system works noticably better in "Full Screen".
 
Grey Roger said:
I can't remember whether Build 13 has the option to run in "Windowed" or "Full Screen" mode. If it does, then whichever setting you're using at the moment, see if the other one works better. Some people have better experience with "Windowed" mode, while my system works noticably better in "Full Screen".
Click to expand...

Hi Grey,

I tried running both in windowed and fullscreen, no noticeable difference.

I installed the game in C:/Games/Pirates of the Caribbean, not program files. I think the inability to save has to do with the sliding function.

Pieter, I successfully installed the latest New Horizons build, but the problem persists. It's been the same issue for vanilla, build 13, and New Horizons. Any other ideas? Thank you for your continued support.
 
I read through the thread and it seems like a similar issue to what I'm having. Some people suggested trying to limit framerates to increase performance? Bandicam was mentioned. I installed it and attempted to set fps limitations, but Bandicam doesn't even pick up my game.

I tested it with a different computer game (installed in program files x86) and Bandicam instantly hooked onto the screen, but it won't for Pirates. Now I'm more confused.
 
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Unfortunately this is an issue of some kind with Windows 10, so you will need a workaround of some kind.
You can either try what has worked for different people before, or you can try to find an alternate solution.
I don't know any other options than the ones I've already suggested. :shrug
 
Hi Pieter,

I installed the game on my windows 7 laptop, and it actually runs fine now.

I think the problem must be a combination of windows 10, and excessively high frames. I booted up another game from 2003 with bandicam, and saw I was getting 600-700 fps.

I guess I'll just have to play the game on my older computer with windows 7. Thanks for your help.
 
Damned it all! I was hoping for a fic for this. I have a bunch of problems, most I presune is win 10 related. Sometimes dialogues refuse to start when chosen, sometimes quest scripts fdon't fire and you're stuck standing frozen on the spot. (save/reload fixes it, gets thrown into the scripted dialogue instantly after reload) and ofc the infamous sliding problem. I can save alright but in the start menu after choosing load, it refuses to load anything. And changing what file to load takes about 5 minutes per icon of sliding. The fact that the game acknowledges the movements of the mouse and highlighting the menu choices but refuse to act on an actual click, until after abt 10 minutes is... I've never seen that before... O,o

And it's making it impossible to enjoy this game. Since... Well I can't have it running 24/7 that would just make it crash anyway for different reasons... Saving and reloading is kind of essential to this genre... :(




Edit: Okey, a reinstall of Bandycam took care of the sliding problems for me. Set to 120 fps max it runs as a purring kitten atm. So far so good.! :) Happy Pappy!
 
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Baalzie said:
Okey, a reinstall of Bandycam took care of the sliding problems for me. Set to 120 fps max it runs as a purring kitten atm. So far so good.! :) Happy Pappy!
Click to expand...
Glad to hear you got it sorted in the end! :cheers
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Glad to hear you got it sorted in the end! :cheers
Click to expand...

Oh, sorry to whip a dead horse (shouldn't whip living ones it hurts them yeknow) but wanted to add: using the ENB means the Bandicam option fails. the ENB settings seem to overrule any fps limiting set by Bandicam, doesn't even let the fps overlay show if I install that feature. Simple uninstall of the ENB and it works fine. (Lost all my saves after installing 4.1 without copying the saves. *schneef* Also added the ENB, hence I noticed thios "feature")

Totally in gratitude to you guys for creating this fabulous,momentous mod... Amazing...
 
Hi everyone,

I've been trying to get Pirates running (un-modded) on my new Windows 10 machine by following the comments in this thread and in http://www.piratesahoy.net/threads/windows-10-low-frame-rates-despite-because-of-good-hardware.25858

I'm super happy to report I got it working! And thought I'd tell my story here for others trying the same thing.

Brief hardware specs:

- Windows 10
- Ryzen 5 series CPU
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060

(I can't therefore comment on the "Intel bug" with integrated graphics mentioned in the other thread, and I didn't read extensively enough to know whether it was a genuine issue or a red herring.)

From what I've seen, with a standard installation, the issues in the game appear to be solely based on the fact that it is not designed to run at a bazillion FPS on modern hardware (definition of a bazillion below).

Steps:

1. I installed the game from the original CDs (can be found at Pirates of the Caribbean - PC Game : Ubisoft : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive)
2. I used the default Program Files folder in the installer
3. I installed DirectX 9 at the end of the installation process (and did not install the Windows Media Player thing, which I assume is irrelevant any way)
4. I did not install any of the mods (though I intend to try out New Horizons when I've finished the game again)
5. I upped my texture detail and resolution to the maximum in the "Configure Pirates of the Caribbean" application, because 800x600 on a 4k monitor looks... yep.

This was enough to get the game working by itself, though as other people have noticed (particularly in that other thread) the UI sliders and button glows don't work properly.
In the best case they are extremely slow and/or unpredictable, in the worst case, they don't move at all and the game effectively hangs.

Turns out (speculation and experimentation below) that all you need to do to fix these issues (and some other audio and NPC glitches) is to throttle the frame rate of the game back to a nice calm 30 FPS (120 FPS is fine too, I wouldn't go too much further though.)

To do this:

1. Install Bandicam, as suggested in the other thread (Bandicam - Recording Software for screen, game and webcam capture). The free version is fine as we won't be recording things.
2. This is my first foray into frame rate throttlers so I assume any other application that does the same thing will work too.
3. Run Bandicam (it wants admin, allow it)
4. In the FPS tab, I ticked the "Set FPS limit to" box, and set the counter to 30. Unselect the "Only when capturing box"
5. I hit the "Game Recording mode" button that puts the application in "watch and act" mode for game recording but doesn't actually start any screen captures. This is enough to make Bandicam detect the game running and throttle the frame rate appropriately.
6. Run the game (which also wants admin, allow it, obviously :) )

Profit.

Hope this helps someone else!

------

Experimentation and speculation:

One of the interesting things I noticed while debugging this was that when the game "hangs" on trying to move the slider window in (e.g. the item purchase UI), the CPU and GPU don't go insane (ramping up fans, etc), so the game actually thinks it's doing the right thing - i.e. it's not actually "hanging" in the usual sense.

My suspicion is that all the UI animation and some of the character trigger animations actually DEPEND on a low frame rate to calculate the speed at which things should happen. To take the slider UI as an example:

If you were going to calculate how far the slider should move per frame, the "correct" thing to do would be to pre-determine how quickly you want it to slide and then measure how many milliseconds (or nanoseconds) had passed since the slider was clicked/pressed, and calculate how far it should have moved in that time. Once you get as far or further than the next/previous item, stop the process, you're done, the slider has arrived.

As we know, there are already a number of coding issues / bugs present in the game, and my suspicion is that the slider UI was coded "incorrectly". Instead of the above calculation, it instead knows the speed of the slider (which is fine/necessary/same as above), but then it determines how long the current (or previous) frame took to render, and moves the slider along based on that number of milliseconds.

This second process appears to do the same thing (and does away with the "state" that has the time when the arrow was initially pressed). However, it has a subtle issue: What happens when the time to render the frame is effectively zero?

If we're bouncing around the 1000 FPS mark on modern hardware, then any time we're running higher than 1000 FPS, any calculation to determine the number of milliseconds a frame took to render will always return 0. And if 0 "frame time" has passed, then the slider should move 0 pixels, because "no time" has passed. This is I think why sometimes we see it moving very very slowly. If a frame takes (say) 1 millisecond to render, that's actually progress, and the slider should move 1 pixel or so in that time. But every time the frame rate happens to go higher, we hit the magical "0 ms", and if no time has passed, then the slider should not move (although it is still registered as "currently moving" which is why no other UI input works - presumably these are cancelled while the slider is sliding).

So the definition of a bazillion, used above, is 1000 FPS. If your game is running at, or faster than that, it will ironically not run.

In fact, if you set Bandicam to throttle at 500 FPS you start getting a fairly degraded experience. Throttling to 999 (Bandicam's maximum) - gives some very interesting buggy behaviour, as sometimes the frame rate skips a few frames over 1000 FPS.

Anyway, those are my experiments and speculations. Hope you enjoyed the read if you got this far :)
 
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