LadyCrimson

Like, ones that go from some rock on the ground to whatever skybox limit flying has? That would be odd to be stopped in mid-air, but I suppose it won't be much different than the flying car in FFXV which was like that too. I was looking forward to flying around but even with that ini tweak largely fixing frame pacing issues for me, I picture it tanking again while flying and then CTD on top. I expect some things need to be accessed while flying but overall I enjoy hoofing it (it doesn't feel slow) enough I'm not sure I care too much at this point.

Hogwarts: --they did a good job with not making me feel like there are (silly) invisible walls everywhere. Either it's fairly linear dungeon/rooms where you don't expect a lot of freedom, or in the wide open, if it looks like you can maybe get up, there's probably a way. I did find the map edge (shimmering) once via climbing a cliff face - but see, I was surprised they let me climb way up there in the first place. --I did bump up combat difficulty to Normal. I'm sure there's a few tougher bosses later, but so far enemies have been cakewalks with Basic attack and one or two spells and barely trying, since it gives you all the block etc. prompts (maybe you can turn those off, haven't looked). The talent/skill system, I feel like I'll barely need any of them. I haven't used a single potion and I already can't pick any more up. --That said, I don't consider easy combat a negative here. it's still pretty fun and there's more moves and spells to learn for more combos for variety. It's an adventure light-rpg, not a constant action/mega-hard game, and that's fine with me/what I want. 😛 --some of the later Main Quests become more involved/longer. Improvement. --Dinner time, then maybe I'll finally get my broom.

^ Was that in Cyberpunk? I don't remember that at all, but I didn't play it very far and my memory is pffft. 😄 But yeah, all games with a large focus on tons of outfit looks should do it, imo.

Ok, I think this worked for me: https://gamerant.com/hogwarts-legacy-pc-stuttering-fix/ gpu shader cache was already on, but I did for some reason have hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling Off at some point (probably for another game, haha!), turned it on. In the Engine.ini, since I have 11GB v-ram instead of 8gb, I put the -r.Streaming.PoolSize- to 6144 (raise in increments of 1024 is the advice). Not sure that makes much difference over 5120 except totally maxing out vram, I might drop it back down. I'm back to the native/no-dlss settings I largely had before and while the outdoor/fps dips are about the same, the difference is the massive frame pacing stutter/lag at that FPS is mostly gone. GPU utilization went from 30% or so to 85%, if that means anything. So it now plays like I expect sub-60, even sub-40, to play. For those who think even one fps under 60 is totally unplayable it still won't be great but for an old fart like me, it's very tolerable vs. the resolution/settings I want. Edit: I have not tested yet whether DLSS still seems to cause constant CTD with FT for me, or not, with these changes.

I'll see your new threads and raise you... ...also found a leather version of a wizard hat somewhere. I like the "transmog" concept in this game. Tiny gear inventory but everything you buy/pickup for even an instant becomes a skin you can apply to anything you actually wear. Or make the gear slot invisible. So I just sell EVERYTHING but what current best-stat I'm wearing. I've been occasonally buying stuff I like just for the skin, then immediately sell it again.

Well, I've decided for myself, DLSS causes CTD's during fast travel (and random other times) far far more often. I played for hours, no DLSS, no CTD's with FT. Had DLSS on and suddenly CTD almost every single FT. Turned it off again, haven't CTD'd at FT yet. I've downloaded DLSS version 2.5 and 3.1.1 that you can stick in the Hogwarts Steam folder cause supposedly it's outdated, but haven't tried it yet. Just went back to playing native at Medium/High (View distance is always on Ultra) and outdoor drops to 38. Haven't tried capping to 30. btw there's also a bug of the game not recognizing your saves/chr. exist anymore. There's a complicated process fix for it that may work in most cases and I think it's quite rare to happen, but ... eh. The game on Steam actually ran a little better (fps and CTD's) before release day and that 300MB supposed DLC "patch." Still liking the game overall a lot (I'm lvl 18 and I think I'm getting close to having my broom), but getting a little fed up. >.>

To be fair, not sure if it's actually assigning spells. I open that menu, change a spell, it CTD's. I close menu after changing spell and take one step, it CTD's. That sort of thing. Anyway, I went into nvidia, made a profile for Hogwart's and set that performance mode setting to Prefer Maximum vs. Adaptive. So far haven't had another CTD, but as always, could be random coincidence lol. I gave up and put DLSS/Quality/mostly Ultra on. While everything in the castle was 50-60 (at mostly Medium/native res), there were more and more forest spots where fps dropped below 40 and in this game, that is often motion "laggy" enough where even I care. I'll just sit back another foot. 😛

I seem to be getting a lot of CTD when I reassign spells. >.>

Hogwart's - I am not particularly enjoying all the very tutorial-feeling main quest missions that seem to comprise how you get any new abilities/game mechanics. They go on and on and on. Maybe this is because I'm not a Potter-world-lore fan and don't get anything from all this teacher and classroom stuff, when all I want to do is progress to say, flying broom, trait unlocking, potion making, flying mount, etc and then go back to exploring more freely, but meh. Some of the early side quests are more interesting/fun.

The Last of Us, episode 5: ...that was the best one yet. Had everything. The pacing of this show, episode to episode, is on point. The supporting actors are (mostly) fantastic. Thumbs way up.

^ I was going to say I still had had only that one CTD, but I just had another. No day1 patch yet either. It did have me download a 300MB something that claims it was DLC, but nothing new. Like it re-downloaded the pre-order stuff I already had. Or updated it. I dunno. Regardless, yeah the best thing so far for me is the exploration factor. Game makes you want to explore and figure out what "things" are for. Resources seem to respawn (eventually). You can definitely wander-encounter enemies much higher level then you but on the other hand I think there's some level scaling in the sense that maybe you won't ever have enemies lower then you. not 100% on that.

...what kind of game am I playing?

Hogwart's: Open file: \Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Hogwarts Legacy\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini At bottom, paste in: Make the file read-only if you want/if it seems to reset on game start. Before: (this is night, btw) https://crimsonkeep.com/wallpapers/data/media/131/Hogwarts-00006.jpg https://crimsonkeep.com/wallpapers/data/media/131/Hogwarts-00009.jpg After: https://crimsonkeep.com/wallpapers/data/media/131/Hogwarts-00007.jpg https://crimsonkeep.com/wallpapers/data/media/131/Hogwarts-00008.jpg ...the no-bloom I like a lot. Definitely keeping that. ...the no-fog I'm conflicted. I like the less white/green/brown haze, but on the OLED tv, it's almost too dark/contrast-y even if you turn game brightness up (note: less of an issue on non-OLED monitor). Plus very distant low quality stuff can be more eye-catching/distracting without the fog-haze. Outdoors mood feels more generic at times or something too, less "highland hills" or whatever. ...The no-fog applies to indoors as well, so the castle rooms looks more vibrant with colors that pop a bit more. I wish the fog had a half-strength option, that would probably be perfect. Why do dev's always seem to go overboard with "volumetric" anything. Oh well.

Oh, one more tech note re: Hogwart's - if you do get a CTD and then find the game won't load/crashes during the pre-shade screen when you try to play again, you can try going into the appdata/Local for the game. In the Saved folder (not saved games) there's a Config folder. I deleted that - the game just creates a new one - and it fired up perfectly again. You just have to redo all your video etc. settings again. So far only had the one CTD, over 8-10 hours game on. To get consistent fps outdoors as well as indoors (again, 4k) I had to lower a few more settings but outside of lighting looking slightly more flat sometimes, I don't feel the "look" of the game changes that much. At High/Ultra view distance I haven't noticed any distant pop-in, either. Maybe that doesn't show up until low or medium view distance, not sure.

Hogwart's Legacy - this is going to be one of those games where I wander all over by myself, ignoring the main quest most of the time. I had to force myself to stop going farther and farther away from the castle and go back cause I don't even have the mounts or room yet (and I figure some quests will send me hither and yonder anyway), but then I explored the castle even more and ... ...btw if you like less hand-holding, you can turn a lot of HUD elements off individually, including the mini-map. I have as much of it off as possible and only turn on the mini-map if I'm running in circles too long or something.

OH, OH, OH, Ansel photo works with this game! I don't have an distance-border/situation unlocker like I did for FFXV. but it works with my Ansel hotkey, no Experience install required. I wonder if any other games were like that and I never noticed/realized. Game fun-o-meter for me just went up three-fold! But more importantly! Sadly, no camera unlock script means I can't use it at certain times, like when you actually pet the cat. Probably won't work during combat either, is my guess. Good enough tho!

...I do not miss those 10MB, 20MB, 50MB HDD's of ye olden days.

Are you playing it on one your NASA-league, brought back from the future PC's? I would hope it runs ok. Optimizations or not, this game has utterly convinced me, that my next rig is definitely going to have 64gb system ram. Or more. And maybe I should get that 48vram 40-titan. eg, the future is going to be "you can never have too much ram" ... I hear you can just download more, maybe that'll work.

Finally got to the early quest that leads me outside. Got there, had a dialogue, turned around, CTD. Heh. If you're someone with a GPU with lower Vram, the Texture Quality setting should probably be set to Low or Medium. Difference between Ultra and High visually was barely noticeable, Medium it's a bit more evident but still not severe/looks good. I'm sticking with High which seems to put my GPU at around 8.5gb vram used (out of 11) instead of maxed out. Should be noted the Day 1 patch on release day may smooth out some of this stuff anyway. Edit: still finding it fun, castle was fun to poke around in, although I'm getting impatient to get to the more-freedom phase vs. every quest feels like an extended tutorial "do this to get your starter spells!" phase.

Ok, got my first cheap cloth wizard hat out of some chest. Also, ooo, pretty.

I've never had any noticeable issues re: Denuvo, in terms of stutter fests or mega lags etc anyway. I mean maybe if it wasn't there I'd see 5-10fps more, who knows, I know nothing. Most of my FPS issues comes from wanting to run in native 4k but not wanting to buy a new gpu yet. 😄 The castle is rather large. Managed to find my way to outside sections here and there, see the view, witness all the little atmosphere touches. I can imagine for a lore fan, it must be awesome. RAM use remains around 16-19GB, varies. It works with a controller, but there seems to be a ton of functions via KB/mouse that do not carry over to controller so that might be more flexible. Most of that doesn't worry/bother me, except...while skip-to-next-line of dialogue is r-click mouse, I can't see a way to do it via controller. So I end up using the mouse and then going back to controller.

I liked Dances with Wolves a lot when I saw it in the theater, although it felt a little too long back in an era where 3hr films were not practically the norm of every film trying to be "epic". My memory is I mostly liked Graham Greene. And the cinematography. And Two-Socks. I think today I would find it a bit dull. Costner is decent/good in the right roles but he is kind of ... generic? bland? overall. Or needs strong supporting/co-lead actors to bounce from. The ones with Costner as lead that I liked most would be: No Way Out The Untouchables (but mostly for Connery) Field of Dreams A Perfect World (possible his best acting role, maybe...) Open Range (Robert Duvall is a strong pairing) The Highwaymen

Note: the chr. creation felt generic vs. an ability to make a unique looking chr, but at least the creation screen wasn't a total lie vs. in-game result. This is the sorting hat thing, not an outfit, but I am looking forward to maybe finding silly wearables...

^ I think I've refunded maybe 5 games, I'm not sure. I usually just eat it, but because my track record re: interest in all media lately has been especially bad, plus I'm not a Potter-world/lore fan I was dubious of my interest, especially for the slightly more expensive early-access version. But if I was going to buy/play it, I'm going to have those extra flying mount options, darnit. 😛 So, minus my earlier testing, I would say it takes 40-60 minutes to first get to the castle, depending on your speed, get hat-sorted and dumped into a room, which is when you can start manually saving. The game seems to be a system ram hog, getting up to 18gb total and beyond so far. But I did see it "let go" of some during transitions so no memory leak. If you have it, it just likes to gobble it. Found turning a few settings down (shadows, effect particles ... uh, I forget) to medium seemed to get me the 50-60ish fps I wanted in native 4k. I expect there to be lots of ups and downs at times. Game itself: One of the few times I rather liked all the tutorial bits, the small combat, the story bits. Nothing fancy, but I wasn't bored, at least. Note: I am playing on Easy because I'm a casual nub these days. Although from the early taste I might bump it back to Normal. You can increase FoV but indoors it often still feels quite restricted and a bit annoying at times. Anyway, so far I'm impressed/interested enough to keep going/forget about any refund possibility. Off I go to find my inner wizard.

I would like to take a moment to gripe about Steam's 2-hour refund window when it comes to modern open world story rpg's, in that by the time you get past chr menu (even if you rush it/don't care), fancy game logos, long intro cutscenes, long tutorial bits (I can't even manually save yet), alter settings multiple times, restart game to make sure settings take, etc. it's going to 3+ hours or more and one sometimes gives up on the idea of a refund for that reason alone. The actual Hogwarts castle is likely going to be a performance drop for many and I think you don't reach that for a while. That gripe over...at the very start of the game, here's what I see, using 2080ti, 9900k, 32GB, no overlays except an fps counter: --during the pre-shader caching/setup whatever it is, which takes a few minutes, system ram went up to about 15GB for me, so not counting Windows maybe 12-13gb? I forgot to glance at task manager for ram usage after that. >.> ---4k, Ultra, no DLSS/scaling, no RT--- first cutscenes and area you can walk around in (not full open world yet), 35-45fps ----4k, Ultra, DLSS at Quality, no RT--- goes up to 50-60fps, DLSS to me looks noticeably softer but still all right ---1440, Ultra, no DLSS/scaling, no RT--- first cutscenes and area you can walk in, 50-60ish fps ---1440, Ultra, DLSS/Quality, no RT--- 90-110fps ...I tried reducing settings but I sort of felt like not everything was registering within game without a restart, would have spend an hour fiddling with that. But just changing one setting, like shadows, down a notch or two didn't seem to make much difference in 4k. I did try -all low- and graphically it's actually not the worst I've seen, although the fps increase didn't seem mega substantial for it. Debating whether to waste more refund window on testing. 😛