PSA: Fix for common game freeze issue

[vitas]

I have found a workaround for the issue I've seen many have with the game screen freezing.

The Issue:
The screen freezes or goes black but you are still in the world and the game still responds to input commands. This happens more in some zones than others, particularly bad zones are OT, PoM, Skyshrine, and parts of Kael. One place in particular that you are almost guaranteed to freeze is in OT, inside the tunnel to Skyfire.

The issue seems to be correlated with modern nvidia gpus.

Other posts about this issue:
https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=359131
https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=342786
https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=355553

The solutions posted in the threads above are either incomplete(only reduces occurrence for regedit fixes and wineq2), or unreasonable (alt enter can crash the game itself)

The solution:
If your motherboard has an onboard gpu (I'd wager most do nowadays), then you can set windows to use that gpu for everquest only.

• Go to control panel > Settings > Display (or windows key > "display settings") and click "Graphics Settings"
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• Browse for your eqgame.exe location to set a preference on that application
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• On the Graphics specifications dialog look at the Power saving GPU and High performance GPU. If you see a different gpu listed for Power saving, then you likely have an onboard graphics card that you can use (mine shows "Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630). In this case you can simply select the "Power Saving" radio to have everquest run solely on your onboard GPU.
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  If you do NOT see a different option for Power saving GPU, you may still have an onboard graphics card and simply need to enable it in BIOS (the steps for this will be specific to your motherboard so I cannot provide a universal guide to doing so)

So far this has been a 100% fix for myself and two others that have tested it with no real game quality difference resulting from not using the main gpu (eq is 20 years old afterall).

I hope this fix can help my friends and adversaries enjoy the game once more as I know this was an extremely debilitating bug to experience on red [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

-Mildew (red)