Evil Genius help needed

RoyceSraphimRoyceSraphim Registered User regular
edited October 2008 in Games and Technology
So I am playing evil genius and the frame rate goes to hell in a hand-basket whenever I load a game and when I try to change the settings in options->graphics, my laptop freezes up. The graphics are set to Custom for some strange reason. I get to the graphics menu find but when I click on a lower level or change the resolution, freeze and hard reset.

Anyone else have this problem and a solution? I am on the verge going to the second island and I really don't want to loose this save.

Fujistu Siemans Laptop
1.7ghz processor (sometimes heat shields to .595 but I have a cooling deck so that rarely happens)
512mb memory
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with updated Omega drivers

It ran fine in 2005 and I never had this problem, I just got tired and had other games i wanted to play at work.

edit: There was only one patch for this game. =(

I also installed from CD

RoyceSraphim on

Posts

  • PemulisPemulis Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    Man, I was hoping this would be about building a death ray or a machine to block out the sun or something.

    Might want to post hardware info, could be the problem.

    Pemulis on
  • harvestharvest By birthright, a stupendous badass.Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    Sounds like you ought to install the latest video driver for your hardware. Also check if the game has any official patches that might address the issue.

    harvest on
    B6yM5w2.gif
  • PemulisPemulis Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    I don't know anything about this game, but sometimes a game's graphic options get messed up and you can't get to the menu to change them. In this case there are often command line options you can use when you start the game to reset the options, or even set them specifically. Worth a shot I guess.

    Pemulis on
  • RoyceSraphimRoyceSraphim Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    Change OP a little with more information.

    RoyceSraphim on
  • PemulisPemulis Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    Also, it looks like these EG forums are still active, you could try asking there.

    http://www.n1nj4.com/index.php

    There is a tech help forum for the game.

    Pemulis on
  • CycophantCycophant Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    Try dumping the Omega drivers for official ones, just to see if it helps? It's always worth a shot.

    Cycophant on
    sig.gif
  • RoyceSraphimRoyceSraphim Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    Sadly, I have been going through pages of that forum and i cannot seem to find a similar problem, I hope it isnt just taking a long time to load changes. Anyone have a clue how to changes the graphical settings outside the game?

    RoyceSraphim on
  • VytaeVytae Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    Im playing this game this week actually. So stylish,its a fucking crime it didnt make a huge splash.

    And as for the OP. Update all your drivers,including your sound drivers,make sure you have the updated EG patch and turn of the AA. The game is getting a tad dated now,so it might just not like your radeon. And Vista or XP?

    Vytae on
  • Steel AngelSteel Angel Registered User regular
    edited March 2008
    Vytae wrote: »
    Im playing this game this week actually. So stylish,its a fucking crime it didnt make a huge splash.

    It suffered from some of the same problems as Elixer's previous release, Republik: Too much reliance on scripted events when the game really should have been sandbox like Civ or SimCity.

    That and you're given no warning that more notoriety from side missions has a significant drawback of frequent visits from military teams and superagents, which you cannot truly deal with until scripted events.

    Steel Angel on
    Big Dookie wrote: »
    I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.

    Steam Profile
    3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
  • TrivialTrivial Registered User regular
    edited September 2008
    I'm playing through this game again since I've last upgraded. The first time I played it was on my older computer and .. well, it wasn't too pleasent. Frame-rate would destroy the fun in the later stages of the game. But that's in the past as now I'm having a blast.

    Some Q's though:
    I know the two main ways to increase max pop is by doing acts of infamy and placing down lockers. But which acts of infamy in particular raise the pop? I've done a few now and only some of them raise the pop.
    Also, can I tell guards to actually GUARD something? Maybe even with a rifle in hand? Right now they're patrolling with nothing in their hands, or sometimes they'll do other jobs like work in the control room.

    Trivial on
    - Triv
  • AntithesisAntithesis Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    There is a patch that addresses some in-game issues and AI-related crashes- there's always a chance it'll help.

    http://www.fileplanet.com/147567/140000/fileinfo/Evil-Genius-v1.1-Patch

    **
    Trivial wrote: »
    Some Q's though:
    I know the two main ways to increase max pop is by doing acts of infamy and placing down lockers. But which acts of infamy in particular raise the pop? I've done a few now and only some of them raise the pop.
    Also, can I tell guards to actually GUARD something? Maybe even with a rifle in hand? Right now they're patrolling with nothing in their hands, or sometimes they'll do other jobs like work in the control room.

    I never really noticed anything other than lockers raising it, but maybe the cap raises as your Infamy level goes up, not as you do individual acts.
    Also, you can get guards to grab rifles from any armories you've set up, but only when on yellow or red alert. And you can't get them to guard anything specific. =(

    You CAN get two Henchmen to guard a door for your use only, but they're generally more useful on patrol.

    Antithesis on
  • TrivialTrivial Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Really? Kinday sucks. I'm having agents literally walk right into the entrance of my base and slowly make their way deeper inside. If I don't actively watch the map for any red dots in my base then they'd pretty much take over. I was hoping I could place a few guards inside the entrance (in the corridor) but I guess not.

    Trivial on
    - Triv
  • Steel AngelSteel Angel Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Antithesis wrote: »
    Also, you can get guards to grab rifles from any armories you've set up, but only when on yellow or red alert. And you can't get them to guard anything specific. =(

    And staying on alert status is not recommended since the international forces are absolutely shocked, SHOCKED that anyone would have a weapon in an area that has no government to provide police or military protection and will fire first on a dude just walking along the beach with a holstered weapon despite never finding any reason to believe anything bad is going on on the island, at which point they will be equally shocked that there's suddenly a dead body lying there as a result of them just murdering a construction worker.

    Sharpshooters absolutely suck for most of the game as a result of this as they always carry their rifle with them and get mercilessly cut down any time they wander out of the base. Now if you're at a point where you don't mind constant firefights, they can be useful but pretty much should be avoided until then.

    The best way to deal with agents is to have a needlessly overcomplicated system of traps and doors. I mean seriously overcomplicated.

    See, locked doors draw agents like moths to a flame. And an agent only has a limited amount of time to spend on the island. The higher the level of lock on the door, the more it tempts them and the longer it takes for them to get through. So having multiple fake entrances around the main complex that consist of nothing besides max level locked doors and an attention draining popup trap behind the doors makes them waste a lot of time. It also keeps your inattentive minions from triggering one of those traps and being left in a daze. Likewise, your main entrance should consist of a long tunnel that has many dead end branches consisting of max level locked doors and attention draining traps. When I made the base on the second island, I had like six dead ends flanking the entrance to the actual base proper. Stuff like fire traps or poison gas traps that you get shoved into by fan traps are amusing to watch and all, but just not as effective long term since any bit of damage causes agents to freak out, even the minor bit from fan traps. At which point they start firing at stuff, causing stuff to blow up, causing more damage, causing them to freak more, etc.

    Steel Angel on
    Big Dookie wrote: »
    I found that tilting it doesn't work very well, and once I started jerking it, I got much better results.

    Steam Profile
    3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
  • TrivialTrivial Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Good call. Do I eventually jump over to island 2? I think I'm still on the first island. Or was I given a choice at some point to choose one or the other?
    I hope I can jump over to 2 soon so I can rebuild my base.

    One other thing: Doors don't always work great at stopping agents from getting in since I have minions running in and out of my base opening said doors FOR the agents. -_-
    But I guess that's what those long corridors and mazes are for, right? I'll have to give it a shot.

    Trivial on
    - Triv
  • AroducAroduc regular
    edited October 2008
    Trivial wrote: »
    Good call. Do I eventually jump over to island 2? I think I'm still on the first island. Or was I given a choice at some point to choose one or the other?
    I hope I can jump over to 2 soon so I can rebuild my base.

    One other thing: Doors don't always work great at stopping agents from getting in since I have minions running in and out of my base opening said doors FOR the agents. -_-
    But I guess that's what those long corridors and mazes are for, right? I'll have to give it a shot.

    The thing to do is to just build a long and convoluted maze of corridors with shitloads of entrances/exits and have it not connect to your main base. That'll deal with the lion's share of the agents, though you do need to be a little careful when the Bond superagent rolls around since he can go to any locked door and use it to set off every single trap/open every door on the island at once. Agents are drawn towards any base entrance they see and will spend hours trying to get into (and then probably out of) a little closet.

    Mostly though, I just tag every single agent for diplomatic attacks and weigh my forces towards lots of the social minions. The front area just gets to be a massive clusterfuck of stunned and confused agents.

    As for going to the next island, don't until you have all the research parts for every single doomsday weapon or you won't be able to build certain things. Nothing vital, but you know... more fun crap to play around with. Building up a ton of cash and getting rid of your science minions for normal/construction ones and more social minions can also help get yourself going again quickly beforehand is also really helpful since you start with basically nothing but a warehouse full of all the cash and uberloot you have (which makes the agents go nutso when they see you carrying it around.

    Aroduc on
  • TrivialTrivial Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Aroduc wrote: »
    Trivial wrote: »
    Good call. Do I eventually jump over to island 2? I think I'm still on the first island. Or was I given a choice at some point to choose one or the other?
    I hope I can jump over to 2 soon so I can rebuild my base.

    One other thing: Doors don't always work great at stopping agents from getting in since I have minions running in and out of my base opening said doors FOR the agents. -_-
    But I guess that's what those long corridors and mazes are for, right? I'll have to give it a shot.

    The thing to do is to just build a long and convoluted maze of corridors with shitloads of entrances/exits and have it not connect to your main base. That'll deal with the lion's share of the agents, though you do need to be a little careful when the Bond superagent rolls around since he can go to any locked door and use it to set off every single trap/open every door on the island at once. Agents are drawn towards any base entrance they see and will spend hours trying to get into (and then probably out of) a little closet.

    Mostly though, I just tag every single agent for diplomatic attacks and weigh my forces towards lots of the social minions. The front area just gets to be a massive clusterfuck of stunned and confused agents.

    As for going to the next island, don't until you have all the research parts for every single doomsday weapon or you won't be able to build certain things. Nothing vital, but you know... more fun crap to play around with. Building up a ton of cash and getting rid of your science minions for normal/construction ones and more social minions can also help get yourself going again quickly beforehand is also really helpful since you start with basically nothing but a warehouse full of all the cash and uberloot you have (which makes the agents go nutso when they see you carrying it around.

    You don't happen to have a picture or screenshot as an example, do ya? Of the maze, I mean. My concern is how much space this thing should take up so as to make sure I have enough room for a fully functioning base.

    Right now I have a bit of room left on the opposite end of my base so I'll fiddle around and see if I can create a crazy and big enough maze on that side of the mountain. I'm thinking on entrance, one exit, and a fuckload of confusion inbetween. Will my minions be going through this thing as well or will it be relatively empty?

    Trivial on
    - Triv
  • AroducAroduc regular
    edited October 2008
    Trivial wrote: »
    Aroduc wrote: »
    Trivial wrote: »
    Good call. Do I eventually jump over to island 2? I think I'm still on the first island. Or was I given a choice at some point to choose one or the other?
    I hope I can jump over to 2 soon so I can rebuild my base.

    One other thing: Doors don't always work great at stopping agents from getting in since I have minions running in and out of my base opening said doors FOR the agents. -_-
    But I guess that's what those long corridors and mazes are for, right? I'll have to give it a shot.

    The thing to do is to just build a long and convoluted maze of corridors with shitloads of entrances/exits and have it not connect to your main base. That'll deal with the lion's share of the agents, though you do need to be a little careful when the Bond superagent rolls around since he can go to any locked door and use it to set off every single trap/open every door on the island at once. Agents are drawn towards any base entrance they see and will spend hours trying to get into (and then probably out of) a little closet.

    Mostly though, I just tag every single agent for diplomatic attacks and weigh my forces towards lots of the social minions. The front area just gets to be a massive clusterfuck of stunned and confused agents.

    As for going to the next island, don't until you have all the research parts for every single doomsday weapon or you won't be able to build certain things. Nothing vital, but you know... more fun crap to play around with. Building up a ton of cash and getting rid of your science minions for normal/construction ones and more social minions can also help get yourself going again quickly beforehand is also really helpful since you start with basically nothing but a warehouse full of all the cash and uberloot you have (which makes the agents go nutso when they see you carrying it around.

    You don't happen to have a picture or screenshot as an example, do ya? Of the maze, I mean. My concern is how much space this thing should take up so as to make sure I have enough room for a fully functioning base.

    Right now I have a bit of room left on the opposite end of my base so I'll fiddle around and see if I can create a crazy and big enough maze on that side of the mountain. I'm thinking on entrance, one exit, and a fuckload of confusion inbetween. Will my minions be going through this thing as well or will it be relatively empty?

    Sorry, it's not installed. I never had a problem with size though since the island has about twice as much as you need in order to build all the main rooms along with some random redundancies.

    Really, you only need a couple doors and then like... a loop with a few offshoots into locked closets. So long as there's nothing to do down there, your guys won't go down there. Soldiers will sometimes get into fights with other soldiers (fucking morons), so every now and then there are corpses, but there's really nothing you can do about that. You can toss in some silly traps if you want just for shits and giggles. That's what I tended to do when I got bored. Mostly of the social damage type or the "turn on fans that blow every body out the middle door (of 3)" and then they inevitably find the doors to the left or right again and go right back in. That can make some agents suspicious and/or they'll destroy them though, so it'll create at least some minion foot traffic.

    Enemy agent behavior is to tail your minions or investigate doors without really too much deviation, so if there's minimum minion foot traffic around, they should spend most of their time poking at the suspicious looking doors until the end of time, leaving you to deal with just the ones that parachute near your base entrance and the remnants of the ones that somehow made it past your SUSPICIOUS SUSPICIOUS doors. They're all on a timer too, after which they just leave, so you just need to give them something to keep them occupied for 2-5 minutes or so depending on their rank.

    Aroduc on
  • pabhpabh Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Pemulis wrote: »
    Man, I was hoping this would be about building a death ray or a machine to block out the sun or something.

    Might want to post hardware info, could be the problem.

    I also thought this was a post from a budding minion with dastardly plans afoot. Curses.

    pabh on
  • Sir CarcassSir Carcass I have been shown the end of my world Round Rock, TXRegistered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Another thing that had good results for me was building those little fake buildings all over the island, then putting a locked door on them with a confusion trap inside. Same idea as the maze, but it doesn't use mountain space. It's probably not quite as effective, but it worked pretty good for me. I didn't have the constant battle raging outside that I did in my first couple of games, at least.

    There's also a mod on http://www.evilplanet.com that raises the population cap and rate. It just involves editing a text file. I did my own that raised it to 500 and made them all available immediately, instead of messing with lockers and infamy. Keep in mind that having a high population means you'll need a huge training room to keep up with it.

    Great game, though. I recently deleted it after a reinstall of Windows, but I may have to drag it out again. I want to play around with the locked doors some more.

    Sir Carcass on
  • NEO|PhyteNEO|Phyte They follow the stars, bound together. Strands in a braid till the end.Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Whats with all this talk of false entrances and dastardly traps? I just flanked my entrance with like 40 camo turrets. If I forgot to tag someone, there was also a simple two-step jet trap to blow them back out the door. (I gave up on lethal traps about the time my minions kept tripping them.)

    NEO|Phyte on
    It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
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  • Sir CarcassSir Carcass I have been shown the end of my world Round Rock, TXRegistered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Because if you're killing agents, that just raises your heat, which causes more to show up. Keeping them occupied until they leave makes less of them show up.

    Sir Carcass on
  • AroducAroduc regular
    edited October 2008
    Because if you're killing agents, that just raises your heat, which causes more to show up. Keeping them occupied until they leave makes less of them show up.

    Actually, it doesn't... not directly at any rate. Most of your heat reduction comes from agents leaving the island empty handed. If you're always killing them, then your heat will just stay pretty much constant. Killing them does also make stronger versions of the same agent show up, but you practically need to commit genocide for that to outweigh notoriety's effect.

    Aroduc on
  • NEO|PhyteNEO|Phyte They follow the stars, bound together. Strands in a braid till the end.Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Because if you're killing agents, that just raises your heat, which causes more to show up. Keeping them occupied until they leave makes less of them show up.

    Again, 40 turrets, even SUPERAGENTS go down like chumps. Plus, how am I supposed to keep my supply of Freaks or whatever they were called up without ample bodies?

    NEO|Phyte on
    It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
    Warframe/Steam: NFyt
  • PeregrineFalconPeregrineFalcon Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    pabh wrote: »
    Pemulis wrote: »
    Man, I was hoping this would be about building a death ray or a machine to block out the sun or something.

    Might want to post hardware info, could be the problem.

    I also thought this was a post from a budding minion with dastardly plans afoot. Curses.

    Fuck it, let's just hijack a bunch of nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage.

    PeregrineFalcon on
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  • davinciedavincie Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Trivial wrote: »
    Aroduc wrote: »
    Trivial wrote: »
    Good call. Do I eventually jump over to island 2? I think I'm still on the first island. Or was I given a choice at some point to choose one or the other?
    I hope I can jump over to 2 soon so I can rebuild my base.

    One other thing: Doors don't always work great at stopping agents from getting in since I have minions running in and out of my base opening said doors FOR the agents. -_-
    But I guess that's what those long corridors and mazes are for, right? I'll have to give it a shot.

    The thing to do is to just build a long and convoluted maze of corridors with shitloads of entrances/exits and have it not connect to your main base. That'll deal with the lion's share of the agents, though you do need to be a little careful when the Bond superagent rolls around since he can go to any locked door and use it to set off every single trap/open every door on the island at once. Agents are drawn towards any base entrance they see and will spend hours trying to get into (and then probably out of) a little closet.

    Mostly though, I just tag every single agent for diplomatic attacks and weigh my forces towards lots of the social minions. The front area just gets to be a massive clusterfuck of stunned and confused agents.

    As for going to the next island, don't until you have all the research parts for every single doomsday weapon or you won't be able to build certain things. Nothing vital, but you know... more fun crap to play around with. Building up a ton of cash and getting rid of your science minions for normal/construction ones and more social minions can also help get yourself going again quickly beforehand is also really helpful since you start with basically nothing but a warehouse full of all the cash and uberloot you have (which makes the agents go nutso when they see you carrying it around.

    You don't happen to have a picture or screenshot as an example, do ya? Of the maze, I mean. My concern is how much space this thing should take up so as to make sure I have enough room for a fully functioning base.

    Right now I have a bit of room left on the opposite end of my base so I'll fiddle around and see if I can create a crazy and big enough maze on that side of the mountain. I'm thinking on entrance, one exit, and a fuckload of confusion inbetween. Will my minions be going through this thing as well or will it be relatively empty?

    You should wait until the second island with making the maze, (btw if you are going to the second island first get the totem pole fully completed since it only can be completed on the first island) but back to the maze, you should first make a small hallway into the rock on the other side as your main base and then make lots of corriders with high security doors and occasionally a confusion trap.

    davincie on
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  • APZonerunnerAPZonerunner Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Man, now I have to reinstall this. Fuck you guys.

    APZonerunner on
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  • Dr SnofeldDr Snofeld Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    I really wanted to love this game. I hoped for something like Dungeon Keeper. But no, didn't quite click with me. I don't have it anymore.

    Dr Snofeld on
    l4d_sig.png
  • RoyceSraphimRoyceSraphim Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    There is a link somewhere on the Evil Genius site that lets you build a base through java on the second island, unfortunately, I cannot tell the colors apart but it does seem useful.

    Oh, and don't get the sonic generator from Russia until the second island or unless you want to edit text files.

    I am so proud of myself, second island and my henchies are only down a single life each and I have never had to edit my save game.

    Must post the elimination of Mariana Mamba after soup.

    linky http://www.evilbastard.org/slight/egplanner.php

    RoyceSraphim on
  • TrivialTrivial Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    Oh man, that maze idea is flawless. The amount of agents distracted in there is tremendous. I put traps in there as well but all they did was piss off the agents and send them into a firing frenzy, so I took them out. The only annoying thing is the constant "WARNING! Security Door Bypassed!" voice that comes on every time they breach one of the many doors in the maze, which is pretty damn often.

    Trivial on
    - Triv
  • Sir CarcassSir Carcass I have been shown the end of my world Round Rock, TXRegistered User regular
    edited October 2008
    There's also a mod on evilplanet that removes those unbuildable spots from the middle of the mountains.

    Sir Carcass on
  • reignofevilreignofevil Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    I feel completely idiotically proud of having been a member of the previously linked forum since 05.
    And I dont know why.

    reignofevil on
  • Sir CarcassSir Carcass I have been shown the end of my world Round Rock, TXRegistered User regular
    edited October 2008
    I feel completely idiotically proud of having been a member of the previously linked forum since 05.
    And I dont know why.

    I'm proud of having been a part of this forum since 2001. :P

    Sir Carcass on
  • TrivialTrivial Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    .. Weird, I tried the pop-cap mod (where you alter the population.ini file) to raise the pop to 500 yet I'm stuck with about 177 pop at about 205 notoriety.

    Trivial on
    - Triv
  • reignofevilreignofevil Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    I usually stuck it at a simple 200 anyway.
    500 is just too much.

    reignofevil on
  • TrivialTrivial Registered User regular
    edited October 2008
    I changed it to 200 and now it's down to 144. What the heck? Maybe it's based on something else..

    EDIT:
    My God, there HAS to be a way to turn off the "WARNING: Security Door Bypassed!" alarm. It's driving me nuts.

    Trivial on
    - Triv
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