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[Mojotech]

Hello,  I'm running Immortal Defense Demo on a 2.01 GHZ AMD Sempron Processor with a gig of ram and an Nvidia 8800 video card, and it's still running slowly. (Extremely slowly, even, especially on stages like "Between past and present.) A stage that should take 6 minutes takes nearly an hour, and my wireless internet inexplicably stops working when the program is up...

I've disabled the sound, music, numbers, and set visual effects to 0, but nothing seems to be helping. Does anyone have any suggestions on ways to get my game to run faster?

[RinkuHero]

Try going into the .ini file and setting priority to 0 instead of 1 -- I've no idea if it'll help, but it's worth trying.

I have a 2.0 GHZ AMD as well, with a GeForce 4 MX video card and 1 gig of RAM, so I've a similar system to yours except for my terribly ancient video card, and on mine I never get any slowdown, so I'm not sure why it's happening to you.

One thing that also may help is to close all other programs when running it -- particularly programs that use CPU, such as flash players in internet browsers; I've noticed that when I have a clip from YouTube or something like that playing, it also slows ID due to competing for CPU. So it could be you have some program using a lot of CPU that's interfering with the game.

[Mojotech]

Thank you for the fast response! I tried doing as you asked, but with little success. I set priority to 0 and closed all other programs, but it still slows down during some parts. However, I still plan on purchasing this game as soon as I get payed- it's too awesome not to. (I've also been telling all my friends.)

Thanks for the help! I'll work it out somehow.

[RinkuHero]

A few other random things I can suggest (although I doubt these would help, this seems like a strange ideosyncratic thing):

- Updating drivers / DirectX if they aren't updated.
- Try playing the game in full screen mode rather than windowed, or vice versa. I've noticed it's faster in full screen mode, but others have noticed it's faster in windowed, so it varies.
- Some type of virus might taking CPU power away from the game (although I doubt that because you'd notice it and most people have active anti-virus software installed -- if you want to be sure you can press ctrl+alt+delete you can see a list of processes, and you can arrange them by how much CPU they're taking up).
- Try playing the game on a different computer, if there are any others around that you have access to. Perhaps even one in an internet cafe, from what I hear most of those allow you to play games (as opposed to computer science labs in universities and libraries, which typically don't).

[Mischief Maker]

You might actually try downgrading your drivers.

I had a similar problem with ALL gamemaker games using the latest version of the nvidia drivers.  I switched to the next oldest and the problem went away.  Truth be told I didn't see any appreciable improvement in performance with ANY of my games using the latest drivers, the opposite, actually.  Maybe it's because I'm running XP and the new drivers were made with Vista in mind.

[Mojotech]

Ahh, that might help- which version of the drivers are you running?

Also, when I booted up my computer this morning, Immortal Defense has stopped working entirely- it always crashes upon bootup... Maybe reinstalling it or getting the full version will help? It's a shame to lose all my progress, but it's an even worse one to not be able to play at all is an even worse one...

[RinkuHero]

You don't have to lose all your progress, just transfer the save file 'ndefense' to keep it.

I don't think the full version will fix any bugs the demo version has -- on indie game developer messageboards one of the most common complaints are about people who couldn't run the demo so they bought the full version thinking it'd fix the bugs, and then demanded their money back when it didn't. I mean, it's kind of obvious that if the demo doesn't work on a certain setup, the full version won't work either

Anyway, apologies for it not working, one thing that could be a cause is running it in Vista and not running it in admin mode under Vista (you didn't mention your operating system). In general Vista has a huge number of incompatibilities with a lot of games, and because I don't have access to a Vista computer I can't really test or fix them.

[RinkuHero]

This is from the forum of another game made in Game Maker. Perhaps it may help.

"I had this issue with the demo actually and found a solution.

Updated DirectX to 9.0c but did not correct the problem.

What I did right after was to update my .Net Framework to the new 3.5 edition.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa569263.aspx

3.0 may have worked as well but I decided to go to the more recent version.

Sure enough, Magi loads. : )

Also do note that I had some issues with the bootstrapper edition (where it downloads a small file to then download all the other files from the net) - they do have a link with the full install further down the page after you select to access 3.5."

[Mojotech]

Heh, I bought and downloaded the full version and it actually DID fix my problem- probably because I just found out my hard drive is dying, and eating random bits of data along the way... It probably got to an important bit of ID data and ate that, so...

Hooray for Data Corruption!

[RinkuHero]

Interesting & good to hear -- I guess if it happens again, just reinstall it (save the install file).