[Tech] NWN screen tearing , resolution and screen span

[Winter83]

I recently was forced to change a notebook on which I installed the game.

However given the notebook's poor performance with video games, when on full resolution there's a terrible screen tearing I experience. Like the refresh rate was low, however it's adjusted to 60.

I had to lower the resolution which solves this problem, but then the screen of the game does not fill the whole monitor, but leaving black edges all around (their size increase with the lower resolution), while the game running in a smaller window centered to the middle of the monitor. Which is just terrible.

Any way to play the game on a lower resolution but have it fill the full screen?

[Twily]

I'll test a bit later. My guess is if you disable allow widowed mode it will work though

[LittleWeasel]

Also sounds like a graphic issue. Are your drivers up to date?

[Winter83]

Drivers are up to date, yes.
Notebook has a rather large resolution, something 1600x900 or alike. But running the game on that hurting me eyes, with the terrible micro-lagging.
Not smooth.

[LittleWeasel]

Odd.. Mine is even larger and I don't have those issues.., no clue...

[Twily]

It could just be an incompatibility with the hardware or the hardwares drivers. NWN has major issues for me if I'm running it on windows, and I do have NWN in compatibility mode, run it as administrator, have tried the oldest drivers I can get as well as the newest, etc. I always have the same issues.

This would probably be more of a pain than it's worth to you, but you could try Linux if you're running windows. In my personal experiance Linux runs faster on my notebook than Windows for everything, and I'm able to use NWN on full screen, highest settings, along with 4gig in overides/mods. Linux can be a bit of a pain though, so if you do try this no blaming me if you hate it.

PS: Having Linux and Windows isn't hard to do(it's what I have). It asks which you wish to use when you turn it on.

EDIT: Also, Every bug NWN had on Windows is now gone in Linux. My game runs nearly flawless with Wine.

[The Rambling Midget]

I recently was forced to change a notebook on which I installed the game.

This phrasing is confusing. Did your alterations to this laptop cause the problem, or do you mean that you were using a different computer before, and now you've switched to the laptop?
I'm going to proceed assuming the latter, for now.

Do you have VSync enabled? It's under Advanced Video Options.

How old is this laptop? It may not have a powerful enough video card to run NWN smoothly at full resolution, in which case you'll just have to suffer through a lower resolution. It would be great if you could tell me what kind of video card it has. If it's called Integrated Graphics, that's likely your problem.

It appears that NWN is set up to align its screen space with factors of the native resolution of the monitor that it's on, and I haven't found a fit-to-screen option or kludge on the interwebs, so you may just have to accept a bit of black space.

Drop all of your video settings to nothing and see what happens at full resolution.

[Tathkar Eisgrim]

There are entries in the nwn.ini file under [display options]. You might want to check those are set appropriately.

It is still the case (I believe) that cloaks cause an FPS bug in NWN - a laptop might struggle where a desktop with a true graphics card might power past it.

[Winter83]

I had a different notebook that I had to change.

This new one is not even a year old. Lenovo Thinkpad. Integrated graphics and Nvidia GeForce 710M.
Its indeed an FPS like trouble.

[The Rambling Midget]

Your video card should be plenty powerful.

Go to full resolution, turn on VSync, and reduce all of the other video options to minimum. If it's still bad with those settings, you may want to try installing the previous version of your video driver.

[Twily]

If all of this fails, you can also try increasing the graphics to maximum. A long time ago, on one specific(outdated) game I used to play, my computer wasn't compatible with the low graphics settings. 99 times in 100 this won't work though(and will instead make you lag or crash), but it did work for me(once)