Jazz and Faust

Hi. I'm trying to play this game in my XP but the audio and video are both choppy and slow. The video card I have is NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440 with AGP8X.

The game set up options under config.exe are:

Use Hardware Acceleration
Use True Color
Triple Buffer
Volumetric Fog & Light
Hot Air Effect
Stencil Shadows
Enable Video

Smooth Settings: No Smooth, Smooth Edge, Smooth Full, Smooth Contour

Enable Sound; Enable Music

I've tried compatibility for 95 and 98, changing both the config.exe and jaf.exe properties but I don't know what all those video options do.

I can escape out of the opening video and the video at the beginning of the game and then the audio sounds fine but the movement is still really slow.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Try turning off the graphics hardware extras.
"True color" is OK, but turn off all those other graphics extras like fog, buffers, shadows, etc.

If necessary, turn off graphics hardware acceleration too, but see how well the game works without doing that first.

If the computer has hyperthreading or a dual processor, you could also try locking the game to a single processor. Some of the games that weren't made for multiple processors or hyperthreading will run slowly if the computer is trying to use more than one processor.
http://www.gameboomers.com/Members/legacygameshyperthreading.htm

Thanks Jenny. I did have to uncheck Hardware Acceleration also. It seems like the game will run okay now. I'll restart and play into it a little later today.

Glad you managed to fix the slowdown.
Good luck with the game.

Thanks Jenny. Looks like maybe I won't be able to play it. I started the game, played a very short time, got stuck, was wandering around, didn't save (of course), went to the Berth, and the screen went black. Had to do a hard shut down. I'm going to give it another try but I'm going to use the walkthrough, which means going back and forth from one room to another since I don't have a working printer anymore. I often find old games to be fussy if you do things out of order or click around too much (the clicking thing may be the computer itself) and I cannot afford to keep doing hard shut downs especially since the start button on the XP computer is broken and I then have to unplug it and plug it in again to restart it, also use a knife on the start button to pull it out if it gets stuck in (while it's unplugged of course).

I'll let you know if I get any further.

Followed the walkthrough and had the same problem. The game doesn't crash. I can hear sound but cannot do anything. I see a patch on gamepressure.com. What do you think?

I played Jazz and Faust years ago on a computer with Windows 98, and it was a crashpot. I don't know if it runs any better or worse on XP. It was definitely less stable than most older games from around 2002, some of which never crashed on me at all.
http://www.pagodagamedatabase.com/year.php?year=2002

Following the walkthrough will minimize crashes. Another thing you can do is exit the game and reboot every 15 or 20 minutes to keep the bad stuff that causes instabilities from accumulating in your computer's cache.


From what I can tell it's supposed to improve compatibility with certain video cards and other unnamed fixes. Worth a try I guess. You may have to restart the game after patching for the patch to take effect.

I must say I thought it odd that the manual states: "The Setup Options window is displayed when the game is started for the first time, when restarting after a crash, or when you launch the config.exe from the installation folder." Sounds like they expected a lot of crashes when they wrote the manual.

It doesn't seem like I should try to play it though it is a shame as it looks like a game I would really like. Since I did save this time just before trying to go to the berth, I may give it one more try. The walkthrough says that I will be told to go away (which I wasn't). I suppose I could skip the berth for now but that would probably just be putting off the inevitable, especially since you say the game is a "crashpot" and this is just the very beginning of the game.

Did you patch your game when you played it?

By the way, are there any other methods of bringing up the task manager or windows menu besides control/alt/delete and the windows key? I can tolerate crashes better if I just don't have to do a hard shut down.

No, I played it when it was first released, before there was any patch.


Since the Power button on your computer is broken you can't use that to shut the computer down. So I think Control/Alt/Delete is it while you're playing a game, at least with XP.

I do use the power button for a hard shut down. I cannot use it to turn the computer on though. After shutting down from the start menu I have to unplug the computer. When I plug it in the computer starts up.

Can you bring the task manager or windows menu up any other way in Windows 7 if a game or something else locks you up? Just asking since you said "at least with XP". Is Win 7 any different?

Do you think I should try the patch from gamepressure.com? The download would come from alamo or krypta. ????? Don't know what either is or if they are safe.

Thanks for your help Jenny!

I don't know what alamo and krypta are.
I usually get patches from patches-scrolls.de
The description of the patch in the readme.txt from the patches-scrolls download is the same -- fixes some bugs in the game and problems with ATI cards.

I don't think Windows 7 is any different.
You can right-click the Taskbar to get to Task Manager, but I think you can do that with XP too. The problem is you can't access the Taskbar while you're playing a game (unless you're playing the game windowed).

Windows 8 is a little different. I think there was some other way to shut down the computer by getting that bar on the right side to appear and then shut down using an option in the bar.

OK. Thank you very much!!

Yikes! That patches scrolls website is way to annoying and confusing for me. All kinds of google ads popping up! And nothing really seems to be there for downloading on gamepressure so the patch is a no-go.

I don't see any Google ads there, but I have Ublock Origin installed in Firefox so maybe that blocks them.

Go ***here***
https://patches-scrolls.de/download.php?g=Jazz%2B%2526%2BFaust&f=jazup2uspl.zip

Then click where it says Download.

Thanks Jenny. I'll see if I can try it out tomorrow.

I don't have any ads either... but like Jenny, I use Ublock Origin.

Thanks. I added this Ublock Origin and no ads now!

Yay!

I haven't had the energy to deal with this game again yet but I am loving this ad blocker!

I've been using Ublock Origin for a long time and I wouldn't be without it!

After I apply the patch, would it be better to restart the game from the beginning again or doesn't it matter?

Unless the directions specifically say you don't have to restart, I would restart from the beginning to minimize the chance of problems.

Thank you Jenny. I did that and so far, so good. I don't like having to play the whole game using the walkthrough but I will because I am interested in the game and hope I won't have too many crash problems that way. We'll see. I'll update.

Yes I thought it was an interesting game.
The locations were interesting.

I played all the way through Er-Elp with the walkthrough except I solved the gravestone jigsaw puzzle myself. I think I saved about 7 times. I got out of the game when I got to the Black Isle. I didn't have any crashes or problems of any kind. I'm tempted to try to just play the game when I go back in to see what happens. Not sure yet though.

I like Jazz and Faust and have played it more than once - but if I remember correctly some parts are certainly a bit buggy

[I still play it in Win98SE though. Haven't tried it WinXP.]

I just got back to the game today as the days kept slipping by me and I didn't want to play it at night for some reason. I did read the walkthrough about Black Isle so I did know what to expect and what I had to do but I did not actually follow the walkthrough. I replayed from a prior save to refresh my memory of getting to Black Isle and then I just played through until the end of Jazz without using the walkthrough and without having any problems until that final cut scene that ends Jazz and begins Faust. I encountered an error and had to do a hard shutdown. When I went back in I was able to see it all and I saved and got out probably for the night. Not too bad especially considering I did have the game open for about 5-1/2 hours even though I took a couple of 1/2 hour breaks from it.

Good game. I hope I don't have problems in Faust which I will try to play without the walkthrough and continue to save, save, save. I thank you again Jenny for directing me to the correct download of the patch which I think is working great.

I'm glad the patch helped.
Good luck playing Faust.

Final update. Finished the game without any more problems. I even replayed the ending which I usually like to do.