Technical Support

[Martin_]

Is the game slow, not running or crashing? Here is our FAQ we will be updating. If you are experiencing any issues not listed, please reply with a detailed description so we can help out.

I'll be removing messages in this thread as they get resolved. If for some reason we remove a post that is still an issue please repost it.

Game is running slow:
We have a rather high min spec due to the complexity of the game.

CPU:
Is the physics slow or character lagging?
You must have a dual core processor for the game to run well. Single core machines will likely experience a slow down when fluid is on screen.
If you experiencing significant slowdowns and have energy saver settings, it's possible that windows is limiting performance of the game. Make sure your CPU energy saving settings are set to high and are using all cores when playing.

GPU:
Is the framerate choppy?
If you have a lower end video card try lowering the Resolution in the Options menu. Vessel defaults to the highest resolution. Lower resolutions will give you a smoother framerate and might improve the experience of the game. Also if you have any forced graphics settings via Nvidia or ATI 3rd party tools, turning these off for Vessel may increase performance.

make sure your Nvidia drivers are up to date at
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

or

make sure your ATI drivers are up to date at:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx


Monitor is 'out of range' in full screen
( Should be resolved. If you are still getting this reply to this thread. See below for fix: )
As a work around, you can ALT-ENTER and play the game in windowed mode.
Once you are in windowed mode,
ESC to bring up the menu.
Select 'Options'
set 'Full Screen' to true
change the 'Resolution' to a valid setting
select 'Apply'

Crashing on start-up:
If you are getting a DirectX dll error you'll need to re-install DirectX.
either by navigating in Windows Explorer and running
"..\Steam\steamapps\common\vessel\Setup\directx_ju ne2010\DXSETUP.exe"
or via the web download at:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35

Cannot play game, getting "Not yet released" message
Exit the Steam client and re-open it.

Gaming laptop: Game is running REALLY SLOW
Some of the modern laptops have an embedded gpu which is lower power consumption but also very slow. If you have an Nvidia card to disable this for Vessel:
- control panel -> 3d settings-> Manage 3d settings ->Program Settings -> Add ->
- Pick vessel or vessel demo
- select "High Performance NVidia Processor"

[johnk]

Originally Posted by Brann0

Hello there,

I have a AMD Phenom II x4 @ 2.8 GHz and a 6970 GPU. But the game slowed when there were liquids on the screen (usually slowed down with 2-3 liquid beings and a liquid stream).

Discovered that the problem was with the CPU energy saving settings. When the game was running my CPU frequency was set at 784MHz (lowest cpu freq) because of the energy settings. It usually scales up when needed but seems that Vessel doesn't pump enough power for that.

All I did was changing energy settings from Economy plan to Balanced or High Profile so the CPU frequency doesn't scale down that easily(or at all, with high profile).

Not Vessel runs smooth as butter, as I expected.

Btw, Serious Sam 3 BFE has the same problem for me. At some areas the CPU doesn't scale over 784 MHz. Probably a conflict on how those games interact with economy energy plan, dunno... Any ideas?

Btw, very fun and charming game. Got it as a present from my brother and I'm loving it \o/

Yeah that's a known issue, the way that video cards choose to go into high power is not public, as best we can tell its hardcoded to certain games like Battlefield, and you have to override it manually for the rest. Still looking for a better solution here.

[Martin_]

Originally Posted by squall_leonhart

I see the latest patch notes mention supersampling, what exactly is meant by this and how do you go about using it?

It's a way to allow for anti-aliasing however since the game is not truely 3D, the amount of good supersampling does is minimal. You are better off just running the game at the highest resolution you can since enabling supersampling will essentially just render the game at a even higher resolution.


I created a separate thread which explains how to use it here:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...php?p=30898312

[Castiello]

Originally Posted by squall_leonhart

sounds like Vessel is starting on the Intel gpu instead of the nvidia one.

It's weird though, it runs beautifully, even with lots of liquid on the screen, for about 1 minute, then it instantly goes into lag mode. I tried doing nothing for about a minute and then moving my character, and sure enough it was lagging. Why would it work fine for a little while then crap out like that?

[Martin_]

Originally Posted by Castiello

It's weird though, it runs beautifully, even with lots of liquid on the screen, for about 1 minute, then it instantly goes into lag mode. I tried doing nothing for about a minute and then moving my character, and sure enough it was lagging. Why would it work fine for a little while then crap out like that?

Check your power settings on your laptop. If it's going to a lower setting, try forcing it to the highest settings so it utilizes 100% CPU usage.

You can force Vessel to use the Nvidia GPU in the Nvidia Control Panel.

[squall_leonhart]

Open up the Nvidia control panel
select the Vessel profile
if one is not present, add the vessel.exe to the list of games
on this new profile, set the gpu selection to always use the higher performance nvidia processor

[cjm]

Apparently my freezes were vsync related. After reading some of the other threads in this forum, I decided to try turning vsync off (but kept full-screen on). It hasn't frozen up since.

[Martin_]

The start-up crash has been resolved. Please grab the latest patch that was released today.

If you are still experiencing it on version 1.14, please respond with your CPU/GPU specs.

[Martin_]

version 1.15 it out, which fixes the crash related to unplugging/plugging in USB devices.

[squall_leonhart]

nice and fast, the other thread got pruned though, i suppose we are to post bugs found to this thread then?

[Martin_]

Originally Posted by squall_leonhart

nice and fast, the other thread got pruned though, i suppose we are to post bugs found to this thread then?

I'll be slowly cleaning up the irrelevant posts on the sticky threads to make it easier for everyone to skim through.

Also, I am only removing threads that are solely about bugs/issues that have been fully resolved. If there is any useful info, I'm leaving the posts or adding it to the stickys.

Thanks!

[skreyola]

Thank you for your attention to the problem. Vessel now works great for me.

[sdcoiner76]

Tried recommendations but still having serious problems with slowdown and choppiness. There is about a half of a second input lag that makes the game almost unplayable. Here are some of the specs from my system.

Intel 4 Core i7 920, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4350 running latest drivers.

[DarthPsymon]

Originally Posted by sdcoiner76

Tried recommendations but still having serious problems with slowdown and choppiness. There is about a half of a second input lag that makes the game almost unplayable. Here are some of the specs from my system.

Intel 4 Core i7 920, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4350 running latest drivers.

Your graphics care barely meets the minimum requirements

GPU: ATi Radeon HD 2400 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600

Although your GPU is a newer generation, 4000, it is still very weak, 350.
It really is a bottleneck for your system.
That CPU is powerful, and you've loads of RAM.
You should treat yourself to a new graphics card.
Assuming this isn't a laptop, then you're stuck...

[dimag0g]

Hello,
I just got the game with humble bundle, and it fails to start on my computer. I get an access violation exception at address 0x00400000+0x0000b808 on my windows XP. I disabled DEP for vessel.exe and installed the directx which comes with the game. Any ideas?