Broken on modern systems?

[slash213]

I've played both Chronicles of Riddick games on Steam when I was running an i5-750 system, but replaying it with an i7-7700k reveals some weird bug, probably a physics one caused by an increased performance.

The very first person you encounter in the tutorial level suddenly breaks his routine and starts walking around looking for threats, despite you staying crouched in the shadows, not moving at all. This repeats with every enemy you meet: sooner rather than later they aggro on something and go into the alert state, even if they were in the middle of a dialogue.

The very first elevator you have to use is all twitchy and wobbly when it's moves — a common symptom of a collision bug. My assumption is that there's collision bugs everywhere, and NPC aggro on some coffee cup freaking out against a table in the far corner of the room, or there's a wrench somewhere close to them that suddenly clinks, fighting for spatial independence with a toolbox he's been placed on top of by a level designer.

I've tried searching the web extensively for the issue and found almost nothing, just a couple threads somewhere on Steam, mostly with no replies, where OPs describe similar problems and attribute them to the CPU frequency. I don't know how they arrived there, but seems plausible to me.

What I've tried already:

• PCGW pages for both games have no mention of the issue;
  
• limiting framerate via nVidia Profile Inspector to 60fps and forcing a 60hz refresh rate along with different Vsync options, doesn't help;
  
• setting everything to "LOW", turning multi-threading off and changing CPU affinity to a single core ... doesn't help;
  
• limiting framerate with RTSS to 20-30 FPS seems to eliminate most (but not all) of twitching in the elevator, and I didn't have the heart to play it in that framerate long enough to check if the NPCs have been at least somewhat fixed too;

I am also aware of the "Cpukiller 3" utility. It is designed to provide a way to play older PC games that strictly tie their internal clock to CPU performance, making them lightning-speed fast on everything older than Pentium. In addition to reassuring name, this program has a very matter-of-fact way of doing things: in order to give you the opportunity to run old software at an appropriate CPU performance level, Cpukiller blasts your processor with useless work, pushing it over the user-defined CPU consumption level, all up to 100%.

Running my system with increased workload seems like an awful idea that just puts an unnecessary strain on the hardware, but I really wanted to play this again so I got a copy of Cpukiller 3 and tried using it to give me 30-40% CPU consumption. The program responded by slowing my system in ticks, completely halting it for a quick moment a couple times a second — mouse cursor freezing on screen, HTML video stream freezing, etc. I guess it would average out to 30% CPU utilization over time, but the utility seems, uuhh, limited in its application.

I welcome any suggestion on how to possibly fix this thing or where to cross-post to get better visibility. The games deserve better fate than to be lost not only to a copyright limbo, but to a hardware limbo as well.

[Kulturensohn]

Sadly I can't help you with this issue, but the game runs just fine with my 7700k

[slash213]

Thanks, even knowing that it's possible to run this helps. I'll leave the thread up in case someone comes up with a fix.

[Pilsu]

Try reinstalling the DirectX redistributable, assuming the download comes with one. I've seen some weird ♥♥♥♥ in old games and running the installers again tends to fix things.

[AJH16]

I was able to run it fine on an i7-8086k with an RTX2080 TI, though I did have to install the Tages drivers from the website first before it would run. Before installing updated Tages, it was getting a 13.6 error.

[Bandy]

I picked up digital copy on Amazon 4-5 years ago, all I needed to do was install patch 1.01 and a no-CD patch.

I keep back ups of game install files just like this, I see no Tages drivers, none needed depending on where you buy it I guess...

[slash213]

Well, it's definitely good to know that I'm in the minority. You lot have inspired me to install this and try again, although I see no reason for change.

I've tried reinstalling all kinds of drivers when I posted the thread, probably failed to mention it. Trying to artificially slow down the system by overpowering its CPU with useless work is not the first thing that comes to my mind whenever there's a problem ;)

[Hardcore Games™]

the game bugs with OS above XP are why the game is not sold on Steam anymore

[Bandy]

Originally posted by Hardcore Games™:

the game bugs with OS above XP are why the game is not sold on Steam anymore

Not my experience, W10, just saying, but that's not unusual, just look at fallout3 forum...

[Viejo Libidinoso]

I'm playing now, and honestly it's very smooth. Only thing is that I also notice that weird stuff when entering elevators, but I think that maybe is just how the game is, unless a video proves that on old machines that behavior doesn't happen.