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In the Forums... |
Posted: June 28, 2000 Written By: Keith "Farrel" McClellan Introduction I'm probably the only true-blue geek that works on the site at this point. Back in the day, not only was I into the whole technical/computer scene - playing around with my old 8088 and taking apart all of my electronic toys (much to my parents semi-dismay - dismay because they had paid for them but glee because that meant the damn things stopped making noise), but I was into role-playing games. Not role-playing games on the computer - but old school, pencil and paper role-playing games. And, guess what, Vampire: The Masquerade was one of the games we played. So you can only imagine the joy I had when I popped in Vampire: the Masquerade and found that it was not only a decent game, but it was also pretty tweakable. Woohoo! Drivers One of the first things you should consider when tweaking out a game is whether or not you have the most current drivers for your hardware. When you are talking about a game, there are two different pieces of hardware that you should make a point of checking out - your video card and your sound card. Video card drivers are pretty obvious - everyone mentions them and they seem to have a huge effect on gameplay. However, sound card drivers are just as important because it is highly likely that the new drivers will have lower CPU overhead, which is great for gaming in 3D sound. Both of these drivers should be available at their respective manufacturers website. Another thing you might want to check on to make sure that the game runs properly would be to make sure you have the newest version of DirectX installed. With every new revision this 3D platform seems to get faster so having the newest and greatest DirectX drivers is a must - DirectX 7.0a (the most recent version) is included along on the installation disks. Something else you might consider would be to download any applicable system updates from Microsoft such as IE 5.0. You wouldn't think it'd speed up the game but because it includes a faster version of the Windows 98 shell it is pretty useful. Installing the Game There are three different choices as to how to install the game - minimum, medium, and full. There are benefits to each of the installs, but personally I would recommend installing the largest installation that you can afford the disk space for. You won't regret it. If you have the spare space on your system to install the game totally to the hard disk, you won't even have to worry about the speed of your CD-ROM drive because even the in-game movies are run off of your hard drive. |
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