I have been trying for some time to re-play Thorgal (I know; it's a love-it or hate-it game) but bear me out.

It played originally on my simpler XP computer, but won't cooperate on newer machines. I discovered the discussion regarding hyperthreading (imagecfg) and tried it on my Vista computer - Lo and behold - the game runs, and appears that it will "continue" to run. BUT: There is something weird with the video layering, and Thorgal our hero is there, but almost transparent. You can sort of see him in the lower left quadrant of the picture, and his shadow is clearly visible on the dock. Also, there is flame from a torch which is actually inside the building, showing up outside on the thatched roof. Have a look:



When Thorgal walks into the hut, there are characters in there who are also mostly transparent as he is; but he talks and interacts with them as he is supposed to.

I was able to sort out the multi-core processor thing, but the video tricks are beyond my ability.

Tally; This thread is going to have to be moved.

It's clearly a ghost hunting problem

Sorry

Hope you get a responce, it's beyond me.

Dunn

When I played Arthur's Knights (a different game, but also made by Cryo), I had something similar happen with characters and parts of things disappearing. I managed to get it working by changing the resolution the game played at along with my default desktop resolution. I don't remember if Thorgal's allows you to change the resolution it plays at, and if it doesn't, this suggestion won't work.

The problem may have to do with filtering or something. Maybe your video card is set to automatically use filtering in games to improve the image quality. But that could be causing problems with this old game. So you might check your video card's settings to see if there's something that might help if you turned it off (or on).

The only thing I can suggest is tinkering with your video card's 3D settings (AA, MIP Mapping etc...) - short of that, you can try running an older set of drivers.

It a common issue; here's a blurb from Metzo's review of the game.

Thorgals Quest did the same thing to me when I played it ages ago on Windows ME, not as bad as yours though. I think it is just a "Thorgal thing" and played it anyway. I might add that is wasn't one of my favorite games.

Thank you everyone for the suggestions. I tried everything and then some; even connecting to an older monitor. Nothing seems to make a difference. I guess the only way to play this game is to use a computer of just the right vintage.

Tally Ho. Looks cool. I haven't played the game but it looks like something I'd like. I will check it out. Hope you can get it working properly.

Let us know if you find a solution. It's probably something to do with the video card or its drivers. Maybe some feature that video drivers had 8 years ago that allowed the game to work properly.

Jenny -

My video card is a GeForce 9500.

It has a great control panel, most of which is over my head. I'm good at a lot of things (LOL), but video is not one of them. If you or somebody can suggest what adjustments I might make, I will try anything.

Stuff I have done includes turning acceleration on or off, many different resolutions (the game seems to create its own resolution anyway,) using either digital or analog output, and playing on a Samsung flat-screen and an old but reliable Sony CRT monitor.

Since you have the nVidia Control Panel available, you may want to define a game specific profile for it. I don't recall to what extent the game used 3D (if at all) - but, try disabling things like Anisotropic filtering and MIP Mapping.

CRT vs flat panel monitor won't make a difference, nor will Digital vs Analog . The problem is happening before the signal is ever sent to the monitor. It seems to be a problem that some of Cryo's 3D/2.5D games were prone to, even back when the game came out though it's worse now. So I think it's driver-related.

I think the problem has to do with how the game is trying to render 3D textures, and it doesn't seem to work correctly with a lot of modern cards/drivers. You can try experimenting with tweaking some of the settings in your Nvidia control panel, especially if you see a control that has to do with textures or filtering or layers (z-depth or similar).