Small things

[Jinx]

1)
Problem:
The Nightmare pet seems to have the same problem as monsters in the underground areas where it can detect monsters through walls/over fences that it can't get to. It just hangs around flapping and not moving, even if
you wander off and it reappears it still stops and trys to figure out how to get to the orginal monsters. It does seem to time out and get abck to task but it takes an attack or ages for it to happen.

Idea:
Reduce the timeout it takes for the pets/monsters to figure out paths and give up.


2)
Problem:
Portals make the auras basically recast around player and pet making the casting effects start run again slowing the game before you can move off the portal stone.

Idea:
Drop the casting effects when returning from portals or changing the graphic settings.

3)
Problem:
The faster you run the more lag you get(every has to load faster), and the more oftern the graphics slows and the races through everything once you stop.

Idea:
Drop some of the movements from the graphics. No need to make the graphics draw whats already past just to catch up to where it should be. Otherwise it'll just get further behind if something else happens.

4)
Random observations:

Just that in task manager when the game is running very slowly and choppy there is maybe:
5% CPU time going to the tqit.exe
1% to system
94% idle
But under the processor trace graph there is 22% usage and most of that is kernal time. Thats where the lag is coming from, but end the game and the kernal and graph drop to maybe 3% max, so it is tied into the game or graphics drivers in use etc.

Also the editor always 100% of the time starts and runs silky smooth even if the game wont. If the souls running to the tower(or flag/birds in TQ) are jerking along no matter how many times the game is restarted, the editor fires up without any issues. Doesn't matter if the game is windowed or not the only thing thats works is a reboot and try again.

I've gone through every combination of settings(in the files not just the options screen stuff) and the only one that makes the game not crash as much is shadows. About 15mins between starting play and a crash with shodows on, and a few hours with them off. But that makes the random brown stretched shapes appear, like when day/night did when first turned off in TQ before the next patch. The horses heads are the worse in Elesium(SP?), every time they drop their heads the disappear and they become stretched triangles off the the right side of the screen.

If the game was **** I wouldn't care, but its damb fine not playing it is most annoying.

Sys Specs:
WinXP
AMD64 3800x2
2048Mb RAM
nVidia 7800GS AGP ( driver v9.1.3.1 mid 2006, same driver as used for TQ without any crashes and doesn't have any problems for any other programmes)
Sound is either Audigy(PCI) or realtek (onboard) makes no difference to anything though.