[rtrooney]

After finishing Still Life, I'm embarking on the second of my five Christmas goodies, Scratches- Directors Cut. I installed the game today. My system excedes minimums by a whole order of magnitude. All drivers, if not the very latest are the latest as of 30 days ago.

The action is excrutiatingly slow. It takes about 36" of actual mouse movement to pan from one side of the screen to the other. This can't be what the designers had in mind when they put this game together.

I found another thread in the section that posed the same question. I think the poster's name was Antoinetta. Her question went unanswered. There is nothing in the "manual" that addresses mouse issues, not anything in the Setup menu that addresses cursor speed and control.

Has anyone else run into this problem, solved it and can share that solution? Otherwise, this game is going to have a very short lifespan.

[Legolas813]

The problem lies with the "improved" sky effects in the latest version of the Director's Cut. There are MANY threads about this problem on the Nucleosys boards. The developer doesn't seem too helpful, mainly telling people to update drivers or get a new video card. At one point, there was a sky patch released, along with some configuration settings to try, but all that did was turn my game from going slow to now it crashes everytime I try to play it. I gave up on it and the game has been sitting on my shelf unplayed for over 6 months. Maybe you'll have better luck than I did.

[rtrooney]

I visited Nucleosys and see what you mean. The common thread is that it's a driver issue. Athough it appears they can't keep their story straight. In one thread the advice is to get the latest driver. In another, the comment is that the latest driver is the culprit, and backtracking to an earlier version is the solution. All drivers, including video are far newer than the release date of the game itself, so that shouldn't even be an issue. The card, by the way is the Dell OEM version of the ATI Raedon x300/x550/x1050 series.

I'm glad I didn't pay all that much. Now it won't hurt so much to get rid of it. While a new video card might truly be the solution, telling people they should spend $250 on a new card so that they can play an $11 game borders on insane.

[Hoipolloi]

This is the most aptly named thread, so let's resurrect it...

I'm having similar problems - with an ATI card that can handle Tomb Raider Underworld on an elderly machine, but Scratches doesn't allow smooth turning, at least as soon as I leave the entry area around the fountain in front of the house. At least, the game is playable in "normal" mode - cursor on the screen edges to turn. I'd very much prefer the 360° movement mode, but it's unplayable that way.

I'm already running the latest relatively bug-free driver version for my card -- f***k Catalyst and AMD/ATI -- and OpenGL tuning isn't my speciality.

A quick fix if the game gets really stuck (even in normal mode):
I've editet scream.cfg in the Scratches program folder. Set

QUALITY 1 ; Quality level (0=low, 1=high)

to

QUALITY 0 ; Quality level (0=low, 1=high)

I've tried to track down some info about the "SCream engine" and its config options, but the developer, Agustin Cordes, and all related websites have gone off the radar - sad. From what I understand, this engine can mix 2D and 3D elements. That's why OpenGL performance is an issue.

Here's what worked best for me:
- turn Triple Buffering on, but leave VSync off in Catalyst
- solve sound stuttering/repetition (on transitions from one spot to the next) by turning off sound hardware acceleration

The game was playable from start to finish, albeit only in "normal" movement mode.